Listener: 26 February, 2000.
Keywords: Governance;
In the past the Victoria of University of Wellington produced a useful one cardboard page calender, which set out clearly by colour coding the year’s teaching and nonteaching days, which is at the heart of the university year. The 2000 calendar is larger – so it does not fit over the archaeological layers of old calendars on the pinboard above the desk. Yet it contains less useful information. In particular the teaching/non-teaching split is not evident. Someone in management decided the old calendar was not sufficiently attractive, and got in a designer to revise it. One assumes they did not consult any academics, and isolated there in management they had no sense of what is important in a university. (The fashion for non-functional calendars seems widespread. Even Creative New Zealand succumbed.)
New Zealand Herald February 2000.
Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; Political Economy & History;
I wanted this to be a good book. It was a super idea to have a “biography” of the British pound which has been around for a thousand years and was once the world’s most important currency. There is so much mystery about money, that a good book would improve public understanding and reduce the mysticism.
Listener 12 Feb 2000
Keywords Growth & Innovation; Macroeconomics & Money; Social Policy
Once upon a time Treasury’s briefing to the incoming government was notorious for thick volumes which set down economic prescriptions for the government with an arrogance offset by errors. However its 1999 briefing, Towards Higher Standards for New Zealanders, is more modest. Early on it states that economists’ “understanding of what generates (economic) growth is far from complete.”
