Going over to the other side

Well finally trying to do it move from Windows to Linux, have created a Linux box running ubuntu. So it will be interesting to see how I go, don't know a whole lot about Linux so doing this as a novice user of linux. How easy or hard is it for a windows user (for years) to make the move to linux. At the moment have two boxes running Win XP on one and ubuntu on the other.

Will admit I'm more comfortable using Windows, most likely because I 've been doing it for the last 30 years or more, so no time like the present to learn something new. So with my son's words of encouragement in my ear " I ain't going to do it for you" I'm on a new learning experience.

Main reason I've never bothered to change was the fact I use Dreamweaver and Photoshop alot for web design stuff, and because neither of those run under linux I figure why change. According to my son its possable to do that, (run photoshop & dreamweaver on linux). The challenge now it to do that.

How the do gooders are attempting to destroy africa - education

Last evening there was a brilliant documentary on BBC World
"Educating Africa" which reported the findings of a Professor
James Tooley of the UK and his research
on this important issue.

As expected, the best schooling the poor Africans are getting is
in the fee paying private sector. The "free" government schools
are generally appalling and the poor choose to avoid them and
pay for their children to be educated in the private sector.

One very perceptive poor African made the comment within the
article below that "Free education is like free food - generally rotton".

Understandably, most African governments detest private education,
as do the NGOs and the "education administrators"
( in their aid funded Mercedes ).

They - like their friends in the West, such as Bob Galdof and Gordon Brown
are more interested in perpetuating poverty and human dispair - sadly for
elitist ideological reasons.

The artcle below is a "must read" - as is the viewing of the brilliant
documentary. Lets hope TVNZ ( New Zealand ) and the ABC ( Australia )
screen it in this part of the world.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Sunday Times - Review
June 26, 2005

Give Africa a private schoolingPoor African children benefit more from
independent schools than government ones for a fraction of the cost, says
James Tooley.

Why are aid groups and pop stars against them? On BBC’s Newsnight last
week the international development secretary Hilary Benn showcased free
primary education (FPE) in Kenya — supported by $55m from the World Bank
and £20m from the British government — as the shining example of aid to
Africa not being wasted.

He’s not the only one clutching at this example for reassurance: Bill Clinton
told an American television audience that the person he most wanted to meet
was President Kibaki of Kenya, “because he has abolished school fees”, which
“would affect more lives than any president had done or would ever do . . .”

When Gordon Brown visited Olympic primary school, one of the five government
schools located on the outskirts of Kibera, the largest slum in Kenya and in Africa,
he told the gathered crowds that British parents fully supported their taxpayers’
money being used to provide free places at that school.

Bob Geldof and Bono rave about how an extra 1m-plus children are now enrolled
in primary school in Kenya. All these children, the accepted wisdom goes, have
been saved by the benevolence of the international community — which must
give $7 to $8 billion (£3.8 to £4.4 billion) per year more so that other countries
can emulate Kenya’s success.

The accepted wisdom is wrong. It ignores the remarkable reality that the poor
in Africa have not been waiting, helplessly, for the munificence of pop stars and
western chancellors to ensure that their children get a decent education.

Private schools for the poor have emerged in huge numbers in some of the most
impoverished slums and villages in Africa. They cater for a majority of poor
children and outperform government schools, for a fraction of the cost.

My research has found this in Kenya — where the international community might
excuse the inadequacy of state education as a blip while free primary education
beds down.

But it’s as true in Ghana and Nigeria too — where free primary education has been
around for a long time, supported by generous handouts from the British government
and the World Bank.

In the poor areas of Lagos State, Nigeria — the same is true in poor areas of
Ghana — my research teams combed slums and villages and found 70% or more
of all schoolchildren in private school, more than half in schools unregistered and
therefore unacknowledged in any official statistics.

In the teeming shantytown of Makoko alone, where 50,000 people live,
many in wooden houses built on stilts sunk into the dark waters of the
Lagos lagoon, we found 32 private schools serving some 4,500 children
(75% of those in school from Makoko) from families of impoverished fishermen
and fish traders, and all off the state’s
radar.

Parents gave the same litany of complaints about government schools, that
teachers don’t turn up, or if they do they don’t teach. I visited the three
government primary schools on the outskirts of Makoko; although my visit
was announced, and I came with the commissioner of education’s representative,
I saw the headmistress beating children to get them into the classrooms,
and found one teacher fast asleep at his desk.

The welcoming chorus of the children didn’t rouse him.

The commissioner’s representative, however, described parents who send their
children to the mushrooming private schools as “ignoramuses”, wanting the
status symbol of private education (saying this, without irony, standing by her
brand new silver Mercedes), but hoodwinked by unscrupulous businessmen.

“They should all be closed down,” she told me. At least she admitted that these
schools existed — the British government’s representative, co-ordinating the
Department for International Development’s £20m aid (all to government schools)
denied flatly that private schools for the poor exist.

But was the commissioner’s representative right about the low quality in the
mushrooming schools?

We tested 3,000 children in maths and English, from government and private
schools, controlled for background family variables, and found that the children
in the unregistered private schools, so despised by the government, achieved
14 percentage points higher in maths and 20 percentage points higher in English
than children in government schools.

Teachers in the government schools were paid at least four times
more than those in the unregistered schools. The private schools
were far more effective for a fraction of the cost.

Would Kenya be the same? Although the education minister told me that,
in his country, private schools were for the rich, not the poor, and so I was misguided
in my quest, I persevered, and went to the slum of Kibera, home to half a million
people crowded into an area of some 1 square miles.

Within a few minutes I found what I was looking for. A signboard proclaimed
Makina primary school outside a two-storey rickety tin building.
Inside a cramped office, Jane Yavetsi, the school proprietor, was keen to tell her story.
“Free education is a big problem,” she said. Since its introduction her enrolment
had declined from 500 to 300 and now she doesn’t know how she will pay the rent.

Her school fees are 200 Kenyan shillings (about £1.45) per month, or about 10%
of the expected earnings of someone living in Kibera. But for the poorest children,
including 50 orphans, she offers free education. Yavetsi founded the school
10 years ago and has been through many difficulties. But now she feels crestfallen:
“With free education I am being hit very hard.”

Jane’s wasn’t the only private school in Kibera. Right next door was another,
and then just down from her, opposite each other on the railway tracks, were
two more.

My research team scoured every muddy street and alleyway and found a total of
76 private schools, enrolling more than 12,000 students. In the five government
schools serving Kibera, there were 8,500 children — but half of these were from
the middle-class suburbs. The private schools again were serving a large majority
of the slum children.

Tony Blair’s Commission for Africa concedes that mushrooming private schools
exist, but reports that they “are without adequate state regulation and are of a
low quality”.

But why would parents be foolish enough to pay for schools of such low quality?

Exploring further, I spoke to parents, some of whom had taken their children to the
“free” government schools, but had been disillusioned and returned to the private
schools.

Their reasons were straightforward: in government schools, class sizes had increased
dramatically and teachers couldn’t cope with 100 or more pupils, five times the
number in the private school classes.

Parents compared notes when their children came home from school, and saw that
in the state schools, notebooks remained untouched for weeks; in contrast, in the
private schools children’s work was always marked.
One summed up the situation succinctly: “If you go to a market and are offered
free fruit and vegetables, they will be rotten. If you want fresh fruit and veg,
you have to pay for them.”

The final rub was that “free” primary education was not only poor quality, it was
also not “free”. Perhaps to keep slum children out — certainly the headmistress
from Olympic, where the chancellor visited, was candid that she objected to the
“dirty, smelly and uncouth” slum children in her smart school — state schools
insist that parents purchase two sets of uniforms before the term starts, including
shoes — prohibitively expensive to parents from the slums.

One parent told me: “I prefer to pay school fees and forget the uniform.”

Curiously, the success story of private schools for the poor is not being celebrated.
But poor parents want the best for their children, and know that private schools are
the way forward. The question is: will anyone with power and influence listen to them?

James Tooley is professor of education policy at Newcastle University.
His film Educating Africa will be shown on Newsnight on June 29

Memorable Quote

If you died right now, how would you feel about your life?

Workers united

Thousands march against labour laws

Up to 100,000 workers across the state are expected to down tools this morning to protest against the Federal Government's planned industrial relations changes.

Unions estimated that as many as 120,000 people marched through the capitals of other states yesterday to declare their opposition to the changes.

The secretary of Unions NSW, John Robertson, and the ACTU president, Sharan Burrow, will address workers in a Sky Channel broadcast from a rally at Sydney Town Hall today.
Unions have been encouraged to leave skeleton staff in hospitals and schools, and public transport is being protected. "We want people to be able to get to the rallies," Mr Robertson said.

Construction industry unions said thousands of their members would defy laws that if passed would provide for fines of up to $22,000 for anyone engaged in illegal industrial action.
After the Sky Channel address workers will march to Dawes Point for what unions are calling "an iconic event" before the protest breaks up at midday.

The Maritime Union of Australia will show videos of its historic industrial battles on screens along George Street, and banners will be unfurled from the Harbour Bridge before ferries on the harbour join the protest.

The Sky broadcast will be screened to union meetings in about 200 pubs and clubs around the state, and rallies are planned for regional centres such as Wagga Wagga and Lismore. Union officials estimated 80,000 marched through Melbourne yesterday. Protesters chanted "Workers united will never be defeated" and "Shame, Johnny, shame". The federal Opposition Leader, Kim Beazley, addressed the crowd, saying he had never seen anything like it in Melbourne.

The Victorian branch secretary of the Australian Nursing Federation, Lisa Fitzpatrick, said the proposed changes would in effect halve nurses' long service leave, worth up to $20,000 for each nurse, and would remove or reduce allowances and penalty rates for night, weekend and public holiday shifts.

In Perth, about 11,000 gathered to show their opposition. Ms Burrow addressed the crowd, saying the Government had designed the package with employers, not workers, in mind.

The West Australian Premier, Geoff Gallop, said the Federal Government's absolute power had become absolute arrogance.

Between 10,000 and 20,000 rallied in Brisbane, where the Queensland Premier, Peter Beattie, said the State Government would try to protect people's entitlements.

In Adelaide about 5000 workers marched on the local offices of Liberal MPs.
Another 3000 workers marched on Hobart's city hall, opposing what they've described as the biggest attack on workers' rights in 100 years. Unions Tasmania secretary Simon Cocker told the crowd workers' rights were on the line, and at risk of disappearing forever.

The federal Workplace Relations Minister, Kevin Andrews, dismissed the protests as a political stunt that cost business tens of millions of dollars and breached the Workplace Relations Act. But he admitted it was unlikely any punishment or fines would be sought. He said the overwhelming majority of the workforce had not joined in.

The Law Society of NSW warned that the judicial system could be left short of jurors because of the Federal Government's proposed changes.

The society's president, John McIntyre, said the reforms would remove from federal awards the provision making it compulsory for employers to pay workers while they were on jury duty. He predicted that would lead to an increase in the number of people seeking to be excused from jury duty on the grounds of financial hardship.

FOOT SOLDIERS - An estimated 80,000 protesters marched through Melbourne.

- About 11,000 turned out in Perth.
- Between 10,000 and 20,000 rallied in Brisbane.
- In Adelaide 5000 demonstrated outside the offices of Liberal MPs.
- In Hobart 3000 workers were told they were facing the biggest attack on their rights in years.

The Lucky Country falls short

Aid organisations are hoping John Howard will respond to the United Nations' call to increase help for poor nations, writes Matt Wade.

Australia is among the least generous overseas aid donors, notwithstanding the $1 billion tsunami relief assistance to Indonesia. Australia ranked 16th out of 22 donor countries last year, with an overseas aid budget of just 0.26 per cent of gross national income, well below the donor-country average of 0.41 per cent.

Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands all give away more than twice as much as Australia as a proportion of their income.

The Federal Government will increase aid spending to $2.5 billion in 2005-06, up nearly 12 per cent. But that is still just 0.28 per cent of national income, leaving Australia wallowing near the bottom of the aid donor pecking order.

In 2000 Australia was one of more than 180 countries to support the Millennium Development Goals - a set of poverty reduction targets to be reached by 2015. But the aid peak body, the Australian Council for International Development, says the Government must do much more to help achieve these goals.

"While Australians are some of the world's highest per capita contributors to poverty reduction and development action, it seems odd that the Government appears content for Australia to remain as 16th place out of 22 OECD donors," said the council's executive director, Paul O'Callaghan.

The Australian Government is formally committed to a UN goal for rich countries to spend 0.7 per cent of gross national income on development in poor countries. The council wants the Government to make a firm commitment to increase aid to 0.5 per cent of gross national income by 2008.

This would lift aid spending to about $5 billion.
Australians have donated $330 million for tsunami relief.

Aid groups say the Prime Minister, John Howard, can show Australians care about the world's most vulnerable people by accepting an invitation to attend the next UN General Assembly in September, when international leaders will evaluate the global push to halve the number of people living in abject poverty by 2015.

A spokesman for Howard said the invitation was being considered but no decision had yet been made. Poverty campaigners are privately confident he will go, especially if US President George Bush decides to attend.

Oxfam's chief executive, Andrew Hewett, said Howard's attendance would build on Australia's generous response to the Boxing Day tsunami. "I think Australia would be let down if he wasn't there," he said. "It's an opportunity for the country."

The United Nations Millennium Declaration, endorsed by Australia, says: "We will spare no effort to free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanising conditions of extreme poverty, to which more than a billion of them are currently subjected."

Five countries have already met or surpassed the 0.7 per cent target: Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, while six other countries have a timeline to reach this target before 2015: Belgium, Finland, France, Ireland, Spain and Britain. The US gave just 0.15 per cent last year.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the number of people living on less than $US1 ($1.30) a day has risen to 314 million, or 47 per cent of the population.

The UN estimates that a person dies of starvation every 3.6 seconds, the majority under the age of five. And of the 800 million people who go to bed hungry every day, 300 million of them are children

Why you will never see a front page like this

Why you will never see a front page like this
Compassion overload not only affects the public but also the media that keep it informed, writes Mark Scott.

It is the kind of line to prick a newspaper editor's conscience. Early in his new book, The End of Poverty, Professor Jeffrey Sachs comments that every day our newspapers could report "more than 20,000 people perished yesterday of extreme poverty". But it doesn't work that way. The story is too big for the news.

The death of more than 20,000 people on a single day would be one of the most momentous stories of the year - full of heartbreak and horror, particularly as so many of the victims were children.

The headlines would be massive, the news coverage extensive, the analysis compelling and in the days ahead, the letters page would be full of reader feedback.

But because this event happens every day of the year, for complex reasons that are hard to solve, it makes little news.

The problem with worldwide poverty and the unimaginable death toll, is that it is happening everywhere, all the time.

There is no sudden trigger or cause. It is a disaster without a single cataclysmic event. No single site of the tragedy. A mundane horror.

A serious newspaper like the Herald tries not to shy away from presenting difficult but newsworthy stories that may confront and challenge. And we attempt to reveal the issues behind the horrifying statistics of world poverty and disease. But inevitably, a paper is created to engage its readership. Part of that engagement comes from a news agenda that identifies stories readers will find relevant, different and surprising.

A crisis repeating itself daily slowly erodes in terms of news value. There is nothing new to report, just the same horror again. We feel like we have seen the photographs of starving children with distended stomachs so often.

As a result, wonderful stories of lives saved and changed - through malaria nets, micro-credit programs and low-cost drugs - often find it hard to register the impact they should make on the news pages.

In human terms, the millions and millions of lives lost in preventable deaths is the biggest story of any year. In media terms, the challenge is to tell that story in a way that arrests the attention of individuals and governments, and in a way that demands response.

Sachs's book contends that the crisis triggered by poverty and disease can be solved by 2025, and that all is not hopeless. And as a savvy political operator, he has enlisted and educated people such as Bono from U2 to help cut through the media indifference.

In a celebrity-driven world, Bono knows he can get headlines and manipulate them. Two years ago he addressed a world gathering of newspaper editors, urging them to pay more attention to the African crisis, stating he was deliberately using his profile to draw attention to the issue. "Celebrity is a kind of currency. I want to spend mine well," he told them.

Now we are seeing what star power can do. This weekend's series of concerts linked to the "Make Poverty History" campaign is expected to draw a TV audience of 1.5 billion.
In the first Live Aid concert 20 years ago, Bob Geldof colourfully urged the worldwide audience to send their money for Africa. This time, he says the concerts are about raising awareness, with a particular focus on putting pressure on the leaders of the world's biggest economies in the lead-up to next week's G8 meeting.

And the initial move of G8 leaders to forgive some of the Third World debt has triggered a storm of debate on whether that is the right policy - and whether the solutions proposed by Sachs will actually work. Debt forgiveness and G8 handouts will simply provide more "Mercs for jerks" - making corrupt African leaders more wealthy as their citizens continue to die - an article in The Spectator reported last week.

But the debate is healthy, as it is all about finally finding solutions that work to problems that should grip the globe and are the most pressing that the world faces.

There can be little doubt that an unlikely coalition of Bono, Geldof and Sachs, working on an agenda supported by G8 host Tony Blair, has pushed poverty back into the headlines. Thanks to them, editors will find it easier to put a big story about world poverty in their papers that people will read.

For a day, at least, the news of the world's greatest tragedy will be on page one.

Do not believe in anything

Do not believe in anything (simply) because you have heard it.Do not believe in traditions, because they have been handed down for many generations. Do not believe in anything because it is spoken and rumoured by many. Do not believe in anything (simply) because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.

But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all then accept it and live up to it.

To be aware of a single shortcoming within oneself is more useful thanto be aware of a thousand in somebody else.
- His Holiness The Dalai Lama

Rebel with a cause offers drought hope

For 30 years Peter Andrews' ideas about drought relief have been dismissed and he has been reviled and ignored. He has faced bankruptcy and family break up.

But now, at a minute to midnight, leading politicians, international scientists and businessmen are beating a path to his door as they grapple with how best to alleviate the affects of drought on Australia's farmers.

Last week, the Federal Government announced a $250 million relief package to help farmers devastated by prevailing dry conditions. But as Peter Andrews tells Australian Story, there are ways to put the landscape back together simply, quickly and cheaply.

www.abc.net.au/rural/content/2005/s1384063.htm

On this day

Sunday 5th June 2005
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY: 1939, Two authors were born on the same day of this year. Margaret Drabble went on to write 'The Needle's Eye'. Ken Follet later wrote 'The Eye of the Needle'.

Friday 3rd June 2005
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY: 1949 Humes High School in Memphis, Tennessee, issued a 14-year-old Elvis Presley with his school report. He achieved an 'A' in language but only managed a 'C' in music. In 2003, 85,000 British GCSE students discovered they had to take replacement question papers after a batch of the original exams was found opened in the street.

Thursday 2nd June 2005
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY: 1886, US President Grover Cleveland married Florence Folsom in a ceremony at the White House. She was 21 and he was 49. At 28 years his junior, she became the youngest first lady in US history. In 1989, Rolling Stones bass guitarist Bill Wyman married Mandy Smith in a secret ceremony at Bury St. Edmonds. He was 52, and she was 19. The marriage ended in divorce 3 years later.

Wednesday 1st June 2005
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY: 1966 Bob Dylan tried to rewrite the rules of folk music at the Albert Hall in London. He started playing an electric guitar and was booed by purists. In 1967, The Beatles rewrote the rules of popular music when they released "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" - one of the most influential and ground-breaking albums ever.