Willie Apiata – Afghan Delight and a Minto Moment

 “The real heroes of Afghanistan are the three Kiwis who popped the dome two years ago…”  John Minto 

Corporal Willie Apiata won his VC-the first by a New Zealand soldier since World War II- for rescuing a wounded colleague under fire. But according to John Minto, he “was no hero compared to Sam, Adrian and Peter.”  Maybe Minto had been popping something else. VC vs PC is no contest. Declaring that Apiata is no hero compared to the real heroes, the peace activists, was a maladroit Minto moment.

 Historically, especially in World War I, conscientious objectors like Archibald Baxter, father of  James K,  exhibited a lot of courage and were treated incredibly harshly*.  By comparison the trio who deflated the Waihopai surveillance base, run by the Soviet-sounding Government Communication Security Bureau (the GCSB), had a milk run and don’t deserve inflated kudos.

 Meanwhile, as the whole world now knows, Special Air Services trooper Corporal Apiana was back on the streets of Kabul recently joining a counterattack against a Taleban terror strike and looking for all the world like a movie poster pin up. The hirsute still-is warrior looked somewhat different from his medal investiture photos* and women of an uncertain age  obviously thought he was very SASsie .

 Like Prince Harry, whose military tour of duty in Afghanistan was cancelled once the word got out, Apiana would be a high profile kidnap target by the Taleban or Al Queda or any one of a number of dissident cells setting its sights on a high profile target as a negotiating chip. A Willie away movement would be very harrowing.

 The media have got the stick for printing a French freelance photographer’s  military mugshot of the Kiwi hero and told that they should consider what they are doing in these days of instant world wide communication. But of course the corporal was naughty for removing his helmet in the first place. Even sunglasses would have preserved his anonymity though not protected his skull.

 Skulldugery was the accusation that some leveled at the New Zealand Government. The New Zealand military originally went into Afghanistan with an emphasis on civil reconstruction in rural areas. The SAS’s metropolitan adventures are a whole new dimension.

The outing of Apiata led to the announcement by the PM late last week about being more open regarding  SAS movements. This makes political if not military sense. The New York Times, through its Afghan news hounds, seemed to know more than Kiwis about the SAS being involved in urban guerilla warfare in downtown Kabul, replacing the withdrawing Norwegians. (Norwegians would).

 The reasons why the antipodean ant has been so assiduously helping the global elephant are largely to do with diplomacy and potential free trade agreements.  If, as Chou En-Lai had it, all diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means, in this case for this country war is a continuation of diplomacy by other means.  New Zealand’s involvement has helped to paper over the cracks of past differences, especially New Zealand’s unwillingness to be part of the military nuclear family, despite Ernest Rutherford’s pioneering scientific efforts.

 In political circles in America New Zealand stands to gain more kudos from  being open about its Afghanistan engagement than conforming to strict military secrecy.  Not all the PR is good, of course. One tricky bit is the SAS’s involvement in the arrests of alleged terrorists and passing over the prisoners to the tender ministrations of the Afghan authorities. This is a new rendition of the old number “Guantanamo Bay” and the guano may stick if Amnesty International has its way.

Since 2001 the American propensity to lump the Taliban and Al Qaeda together is the equivalent of the old red scare and smear approach by the Americans after World War II. Reds under the bed have been replaced by mullahs under the loofahs. (There have been some strange alleged bedfellows: at once stage, before he was deposed, Saddam Hussein was lumped in with Moslem radicals despite his rather secular background).  

 The Allies in Afghanistan (though most non-Americans nations, apart from New Zealand, have disengaged) are looking down the barrel of a deteriorating military and civil situation in a country which in the last two centuries has dispatched the armies of the imperial British and the communist Soviets.

 Meanwhile American soldiers in Afghanistan and elsewhere, together with their allies, including New Zealand, have been setting their sights on higher things.

 Sadly there will be a lot more inscriptions to come, in many languages, and they won’t just be on gun sights.

 #Lyall Lukey 3 Feb 2010  

http://www.lukey.co.nz/  http://www.smartnet.co.nz

*BLINKS

Corporal Apiata VC-2 photos: http://kotare.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/07/25/312454.jpg  http://static.stuff.co.nz/1264068651/236/3252236.jpg Reporter describes SAS encounter I’m okay, Apiata tells worried family  archibald Baxter «

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pklr0UD9eSo  Tom Lehrer “So Long, Mom (A Song for WW III)”

 

Trijicon: Onward Christian Soldiers?

 “ We believe that America is great when its people are good.  This goodness has been based on biblical standards throughout our history, and we will strive to follow those morals.”  Trijicon Mission Statement

The trigger happy US gun sights manufacturer Trijicon  adopts the missionary position in its corporate statements. It also includes biblical references  on its Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight in raised lettering, added to the serial numbers.*  The ACOG Tactical Scope has the inscription pointing to John 8:12 “Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life”.

This doubles as a tract and a bit of cute self-promotion for the  day/night sight as demonstrated in a video review by Fun Gun* which shoots the line that the ACOG sight is indubitably A Good Thing in the sight of God.

 We‘re not talking here of religious bumper stickers or personalised ordnance signage but officially issued high tech weaponry used by American troopers and also, among others,  by New Zealand’s SAS soldiers in Afghanistan, who have been in the news recently more than any covert  military organisation would wish.

News of the inscriptions on the “Jesus guns”, for long, apparently, an open soldiers secret,  is just the  right calibre propaganda ammunition for recruiting dissident Moslem youth, with or without Koran-inscribed rifles, to target purported new era Christian crusaders.  As University of Canterbury historian Geoffrey Rice points out, the medieval Crusades are still comparatively fresh in the collective  Moslem memory.

Domestic critics point out that the US is already struggling against the image of a crusade in the Middle East. It is tricky enough to recruit and retain an all-cultures all- faiths American army, as last year’s US military base camp mass slaying demonstrated. The inscribed sights do no favour to the American military by potentially triggering a dissident recruiting backlash, nor to Christianity, as witnessed by the numbers recoiling from  the present proselytising position.     

Further afield, Al-Jazeera correspondent David Chater, says that the references are a “rallying cry for the Taliban. It gives them a propaganda tool. They’ve always tried to paint the US efforts in Afghanistan as a Christian campaign.”*

They reinforce the anti-American perception that religion rather than national security is at the heart of the US military presence abroad.

 The “war on Islam” issue is not confined to American troops.  New Zealand soldiers, also equipped with the ACOG sight, could also be in the gun as “Christian Crusaders”, as Mavis Emberson points out, “…..you are giving a perfect excuse for all those who pretend to feel that the NZ soldiers are “Christian Crusaders” to kill all NZ Armed forces where ever that are..”

 Since the concordance revelation the New Zealand Defence Force has been quick on the draw and ordered the removal of the letters from existing gun sights from its 260 Trijicon sights. I thought that such a hair trigger response would be unlikely to happen in the United States, where large numbers appear to believe that not only is God on their side but he speaks with a mid-Western accent, but just yesterday the issue had obviously become such an embarrassment for the Pentagon that it insisted that Trijicon send ‘removal kits’ that soldiers can use to file off the references.  Only the more muscular military Christians will  describe this as defiling the holy swords of salvation.

 It is hard to imagine the previous American government moving so fast- or even at all- on this issue. There has been a fundamental change at the top.  Is this the start of the War on Error?

#Lyall Lukey 24 Jan 2010  

http://www.lukey.co.nz/  http://www.smartnet.co.nz

 *BLINKS

ABC News –Revelations

Video review of  the Trijicon “ACOG” sights-3.43+ refers to the biblical inscriptions.

Al-Jazeera quotes its correspondent

Trijicon sights: How the ‘Jesus gun’ misfired‎

 OT and NT verses not used by Trijicon:

Ecclesiastes 9:18

Wisdom is better than weapons of war

1 Samuel 17:47

It is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves…

Matthew 26:52

All who take the sword will perish by the sword

Matthew 5:9	Blessed are the peacemakers

Blessed e-vent: The search for the 3G spot

 “May our tongues be gentle, our emails simple and our websites be accessible.”     Rev. Canon David Parrott

As John Cleese would spot in a flash the good Reverend is definitely a live and very lively Parrott,  with a secure grip of his parish perch.  He recently organised a blessing of smart phones and other devices brought to a special service by members of  the congregation of St Lawrence Jewry in the City of London. 

In an earlier parish, at Yuletide, he’d dressed up like a Christmas tree.  The livewire leader is obviously a very switched on clergyman in the Anglican eccentric, eclectic and now electric tradition.

The 3G blessing ceremony was an overdue V2 of the medieval Plough Monday ceremony, when farm labourers would bring  ploughs to the door of the church to be blessed. This stopped them being turned into spears. (See below for how to turn old mobile phones into cash for Starship Children’s Hospital*).

On the altar, in ecumenical propinquity, were four Smart phones, one Apple and one Dell.  Members of the congregation tended to their own devices, tenderly key stroking their mobiles and searching for  the 3G spot (which heretics now claim doesn’t even exist), in order to receive a blessing in the name of 3G, the Holy Trinity of Mobile Communications.

The Apple was, no doubt, a salutary reminder of certain events in Genesis (the book, not the power company or the rock band).

We can assume there was a reading from The Book of Jobs. The iPostle’s divine products are both objects of worship -dangerous territory in Old Testament terms- and  diabolical inducements to the heinous sin of envy for those without an iPod and an iPhone.

For those who eschew micro soft options they are also universal proof  of intelligent design rather than evolution.

There are other theological implications of the blessed event at St LJ.

For example, without getting in too deep, we can expect much more speaking in tongues in off-shore  call centres. (This may be a mixed blessing).  

More customers will summon the strength to get off the broadbandwaggon and use the power of prayer to by-pass telco networks by using God’s free direct dialling service. This will give Telecom New Zealand more headaches on top of the Commerce Commission’s recent report into errors in the telco’s historic broadband charging.  It sheds a little light on esoteric invoicing practices and is a timely homily for unwary consumers: thy will be done.

Next time Anglicans do the Lambeth Walk we can expect a proposal  to change the chronological alphabet from BC to BB  (Before Bell) and AD to AC  (in the Year of Our Cellphone). There will be a hot debate about whether those with mobile pre-pay schemes will qualify for ordination.  A conservative Anglican minority apparently regards pre-pay as synonomous with the pre-Lutheran purchasing of indulgences and therefore anathema.

Meanwhile, a Kiwi with dextrous digits and a well-thumbed keypad has just won the Bronze in the World Texting Champs. This event is a portent of accelerated thumb evolution which could forever alter the dynamics of the key to humanity’s technical wizardry, the opposed thumb and index finger. That will really fire up the anti-Darwinists and create a real debate. 

But thumbs up for the colourful Rev. Parrott.  There may be a few feathers flying in his parish and calls for normal service to be restored as soon as possible, but any reason for a live gathering of any community is better than leaving people to their own devices, locked in their own cells, in these connected but often lonely times.

#Lyall Lukey 16 Jan  2010  

http://www.lukey.co.nz/  http://www.smartnet.co.nz

PS Starship Hospital appeal for old mobile phones. If you can’t ressurect your dead batteries or you’re buying a new phone, turn your mobile phones into money for a good cause.*

Blinks

*Mobile Phone Appeal – Starship Childrens Hospital
  The Parrot Sketch
  Kingston Trio – Little Light  The real version 1962
  Genesis – In Too Deep

 

2010-The Shrinking Decade

“ my friend and i are having a little chat…
i say 2000-2009 is a decade,
she says 2001-2010 is a decade.
we both agree there is no 0 AD, but i’m certain 2010 is a new decade…”                                                                                          answers.yahoo.com

The  questioner may be certain-but he’s certainly wrong!

 I just arrived back from a 6 day bike trip to Lake Taylor and Loch Katrine in the North Canterbury High Country. My ride, into the teeth of an old man Nor’wester,  spanned the New Year. It was also a trip back in time which covered half the ground traversed first by Maori en route to the West Coast pounamu and then by the Europeans on their way to the West Coast goldfields in the 1850s before the  Arthurs Pass route supplanted it.

 I emerged from a phone, newspaper, TV (and, until late at night radio) blackout to discover that, in a clear case of premature exhortation, the mass media had jumped the gun by a year in celebrating the arrival of the new decade. Magazines, newspapers, radio and television programs were filling the holiday white spaces with interminable “Best of the Decade” lists.

Having failed to pin the nauseous nickname “The Noughties” on the allegedly completed first decade of the third millennium,  wordsters  were already suggesting even more  dreadful terms like the “Twenty Teens” for the second.  At least they used capital letters.

 If you accept that the third millennium began on 1 January 2001 the last decade has suddenly shrunk by 2 years-ie it covers the period 2001-2009. (Certainly, it seemed a whole lot longer, but that was only because George Bush II inhabited the White House for a good chunk of this abbreviated time span).

But when does the new decade really begin?

Okay, strictly speaking, a decade can be any period of ten years, but for the concept to be of any historical use there need to be certain agreed conventions about when it really begins. It’s a matter of knowing how to count to 10. Perhaps the Government’s new numeracy standards need to be broadened to cover media mavens.

If you want to number from the beginning of the Common Era, C.E. (it’s a bit tricky using AD- most biblical scholars  are now agreed that Jesus Christ was born anachronistically around 4 BC) and you agree that there is no year zero, the first year was 1 C.E. and the 10th year, or the last year of the first decade was 10 C.E. Extrapolate from there. Years ending in 1 are the first year of the decade. Years ending in 0 are the 10th year of the decade-ditto for centuries and millennia.

Richard Brody in a blog “When Does the Decade Really End?” persuasively develops the argument that the new decade doesn’t begin until 2011:  HINT- There Never was a Year “0″. Since there never was a year “0,” the first decade was Years “1-10,” and the first century “1-100,” and thus the first millenium was “1-1000.”

It seems as if the wrong headed view of the majority, misled by the media, is squeezing out the logical voice of the minority.

Of course, if the Mayan calendar and prophecy is correct we won’t need to go through the same logical and semantic contortions in 2021.  The Mayan Calendar is more than just a system to mark off the passage of time;  it is above all a prophetic system. The Mayan word is that Close Of Play for The World is going to be either December 21 or December 23, 2012, the end-date of a 5,125-year-long cycle. (The 22^nd must be a rain day).

No matter into whichever of the two numbers in the celestial roulette wheel the ball drops, the decade debate will stop once and for all.

Meanwhile it’s back to the future. While you are waiting around go for shorter investment terms and longer mortgages.

Before it goes all black in 2012 the All Blacks just better make sure they win the Rugby World Cup next year.

#Lyall Lukey  6 Jan  2010  

http://www.lukey.co.nz/  http://www.smartnet.co.nz

BLINKS

When Does the Decade Really End? – Associated Content …

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091230234330AAOk9uX 

Mayan Calendar – 2012 and The Mayan Calendar

Aorangi School: funding closure but not finding closure

“This has not been an easy decision to make, but after considering final submissions from the school and from the Ministry of Education, I believe it is the right one,”  Anne Tolley, Minister of Education 

Political leaders revel in stories about humble beginnings. Abraham Lincoln — from a log cabin to the White House*, Barrack Obama– from a primary school in Jakarta to the White House*,  John Key–from a state house in Christchurch to the key of the House of State ( plus a mansion in Remuera and a holiday house in Hawaii).

As a 13-year-old, John Key decided he wanted to be the Prime Minister of New Zealand. Aorangi School, the primary school he went to in his pre-teen years, has just been closed in a pre-Christmas snow job, despite a High Court hearing challenging deficiencies in the consultation process.

The Government is having enough problems coming to grips with the leaky homes caused by the loosening of building regulations by its early nineties National Government predecessor. In this case it has had even more trouble with rotting school buildings. Perhaps something is rotten in the state…

There was obviously overwhelming local support for Aorangi, which was a microcosm of multi-racial Christchurch and provided unique educational opportunities for its community.  It was a decile 3 island in a decile 10 suburban sea in NW Christchurch, which includes Fendalton, and had its demographic origin in the sixties policy of pepper-potting small numbers of state houses and their inhabitants in leafier suburbs than usual. 

The school’s roll has been declining, not helped by the school’s being under a dangling Damoclean sword for many months. 27 staff- rather a good ratio of teaching, support and administrative staff in a shrinking school- were handed an unwanted redundancy card for Xmas.

The Minister has undertaken to provide a school undertaker, aka as a “change manager”, to support the school, families and students through all aspects of the closure process, which happens over the school holidays. The school community would have preferred a school caretaker.  The ministry will work with Ngai Tahu to establish a replacement bilingual unit “with some urgency”, though, given the school’s rainbow population a multicultural unit might be more to the point.

As John Caldwell, junior counsel for the Aorangi Board pointed out, the alleged fiscal savings of around $2.5 million by closing Aorangi were  ”potentially illusory”*.  The Press reported on 24 December that an independent accountancy firm concluded in a report made available on 10 December that the actual saving between the cost of rebuilding the school, calculated correctly, and the costs of moving its pupils elsewhere, was no more than $38,032 a year.

The board only received the working papers on which the ministry’s closure assumptions and dodgy arithmetic were based after the minister’s final decision to close the school, effective from the 27th of January 2010 (with the school holidays intervening, effectively from end of the 2009 school year).

In a clear example of below standard numeracy a ministry official apparently subtracted rather than added a six-figure sum for rebuilding demolished classrooms, which rather messed up the replacement tender budget and widened the gap between the board’s and the ministry’s negotiating position.

$38,000 is a very modest return for bad publicity and loss of goodwill.  The government, which like its predecessors has more spin doctors than all the cricket playing nations combined, has trampled rather clumsily on its own education stumps rather than stumping up with the not very big net difference in finances.

With a bit of cultivation and a Mucking In makeover, Aorangi could have been a living, learning testimony to a poor boy made good and multicultural harmony.  (Not that the Key family was quite the stereotypical New Zealand poor: his assiduous widowed mother, with her European Jewish heritage, was a great believer in education and his home would have had more books than most, even if her son became most interested in the double entry kind). 

The young John Key’s shift, with his family, from his birthplace in Auckland to Christchurch and his educational progression from Aorangi to Burnside High, then to the University of Canterbury en route to a stellar financial trading career and politics and the top job in 7 years, while not quite Horatio Alger, is still good stuff in the Kiwi egalitarian lexicon. It is too good a story about the power of education to attain personal and social goals to have an unhappy ending.

 As Trevor Mallard found out when he was the Minister of Education, whatever the budgetary constraints, closing schools is not the quickest route to political popularity.  He certainly wouldn’t have tried to close down Helen Clark’s old school.  If he had tried she certainly wouldn’t have let him.

The Prime Minister is relaxed about most things and cuts his ministers plenty of slack. Gallows humour is premature-there are bigger battles looming over National Standards- but this has been a dreadful public relations exercise for the Ministry of Education and its minister Anne Tolley, who has been left holding a can of worms because of some bureaucratic bungling.

 #Lyall Lukey 26 Dec 2009  

http://www.lukey.co.nz/  http://www.smartnet.co.nz

*Blinks

The Boyhood of Abraham Lincoln (clip)

Log Cabin Blues’ BLIND BOY FULLER (1935) Ragtime Blues Guitar Legend

Barack Obama’s school days – 08 Jan 07

School Days―Sekai vs Kotonoha

Decision to shut school `unfair’ | Stuff.co.nz

http://www.aorangi.ac.nz/cms/ 

http://www.johnkey.co.nz/

New Zealand lunches above its weight at Copenhagen

Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen
Friendly old girl of a town
‘Neath her tavern light
On this merry night
Let us clink and drink one down
To wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen
Salty old queen of the sea                   Frank Loesser

In an incontrovertible example of global swarming 35,000 official delegates and hangers-on descended upon Copenhagen two weeks ago for the UN’s climate change conference, which concludes today.

I am not sure about old queens but at the proverbial end of the day at the end of the fortnight, the negotiating glass was neither nearly half full nor half empty, depending upon your personal optimism setting. This was despite President Obama coming off the bench with his cheque book for the last play. (His speech about all nations “giving ground” would have had the leaders of low lying Pacific nations nodding their heads).

In fact, there is not much to celebrate.  Despite the self congratulations of its diplomatic drivers and even if, as a negotiating vehicle, it was pointed in the right direction, Copenhagen looks more of a clunker than a clinker.

Hans Christian would have had a field day separating the fairy stories from the factoids. There were only some Thumbelina-sized advances, despite the Snow Queen and her ilk, including Father X and polar  livestock, purportedly being in grave danger of getting the third degree treatment within the next century.

As might be expected very few officials- or protestors, for that matter- had arrived in the salty old town by sailing ship and several invited luminaries, including Prince Charles, arrived in private jets. (Even his scarf wearing mother used a scheduled train service two days ago to go to King’s Lynn in Norfolk for Xmas).  It was just a tad too soon for Branson’s Virgin Galactic so the city was spared any ETs. Just as well-the ETS was quite enough. 

Apart from the live and lively activities of a green deluge of tens of thousands of protesters, electronic petitions were a significant factor in accelerating cyberspace warming. With two days to go Avaaz* invited the global digital community to “sign the petition for a real deal” — the campaign already has a staggering 11 million supporters — over the next 48 hours let’s make it the largest petition in history! The name of every signer is being read out right now in the summit hall — this sign on at the link below and forward this email to everyone!“ 

Even if no one else signed the petition in the last two days-and it seems another 3 million odd did-to get through the list of names they would have needed 125 people simultaneously reading out aloud continuously for 48 hours. The Guinness book of records may be interested.

So was at least one politician.  On an “emergency conference call” with 3000 Avaaz members two days ago, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: “What you’re doing through the internet around the world is absolutely crucial to setting the agenda. In the next 48 hours, don’t underestimate your effect on the leaders here in Copenhagen”.

Not quite a brown out, but the other 109 (no, make that 110) presidents and prime ministers negotiating in Copenhagen no doubt also got the message:  “We call on each one of you to make the concessions necessary to meet your historic responsibility in this crisis. Rich countries must offer fair funding, and all countries must set ambitious targets on emissions. Do not leave Copenhagen without a fair, ambitious and binding deal that keeps the world safe from catastrophic global warming of 2 degrees”.

Apart from the online mobilisation there were 3000 climate vigils in 140 countries last Saturday. Protests in the digital age make their analogue predecessors positively pedestrian, which, of course, they were.

Away from the last day’s superheated hyperactivity New Zealand can take some satisfaction from the agricultural pre-deal it initiated. Once he decided to go the Copenhagen Prime Minister John Key may have been elbowed out of the BBC climate change chat show by his  jostling Australian counterpart, but, as NBR columnist Matthew Hooton points out,  he at least has a significant agreement under his belt, courtesy of the work done in the months before Copenhagen by ministers Tim Groser and David Carter, supported by ex minister Simon Upton and MAF. 

This significant initiative is not based on dubious market trading schemes but on research, development and the application of new technology that can reduce net greenhouse emissions. There is an impressive lineup of foundation members for the Global Agricultural Alliance  who are funding new research, much of which will be done in New Zealand universities like Massey and Lincoln.

In this instance New Zealand was certainly playing to its strengths and lunching above its weight in diplomatic circles. That, at least, is worth celebrating.

 BLINKS

 Danny Kaye – Wonderful Copenhagen

Wallmans – Wonderful Copenhagen

Copenhagen vs. Tainted Love (Trentemøller Mash-up)

http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_copenhagen

http://www.nbr.co.nz/ 

 #Lyall Lukey 19 Dec 2009  

http://www.lukey.co.nz/  http://www.smartnet.co.nz

20 years on Tomorrow’s Schools are history

“Effective management practices are lacking and the information needed by people in all parts of the system to make choices is seldom viable.”  Picot Report May 1988  

It is an incredible testimony to the power of a label that people still refer to “Tomorrow’s Schools” 20 years after the administrative earthquake of David Lange’s education reforms.

 We all know that tomorrow never come and neither did Tomorrow’s Schools in respect to some of its original interlocking architecture. Nonetheless the changes were portentous. The fall of the Department of Education and local education boards  was not quite as momentous as the near simultaneous fall of the Berlin Wall but it was still a bureaucratic big bang event-and most bureaucrats hate change.

Earlier in the eighties the government had called for a review of the curriculum. The public were consulted but the initiative was overtaken by reforms of the administration of education. Two major reports appeared. The first had the Tom Peters-inspired title Administering for Excellence and had much input from business and industry, reflecting the neo-liberal agenda promoted rather ironically by the Labour Government. It was known as  the Picot report after its leader, Brian Picot, a supermarket owner.

 The second report called Tomorrow’s Schools was the Minister’s blueprint for the process. The government replaced the Department of Education with a ministry and turned schools into autonomous entities, managed by boards of trustees. This was a  world first.  The fact that it does not appear to have been replicated elsewhere  may speak volumes.

Picot had found that the education administrative structure in 1988 was over centralised and made overly complex by having too many decision-making points.   It was a pain just to replace a broken window. It was purported that the relevant “fix it” papers went through 14 pairs of hands. The lesson was if it’s broke don’t fix it.

I  recall,  during a short  teacher recruitment  stint in the Department of Education well pre-Picot,  encountering  former principals and school inspectors chained to musty office desks in the historic old wooden Government Building in Wellington  while they handled tactical tasks such as approving new light bulbs.

 Lange saw the light. He regarded the dinosaur-like Department of Education beyond evolutionary adaptation and new organisational forms and drastic reforms were needed in the shape of autonomous school boards.

 In Picot’s words “The result is that almost everyone feels powerless to change the things they see need changing.  To make progress, radical changes now required.”

 Radical they indeed were. The trouble was as part of this process teachers in their professional dimension were sidelined. In education and health and elsewhere the politicians  fear of the day was professional capture.

 Managerialism was the answer du jour. Bus companies, hospitals, government departments-they were all amenable to the management span of control. Brain surgeon or bus driver? Bring them on. It’s all grist to the MBA mill.  And millstones were what we sometimes got. The missing part of the equation was professional credibility. It is true that some people skills are eminently transferable. But it is also true that credibility resides not just in what is said but who says it and in their background and experience.

 In the laudable rush to get community input and involvement the professional voices of  teachers were muted. (It didn’t help matters that the 1980s tactics of the teacher “unions” -the professional terms “association” and “institute” were used less and less frequently- were on a par with the Cooks and Stewards Union, the difference being that  the latter chose the school holidays for their stoppages).

 Tomorrow’s Schools was a more radical change for primary schools than their secondary colleagues, who already had the right to appoint their own staff. It led to a nearly 3000 autonomous school boards, without some of the regional and national connecting structures envisaged by the Picot Report.  

Autonomy led to an atomised educational landscape with “clusters” of schools providing limited local connectivity. Important professional supporting roles like national in-service programmes and curriculum and resource development became fragmented or non-existent for a number of years. Curriculum reforms were postponed and it is only now, near the end of the first decade of the new millenium, that a new 21st century curriculum is finally being implemented.

In the meantime societal shift has happened big time. Today, Tomorrow’s Schools are very much last century.  

Lyall Lukey 6 Dec 2009  

http://www.lukey.co.nz/  http://www.smartnet.co.nz

Blinks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ILQrUrEWe8   Shift happens-2009 update

Pearl Harbour-They were sailing

“It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time, the Japanese government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace”.

Franklin Roosevelt – Pearl Harbour Speech December 8, 1941

On this day in 1941-the day I was born–the Japanese Imperial Navy sailed from Tokyo Bay to a staging point rendezvous within striking distance of Pearl Harbour, which they attacked at dawn on 7 December.  Roosevelt’s  “Day of Infamy”  was to be forever seared into the collective consciousness.  The attack finally brought the United States into World War II.

Their tardiness in being involved in the  two world wars was in stark contrast to the alacrity with which they engineered the war against Iraq to effect “regime change” by getting rid of Saddam Hussein, originally their man.

Revelations in the last few days about the pre-Twin Towers timing of the Blair/ Bush agreement, which lead to the “shock and awe” martial rhetoric and then the real thing, demonstrate that the “War on Terror” was not preceded by a war on error which would have confirmed Iraq’s lack of alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction.

The United Nations weapons inspection evidence at the time showed that the only thing likely to be blown up was the spurious evidence.  But Blix was nixed and the WMD  claims Colin Powell  made at the UN  were totally overblown. A war with strong opening moves,  a weak middle game and no end game was launched with indecent haste. It, too, was obviously planned many months  before; all that was needed was a casus belli or at least a half plausible  rationalisation.

Playing black in the military game of chess rather than white, as in 1941, certainly has some public relations and historical memoir advantages, not to mention  cv benefits.  In respect to Iraq, if not Afghanistan, Tony Blair may now wish he had followed Harold Wilson’s example of not sending troops to Vietnam. Not only did the decisions to support the Americans elicit little in return diplomatically, they would have been a big factor in Blair being recently sidelined for the European President’s job. After his long wait in the wings Gordon Brown could be forgiven for not being entirely heartbroken about this.

The attack on Pearl Harbour was a giant step to lifting the profile of Hawaii and paving the way for eventual statehood in August 1959. That was to make one Barack Obama, born in Hawaii two years later, eligible to run for US President. Last year he became Hawaii’s first president as well as the first of African American descent to hold the office. 

 He is certainly in the right place at the right time to wind back an offensive military strategy.

Lyall Lukey 27/11/09

 http://www.lukey.co.nz/  http://www.smartnet.co.nz

Blinks

Attack on Pearl Harbor        Documentary

Pearl Harbor Uncut Attack (Director’s Cut) part1 High Quality

Conservatorium-The Sound of Music or The Sound of Silence?

“…Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.”           

                                                                       Simon and Garfunkel  

Will the nearby new civic halls be alive with the sound of music or will the University of Canterbury’s proposed National Conservatorium of Music at Christchurch’s unique Arts Centre be art garfunkled?

This is another Christchurch Sturm und Drang in a tea cup. It’s been depicted in black and white, but if the conservatorium goes ahead the outcomes are certainly not all black, as painted by some opponents, though they may be a paler shade of white than portrayed by some proponents.

I have been open, but with some reservations, to the concept of building the Conservatorium on the vacant Hereford Street site to complete the original 1873 vision of progressively building a university campus in a gothic revival style. This vision didn’t include the mock Tudor building now occupied by the Dux de Lux, for which we ex-town site students have so much affection. Owner and opponent Richard Sinke seems to have got his Dux in a row rather more adroitly than the UC and the City Council.

Perhaps it’s time to try to clarify some of the thinking behind the concept and to do some rethinking.

The proposal

The proposal for the Arts Centre site is for a building that will replace existing inadequate facilities for music at Ilam, to which the University of Canterbury finally decamped in 1974. Its centrepiece would be an auditorium: “Performance would be the focus of our programmes at the conservatorium. An auditorium would be necessary for rehearsals and performances by staff, students and others… .the School of Music would flourish as a centre of musical excellence with a focus on conservatory-style training in the performance of classical music, providing the highest calibre artistic education for gifted musicians, in particular in strings, piano and voice, and with the possibility of developing a specialised opera programme.”

There is obviously a major international performer behind the concept who fully understands the need for top class rehearsal and performance facilities!  So far so good.

Conceptual Confusion

 The proposed site is in the heart of the city’s cultural precinct, which attracts residents and visitors. The prospectus states: “Entry to the Performance courses (piano, organ, orchestral instrument, recorder, brass band or voice) is limited. Places are awarded on the basis of a School of Music audition held in October 2009.”

There are many professional and amateur performance opportunities in the city. Christchurch is home to a symphony orchestra and the country’s second biggest, if currently somewhat shaky, arts festival. There are also efforts being made to breathe new life into the opera scene.

But there seems  to be some conceptual confusion which stems from a blurring of the related but quite different dimensions of music education and music performance:   “Students would also be able to pursue their interest in a comprehensive study of music, including musicology, music history and music education.”

Music education and music performance are at different ends of the knowing/doing continuum and should not necessarily be lumped together. For example, UC’s Bachelor of Music prospectus lists six pathways available within a Bachelor of Music:  Composition; Digital Music, Sonic Art and Recording Technology; Music Education; Music History, Culture and Research; Musicianship; Performance (Instrumental and vocal).  Presumably all but the last are capable of still being taught at Ilam-as is all or most of a Bachelor of Arts in Music, which contains a wider range of subjects than just music.

We shouldn’t confuse a more general music education, as in Stage I Music, with performance imperatives for those who wish to specialise in music. Apparently  Stage I music lectures will still be held at Ilam, with some staff, not students, doing the commuting;  likewise other music programmes would continue to be offered at Ilam for the likes of students studying for a double degree.

Rectification of Terms

What is a conservatorium? The eighteenth century French origin of conservatoire, as in conservatory of music or theatrical arts, was the word for an orphanage.  Early schools of music originated in orphanages where a musical education was given. An orphanage detached from the Ilam campus is what some fear if the Arts Centre proposal gets the go ahead.

Confucius emphasised calling things by their proper names. Perhaps it’s time for the  rectification of names and for dropping the inflated term “National Conservatorium of Music” in favour of the more descriptive “UC Music Performance Centre”, with an appropriate stress on music performance more general music education. The Music Performance Centre would be something to which serious music students “graduated” to in their second or subsequent years. The School of Music, as the umbrella organization, would span activities at Ilam as well as in the Arts Centre. Some music subjects, not necessarily performance related, are useful for those pursuing education or other careers.

Design

The overshadowing weight of the design of the four story building is a big issue. The “edifice complex” was one of the reasons why Elric Hooper wants to knock it out of court.

One of the FAQs on the UC website: “Q: Could it be smaller? A: The current size is considered to be necessary for a facility of this sort. Further, it is no higher than the surrounding buildings and the quadrangle it creates will be the largest of the quadrangles”.  

The “all Arts Centre” or “all Ilam” dichotomy is a false one and perhaps has led to the  building being overspecced, not in terms of rehearsal, recording and performance spaces but in terms of staff and administration offices.  We can’t tell. The design has been pulled from the UC Conservatorium website.

The university needs to avoid acting like a homing cuckoo depositing an inappropriately large egg in a rather small nest, thus destroying the organic ambience of the present centre when a more sympathetic approach would enhance it.  

I’ve been been involved in a charitable organisation which, just prior to pushing the button on a new building on an old site, saw the need to have an eleventh hour rethink about the function and design of the building after neighbours raised objections. Substantial design and location changes were made and produced a final outcome acceptable to all parties. Perhaps it’s time for UC to move towards the middle ground.

Finance

If following the Special Consultative Process, the Council resolves to proceed with the proposal, the recommended structure would involve the Council borrowing the funds required to build the centre ($24.355m million), leasing the land from the Arts Centre and providing working capital to Civic Building Limited (CBL), which would be responsible for the development.

CBL would then have a long-term lease agreement with the University, up to 200 years, which ensures lease payments are sufficient to Recover the whole construction cost of the building over 50 years, meet all maintenance and refurbishment costs, pay the interest on the required loans, repay the debt and ensure the structure is cash-flow (and rates) neutral to Council

The financing of the project is the only part open for consultation. Recent Council deals have raised suspicions about the consultation process, or lack thereof. In this case it’s limited to the funding modus operandi not the wider concept. Some previously concealed financial data, eg the price tag for the Conservatorium, has only just surfaced as the Council hearings began because the Ombudsman has once again prised the facts from a coy Council pleading commercial sensitivity and pursuing its own interests in the shape of subterranean staff car parks.

Sinke’s lawyer Margo Perpick says: “There is a strong indication that the city council has predetermined the outcome of the consultative process.” The Arts Centre Trust has already applied to the City Council for “boundary realignment” for six allotments on the proposed music school site.

 Despite all this, the financial arrangements appear to be a reasonable way to achieve a visionary mix of civic and university goals and bring some more life to the city centre.  

Promise and compromise

We shouldn’t fall into the trap of either/or thinking. It is possible and desirable to keep a substantial presence of the School of Music at Ilam, particularly the lecture components and some administration and to have a second hub, the UC Music Performance Centre, at the Arts Centre.

Having some music staff and students working and performing in the centre of town would add to its vibrancy, attract more visitors and provide significant spin-offs for businesses in the inner city. But not all UC music education needs to be in the new separate from the main teaching and learning Ilam family.

The creation of a performance focussed building at the Arts Centre site would, as proponents aver, provide a central city location for the University and be useful for other University events such as the UC in the City Lecture series and alumni events. “This location has the potential to maximise audience numbers and community participation at such events and also at School of Music concerts.”

A modified concept can still be aspirational without being overblown.

Let’s have high quality music in the Arts Centre-in the new auditorium, in the Great Hall and elsewhere throughout the city centre, with UC performers  sharing their talents in a mix of non-profit and commercial contexts.

The Arts Centre is already a showcase, a meeting place, a marketplace and a performance venue for theatre, film and music.  It is no longer an education facility and is not zoned for tertiary education. 

The cosy coterie of proponents  and lack of real consultation has aroused suspicions and raised hackles, but on balance, with some rethinking and redesign, I would support the concept. To make it work some of the more avid supporters might need to get out of their own way  and discard a take it or leave it approach – and some of the critics who have been trying to sink the proposal might need to open their minds a little to a vision still softly creeping.

A modified concept and  revised design offers the prospect of filling in the longstanding gap in the Arts Centre with a blended porcelain filling rather than a transplanted gold-capped tooth. It would foster town/gown connections and enhance the vibrancy of the heart of the city’s cultural precinct.

The Arts Centre “one of New Zealand’s most significant historic and cultural attractions” could then be renamed Christchurch Arts and Music Centre and be alive with the sound of music seven days a week.

“We want music seven days a week, seven days a week will do
Any more than this would be greedy, just so greedy, too true….”                                                                                                                             

                                                 Mark Walton  7 Days a Week

Lyall Lukey 2/11/09 

 http://www.lukey.co.nz/   http://www.smartnet.co.nz 

 BLINKS

http://www.music.canterbury.ac.nz/conservatorium/building.shtml

http://www.culturalprecinct.co.nz/

http://www.soac.org.nz/     Save Our Arts Centre from inappropriate development.

Heritage Alert  Graphically illustrates just how significant the proposed building will dominate the Arts Centre site and how totally unsympathetic the proposed new building will be in respect to the existing heritage buildings.

Sound Of silence – Simon & Garfunkel (live sound)

SevenDaysaWeek.mp3

If I were a carpenter would I manage time any better?

“The desk is a void in space which others try to fill. Fight them.”          Jolyon Firth  

Jolyon Firth, an Auckland City Councillor a generation ago, was not talking of the desktop as we now know it, Jim.  But the principles of time management remain the same. Clutter kills creativity and the urgent drives out the important.

 At times we have to simplify the chess game of life and exchange complexity for a simpler strategy.

We have in our offices in inner city Christchurch any number of filing cabinets,  filling in space that in a digital age could be liberated. I know what you are thinking: why not biff the whole office in this mobile world and be done with it?

Personally I like the mix of my place and my space. Like many of us, when on the go or at home my laptop, plus wifi, is my main office tool.  But in this highly mobile workd it’s good to have a physical headquarters away from home, even if more and more computer services are hosted in the Cloud.

(Send in the clouds, I say.  I love  having my head up there every so often, instead of always having to be  down to earth and mundane).

 The digital divide of a decade ago has become the digital dividend. As well as all the other dimensions of cyberspace,  digital filing is a great boon, though people who insist on the belt and braces support of printed copies of  everything can still get caught with their trousers down if they lack information navigation skills.

I have learnt to be less analoguely retentive, but I still need to print some key documents and gather clippings, hand written notes and Post Its into working files.

But how do I  quickly grab the physical files when needed and avoid clutter in the meantime?

 I sit at on the flight deck of my business at my twin computer workstations, in an L shape, at the top left hand corner of the Boardroom, facing the door like Billy the Kid, but able at one quick swivel to take in the view across to the Avon River.

I need the two workstations. How the array of digital devices has grown in the last decade! Mine include the Laptop docking station, data projector, vid cam, voice–activated dictation cradle and headpiece, conventional dictaphone, both wired and mobile phones, PDA and sundry other plug-ins and pull-outs, not to mention remotes for the sound system, data show, laptop and aircon.  Am I a remote person?

There are also handy Chinese stress balls and a mock turtle, to remind me that you only move forward when you stick your neck out. My neck’s been a bit sore lately.

Most of the stuff is portable, but I leave the stress balls and the turtle behind when working out of the office. Maybe I should take the stress balls. 

But I don’t always want to be left to my own devices. The problem is that there is  no filing cabinet or other storage space is within arm’s reach, from which I  can quickly grab a working file-often with scribbles and visuals-when required. There they are, on the periphery, quietly producing nicely matured compost. 

 I don’t use a smaller office, though we have some spare space. Instead I insist on having my personal office space in the far end of what some might describe unkindly, as a spare boardroom. (We don’t even have a board: we are a small hub at the centre of two large networks).

This does have some advantage: with groups of people I can glide from my workstation to around the board table, with the data show in situ, and my finger on the remote. (#Did you know that Powerpoint has a simple go to black/go to presentation function- the B key on your keyboard. No capping the lens, or firing up the datashow while people are waiting expectantly-just one click in the key of B! No one but me seems to use this. Great not just for an impactful start but for giving the audience a visual break or switching from input to discussion).

Alternatively, I can invite single guests  (you know what I mean) to rollercoaster their boardroom chair to my L-shaped workstation, where I can use the laptop presentationally sans data projector and then return to a tête-à-tête around the table.

With some big events coming up, including our third annual Education Leaders Forum in Rotorua next week, I decided last Thursday to shift current, but less important files off my twin desks and make Jolyon Firth jolly. Clutter expands to fill the space available for it. The principle  of out of sight, out of mind, may not cure procrastination but it does aid focus and reduce guilt. (“I’m going to give up procrastination…tomorrow”).

Don’t get me wrong. I’m only talking a dozen working files, not as in some lawyer’s offices, every mortgage ever transacted since the Magna Carta. I’m also talking office paraphenalia-stationary items, knicknacks, dodads, gizmos as well as bottle openers and cork screws (not that there’s much call for the latter nowadays).

(Hold in your mind this reference to tools. We are a tool using people, even if the relevant evolutionary gene has passed some of us by on its way out of Africa.  On the evolution front the Lukeys would be scorned by the Leakeys).

 I set a time-bound goal to clear the decks and batten the hatches. I made a bee-line for The Warehouse in Blenheim Road after work the very next day, the auspicious 1 October. What they say is true! I got a very timely bargain at the Big Red Shed ($49.9+gst instead of the usual  $69.99+), made in China, on the very day of the main celebrations of The People’s Republic of China’s 60^th.  See my blog http://lukeytraining.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/china-6oth-anniversary/  .

There it was on display. The answer to my fond imaginings. Precisely the right dimensions. (For once I’d taken a measured approach to this project). It was truly an answer from the Chinese Branch Office of Hampton Furniture Solutions: a chocolate 3 drawer cabinet, complete with silver (well not quite silver) handles, designated ©model F8303C   9401047653036.

The one downside was that I couldn’t walk out with the assembled  display model, even for full price. But this was a mere cavil.  At the risk of being derrided* I’m as interested in deconstructions of architecture and office furniture as the next person and even more so in reconstructions, especially in the case in hand.

Model F8303C   9401047653036 is constructed mainly out of particle board. It didn’t quite fit the carefully nurtured corporate image of the international HQ of Lukey Resources and SmartNet. But it didn’t have to be top shelf. It was going to slide neatly out of sight, out of mind, with my working files inside, my sound system on top, all within a swivel and an arm’s reach, under one of my twin work stations  in the corner.

The suspicious weight of the self-assembly kit should have alerted me as I lugged it to Check-out. The particles in the medium particle board must have been whizzing around at a more than usually excitable rate. I really should have checked it out there and then.

At first sight it had all looked comparatively, if not dead, easy. I just had to “clean use soft dry cloth, avoid detergent or chemical, avoid contact with water and directsunlight and assemble it on a soft, dry, clean, and smooth surface.”

But at the office next day, as soon as the catalogue, with incomprehensible assembly instructions, was out of the box my creative thinking suddenly wasn’t. Where the hell did I start and did I really want to.  My first attempt at a 3D working model, to work out the configuration, collapsed like a house of cards (not that this preview was part of the instructions).

I  should have known better than to attempt such a project. By the age of 11 I had already defined myself as being a nail or two short in the construction department.  This learned helplessness  took a quantum leap at Woodwork classes at Oxford District High School  in 1952. I had to make a nugget box and all I made was a misshapen receptacle, definitely lacking any polish, which I abandoned as a work in progress.  

It became such a big deal that I was conveniently ill three Wednesdays in a row so that I missed the school bus from Coopers Creek to Oxford and didn’t have to confront the sorry results of my unskilled labour.

In a word, I had removed the try from carpentry. If confidence and competence are mutually reinforcing; so are lack of confidence and lack of competence.

Back to the task in hand. I slit open the belly of the box and tipped out the contents. It was like a jigsaw puzzle without a picture. My heart sank. I found the big picture later, on the outside of the disembowled box, which I’d  manage to cover up. All I could see now were small and complex diagrams inside with ominous instructions.

There were 2 pieces of particle board, of varying shapes and sizes, some numbered and some not. The Da Vinci Code was looking a pushover by comparison.

There were 150 odd various items in 12 configurations, from a flat top screw to a plastic leg stud and even a moon shaped handle. Also required were at least 5 different kinds of screwdrivers.

In a mild panic of not seeing which connected to what and how—I had a revealing insight. Ok-I’d only paid $49.99+gst for the bits and pieces, but now I had to factor in the value of my own time.  This was a classic case of Gresham’s Law being applied to time management: bad use of time drives out good.

I put it all back inside the box-to hell with all this thinking outside it- photocopied the now tattered instructions sheet, scooped up all the screws and nails into a new plastic bag and re-taped the box very firmly. Then I applied the same zeal to the items I’d wanted to store. I  biffed most, kept some and used the items of office furniture I had already invested years ago more efficiently to shift the stuff from the top, visible plane to subterranean planes-a sort of reversal of Plato’s Parable of the Cave.

As I left my office, once more en route to the Big Red Shed, the bright light ouside my office cave was clearer and my visual acuity unsurpased.

I returned the box of parts to the Warehouse, where people sometimes get more than they’ve bargained for, with my shoulders back and my eyes avoiding no one, (certainly not any lurking DIYers, with contempt in their eyes as they eyed the failed project I was returning.)

At the Warehouse’s stock exchange I didn’t get to ring the bell but managed to get credit where credit is due, despite not being able to locate the receipt which I knew I’d put in the front pocket of my jeans. (The receipt appeared magically at my next stop, at a Shell service station when I pulled out my handkerchief. The shell game of life).

I walked out, not with the cash, for which I needed the missing receipt, but a credit note. I exited into the sunset glare of a Canterbury Nor’wester. It would have warmed the most wooden heart. Such a feeling was coming over me.  I felt on top of the world- as if I’d only just begun.

Blinks

Bobby Darin “If I Were A Carpenter” Live 1973 

If I Had A Hammer Peter,Paul & Mary(Mary Travers died on 16 September, 2009 of leukemia at the age of 72).

Elvis – Wooden Heart

The Carpenters – Top Of The World

Barbra Streisand – Send in the clowns – 2000  Clowns operate outside the rules of ordinary societal limitations to mock both the sacred and the profane.

Jacques Derrida  Not a well-known French cabaret singer.

http://www.smartnet.co.nz/events/ELF/2009.htm 

#Lyall Lukey 6 October 2009   http://www.lukey.co.nz/  http://www.smartnet.co.nz