Notices by Kōtare :tinoflag: (jdmcg@mastodon.nz)

I was doing some research for a proposal i'm putting together at work yesterday and went down a rabbit hole on youth crime.

It will not surprise you to learn that in NZ, despite the shock headlines, there is no youth crime crisis. Youth crime dropped by almost 60% between 2010 and 2020. Some localised increases, driven by homelessness, have not disturbed this trend.

The real crime here is undermining the mana of youth for cheap political advantage (while cutting funding to support services)

I was speaking with an English academic last week, who is planning a field trip to NZ about the proliferation of charities aimed at supporting youth and how to navigate them.

"Why are there so many?" he asked.

But we both knew the answer before he'd finished asking it. In NZ the vast majority of charities are a community response to an otherwise unmet need. They are not a solution in themselves but a symptom of poor governance.

Thinking today about "Eat my lunch" & Seymours school lunches

@lightweight oh yes. Have been through this. The staff looked at me like I'd crawled from the bottom of the sea.

@ptoothfish that's the problem with today's generation. In my day we were servile, dammit.

@jeffowski I spend about a day per week on average volunteering for a charity and it makes me feel greatly superior.

Seriously, though, my approach is to influence systemic factors enough, through collective action, that there is no longer any need for us to exist. I suspect we'll be in business longer than my own lifetime, but you gotta have goals.

My 12 year old who loves sport wrote a school speech that was a fiery repudiation of the misogyny of the sporty boys in her class, inspired by the fact they wouldn't pass to her in a soccer game. She addresses them directly in the speech to say that their behaviour is unacceptable and out of touch. It is amazing.

Her teacher, however, suggested she tone it down as it wasn't "all the boys" and also they might respond better if she made them like her.

Dear readers, she did not tone it down.