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February 24, 2018

Labour Announce Education Shake-up

Okay so New Zealand has a new coalition government, led by Labour. It was needed, a change of government that is, and NZ clearly voted for change despite what National say when bleating about their defeat. A lot of good to talk about in the change; we'll get investment in construction, regional development, primary industry as that's where a lot of Labour voters are. All good.

But the not-so-good we can see starting to happen already. Labour, this may come as a shock so I hope you're sitting down when you read this, are owned by teachers. That's right, teachers in schools own the party that now runs the country.

So they're going to make changes. This could be good or it could be really bad and I'm picking really bad as it's the fox being put in charge of the hen house. Teachers are a lazy bunch you see. If they weren't lazy then they wouldn't be teachers, they'd be doing something that involved hard work (stop right there, I used to be teacher, don't tell me it's hard work, just don't, I stopped teaching to do something that was difficult). Teachers are necessary, very necessary but they're not rocket scientists. If they were rocket scientists then they'd be building rockets but they're not, so they're not.

What will happen is more control being put in the hands of teachers, and what you'll get is even less teaching. The new age of the illiterate and innumerate is about the dawn on the good people of NZ and they don't even know it. I'm just glad my children dodged this bullet.

I've written about this before, you can check some of my posts out here:

http://kenhorlor.blogspot.com/2014/06/reform-of-nz-education.html

http://kenhorlor.blogspot.com/2014/06/ncea.html

http://kenhorlor.blogspot.com/2016/05/more-nz-education-and-bryan-bruce.html


February 23, 2018

Winter Olympics 2018

New Zealand has broken the drought with two more medals to add to the one it won 26 years ago in Albertville, France in 1992. That first medal was a silver in the slalom by Annelise Coberger. What this means is that New Zealand is now three times better than Denmark, a country that has still only won one medal. That's right, Denmark won their sole medal, a silver in curling in 1998.

But in 2018 the story of these games must be Norway. A tiny country of only just over 5 million people and they lead on the medal table with only a few days to go. How do they do it? It turns out to be all about money; they're rich and invest in their athletic programmes more broadly. Here's an interested article on the subject.

Oh and Russia has to be called Olympic Athletes from Russia, and they can't use their flag. It's like they're the only country that dopes their athletes. Oh right, pull the other one!! My take on this is very straightforward; the west owns the doping system and keep themselves one step ahead of the agency tasked with detecting abuse. Those outside the loop, like Russia, well they're kept guessing and thus they get busted more often. Just assume all athletes are doped one way or the other and let's move on shall we, I'm sick of the finger being pointed at Russia all the time.

February 13, 2018

Simon English to step down (finally)

The incompetent Leader of the Opposition, Simon "Bill" English is saying goodbye to the New Zealand Parliament. Finally, we are free of this man who has insisted for so long everyone listen to him. He offered nothing, delivered nothing and led his party to two staggering defeats; the first just about destroyed his party and the second was a magnificent effort in clutching defeat from the jaws of victory.

For me though, with English it was all about the poor people and how much he hated them. Every chance he got he kicked them. It's hard to know why he was like that but he did a lot of social damage to his country. Personally I don't trust a man with the first name Simon, using a name like Bill. What's up with that? And then there was his faux Southland accent.

We can all let out a collective sigh of relief. He's gone, finally.

February 12, 2018

Third Novel Underway

My readers will be happy to know I'm in the middle of writing my third novel. It's a little bit Sci-Fi, a little bit comedy, tongue in cheek. I will be finishing it up in a couple of months time.

February 07, 2018

Crash 2018

Only a month ago I said that I was negative for 2018 and I told you why.

>> See Here <<

Now we have a crash across all stock markets. It was to be expected. Too much uncertainty exists in the global arena, and too much wealth concentrated in a few hands. Plus we have not had structurally meaningful reforms to economies. All that happened post the GFC was bail outs and doubling down. Inefficiency and incompetence was rewarded.

For the value investor, right now is a golden opportunity. Have you been a frugal investor and kept your cash in the bank? Yes? The next few weeks is the time to venture out and begin looking for bargains. Study my portfolio from the following site;

http://www.siliconinvestor.com/portfolio.aspx?fid=521

My suggestion is to look for companies that everyone else thinks are too boring for words. If your neighbours have never heard of them, then maybe that's a good thing and you should check them out - the company that is, not your neighbours.

[Update @ 03/04/2019 - this portfolio is still ahead 28% despite the 2020 COVID-19 Crisis. That's testament to conservative investment strategy. The real crash wasn't 2018, but 2020, but with my strategy it doesn't matter ]

February 04, 2018

Sexism Dos and Don'ts

We live in a strange age. An age where this kind of explicit sexuality is deemed fine and dandy...cue leggy models....




But then F1 grid girls are a no go....




Err, hello world, reality check. While personally I've never seen the point in having models displayed at grand prix events (okay so an exception would be hosts at corporate events and the like, hosts of both gender preferably), the above video seems to be celebrated while the girls in the image below are vilified, but in fact I fail to see any difference between them.