police without arms

just a bits and pieces post today, as there are a few little things that caught my eye.

as a regular radio nz listener and sometimes panellist, i loved this response by noelle mccarthy to criticisms by bill ralston. i really enjoy radio nz, and if i'm a baby boomer, i'd have to be at the very tail end of that boom. i especially love their website, which means that i can listen to selected bits of programmes whenever i have the time. and as for aging broadcasters, well i still have plenty of time for people like kim hill, whose no-nonsense interview style cuts through any amount of media-training and pre-prepared scripts. but the hypocrisy of course is mr baby-boomer ralston himself being the one to complain!

remember a year or so back when the target programme put out this big scare about formaldehyde in children's clothing. what an uproar there was against imported clothing, a lot of which i suspect was racially motivated - those terrible asians with their lax standards! well, it turns out that the programme has been fined and ordered to apolgise because “The Broadcasting Standards Authority found that Target had misled and unnecessarily alarmed viewers in its presentation of test results of formaldehyde in clothing." somehow, i don't expect this decision will create the week-long furore that the original programme did.

funniest line of the week: "If police haven't got any arms, how can they work?" maybe they can use their legs... but on a more serious note, turangi dairy owners have decided to arm themselves with a baseball bat and a golf club. while i can understand their motivation, announcing it in the paper is a less than smart thing to do. as far as i can see, all they've done is let potential robbers know they need more deadly weapons before they come into the store. which can only increase the chances of armed robbery. the money spent on the closed-circuit cameras and the panic alarm are much more useful. and calling for the police to be armed to prevent robberies is pretty much a waste of time. in almost all cases, the culprits will have left the situation before the police arrive, no matter how quick they are.

sad to see that some employers are trying to have their cake and eat it too. they are taking the government subsidy reimbursing them for their employer contribution to kiwisaver, and at the same time are trying to penalise employees who have chosen to join the scheme by paying them less. it's pretty shameful that the government has to amend the law to prevent this from happening.

finally, national's policy on 20 hours no-longer-free early childhood education is a bit sad. what it means is that they don't guarantee that subsidies will cover cost increases, neither do they guarantee that taxpayers won't be subsidising private childcare centres to make large profits at our expense, especially through charges for those "optional extras". oh, and what julie said.