=== Todays Toon ===
1850 CompromiseZachary Taylor (November 24, 1784 – July 9, 1850) was the 12th President of the United States and an American military leader. Initally uninterested in politics, Taylor nonetheless ran as a Whig in the 1848 presidential election, defeating Lewis Cass and becoming the first president never to have held any previous elected office. He was the last Southerner elected president until Woodrow Wilson was elected 64 years later in 1912.
Known as "Old Rough and Ready," Taylor had a forty-year military career in the United States Army, serving in the War of 1812, the Black Hawk War, and the Second Seminole War. He achieved fame leading American troops to victory in the Battle of Palo Alto and the Battle of Monterrey during the Mexican–American War. As president, Taylor angered many Southerners by taking a moderate stance on the issue of slavery. He urged settlers in New Mexico and California to bypass the territorial stage and draft constitutions for statehood, setting the stage for the Compromise of 1850. Taylor died of gastroenteritis just 16 months into his term and was succeeded by his Vice President, Millard Fillmore.
=== Bible Quote ===
“Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”- Psalm 73:25-26=== Headlines ===
Is a perceived lull in the Tea Party storm and hope that voters suffer amnesia in November enough to allow Democrats to ram through a health care bill?
Quake Looters Grip Chile
Police fire tear gas to control looters in Chile's hardest-hit city as death toll from catastrophic quake surpasses 700
Sex Offender Arrested in Hunt for Teen
Strong 'physical evidence' linking suspect to the disappearance of California teen Chelsea King
Chat at Your Own Risk
Chatroulette.com, a service connecting videochatters with strangers, dubbed 'predator's paradise' by authorities
Massive Head of Pharaoh Unearthed in Egypt
Archaeologists have unearthed a massive red granite head of one Egypt's most famous pharaohs who ruled nearly 3,400 years ago, the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities announced Sunday. The head of Amenhotep III, which alone is about the height of a person, was dug out of the ruins of the pharaoh's mortuary temple in the southern city of Luxor.
A 27-year-old woman who gave a running commentary of her abortion on Twitter and YouTube is "astonished" by the backlash / You Tube
'Foreigners corrupt violence'
ANGRY Anderson tells inquiry into youth violence that "other cultures" are to blame for use of weapons.
Chilean army takes control of cities
EARTHQUAKE death toll rises as soldiers fire tear gas and water canons at desperate survivors.
Experts tipping a $50 a month rate rise
HOME owners to face extra home loan repayments with the Reserve Bank expected to hike rates today
Lara Bingle to sue over nude photo
MODEL to take action against footballer Brendan Fevola after raunchy picture made public.
Push to overturn 'outrageous' bylaws
NO dogs left alone in yards, no singing in parks and no over-exercising racing pigeons.
Teenage driver denies headlight rage
DRIVER chased after 17-year-old girl because she had her car lights on high-beam, court told.
Girls ready for babies at 14, says writer
PRIZE-winning novelist causes teen sex storm after claiming younger women are supressing their instincts to have children.
Rottweilers and snakes greet drug cops
POLICE swooping on a Sydney house during a major drug raid after a two-month investigation have been confronted by rottweilers, snakes and lizard.
ICAC hears dog kennel corruption claims
AN airconditioned kennel with room for 21 dogs is at the centre of corruption allegations involving two TAFE teachers and a former greyhound trainer. - one supposes they have to do something before the next state election or appear incompetent. - ed.
=== Journalists Corner ===
Leno's back in the fight!
But can he beat out David Letterman in the late night wars?
===
No Deal!
Dems prep to go it alone on health care! Forget the political price they could pay - what would be the actual cost for YOU?
===
English High Tea!
Inside the Tea Party's first rally in England! How will the movement in the U.K. impact the U.S.?
===
Live from the Middle East!
Israel, the Palestinian territories, even Syria - could these be the next big investment opportunities for America? Cheryl Casone gets answers!
=== Comments ===
Bill Bennett: Democrats a 'Discouraged and Demoralizing Bunch'
The Democratic Party has been plagued with scandals, most recently New York Governor David Paterson's departure
This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," February 26, 2010. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.SEAN HANNITY, HOST: It is another day and surprise, surprise, yet another Democrat is calling it quits as a result of a major scandal. This time it is embattled, New York Governor David Paterson, who told reporters just a short time ago that he will not seek a full four year term as governor.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOVERNOR DAVID PATERSON, D-N.Y.: There are times in politics when you have to know not to strive for service, but to step back, and that moment has come for me. Today I am announcing that I'm ending my campaign for governor of the state of New York.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: All right. Now, Paterson's departure comes on the heels of a bombshell New York Times article detailing his handling of a domestic abuse case involving one of his aides. Now last year Paterson aide David Johnson was accused of brutally attacking a woman. Now, that woman later pursued a restraining order against Johnson. However, just prior to her court appearance, the woman alleges that she received a call from none other than Governor David Paterson.
Now he responded to these very serious charges and allegations earlier today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PATERSON: I am looking forward to a full investigation of actions taken by myself and my administration. But I give you this personal oath, I have never abused my office. Not now, not ever.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: All right. And as that investigation continues and so does the one surrounding New York Congressman Charlie Rangel. Now Rangel, who chairs the powerful House Ways and Means Committee violated house ethics rules for allowing corporations to fund his trips to the Caribbean. But that is just the tip of the iceberg for Charlie Rangel. Now, calls for his resignation are heating up as even more ethics investigations continue.
===
Why Conroy, not Garrett, is the Rudd Government’s problem
Piers Akerman
WHETHER skiing with Seven media boss Kerry Stokes or golfing with Foxtel shareholder James Packer, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is becoming quite the all-round sportsman. - I noticed Rudd’s painful ‘mate’ which he gives too regularly. His mea culpa is pretty close to the truth, but the excuses given on his behalf .. that he is in danger of undermining the good work done by his government .. is pure propaganda. Have you read how Conroy’s department has deleted part of his own homepage through filtering? I’m thinking this is an exercise in hitting whistleblowers.- ed.
===
Rudd’s new lessons: back to basic lies
Andrew Bolt
The “stolen generations” is a myth, and disastrous man-made global warming is a theory now falling to bits. Yet:
SCHOOL children will learn about climate change and Sorry Day under the Federal Government’s draft national curriculum.Not teaching but deceiving. It’s unforgivable.
The new document, launched by Prime Minsiter Kevin Rudd and Education Minister Julia Gillard at the Amaroo School in Canberra, outlines the education plans for kindergarten to Year 10 English, maths, science and history students to replace state and territory standards next year.
Mr Rudd described it as a back-to-basics approach to teaching and learning, with grammar and arithmetic a focus…
However, the draft also suggests five-year-olds discuss community commemorations such as Sorry Day and 15-year-olds explore the link between carbon dioxide and global warming.
UPDATE
Where did these people find their theories of teaching? Mao’s China?
The Minister for Education, Julia Gillard, and Parliamentary Secretary for Industry and Innovation, Richard Marles, today welcomed progress on a $2 million project to encourage students to study the sciences in senior secondary years.Pity the children. Pity our future.
The Science and Technology Education Leveraging Relevance (STELR) project ... is being piloted in 185 schools nationally that have been selected in consultation with state and territory education authorities. Students will participate in a six-to-10 week module using a hands-on learning approach.
“Classroom activities will cover concepts such as global warming, climate change, greenhouse effects, renewable energy resources, energy forms, transformations and conservation,” Mr Marles said.
UPDATE 2
From the content requirements for Year Three:
5. We rememberThe achievement standard demanded of Year Four students of history:
Reasons for particular days and weeks being marked as celebrations, or as commemorations of events of national significance, including Australia Day, Anzac Day, Sorry Day(H3KU5)
6. We remember
The meaning and significance of emblems and symbols of the nation including the national flag, the Aboriginal flag, the Torres Strait Islander flag and the Australian national anthem(H3KU6)
By the end of Year 4, students are able to explain key features of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander societies and account for their diversity and significance. They identify and describe early contacts and aspects of daily life. When inquiring into the past, students construct historical narratives using key ideas and images from graphic and written sources. They show empathy by retelling stories from a past perspective and they communicate this empathy in a variety of formats (eg visual, oral, written, role play).All that said, I must say the history curriculum is refreshing is seeing the history of the rest of the world as a key to understanding our own.
(Thanks to reader Russell.)
===
Why? Is he drinking too much?
Andrew Bolt
Doctors report back after checking out Barack Obama:
The doctors also recommended ”moderation of alcohol intake”.
(Via Tim Blair.)
===
China feeds its pet Mugabe
Andrew Bolt
Beware the Chinese century - and the kind of leaders who will eat the Chinese cake:
Chinese Communist Party authorities announced on Monday they had hosted a birthday party for Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe—a leader scorned by many Zimbabweans and seen as a despot by much of the world.
A picture posted on the Zimbabwe Foreign Ministry website showed the president at his 86th birthday party, cutting his cake, and addressing about 100 guests at the Chinese Embassy in Harare.
===
Help us to end this ghastly Age of Panic
Andrew Bolt
Hold the panic merchants to account!
Tim Blair does his best:
(H)ere’s an ABC report broadcast in July:UPDATEA dire bushfire forecast has been issued for Victoria, with this summer’s season expected to be even fiercer than the Black Saturday bushfires that killed more than 170 people earlier this year.We’re now at the end of summer. Nobody died.
A leaked report from the state’s Department of Sustainability and Environment says a season with the “greatest potential loss to life and property” is now in sight.
Get the impression the scare-mongering is wearing thin?
A MAJOR tsunami warning for Australia’s east coast did little to deter people from flocking to beaches.
In Sydney, many travelled kilometres to try to get a glimpse of the “big wave” that never came…
Gabby Stevenot, 27, said she had travelled more than 20km from West Ryde, in Sydney’s northwest, to watch the tsunami and was “disappointed” she couldn’t see anything.
===
ART OF THE STEAL
Tim Blair
As a form of performance art, theft is terribly underrated. A properly composed act of thievery is bold, involves a magician’s sleight of hand and leaves audiences stunned.
Take – so to speak – the events of last Tuesday night. I was with a mate at a Surry Hills bar, out on the balcony, when a brilliant moment of art happened.
===
HONEST PRIUS
Tim Blair
“Saw this coming off the Anzac Bridge on Saturday,” emails reader James. “Might be the best, most appropriate license tag for a Prius ever.”
===
QUAKER
Tim Blair
As might have been expected, a religious fundamentalist links the Chilean earthquake to God’s wrath:
Calling this weekend’s earthquake in Chile a divine precursor to his planned speech, controversial Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan predicted on Sunday that America will face its own imminent disaster and must prepare …A three-hour Farrakhan speech with no chance of escape? There is no God.
“It’s not an accident that a great earthquake took place in Chile,” Farrakhan, 76, said an hour into his three-hour address. “It (precipitated) what I have to tell you today of what’s coming to America. You will not escape.”
===
THINGS SCIENTISTS SAY IX
Tim Blair
Proudly powered by the archives of the New York Times, Things Scientists Say keeps bringing the fun:
• 1949: “New York’s present water shortage is only a temporary situation, in the long-range view of scientists attending a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science yesterday.”
And they were right. In those days, scientists knew about something called “rainfall”.
• 1953: “British Women Scientists Think Men Are Smarter … two women psychologists have reached the ‘interim conclusion’ that men are more intelligent than women.”
This view prevailed for only three years, until the Great Roach Breakthrough:
• 1956: ”SCIENTISTS ABASHED; British Girl Says They Are All Wrong on Roaches.”
The question remains: what were they doing on those roaches that was all wrong?
• 1957: “The feasibility of nuclear-powered aircraft becomes ‘more a certainty’ every year in the opinion of scientists directing preliminary design studies for atomic airframes.”
Still waiting.
• 1959: “Fear of being labeled ‘space cadets’ is inhibiting many reputable scientists from working on space research, Dr. Lloyd V. Berkner said last night.”
Which explains why so many of them ended up studying global warming instead. No chance of being mocked there.
• 1973: “The blob in Mrs. Marie Harris’s backyard is dead and probably will not return, two Texas scientists said today.”
Click for further details on this fungtastic story. Plus several excellent diner ads.
• 1976: “After years of ridicule directed against reports of a Loch Ness ‘monster,’ scientists have begun to take seriously the possibility that such a creature does indeed inhabit the depths of the Scottish lake.”
And they were worried about being called “space cadets”.
===
GAIA GRILLER
Tim Blair
A zombie child for warming demonstrates The Science:
Not sure about her argument, but for some reason I’m suddenly hungry enough to eat a whole planet globos rancheros-style. The kid’s a little behind trends, because warming ain’t cool no more:
===
BIG TOBACC-O
Tim Blair
A great Presidential tradition continues:
Barack Obama is still struggling to kick smoking, according to his first medical examination since becoming president.Sensitive? Tetchy? Maybe he’s just hungover:
Obama is sensitive about his cigarette habit and tetchy with reporters who raise it.
The doctors also recommended “moderation of alcohol intake”.So much for those “secret Muslim” theories …
===
BEARS CAN TAKE IT
Tim Blair
Been there, survived that:
A fossil find suggests that polar bears may only have come into existence during an ice age 150,000 years ago as part of the brown bears’ battle for survival against climate change …So now we can all stop worrying about the poleys. This is great news. Except if you are in the warmenist camp:
It means polar bears have already survived a global warming that affected the northern hemisphere from 130,000 to 115,000 years ago, when the Greenland ice sheet and the Arctic ice cap were smaller than now.
But Professor Chris Stringer, of the Natural History Museum in London, said: ‘Living through a warm period back then does not mean polar bears are resilient to climate change now.’Why not? Is the modern poley bear a cosseted, feeble creature, unable to cope with the challenges faced by its, er, forebears?
(Via Possum Hunter)
===
INCONVENIENT DEATHS
Tim Blair
Global warming claims its first victims:
A seven-month-old baby girl survived three days alone with a bullet in her chest beside the bodies of her parents and toddler brother.(Via Cal)
Argentines Francisco Lotero, 56, and Miriam Coletti, 23, shot their children before killing themselves after making an apparent suicide pact over fears about global warming.
Their son Francisco, two, died instantly after being hit in the back.
UPDATE:
A letter was found on a table expressing the couple’s anger at the government for not responding to the environmental crisis.This sort of madness has been building for some time.
===
The weapons are imported: Angry
Andrew Bolt
Police will indeed tell you that a machette wounds tend to be a sign that the attackers were Asian:
ROCK’N’ROLL bad boy Gary Angry Anderson believes life experience has taught him “Aussies use their fists” when they fight and that ”weapons were introduced by other cultures”.
The former Rose Tattoo frontman’s comments before a Parliamentary inquiry in Canberra yesterday have experts describing his views as “pure fantasy” and ignoring “the realities of life”.
Anderson, 63, was adamant he’s not racist and said politically correct bureaucrats were getting in the way of progress when it comes to preventing youth violence.
“The racial thing, the cultural thing needs to be addressed because it’s not going to go away,” he told a Federal Parliamentary Committee into the impact of violence on youth.
“You never kick a bloke when he’s down . . . you don’t gang up on a bloke. These things are Australian and we shouldn’t shy away from being Australian.”
===
And yet another
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd’s well on track to smash his record for boat arrivals:
The 17th asylum seeker boat to arrive in Australian waters this year has been intercepted near Christmas Island off the coast of north-west Australia… Fifty-seven people are on board the boat.What’s the definition of “intercepted”? Surely it means something different to “greeted”?
(Thanks to reader Pira.)
===
Climate balmy for Jones
Andrew Bolt
Even Fred Pearce of the New Scientist is astonished by how gently Climategate ringleader Phil Jones was questioned by a parliamentary inquiry:
Jones did his best to persuade the Commons science and technology committee that all was well in the house of climate science. If they didn’t quite believe him, they didn’t have the heart to press the point…UPDATE
Jones’s general defence was that anything people didn’t like – the strong-arm tactics to silence critics, the cold-shouldering of freedom of information requests, the economy with data sharing – were all “standard practice” among climate scientists…
And he seemed to be right. The most startling observation came when he was asked how often scientists reviewing his papers for probity before publication asked to see details of his raw data, methodology and computer codes. “They’ve never asked,” he said.
He gave a little ground, and it was the only time the smile left the face of the vice-chancellor, Edward Acton: “I’ve written some awful emails,” Jones admitted. Nobody asked if, as claimed by British climate sceptic Doug Keenan, he had for two decades suppressed evidence of the unreliability of key temperature data from China.
But for the first time he did concede publicly that when he tried to repeat the 1990 study in 2008, he came up with radically different findings. Or, as he put it, “a slightly different conclusion”. Fully 40% of warming there in the past 60 years was due to urban influences. “It’s something we need to consider,” he said.
This sweet concern to be nice to Jones is at odds with the insane fears he so recklessly stoked:
A seven-month-old girl survived for three days alone with a bullet in her chest after being shot by her parents as part of a suicide pact over their fears about global warming.(Thanks to readers Gordon and Neil.)
Francisco Lotero, 56, and Miriam Coletti, 23, shot their daughter and her toddler brother before killing themselves.
Their son Francisco, two, died instantly after being hit in the back…
Her parents said they feared the effects of global warming in a suicide note discovered by police.
===
Defend freedom and reason - which make us truly human
Andrew Bolt
Melanie Phillips urges British conservatives to learn from John Howard and Tony Abbott:
The great battles today are not between left and right. They are between morality and nihilism, truth and lies, justice and injustice, freedom and totalitarianism, and Judeo-Christian values and the would-be destroyers of the West both within and without.
If conservatives are not on the right side of all these touchstone issues, then what is the point of conservatives at all? Why should anyone vote for them if they are merely left-wing wannabes? If people want utopia and the repression that inevitably follows its pursuit, the party to vote for is Labour: it does it so much better.
===
As sorry as their advisors told them to be
Andrew Bolt
Don’t voters see through such cookie-cutter contrition?
South Australian Premier Mike Rann, campaigning for the March 20 election, and his Victorian counterpart John Brumby, who will face the voters in November, were both critical of their performances, in the wake of Mr Rudd’s comments that the federal government had to lift its game and deserved a pounding in the polls…Niki Savva on Rudd’s sorry days:
At separate press conferences, Mr Brumby and Mr Rann sounded distinctly like Mr Rudd, offering their own admissions about their sagging popularity. The latest Newspoll, published in The Australian yesterday, showed, Victorian Labor’s primary vote sliding to 39 per cent and hitting the 30s for only the fourth time in the history of the decade-old government. Mr Brumby said Victorians wanted to see “progress occurring more rapidly”.
“We’ve been not delivering as well as I would have hoped. That’s been frustrating to me personally. I’m a naturally impatient person, I like to get things done,” he said. Mr Rann, who launched his campaign yesterday, applauded Mr Rudd’s comments before admitting his own government’s shortcomings. “The polls are showing that we haven’t communicated our message well enough and the message is: is this a state that’s turned itself around?” Mr Rann said.
What exactly is the message he is trying to send now? Vote for me even though I am a failure? Vote for me even though I fibbed about all the things I said I would do before the election? Vote for me because governing is really hard, much harder than I said in 2007? Vote for me because I cannot speak concise English or communicate with you unless it’s with a cliche? Or vote for me even though I haven’t delivered on my policies, because I promise I will do my best to do better?
Yeah, right. So much for Kevin 24/7, the PM who allegedly worked harder and longer than anyone else before him to make sure everything got done and got done right.
It was not too little too late. It was too much too late. And it has all ended up with a deliciously ludicrous aroma.
===
Who’ll be sorry then?
Andrew Bolt
Now there’s an incentive:
THE Coalition has threatened to scrap Australia’s first national curriculum, saying it places too much emphasis on indigenous and Asian perspectives at the expense of the nation’s British and European heritage.
The curriculum, the product of more than 30 years of agitation by education experts and two years of negotiations by federal, state and territory governments and Catholic and independent school sectors, could be binned before it reaches classrooms if Labor is defeated at the election expected in the second half of this year.
===
How many billions more to hand out?
Andrew Bolt
That’s a hell of a lot of money:
MORE than 20,700 hectares of government land worth $70 million has been granted to indigenous people in NSW under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act in the past 18 months.Exactly how much is enough before people can be asked to shift for themselves?
But it has barely made a dent in the sea of claims made by Aboriginal land councils across the state....
When it is eventually transferred to the land councils it will be used for indigenous housing, long-term economic development such as agriculture, industrial use or tourism, or put on the market.
‘’Land claims are now being determined at a faster rate than any time,’’ the NSW Planning Minister, Tony Kelly said. ‘’Since the commencement of the act (in 1983), 81,505 hectares of land has been transferred into ownership of Aboriginal land councils at a value of $2.2 billion.’’
===
Needed: a rule against such rules
Andrew Bolt
Exactly when did we go mad?
NEW council bylaws forbidding dogs from being left alone in their front yards and limiting the amount of exercise allowed for racing pigeons have been slammed as out of touch and impossible to enforce.(Thanks to readers CA and Grant.)
The bylaws, introduced by Wyndham Council last month, join changes imposed by councils to exert further control on their ratepayers…
In Bass Coast shire, families were shocked to learn they needed a $100 permit for children to camp in their own back yards.
===
Basic spinning
Andrew Bolt
It is so painfully and insultingly obvious when Kevin Rudd has had focus groups telling him what to say. His pollster’s latest finding is that people might believe him more if he uses the word ”basics”.
People are seeing through this stupid spinning now, surely.
(Thanks to reader Andy,)
===
Shock: union’s pollster finds Rudd better than Abbott
Andrew Bolt
AAP thinks this poll result is hot news:
PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd may be talking down his government but a poll has found he’s more popular than Opposition Leader Tony Abbott.But polls are only as good as the questions that were asked, and of whom. And, given that, it’s worth checking just who’s doing that asking:
The poll of 1000 people by Essential Research found Mr Rudd is seen as more capable as a leader, and good in a crisis.Mr Abbott is seen as narrow-minded and inflexible, and less honest.
EMC (Essential Rearch’s parent) has pioneered the use of issue advertisements in winning campaigns in Australia.UPDATE
Whether it has been to get results in public education for the Australian Education Union or to lead the campaign against IR laws for the ACTU we have used advertising as a key part of our campaign strategies....
EMC has Australia’s biggest industrial relations practice.
Our work covers IR laws, member recruitment & retention, Occupational Health & Safety, EBA’s, industrial disputes, industry policy and company closures.
In fact, the biggest shifts in sentiment measured by the poll for either candidate over the past six months are that more people think Rudd complacent (up 12 per cent), inflexible (6 per cent) and superficial (6 per cent), and fewer think he’s demanding (down 12 per cent), capable (down 7 per cent) and hardworking (down 7 per cent). The main conclusion from this survey should be that Rudd is on the slide.
Voters are not asked to compare the candidates on Rudd’s overriding characteristic: his tendency to spin and overpromise.
===
A parade of tired stereotypes
Andrew Bolt
One of these Q&A guests announced in their first response and their second that they were an Aboriginal. It needed saying.
Paul Grabowsky and Eddie Perfect immediately declared they were not interested in talking about the insulation scandal that has killed four people, set fire to more than 90 houses, left 1000 houses electrified, wasted hundreds of millions of dollars and left 240,000 houses with dangerous or shoddy insulation. Did I mention both were of the Left?
Oddly enough, the audience was more interested.
Christopher Pyne was quite punchy, and had to be, given he was the only conservative (loosely defined) that Q&A bothered to invite onto a panel of five guests and a host.
Apologies, but when Grabowsky started rhapsodising a la Blanchett about the arts and Aborigines, and about being the “conscience of society”, I felt an overwhelming desire for sleep. I’ll leave it to you to comment on what followed. I’ll just add that with Peter Garrett dying beside him, Grabowky should contemplate on the ease with which artists can posture as principled, while being totally free of any responsibility - even to make sense.
===
Billions more just thrown away
Andrew Bolt
Want just two small insights into the colossal waste of money that’s Julia Gillard’s $16 billion “Education Revolution”?
First, Gillard gives $150,000 to a school with just two pupils and no future:
Yapeen Primary School .... reopened this year with just one in grade five and another in grade six.... There are 10 primary schools within 25km of Yapeen....Two, a reader writes in astonishment at what his own school has witnessed:
Talks about closing the school were held late last year, after the school had received $200,000 in government funding.
Yapeen Primary was given $150,000 through Building the Education Revolution and $50,000 through National Schools Pride…
Yapeen Primary School principal Marg Lewis, twice a Labor candidate, declined to comment on the school’s student or teacher numbers.
Our school was able to choose from three buildings under the program, with enough students to qualify for spending of (I think) $2.5M. as the school already had a library and arts/music facilities and a hall, it was decided to have more classrooms built (even though we have either double classrooms or 2 in 3 for all grades). This building was situated away from the other classrooms, on the senior playground area, as there was no other suitable space (as it wasn’t really needed, but the school was hardly likely to say no was it).
This necessitated the demolition of the senior students playground equipment (including the adventure playground and cricket nets) and the closure of approx 20% of the activity area for these kids, for what has already been two terms, with no real end in sight. It was meant to be finished in April, however this looks now extremely unlikely.
Because of cost over runs, the project has now run low on funds, and as such reductions are being made.
No comments:
Post a Comment