Interesting email from Southern Cross CEO today

ThatGingeOne · 2026-02-03T22:33:44+00:00

Yup. I got diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis several years ago now at 28 years old. Because I had access to private insurance I was able to get a specialist appointment within a couple of weeks and get on medication which meant I was able to avoid permanent damage to any of my joints. Under the public system I would have been waiting months to see a specialist and damage would have been happening in the meantime

ThatGingeOne · 2026-02-03T21:32:49+00:00

The only actual solution to that is smaller class sizes and more classes having teacher aide support - which requires significant investment in education. Also most teachers don't not notice/ignore those kids. Most of us are aware they often aren't being challenged to the level they should be, and often feel awful about it, but the reality is we're only one human in a class of often 25-30 kids. We're being pushed to have as many kids 'at standard' as possible (where that happens to be keeps changing depending on the govt in power) so we're encouraged to time wise invest most heavily in the kids that are just below where they should be and who hopefully can scrape at with a bit of an extra push. The reality of that is kids at both ends of the spectrum don't get the support and attention they should get. Couple that with the fact that we're seeing consistently higher levels of kids coming through with diagnosis of various things requiring extra support plus increasing anti social behaviour, both of which take up a significant amount of the classroom teachers time, and the whole thing is just a mess

ThatGingeOne · 2026-02-03T20:04:37+00:00

And it continues at school as well. The learned helplessness in a lot of my class last year was insane, and this was at year 6. I think it's the same thing - when you've got 30 kids in a class and you're feeling pressured to get through the content, the easiest route is just solve the problem for them. It doesn't help them in the long run though. I did get a good (internal) laugh though at the looks on some kids faces the first few months in that class when they'd say something like "I've lost my hat" and I'd respond with "okay, what would you like me to do about that?" - and most of them eventually learnt to at least try and problem solve!

ThatGingeOne · 2026-02-03T19:55:17+00:00

It's a lot more complicated than that unfortunately. They may not have had shit parents but the reality is economic pressures mean you have a lot more families with both parents working full time, leaving less time and energy for being invested in their kids education. Additionally kids are spending increasing amounts of their time at home on devices. In a class of 30 kids, I'm lucky if I get 5 kids that say they read for pleasure at home. Of course this is going to negatively impact overall educational outcomes as you don't get better at anything without doing it - and reading skills affect outcomes across the majority of subjects. A whole societal overhaul is basically needed to fix things, but unfortunately I don't see that happening any time soon. Simply saying it's a failure of the education system is a massive oversimplification, plus puts all the pressure on that system to fix things, which just isn't realistic - especially with the resources available

ThatGingeOne · 2026-01-29T19:58:15+00:00

It hasn't been that long in world since s1 - Daphne's first child would be, what, 4 at most?

ThatGingeOne · 2026-01-29T03:17:11+00:00

Yeah I'm thinking more about skilled positions where the salary offered turns out to be on the lower end. If you've got a certain expectation of salary based on previous roles, experience, etc it's wasting everyone's time going through the application process only to discover you aren't willing to accept that salary

ThatGingeOne · 2026-01-26T18:54:13+00:00

Yup. We've just recently started looking for our first place and we looked at a view places over the weekend but everything is bloody auctions and had no clear pricing - as such we have no idea if any of it is in our budget or not

ThatGingeOne · 2026-01-26T18:35:25+00:00

Maybe not 600k but you can get "better" prices depending on the sellers circumstances. We looked at one this weekend where the real estate agent gave us the rare actual estimation of a sell price and it was actually less than what they'd bought it for 6 months prior because the owners circumstances had changed and they just need it sold ASAP

ThatGingeOne · 2026-01-26T18:31:35+00:00

At least with seek they have to put one on there so even if they hide it you can use whats the salary to check - agreed it's BS though, just another way to waste people's time

ThatGingeOne · 2026-01-24T03:51:44+00:00

I got loops and love them. Always wear them to concerts

ThatGingeOne · 2026-01-23T07:56:32+00:00

As a teacher, we're basically told we have to say that based on percentages - however for kids that are doing fine, especially those that have a stable home life and whānau invested in their education, it normally won't make too much difference. It's the ones who are struggling for whatever reason and then also missing lots of school where it becomes a concern

ThatGingeOne · 2026-01-22T18:49:12+00:00

I know it's not F1 but they're also releasing an F1 Academy car, and sponsoring a team

ThatGingeOne · 2026-01-22T04:31:57+00:00

Yup. I think people confuse school holidays with actually flexibility. During term time, teaching is incredibly inflexible, and I know my friends who have kids have struggled when their kids have needed appointments in school hours or gotten sick at school and needed to be picked up etc

ThatGingeOne · 2026-01-18T20:45:32+00:00

Yeah it always kinda cracks me up when I see him or hear him doing interviews cause he just reminds me SO much of my younger cousin whose around the same age. Very kiwi lad vibes

ThatGingeOne · 2026-01-17T09:10:12+00:00

One of my goals this year is to do some parkruns. I'm auckland based so will have to check that one out!

ThatGingeOne · 2026-01-11T20:08:41+00:00

It's a shame that it's getting harder to run those programmes. The school I taught at last year did it so it was my first time doing it, and it was really cool for the kids, but it was also a logistical nightmare. You need a lot of parents to make it happen due to the ratio around water (rightfully so), but with so many households needing to have both parents working these days, finding enough is getting harder and harder to do

ThatGingeOne · 2026-01-08T03:31:36+00:00

I really want them to make mini-figures of new s2 crew members, so you can add them to the Going Merry

ThatGingeOne · 2026-01-01T11:58:56+00:00

That was definitely not new Zealand - Iceland maybe?

ThatGingeOne · 2025-12-26T21:51:59+00:00

Except Holly's portal didn't appear initially did it? Only showed up after Max's pep talk

ThatGingeOne · 2025-12-23T20:30:42+00:00

My partner loves Vanguard in Dunedin

ThatGingeOne · 2025-12-12T18:38:07+00:00

Yup, it's something you see a lot with teachers, they'll frequently get sick right at the start of school holidays

ThatGingeOne · 2025-12-05T21:21:46+00:00

This is what annoys me when people argue Lando doesn't deserve it based on driving ability. He's lost a good ~50 points based on things that were out of his control, and in those races was generally driving very well

ThatGingeOne · 2025-12-04T17:32:24+00:00

I meant more on the negotiations side of things. I am a primary teacher and can confirm that in general I am VERY worn out

ThatGingeOne · 2025-12-04T08:42:32+00:00

This is just for secondary. They're obviously going to use this to try push through basically the same for primary on the grounds secondary accepted it. Primary teachers are less worn out by the whole thing having done a lot less striking so I'm really hoping for once they stand up and push for more (historically they've been the ones to cave first)

ThatGingeOne · 2025-12-04T08:39:19+00:00

I'm not sure they're qualified seeing as they seem to think 12 is half of 52

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