As previously discussed here, the merger of the National Library and Archives New Zealand into the Department of Internal Affairs is a piece of epic back to the future nonsense. The report of the Select Committee is out, including an extensive minority report from Labour.
Now it is out I wanted, and the submissions made to the Committee are public I wanted to highlight two comments from those who were involved when Archives NZ was last part of DIA. A former Chief Archivist said
“thousands of unique items that have relevance today have been lost by fire, water, vermin and indifference”.
Another said
“the past management of the archives function has an unfortunate history, characterised by arrested development, lack of resourcing, poor understanding, litigation, rancour and distrust”
and that ladies and gentlemen is what the government want to take us back to.
Posted in National Library, Archives NZ and DIA. |
Almost every day since I have been in the UK there has been a story about cuts in public services in the media. Talking to people who are working in both central and local government over here they say it is like one body blow after another. Many people are so bewildered they just dont know what to do.
Of course, some people are doing a lot. And tomorrow there will be further fees protests across the country. That issue will not go away in a hurry, and has not been helped tonight by a patronising speech by Deputy PM Nick Clegg. The Lib Dems really are going to regret their total acceptance of the Tories proposal here.
But two of the cuts really caught my eye this week, and almost certainly have not made the news in New Zealand. They are the kind of short-sighted things that will only show up in terms of impacts in decades to come. The first is the cutting of library services. Cuts to funding for local authorities are seeing library funding slashed and many authorities more than halving the libraries they have. Author Will Self sums things up in the article above
“Libraries are a cultural resource of universal benefit that shouldn’t be subjected to the crude calculus of cost-benefit analysis. What they should do is provide access to as many books as possible for as many people as possible.”
The other cut this week that stands out is in terms of school sports Here the Tories answer to Anne Tolley, the Education Secretary Michael Gove wants to cut the 162 million pound fund for school sport. This provides teachers and resources for school sport partnerships. But more than that it gets kids active and encourages them into sport. This has obvious health and social benefits, but seemingly the government want to let problems like childhood obesity fester as they make short term decisions.
No one in the UK doubts that there need to be changes as the government grapples with the kind of debt levels we might have reached if Michael Cullen had agreed to English/Key’s clamour for tax cuts while in opposition. But serious questions are being asked about where the focus should be, and literacy and activity of kids just seems like the wrong place.
Posted in Students, Public Service and Education. |
It has been gutting to wake up this morning in London to hear of the second explosion, and the confirmation of the deaths of the miners. New Zealand feels both far away and very close at hand today.
For what it is worth, throughout the last few days the colleagues from around the Commonwealth at my conference have taken a keen interest and expressed their sympathy. This morning a number have contacted me in the last few minutes to pass on their condolences. They are expressing their support and concern as family members, former visitors to New Zealand, MPs with mines and miners in their constituencies, but above all as fellow human beings who can feel the tragedy. All New Zealanders, most particularly the miners, their families and the Coast community, should know we are in the thoughts of many around the world.
Posted in Pike River. |
We had the most brilliant session at the seminar yesterday on engaging young people in politics. We had speakers from Facebook, the UK Youth Parliament and the House of Commons Education Service. There were loads of interesting and practical ideas.
The Facebook presenter, Luc Delany gave an overview of their political engagement work, including the highly successful Democracy UK which they started for the UK election in May, and now has over 270,000 members. Its goal is to get young people interested in politics. They had a range of material and interactive events during the election campaign. One very practical result was that more than a thousand people downloaded enrolment forms from the site. One issue that made me a little uncomfortable was an application called My Vote Advisor that got you to answer a few questions and then told the person who they should vote for based on that. Maybe taking things too far? Nevertheless a great initiative that is still going.
We discovered that one of the participants is the Indian equivalent of Trevor, in one respect anyway in that he has reached his limit of 5,000 friends on Facebook. He asked the representative from Facebook if there was a way of extending this. But he has an even bigger ‘problem’. He has now reached the limit of 25,000 fans as well. The scale of politics in India is challenging Facebook.
The Education Service at the House of Commons are doing all kinds of innovative things to engage young people in politics. There were some great ideas about teacher training programmes, films, competitions and the like that I will be bringing back home to share. They have put a bit of focus on games to get young people interested. Check out the MP for a Week game. Not quite the same as being an MP in NZ, but a really good way to give young people an idea of the kinds of things an MP does.
We also heard from a member of the UK Youth Parliament. This is similar to the NZ version, but it is on-going, and election to the Parliament is done by young people in different regions. 500,000 young people voted in the last election. They have come up with some really interesting material, including a report on young people’s attitude to politics, called The P Word. Well worth a read.
Posted in Youth Engagement, UK Parliament and Facebook. |
Last week I went to Brussels as part of my programme. Charming place. Easy to get around, nice people. About now though, some of those people (and my goodness there are a lot involved in the EU bureaucracy) are very worried indeed. As at tonight the Irish government have asked for, and the EU Finance Ministers (and IMF) have agreed to a massive bailout package for the Irish economy.
It had to happen of course. There was no way that the EU would allow the Irish economy to collapse. The effect on the rest of Europe would be huge. But questions are being asked around Europe about how much more the taxpayers of Germany, Italy, UK and others can continue to stump up. Greece, Ireland, the question seems to be who is next?
When we were in Brussels views varied, but there is pressure on the EU. No budget has been agreed for the coming year, there is concern about the long sterm stability of the Euro, and there is limited progress in trade talks. Financial pressure in individual countries, including here in the UK are causing people to ask serious questions about the EU.
Except the serious questions dont seem to extend to questioning some of the economic decisions that got countries like Ireland into trouble in the first place. There seems to be a stark lack of debate around enhanced regulation in the finance sector for instance.
There is certainly benefit for EU member countries of the relationship they have forged. But the financial stresses of recent times and those that are still to come, may cause a re-think on how that relationship looks in the years to come. A smaller, leaner EU may yet be the result.
Posted in EU and Foreign Affairs. |
