Don’t kill the golden goose

As a student at the University of Auckland, I was dismayed to read my university is planning to slash jobs at the faculty of education and the school of cultures, languages and linguistics. This comes at a time New Zealand faces its worst teaching crisis. Teachers are being forced to teach outside of their subject areas and schools are axing certain programmes due to the lack of qualified staff.

Slashing academic staff in the languages school would undermine its reputation as one of the top 100 schools for modern languages and culture. We live in an increasingly globalised and interconnected world where knowing foreign languages can open doors. Layoffs may temporarily help balance the budget. However, it would hurt the university in the long term by robbing it of the human capital needed to educate our future workforce. So please don’t kill the golden goose.

Pronunciation

New Zealand accents and grammar seem to be sliding along with most other values we used to believe important. TV presenters are good examples: One aberration that comes to mind that has emerged lately is the sound of: to or two or too, being spoken as ‘toe’. On Wednesday evening, presented by Janika ter Ellen and Eric Young covered the subject of Ma¯ori rugby players whose names were being said wrongly, and attempts by the players to help us all to get it right.

However, both presenters talked of the “pronounciation” being wrong, unaware that they were pronouncing the word “pronunciation” wrongly. The verb and its forms are pronounced with an “ounce” sound and the noun is pronounced with a “nun” sound. Does it really matter? I think it does, or as time passes our English language will no longer be intelligible.

Auckland Airport

I worked at Gatwick airport for 10 years and Heathrow airport for 20 years. I also ran numerous contracts at Lax Airport. In that time (and still now), all three airports were permanent construction sites. Even working at Heathrow every day, I still got lost driving airside around ever changing diversions.

Aircraft regularly have to park at coaching stands. No one wants this to happen to an inbound international plane but the slots are tight for gates and if a plane comes in early or an existing plane is late off, ground control don’t have a lot of options.

It’s interesting that Mr Hosking uses Heathrow as an example, as at one stage, there were so many problems at Heathrow with coaching stands that I wrote a procedure manual for ground handlers and airlines that is still used.

All airports have their baggage problems. In the numerous positions I held at these airports, I can recall having to stand on a baggage ramp late one night informing a plane load of passengers there was no point in waiting for their bags because they had not been put on the plane. Or the guy who came to me to complain about damage to his bag — he just had the handle in his hand, the rest of the bag and its contents were strewn all over the ramp.

I really can go on with a hundred other stories to show that the article of comparison by Mr Hosking is so wrong and built on such little experience.

Contaminated houses

While Paula Bennett, Marama Davidson and Tariana Turia all express sympathy for the poor souls who were evicted from P contaminated homes they conveniently forget two facts. Firstly, P is an illegal substance and secondly, their tenancy agreements would have contained a clause prohibiting the consumption or use of illegal substances in the premises.

In that context, the level of contamination or the health risks is irrelevant. The real losers in this debacle are the insurance companies who have paid out for decontamination and the landlords who have lost rental income from properties that the law declares uninhabitable. Let’s not forget Ms Bennett was part of the Government that enacted the current laws. We could also ask where was Professor Gluckman when the debate on the appropriate levels of P from a health perspective was going on.

Adrenaline takes over

Thirty mostly young people died recently at the end of police chases. They would all be still alive if the police had not gone on an adrenaline fuelled high speed chase. Let’s not forget the chaser is as pumped up on adrenaline as the chased. It is sad to see grieving parents blame themselves for the bad decisions of their young. Making bad decisions is part of being young. Being chased almost prohibits suddenly becoming sensible and making the right decision.

Most disturbing, however, is the reaction of many members of the public who seem to think young offenders deserve to die for their mistakes. What does that tell us about our society?

Dubious remorse

No statement is more ridiculous than the one we hear time and again from judges when applying a lenient sentence “due to you showing genuine remorse”. The problem is the remorse emotion tends to look very much like the “I’m feeling very sorry for myself” emotion. It would be nice if these judges could reveal how they can tell the difference. However, their hit rate doesn’t appear particularly high, suggesting that it’s more a gamble or experiment than a science.

The next most ridiculous statement is the one where Andrew Little keeps saying the tough approach to sentencing criminals has not worked, therefore what’s the point of putting them in jail. I guess he means that because they haven’t changed their violent ways you might as well let them be violent outside of jail instead of inside and save the country some money. Andrew Little’s definition of tough must be quite different to the “tough” most New Zealanders envisage.

Balcony rescue

The rescue of a baby from a fourth floor by a refugee who literally scaled to new heights is a story of the best of what we can do and . . . ? The other part of this is that it is not an “untold story”. There were many witnesses and many videos but only one climber, although the next door neighbours must also be recognised for helping. What is a concern, again, is how many watched, filmed and photographed but how few helped. Admittedly it was a difficult and dangerous rescue, but other options should have been prepared — a blanket to catch the falling baby, a lot of prayers, somebody clearing the area so that rescue vehicles could get in easily.

Praise the hero and look for what can be done by everyone to make the world better. Dennis Fitzgerald, Box Hill, Vic.

Critics now

It is interesting to see the change in approach of some of the Herald columnists since the last election. Messrs Hosking, Soper, Roughan and now, Hooton, rarely find anything positive about this Government, a change from their near-reflex support of the previous Government. As evidence emerges on several fronts of mismanagement before the change of administration, their preelection opining looks increasingly misplaced. Their status as independent analysts and journalists has to be queried.

They did us all a disservice by failing to properly investigate goings-on in the previous nine years. Writing opinions became their stock-in-trade. Maybe, just maybe, they could do less persuading and more investigating of this Government. Then we, and maybe they, would be the wiser. But then that is just my opinion.

Reverse effect

Mike Hosking has been called to task by Darryl Evans, chief executive of the Mangere Budgeting Services Trust, for lacking compassion. Unfortunately, we cannot all have the souls of social missionaries in this life.

Has Mr Evans considered that many, many people read Mike’s articles and listen to his radio show? A few of these just may be persons of empathy, and Mike’s words might spur them, even if angrily, into endeavours on behalf of the people Evans speaks for. Therefore, Mike Hosking could definitely be considered a champion of the underdog and the unfortunate, because his very words could appear to act as a catalyst for action.

Personally, I love Mike’s opinions and find myself agreeing with mostly everything he says. Sorry not sorry.