Classic Miranda, 2011: “YOU have to worry when a comedian has more moral sense than an archbishop. But that is the conclusion to draw from the news that South Africa’s celebrated cleric Desmond Tutu has written a letter congratulating Marrickville Council’s attempted Israel boycott. “I want to pay my respects to you and your fellow Councillors in Marrickville for taking a stand to isolate the Israeli state,” wrote the 79-year-old Anglican Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, to Marrickville’s Greens mayor Fiona Byrne. You’d think Tutu might find more pressing humanitarian concerns in the Middle East to write letters about than continuing to demonise the only democracy in the region.
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Lebanon, Turkey, Kuwait and Morocco are all democracies
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Classic Miranda, 2011: “In 1998, 18 per cent of Australians over 13 had recently smoked pot. That dropped to 13 per cent in 2001, and plummeted to 9 per cent in 2007. NOW that usage has spiked up, researchers are finding that children’s “perceived risk” of marijuana has fallen. In fact, kids disapprove more of cigarettes than bongs. The Gillard Government is quite happy to intervene and regulate to a ridiculous extent practices that are legal and less harmful - such as smoking, drinking and gambling.
Classic Miranda, 2010: “The most valuable information standardised testing can provide is the difference good teaching makes, allowing the lucky child with a good teacher to improve at a greater rate than her contemporaries stuck with duds or mediocrities. This kind of information is, of course, anathema to a union culture hell-bent on preserving a false “see-no-evil” egalitarianism among its membership, where longevity of service is rewarded over excellence, ingenuity is crushed, and children, especially those without involved, competent parents, suffer.
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US charter schools aren’t stuck with the tenure rules that make firing teachers difficult:
“Known as the CREDOstudy, it evaluated student progress on math tests in half the nation’s five thousand charter schools and concluded that 17 percent were superior to a matched traditional public school; 37 percent were worse than the public school; and the remaining 46 percent had academic gains no different from that of a similar public school. The proportion of charters that get amazing results is far smaller than 17 percent.”
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter-schools/?pagination=false
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Classic Miranda, 2010: “But the militant ideologues of the Australian Education Union and the NSW Teachers Federation are determined to boycott the tests, ostensibly because they object to the possibility they might be used to rank schools in ”league tables”. The only logical explanation for this madness is the unions are frightened of information. They don’t want Macquarie Fields to be hailed a success or become a model for other schools in impoverished areas. They want to hide failures and condemn another generation of young Australians to illiteracy.
Classic Miranda, July 2011: “Adolescent psychiatrist Michael Carr-Gregg says people who spread hate on the internet do real psychological harm and should be punished. In Australia they can be prosecuted for violating the Commonwealth criminal code act of 1995, section 474, “using a carriage service to menace, harrass or cause offence”. It’s about time purveyors of hate and the websites they use are held accountable for the pain they cause.
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Classic Miranda, September 2011: “The Twitterati voiced delight as well: “Great victory against Andrew Bolt, hope one day he will be removed from radio and TV”. One tweet said: “now for Alan Jones”. The irony, of course, is that the chortlers are so stupid that they don’t realise they are next. The Federal Court has shown us that the Racial Discrimination Act can be used to silence unfashionable opinion.”
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/bolt-case-has-ominous-echo/story-e6frfhqf-1226152332593
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Classic Miranda, 2011: “Miller says that in the past when bullying or arguments occurred at school, only a few people witnessed them. But on Facebook your humiliation can be seen by millions. It has turbocharged one of the most destructive emotions known to teenage girls - jealousy. “It’s the old compare-and-despair game that girls have played forever, but now it is being played online,” says Miller. Where once there was a natural hierarchy in the playground, a “social totem pole” with the alphas or “mean girls” at the top, the internet has enabled the “revenge of the nerds”, who can anonymously undermine the girl who makes them feel worthless all day at school.“It gives the nerds an avenue to get their revenge which they never had before,” says social media expert Thomas Tudehope, from SR7.
Classic Miranda, 2011: “But something needs to be done. Would we allow a teenager to be taken to a public square and stoned? Of course not, but this is effectively what we are allowing to happen on Facebook or Formspring or any number of social-networking sites.
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As a self-proclaimed journalist Miranda should have really empirically tested that claim à la Christopher Hitchen’s allowing himself to be water-boarded after advocating torture.
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Classic Miranda, 2011: “Carbon pricing was poison when Kevin Rudd’s polls were plummeting last year and that was the reason Gillard suggested he ditch the ETS on which he had staked his leadership.
Classic Miranda, 2011: “But as needless disruption trickles through the economy from the carbon tax and a string of other debacles created by a weak minority Government, even the most clueless people will wake up. There will be a generation of voters allergic to the Greens and independents.
Classic Miranda, 2011: “In NSW, after 16 years of damaging government had brought the state to its knees, then Opposition leader Barry O’Farrell promised to look at introducing recall elections so voters can dump “corrupt, incompetent governments”.
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Yeah I don’t think he’ll be doing that:
- “A senior government source said last night the only producer of ethanol in NSW, Manildra, “gives a lot of money to political parties and has bought (itself) a monopoly”. ”Customers don’t want it and we have a mandate to make people take it. If you (were to) dump the mandate, then you don’t have to abolish unleaded petrol,” the source said. BP’s government relations director Richard Wise told Seven News that Mr O’Farrell’s decision was “bad policy” that benefitted only Manildra.”
- “The Opposition has accused Finance Minister Greg Pearce of ordering the adjournments and interfering in the judicial process.”
- “Mr O’Farrell on Monday sent his senior media adviser, Peter Grimshaw, on leave without pay pending an investigation into whether he breached a code of conduct for ministerial staffers by forwarding to his girlfriend emails from the premier, a former senior executive at The Star. Mr Grimshaw’s partner has accused sacked Star managing director Sid Vaikunta of sexual harassment, one of two complaints being investigated by the Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority (ILGA) as part of its inquiry into the casino boss’s removal. Mr Grimshaw, who once worked for The Star, has been accused of conspiring to get rid of his partner’s then-boss Mr Vaikunta.”
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