The Pigeonhole

Dear Ted

I've been following your recent progress with interest.  Tough times, I'd have to say...  still, Dan's on the mend and the Ozzie captain's been taken out of play - all is not lost.

I've been thinking about all the important aspects of running our great nation and it occurred to me that the new cycle tracks just aren't going to be as much help to our national game as I had hoped - although you might want to take the team for a bit of a ride as part of your bonding programme?  Think of the publicity shots... 100% NZ... pure... yeah... right!  Good one.

Anyway, it's obvious to me that you're trying to rebuild our once great team for the future - so I've found some money for school sport.  I think it's important, as a government, to get our priorities clear and I think the people of NZ are starting to glimpse my master plan unfolding:

1.  more bike tracks. 

2.  better all blacks through chucking some money at school sport.

3. forget 21^st century learning, the knowledge wave, global infrastructures and communications (and all the crap).  Ordinary kiwis can't be bothered with such newfangled thinking.  It's dangerous. Waste of money.  Refer to points 1 and 2.

4. stop funding curriculum implementation (oh, Mrs Trolley says don't worry we've already done that - in fact, we hardly bothered in the first place... silly me).

5. strip funding from community education. It's needed for points 1, 2 and 6.

6. give more money to private schools (some of them give scholarships to good rugby players - which is a good thing, eh Ted?)

7. expose regular people trying to get ahead by using public money for study, then take it off them, while my colleagues and I rack up the bills (oops, no pun intended) courtesy of generous taxpayers' dollars.

Well Ted, my advisors (both of them) say that seven points in a plan is plenty - I'm thinking of calling it the magnificent seven... original.  Good one.

See you at Eden Park, Ted.  All the best... jon