Messing with your heads

You’d never know that there is an election imminent.

Two months ago Health Minister Cunliffe slagged off striking doctors for being “unrealistic“, backed up by CTU President Helen Kelly, of all people. Now Education Minister Chris Carter has told a group of North Shore secondary school principals protesting against inadequate funding to “stop moaning and start teaching“. Primary school principals are considering joining the protest.

Brilliant.

Carter points out that the Government has spent $5 billion on education since 1999. This year’s amount represents 4.4% of GDP and compares with 3.5% in Australia. He’s right. But it appears that he’s the only person in the country who isn’t aware of the problems schools have experienced with their funding for maintenance, amongst other things.

One thing’s for sure, dissing the hard-working people who struggle to keep our schools and hospitals functioning is not a sure-fire fix for sagging poll ratings.

[Update: The PPTA weighs in, telling Minister Carter that the concerns of the North Shore principals are "shared right across the secondary school sector." Will he listen now? The answer appears to be, not.]

Bodily fictions

It was pure Hunter S. Thompson. The giant green lizard raised itself up and slithered across the stage towards me. It stopped just a metre or two away. Human eyes in the reptile’s visage fixed on me, and it bared its bright blue tongue menacingly.

I found myself last night at the NZ Body Art Awards 2008 in a catwalk-side seat — as a guest of a major sponsor and judge. The lizard went on to win the Best Model award as well as the supreme award for the make-up artist Carmel McCormick (who also won overall last year).

Of course, I had approached the show with some quiet misgivings, mostly due to my feminist-sympathising conscience asking whether this wasn’t just an attempt to make voyeurism acceptable. And from my seat there was no avoiding the, er, bareness of it all.