Rustie

That's why we invented the GPA. Am I still mad that mine was only 312/320? Maybe.

What's great about this is I thought I was paraphrasing Marx but it turns out I was paraphrasing a Twitter shitpost paraphrasing Marx in GWB voice.

There's a point in Bourdieu - maybe it's in Piketty but it's definitely in Bourdieu - that class resentments are most intense between the class immediately above you and immediately below you.

Take a wild swing what class was immediately above me.

The anti-NCEA neurosis is almost entirely a phenomenon of umc Auckland parents worried that their kids won't get into Monash and will have to settle for *retches* Otago, not families who have to forego four years of potential labour market income to put a kid through UoA.

An important thing to remember is that in the 2000s IB and Cambridge weren't just sold to parents as luxury consumption markers, they were also sold to the kids as a status symbols.

Suggesting that NCEA is mostly fine is an identity threat.

This was also the sales pitch for the alternative qualifications (IB, Cambridge).

With Treasury as the only real referee.

Not that internal structural change makes it all go away. We still don't tax enough for our expectations. But the structures are an accountability sink where cost control goes to die.

Oh also man throw NZTA onto this pile.

The 6NG is stuck because it knows jabbing an adrenaline needle into the corpse of Ruthanasia would be electoral suicide, but lacks any better ideas for reconciling consumer ends with public means.

The 6LG tried a kind of reform at a structural level (all the amalgamations) but a) they're all in the process of being unwound or replaced and b) didn't deal with the underlying problems, just tried to mask them with economies of scale.

The Clark government arrested that process but never did anything significant to wind it back or build an alternative.

They were all the groundwork for a model of public service provision built on ability to pay, consumer choice, and eventual privatisation.

Vestigial procurement entities for things too hard to immediately marketise.

Overarching NZ pol history theory I want to test: Tomorrow's Schools, DHBs, and local governments are all hangovers of an aborted neoliberal revolution.

I've gone through the 1335 candidate nominations that electionz have on their website for NZ local government. Some interesting stuff 🧵 #nzpol

Ha. This one is better I think.

He'd be so good at just being a ceremonial President.

Hell it's a shame Malania can't be President so he can be First Gentleman.

Things in NZ are so dire you can't even get a train run on you, gotta get a rail-replacement bus run on you instead.

I could also add "BBC News" to this I guess.

LAPD when they think nobody is watching

Yeah unfortunately councils run their own elections, so there's no centralised data (even for results).

Slightly ridiculous and ECom should do them.

Wikipedia is your best bet.

Fwiw, I do not think this is what Tim Berners Lee had in mind

Heather I'm not going to hold your hand while I say this (because I know where it's been) but: we're not getting the pension.

There's not going to be anything left.

Whichever Blues forward was holding on at the bottom of that final ruck:

I was about to say "do we have evidence whether he's literate" but then I remembered his book and we do and he isn't.

Vance did National a favour with that column. Only interesting question is whether it was intentional.

Also fucking around with a Christchurch version and while the main grid is pleasingly regular, the pattern of the side streets is very boring.

Fuckin around with the forsaken sigils again.

RIP BOZO REST IN PISS YOU WONT BE MISSED

PACK WATCH