Why is the Tauranga CBD no longer working

The downtown shopping area of Tauranga is not working. People are chosing to shop elsewhere. Shops are closing down and moving out due to not making enough sales, high rents etc. The Tauranga council is spending a lot of time and money trying to find out WHY, and how to rejuvenate the area. At the same time they are running parking meters and parking buildings and all the wardens and bureacracy that goes with them enforcing them. Here is my take on the situation.

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Why is it the councils responsibility to ensure the downtown area is a vibrant and happening place?
The downtown shopping area was a happening place long before the council started meddling in its proceedings!

Is the shopping area dependant on the council, or the council depandant on the shopping area (for the lucrative income they get from running it?)

The shopping area is inhabited by a number of private businesses, whose sole reason for being there is to make a profit, and earn a living.

These people pay rent to the property owners for of using their premises to sell their goods.

The property owners must pay rates to the council, (who recover this expense through rent.)

If council were only responsible for essential services, the rates would be a lot less, but because they have taken it upon themselves to be responsible for everything and anything, rates are much more expensive than they should be. - and hence the expensive rents, making the area unprofitable to those who ACTUALLY make it vibrant.

This situation has much in common with Atlas Shrugged, where the people who actually create wealth are so bludgeoned by the looters - the second-handers - the bureacracy, that they all move out and go on strike.

I wonder what would happen if all the retailers decided no to operate from here anymore, what would happen to the council! They would have nobody to collect their loot from - Then what?

Council interference in this situation is totally unnecessary.

To make the town a vibrant and happening place, remove council interference, and let the people whose livelihood depends on it do what is best for THEM. - just like they did before council interfered! Hand over the car parking situation so they may do whatever is best not to deter shoppers. Hand over - and not interfere in - entertainment which which attracts hordes of people annually. Not to impede with red tape and bureaucracy, requests by these people to enter into new schemes to attract shoppers.

Holding the council responsible for ensuring the livelihood of private businesses is wrong. All it is doing is justifying employment of another bureaucrat, paid for by the ratepayers - to ensure council are still involved in the problem they caused in the first place.

Why are our teens going astray?

There was a full page article in the Bay of Plenty Times on Saturday asking the above question.

Asking Why are so many children wanting to leave school at 14, 15, 16 before they are allowed to!

Why are so many children wagging and just not attending school?

They called for the usual "Get tough on parents" thing

Fine the parents.

Force the kids to go to school etc etc.

Here is my letter to the editor concerning the topic.


It’s a case of the turkeys coming home to roost!
Blame the 1 size fits all government-run education system!
We’re only products of our parents says Richard Shore (Police youth aid officer), and he’s correct. (for the following reason!)

Where did the majority of parents of the children going astray get THEIR education!

How to fix it!

Remove government from the education system.

Refund the money taken by force from parents and let them spend it on education that best suits the needs of THEIR children. One look at the statistics of private education over government-run education leaves no doubt about this fact.

There are youngsters with amazing talents in music (Smokefree rockfest), arts (taggers, carvers) computers (hackers and gamers), mechanics (boy racers) performing arts and sports (rugby, league, skaters, surfers) etc screaming for an outlet for their talents, instead they’re forced to sit in an english class where they DON’T learn to read or spell, and are allowed to answer exams in TEXT language!

There’s an income to be earnt in achieving in ALL of the above areas, but nanny knows best, and continues to FORCE your darling little "Square peg" into her "round hole!"

MORE government interference will ensure MORE of the same problems.

All those people asking for MORE of what caused the problem will not fix it. It will simply make it worse.

As for FORCING the kids to stay at school - what good will that do?

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink!

or will there be armed guards on the door of each classroom to ensure they don’t leave?

The Free Radical 76

A new Free Radical, and a FREE offer ...
The new Free Radical magazine is out and this issue has lessons for most, good reading for all... and a special free offer that should have everyone happy. Read on.

When the Berlin Wall fell it was obvious to everyone with eyes to see and a brain to think with that socialism had been tried, and it had failed spectacularly.
No one alive at the time could fail to get the lesson: Socialism Sucks.

But it seems lessons that big have to be relearned every generation: the tragedy of Venezuela should be this generation’s object lesson that Socialism Sucks.

Socialism came to Venezuela, and in its inevitable wake has come poverty, penury and oppressive totalitarian rule.

This issue of The Free Radical sends out A Challenge to Young Socialists to watch, and to learn – and to reject this ideological harbinger of misery.

Let freedom reign!

Let freedom reign in boardrooms, bedrooms and smoko rooms.

We talk to NZ Green MP Metiria Turei who wants to let freedom reign in New Zealand’s hospital treatment rooms, allowing medical practitioners to prescribe a drug that, as Jonothan Rennie's History of Medical Marijuana points out, was once used by Queen Victoria – a drug that Lancet has confirmed is less harmful than either alcohol or tobacco.

There’s much, much more in this issue:

Frank Shostak and Lary Sechrest explain how economic illiterates and central banks make us poor;
Lindsay Perigo and Muriel Newman lament the rise and rise and rise of Nanny State - as Perigo describes her, that disgusting "hybrid of gargoyle and dominatrix";
George Reisman on how the thricefold seductions of socialism, environmentalism and irrational skepticism (but surely I repeat myself) are fuelled by irrational education; we have an obituary for the New Zealand woman who’s left several generations of students around the world functionally illiterate; an interview with the man to whose gun shop knife-wielding would-be suicide victims seem to be drawn; dissidence from "a dissident president"; global warming sense from another president - "environmental extremism is the modern equivalent of communism," says Czech president Vaclav Klaus; confessions of a former warmist who threw himself off the global warming gravy train;
advice for parents from Larry Sechrest and Tia Wooller: Don't fake reality;
an obituary for a philosopher whose own grip on reality was slight. He died, we think;
reviews of conman Conrad Black's eulogy to "champion of freedom" Franklin Roosevelt, Al Gore's upfront assault on reason and the internet, and Stephen Hicks' exegesis of Nietzsche and the Nazis; …

all this and much more in this latest issue including new and regular columnists to challenge your funnybone and your thinking, and great scads of The Free Radical's usual brand of irreverent wit.

I invite you to step inside Free Radical 76: Politics, Economics & Life As If Freedom Mattered, and load up on intellectual ammunition!

Subscribe here.
Download a digital copy here.
Buy your hard copy (NZ only) from one of these quality outlets.
But that's not all.

We're so confident of the quality of each and every copy of The Free Radical that this month we're throwing open our digital back issues.
That's right: All digital back issues of The Free Radical are free!

See below for links.

We're convinced that once you see the quality of our back issues, you won't want to miss out on getting your NEW copy of the Free Radical in your letterbox hot off the press.

Enjoy!

Cheers,
Peter Cresswell
EDITOR,
THE FREE RADICAL
PC.Blogspot.Com

DIGITAL FREE RADICAL BACK ISSUES -- all free to good homes:
FREE RADICAL 75: The Naked Truth About Self-Defence
FREE RADICAL 74: The Environmental Noose is Tightening!
FREE RADICAL 73: The Assault on Free Speech
FREE RADICAL 72: The Great Environmental Sellout
FREE RADICAL 71: The Stolen Election!

Message from the Principle

This is What Terry Collet Principle of Mt College says in a message from the principle on the Mt College website

To me this seems quite different to what he said in his Newspaper column that I posted previously

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Welcome to Mount Maunganui College.

Mount Maunganui College has a proud record of student achievement. The education we provide will give students the foundation needed to choose the future they want for themselves.

We develop students who:

- pursue excellence
- become independent critical thinkers
- love and value learning
- gain self-esteem and pride in their achievements.

We will prepare students to meet the challenges of the 21st century, to have a foundation of technological skills on which they can build in the future.

At Mount Maunganui College we continually reinforce our school mission statement: Success with Integrity, Whaiˆ te pono. We want our students to be successful in every sphere of college life in an environment that expects honesty and openness, respect for others, and acknowledges diversity.

Government run education system

This disgraceful piece of rubbish was written by a local secondary school principle
After reading it, you can:
1: Vomit
2: Read my reply to him (below)
3: Write a letter to the Bay news and tell them what you thought of it
bnews@bopp.co.nz

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Can texting spur a revolution on spelling?
Young people have evolved a new script and a cost effective reason for using it. They are breaking free of spelling dogma and expanding the alphabet with emoticons
Texting is the shorthand of the computer age. It is concise, cutting through verbal jargon which professional classes use to exclude the less educated.
The texters A-Z, a dictionary compiled by Andrew Johns points out that a mobile texting literally puts a price on waffle, while ingenious abbreviations have been contrived to capture vaguely philosophical thought, a loving sentiment or a beautifully crafted obsenity.
The texting generation may yet realise George Bernard Shaws dream of liberating the English language for all of us.
The NZ Qualifications Authority has declared it WILL accept text messaging short forms in school exams.
When Noah Webster invented American Spelling it was applauded for its commonsense. For that reason the British treated it as foreign, vulgar and worse,of all, American.
While plain writing is considered a virtue, plain spelling is a vice though English spelling makes little sense. Not to spell properly is a sign of being common, as once was ignorance of Latin.
Across the globe, students of English are driven to distraction by its spelling. While English adapts its vocabulary to circumstance, it is very reluctant to adapt its spelling. Every time we write cough, bough, through and thorough (not to mention write), think of the teeming millions of students who ask their teachers why? English is perhaps a more sensible alternative.
In Shakespeares day, authors conveyed the clearest message with random spelling, even of Shakespeare's own name.
In 1992 a Gallup poll suggested that only one in six adults can spell accommodation, business height, necessary, separate and sincerely; 10 per cent got them all wrong. While we may be amazed by this result, in truth it could be a comment on the archaism of the spellings. Most English words are twice as long as they need to be, with unvoiced vowels and surplus consonants.
Scottish Qualifications Authority are adamant that they are not rewarding text spelling in allowing its use, as there are no marks for it, only for accuracy of meaning. Pupils will be credited for quoting 2b or not 2b but will get higher marks if they spell it correctly. That they should be penalised for an offence that Shakespeare himself committed is perhaps strange. Are they not saving paper and helping the examiners by their brevity. It is possible that the young will reform English spelling on their own. Already millions of fingers are tapping out a revolution.



By TERRY COLLETT, Principal
Mount Maunganui College.
Acknowledgement: Simon Jenkins, The Guardian.

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My reply to Mr Collett

I was horrified to read the views of principle Terry Collett in his column. No wonder our children are failing miserably if this is the outlook on education that principles of government run schools are taking!
They are obscene in their willingness to accommodate underachievement while in doing so penalise those who actually achieve.

To confirm this fact the NZ Qualifications Authority will now accept text messaging short forms in school exams. There truly is no hope of actually getting a valid government-run school education now.

Collett states that in 1992 only 1 in 6 could spell certain words, and goes on to blame it on the English language itself. I call this passing the buck. This is what I blame it on: The Government run school curriculum discarding the teaching of phonics and opting for the Marie Clay "Look and Guess" system, which has left several generations of Kiwis adrift in a world of words without any means by which to decode them.
The results can be seen in literacy surveys such as the 1996 world survey on adult literacy, which demonstrated all too clearly -- and it’s worth reminding ourselves of this fact frequently – that too many New Zealanders emerge from school without two of the basic skills that were once (pre-Clay) taught there: they can neither read nor write at a skill sufficient to function in the modern world.
The survey found that a staggering 66.4 percent of Mäori are below the minimum level of “ability to understand and use information from text,” and an equally tragic 41.6 percent of non-Mäori. 40 percent of employed New Zealanders and 75 percent of the unemployed are below the minimum level of literacy competence for everyday life and work. Blame THIS on the one-size-fits-all state-school curriculum.
The Labour Department estimates that up to 530,000 New Zealand adults have inadequate literacy and numeracy skills. 530,000 New Zealand adults! You’d have to think that levels of illiteracy that bad did not happen by accident, and you’d be right. They happened after Marie Clay’s “look and guess” method of reading was substituted for the teaching of phonics.

The problem of rampant illiteracy has for too long been denied, disguised and explained away by insiders such as in Colletts column, and in the training colleges and the elite clique of educationalists who have followed along behind Marie Clay.

After reading Terry Colletts column I had to stop and ask myself "why I get so upset about stuff like this" Why don't I just shut up and let him get away with it! Nobody else seems bothered to challenge what he says! But to do so would be to agree with him, to bow to the increasing stranglehold of mediocrity and underachievement, and the continuing downward slide in the quality of the compulsory government-run education system.

Does Collett suggest that in the future, journalists, newspaper and magazine editors, will not need to spell correctly? In my job as a graphic designer, in the last few years especially I have noticed how many of those wishing to make a career in the industry couldn't spell if their life depended on it! Who in their right mind would employ THEM? 25000 brochures with wrong spelling and the customer doesn't pay the bill!
Perhaps they could send their boss a text message saying "sory"

The Fortune Teller

Cross my palm with silver (or failing THAT, just read on!) and I shall fortell the future with astonishing accuracy! Forget Nostradamus, aunty Ethyl’s tea leaves, and The Great Zoltan - fairground fourtune teller - I would like to make a prediction - not based upon feelings, or crystal ball gazing, but upon history and facts.

These predictions I make in lieu of the cabinet agreeing to Adolf Anderton’s recommendation to ban party pills. I predict that: Party pills will remain available, although more concentrated in content, and contain more dangerous ingredients.

Gangs will now become the major retailer. More people will be admitted to hospital through misadventure due to their inconsistent ingredients (no labels stating ingredients will be needed now!)

Now they’re classified alongside methamphetamine and other truly harmful substances, misinformed party people-when going to their drug dealer-will be exposed to dangerous choices.

Stupid people will continue to listen to Jim Neanderton.

The drug problem will NOT go away, and government will allocate even MORE money to the war on drugs, even though they have no proof that it actually works. Adolf Anderton will find something else to ban in the near future.

Here is a very simple fact that Associate Minister of Health and Leader of the Regressive Party should have learnt by now! Ban things, and you create a black market. It’s the first law of street economics.

Something so SIMPLE even brain-dead street-punks know it. Obviously, it’s not simple enough for Jim.

- Watch for my letter in the near future saying "I told you so!"

Save the Kiwi (Yawn)

This may sound like the start of a stupid joke - in fact it IS a stupid joke! Unfortunately the situation is real, and we read about it ion a regular basis. Now, they say the definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result, but lets forget that for a moment (the powers that be obviously have!) Anyway, here we go! A cow, a sheep, a chicken and a kiwi all line up for the start of a race. In true PC fashion there is a reward for just completing the race - the reward is survival! All animals are unfettered and have an equal opportunity of reaching the finish line, until just before the starting gun, a government official walks up to the kiwi, and puts a ball and chain around its ankle! The gun goes off, and in no time the cow, the sheep, and the chicken all reach the finish line, while the kiwi is nowhere to be seen! The most significant point of difference between all these animals is that 3 of them enjoy the benefit of property rights, and one does not! oh yes, and one has a ball and chain marked - in big white letters - MAF! If you REALLY wish to save the kiwi, remove the handicap and give it the same privileges held by other species that live in profusion and are NOT threatened by extinction. Give Mr Tegel and Mr Braemar a chance to show what they can really do!