“The PPTA union should have every right to choose who they buy airline tickets from”, said Martin Poulsen, the National Party candidate for Auckland Central.

“Yesterday they chose to publicise that right to choose by declaring sympathy with Ansett airline pilots”.

“However the PPTA union may be dabbling in double standards. The PPTA union’s customers, that is, New Zealands parents and children do not get the same choices the PPTA union does”.

“Parents have limited ability to choose not to employ the services of teachers they regard as poor performers. Likewise parents have very little ability to reward the performance of good teachers with extra pay and bonuses”.

‘I accept it is difficult to quantify good teacher performance but it is not impossible. Not to try, is an acceptance of mediocrity. Being a bit cleverer about teachers renumeration should be seen not as a threat but as an opportunity”

The PPTA union wants to demonstrate it has choices but maybe it should look to its own backyard first”, concluded Poulsen.

ENDS

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>