A pity eight year olds can’t vote

There were two education announcements today.

Labour announced it would borrow more than $200 million a year (once fully implemented) to give out cash to students. It will not result in one more student being educated. It is simply a cash hand out to students.

National announced it would spend $47 million a year on boosting literacy and numeracy in schools, because almost 1 in five kids are leaving school unable to read, write or count. There is no point in keeping kids at school until they are 18, if you have let them get past age eight without checking their numeracy and literacy.

It’s a pity the eight year olds don’t get to vote.

The funny (as in sad funny not ha ha funny) thing about Labour’s announcement is that at the PREU lockup, I turned to a journalist and said “There goes any chance of universal student allowances”. He agreed with me. It was inconceivable that after announcing a decade of deficits and $20 billion more debt, that the Government would be so reckless as to do such a thing. I guess we both under-estimated their willingness to fuck up the economy in order to retain power.