The great weakness of all Labour governments is their cornucopian approach to money. This reflects their usual school-teacher, public service and the like non-commercial backgrounds.
It’s why, (the Clark government excepted) allowing them at absolute best two terms to institute desirable changes is critical, failing which they will bankrupt the nation.
Typical of this laissez-faire approach is the announcement that a Canterbury insect specialist has been given almost a million dollars of taxpayer money to “research” whether spiders can count (I’m not making this up). Personally, I couldn’t give a damn whether spiders can count but the news-item doesn’t explain why anyone else should care.
It will come as no surprise to learn this decision was made on our behalf by the New Zealand branch of the Royal Society, an outfit with a record which disgraces that great organisation’s founding principles of respect for truth. But it’s overdue for the government to stop funding them, albeit indirectly, until rational and sensible people are in charge.
The Opposition should be hammering this indulgent fool-hardiness.
7 Comments
Counting must be difficult when you have eight legs but no fingers or toes. But on balance that’s a comparatively sensible funding decision from our Government of kindness. Strap yourself in for some of the ridiculous CreativeNZ arts funding which is just a blatant money funnel between the long-suffering taxpayer and the back pockets of effete, anointed McComrades. https://www.taxpayers.org.nz/creative_nz_grants
This government have not yet fully plumbed the depths stupidity when it comes to throwing our money at unnecessary or idiotic projects.
In 1984, $3 million of taxpayer money was spent on teaching Te Reo … by 2016 it was up to $260 million … and now it is heading towards $600 million … and you know what?? … there are less Maori speakers now than there were in 1984.
… we’ll set up a new working group to develop a framework whereby we’ll investigate the appropriate protocols for weaning spiders off their desire to count by providing them with calculators … $ 10 million , please … ( ka-ching ka-ching ) …. thankyou minister , that’ll do nicely …
I suggest it would be a helluva lot cheaper to just acknowledge that spiders can count. And should we ever want to know how many spiders there are, then we can just email and ask them?
Ah but that’s assuming they can read…mind you perhaps another million or two could get to the bottom of that as well
Think we’re ( NZ’rs ) all a bit thick to understand the “your” bit in the title SB!
Doesn’t it come from the Government ?
i see nothing wrong with that. The NZ govt gave 2.75 million to the mongrel mob but obviously for a different reason. We already know most of them can`t count.