Victoria's oldest hoon loses license
Sunday, 28 February 2010
Enough of the yoof bashing
It's time we as a society put an end to this sort of behaviour:
The Bulletin's owner on Climate Change
The Disinformer. Rupert Murdoch, CEO, News CorporationI strongly recommend you read about all 17 polluters and deniers in The Climate Killers piece by Tim Dickinson of which this is part (I find the piece on Warren Buffett really scary because of his proven ability to read the future of the markets), along with Jeff Goodell's article "As the World Burns" about how Big Oil and Big Coal mounted aggressive lobbying campaigns to block progress on global warming.
FAILED? Well the Bulletin did at least
The Bulletin was at it again on Saturday – beating-up a nonsense bit of writing into a front-page murder and mayhem story.
“FAILED” (their choice of all caps, but very bad form I’d say if I were their teacher) screamed the front page header followed by “Educating against era of violence” (missing an “an” – again, very bad form and lost marks) splashed across pages six and seven, just below “What’s up with North Queensland schools” (online version here).
It actually took a full 24 hours before I could summon the courage (or is that, was bored enough) to read Alexis Gillham’s “Special Report”.
Personally, I get a bit sick of everybody assuming they’re an expert on education (or hospitals, or homelessness, or blackfellas for that matter) and I was dreading reading what, I’d assumed from the editor’s headlines, was going to be yet another uninformed attack on our education system and/or the kids who use it.
Reading the story, I soon discovered that it was in fact another muddled headed diatribe of the type I’ve come to expect of The Bulletin.
The only ‘evidence’ of our schools facing an “era of violence” as the headline suggested was a quote from a “school bullying prevention and management consultant” (you immediately worry when you read ‘consultant’) who claimed in the opening paragraph that “Townsville school students will soon be wielding guns and machetes, creating a violent backdrop for ‘innocent’ classmates to spend an major chunk of their day” (my guess this was a bit of sub-editing ‘licence’ rather than an actual quote as the Bully implied).
Well, that and the hard statistic that the town has had two school lockdowns this year – exactly the same annual average as for the last unknown number of years as we later learn from the Northern Vice President of the Qld Council of Parents and Citizens Associations. Not necessarily an alarming increase, perhaps just the year’s average achieved early - only time will tell.
The story goes on to use suspensions and expulsions from school as a proxy indicator of increasing violence in schools and to argue that this region is worse than others. A few facts might help:
Finally, at least 1/3 of the article compares suspension and expulsion rates in the public sector with those in the private sector without any reference to differences in the socio-economic demographics of the student populations in the two sectors or, of course, the funding per student differentials. Either Alexis Gillham is a product of the private school sector or just plain intellectually lazy or both (they tell me it happens)
For me however, the last word comes from a mate of one of my children attending (a State) high school. She was the victim of fairly violent attack on the school bus from another girl who had already been suspended (and who had been led to believe the girl she was attacking was the cause of her suspension). The ‘bully’ was immediately expelled – for which I was glad when I first heard of this.
But interestingly, a couple of months later, the “bully” saw the “victim” at Stocklands Mall, stopped her, apologised, took her for a coffee and explained that the expulsion was the best thing that happened to her as it enabled her to get a clean start at a new school with new friends and get away from a group of girls who were using her to get at other girls.
I also learnt that that group of girls have since been left largely powerless as they have no one to get to do their bullying for them and (is often the case) are too gutless to do it themselves (a bit like The Bulletin one might say).
All-in-all, I thought that story the best advertisement for the value of suspensions and expulsions as a behaviour management tool within schools.
And lastly, if I were a Grade-10 English or SOSE teacher I would have FAILED both Alexis Gillham and the Bully’s headline writer for an incoherent, factually wrong and dreadfully argued article.
“FAILED” (their choice of all caps, but very bad form I’d say if I were their teacher) screamed the front page header followed by “Educating against era of violence” (missing an “an” – again, very bad form and lost marks) splashed across pages six and seven, just below “What’s up with North Queensland schools” (online version here).
It actually took a full 24 hours before I could summon the courage (or is that, was bored enough) to read Alexis Gillham’s “Special Report”.
Personally, I get a bit sick of everybody assuming they’re an expert on education (or hospitals, or homelessness, or blackfellas for that matter) and I was dreading reading what, I’d assumed from the editor’s headlines, was going to be yet another uninformed attack on our education system and/or the kids who use it.
Reading the story, I soon discovered that it was in fact another muddled headed diatribe of the type I’ve come to expect of The Bulletin.
The only ‘evidence’ of our schools facing an “era of violence” as the headline suggested was a quote from a “school bullying prevention and management consultant” (you immediately worry when you read ‘consultant’) who claimed in the opening paragraph that “Townsville school students will soon be wielding guns and machetes, creating a violent backdrop for ‘innocent’ classmates to spend an major chunk of their day” (my guess this was a bit of sub-editing ‘licence’ rather than an actual quote as the Bully implied).
Well, that and the hard statistic that the town has had two school lockdowns this year – exactly the same annual average as for the last unknown number of years as we later learn from the Northern Vice President of the Qld Council of Parents and Citizens Associations. Not necessarily an alarming increase, perhaps just the year’s average achieved early - only time will tell.
The story goes on to use suspensions and expulsions from school as a proxy indicator of increasing violence in schools and to argue that this region is worse than others. A few facts might help:
- Suspensions and expulsions from school can happen for any number of reasons with violence being only one of them.
- All of the data used in the report (and here) is from 2008. That is, it tells us nothing of what is happening in our schools in 2010
- For every 100 students in the region there are there are about 15.4 suspensions a year – that’s not 15.4 bad kids, just 15.4 suspensions. For example, all kids who are expelled usually go through a number (at least three) suspensions – so for every 100 students there might be in reality 3-5 “problem kids”. As a matter of interest, I wonder what the ratio is on Flinders St East, at Lavarack Barracks or in the Tax Office? – not much different I’d wager!
- North Queensland’s suspension rate is high but not the highest in the State – Wide Bay-Burnet is the highest.
- North Queensland expulsion rates are also high, but far from the highest. Ours is 1.6 per 1,000 students, while the Far North’s is 2.6 and the South Coast’s is 2.9
- The article quotes (twice) a figure of 21 expulsions over three years. Best I can tell, this is actually a count of ‘cancellations’ in the 2008 year. A ‘cancellation’ occurs because “a post compulsory age student if the student displays persistent refusal to participate in the program of instruction” (EQ web site) – expulsions are a totally different thing (are generally behaviour rather than attendance related) and the count was actually 47 in ‘08
Finally, at least 1/3 of the article compares suspension and expulsion rates in the public sector with those in the private sector without any reference to differences in the socio-economic demographics of the student populations in the two sectors or, of course, the funding per student differentials. Either Alexis Gillham is a product of the private school sector or just plain intellectually lazy or both (they tell me it happens)
For me however, the last word comes from a mate of one of my children attending (a State) high school. She was the victim of fairly violent attack on the school bus from another girl who had already been suspended (and who had been led to believe the girl she was attacking was the cause of her suspension). The ‘bully’ was immediately expelled – for which I was glad when I first heard of this.
But interestingly, a couple of months later, the “bully” saw the “victim” at Stocklands Mall, stopped her, apologised, took her for a coffee and explained that the expulsion was the best thing that happened to her as it enabled her to get a clean start at a new school with new friends and get away from a group of girls who were using her to get at other girls.
I also learnt that that group of girls have since been left largely powerless as they have no one to get to do their bullying for them and (is often the case) are too gutless to do it themselves (a bit like The Bulletin one might say).
All-in-all, I thought that story the best advertisement for the value of suspensions and expulsions as a behaviour management tool within schools.
And lastly, if I were a Grade-10 English or SOSE teacher I would have FAILED both Alexis Gillham and the Bully’s headline writer for an incoherent, factually wrong and dreadfully argued article.
Thursday, 25 February 2010
Vote now!
What's your opinion of The Bulletin? Vote now!
We've included a poll on the blog to give readers the chance to express their opinion about The Bulletin.
We tried to emulate the Bully itself by giving you that chance to vote as many times as your heart desires but unfortunately Blogger's technology is far more sophisticated than that which Rupert will buy for News Ltd, so you’re only allowed one vote.
Choose carefully.
Click ‘comments’ below to send us any other poll options that you think would be appropriate.
We've included a poll on the blog to give readers the chance to express their opinion about The Bulletin.
We tried to emulate the Bully itself by giving you that chance to vote as many times as your heart desires but unfortunately Blogger's technology is far more sophisticated than that which Rupert will buy for News Ltd, so you’re only allowed one vote.
Choose carefully.
Click ‘comments’ below to send us any other poll options that you think would be appropriate.
Could Barney be the funniest man in politics - or just a joke?
If, like me, you can't work out whether Barney Joyce is full if sh*t or just a goose, this investigation by Crikey of whether he conducted his ABC Newsradio interview this morning while on the loo or not might be enlightening:
A goose full of sh*t perhaps? Ya gotta laugh
Barnaby’s Watergate: a flush or a truck?Not sure if the background noise is the loo flushing or a truck passing as his staff claim? - there's the definative comparison here.
A goose full of sh*t perhaps? Ya gotta laugh
Is Peter Lindsay running for State parliament?
You'd think that Peter Lindsay was a State MP given the amount of time and effort he puts into State issues. His letter to the editor today is a case in point (not online) – ripping into the State Minister, Kate Jones, for announcing last Friday a worrying lead level reading in Mount Isa and the process the State would take to confirm if there was a problem and, if there was, their approach to handling the polluter.
No doubt Jones milked the story for all it was worth at the time and no doubt Xstrata understood the game, but if I lived in the Isa, I would have wanted to know.
Maybe Peter is looking for a consultancy with Xstrata in his coming retirement? He’s certainly not helping his LNP replacement by spending his time and effort bashing up the State Government when the Feds are supposed to be his target.
He’s probably made no friends at the Bully either, having pointed out their headline beat-up “Xstrata to be prosecuted over air pollution”
No doubt Jones milked the story for all it was worth at the time and no doubt Xstrata understood the game, but if I lived in the Isa, I would have wanted to know.
Maybe Peter is looking for a consultancy with Xstrata in his coming retirement? He’s certainly not helping his LNP replacement by spending his time and effort bashing up the State Government when the Feds are supposed to be his target.
He’s probably made no friends at the Bully either, having pointed out their headline beat-up “Xstrata to be prosecuted over air pollution”
Another Bully beat-up
I got all excited when I unrolled this morning’s Bulletin and saw the front page. “Razor gang hacks budget” screams the headline followed by a list of Council budget items that are presumably going to be “hacked” – items that are sure to raise the punters’ ire (security cameras, public toilets, community grants etc).
Read the full story on page four though and you see that these, along with every other Council Budget line, are up for review in the budget process – as you would expect of a sound financial manager. None of the headline items splashed on the front page have actually been slashed (yet) – no decisions seem to have been made. But read the editorial and the shopping list has actually become a “plan”.
They probably have suckered a few more paper sales as a result and I’m sure the Bully will get an extra page of text messages to publish tomorrow.
Read the full story on page four though and you see that these, along with every other Council Budget line, are up for review in the budget process – as you would expect of a sound financial manager. None of the headline items splashed on the front page have actually been slashed (yet) – no decisions seem to have been made. But read the editorial and the shopping list has actually become a “plan”.
They probably have suckered a few more paper sales as a result and I’m sure the Bully will get an extra page of text messages to publish tomorrow.
Wednesday, 24 February 2010
The power of the blog
Having claimed that this blog helped embarrass The Bulletin into not running their Mooney/Hill poll on the front page as we might otherwise expect, dare I be so brash as to claim success in achieving the opposite and embarrassing Council into action?
Following this story about the state of the parks and verges on Townsville’s major tourist attraction on the eve of a visit by 80 tourism junketeers from all over Qld, the grass got mowed today - as the picture at right show.
All power to the bloggers!
The Pollytics of insulation
You gotta love Possum Comitatus at Pollytics.com – he has a way of finding the truth in the numbers that few others are capable of.
Today he has what has to be the definitive blogs about the “insulation affair’ that The Australian and the rest of Rupert (the Monk’s lunch partner) Murdoch’s slag-sheets have been beating-up for the last couple of weeks.
Firstly, he demolishes much of the reportage to date:
Today he has what has to be the definitive blogs about the “insulation affair’ that The Australian and the rest of Rupert (the Monk’s lunch partner) Murdoch’s slag-sheets have been beating-up for the last couple of weeks.
Firstly, he demolishes much of the reportage to date:
Risk and Incompetence in an Insulated MediaAnd then he shows statistically how the Garrett insulation scheme in all probability actually reduced the rate of installation caused fires:
Read them – you won’t be sorry
Get your daughters to read this story
I sure have - a great lesson in self defence (and girl power):
Schoolgirl, 15, escapes after kicking would-be kidnapper in groin
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