Opinion — Category

Here in New Zealand, we have a Student Loan system run by the government, under StudyLink (which is also under Work and Income New Zealand). With the loan, you can get your fees covered or your living costs covered.

We also have student allowances, depending on your parents income, you can get money from the government. This is tested against the parents income (unless you can prove that you have been estranged), and it also gets docked if you earn too much. With Student Allowances, you can get up to $144 (after tax) a week.

Way back in 2002, this used to be $131. So, there must be some sort of increasing due to inflation going on.

Under a Student Loan however, the maximum is, and always has been - $150. Now, if you are on a Student Allowance, you can cover up to that amount with the loan. However, this isn’t right.

Over the years we have had many things rise. We have been through a housing boom, rising rental rates. We hear every year of Telecom phone services increasing basic line rental prices. Many students depend on cellphones these days (if they are going without internet) but those incur bigger costs! (Especially since you can’t call Study Link using their Freephone number with them). Other living essentials, such as food, petrol for transport, and electricity have also had major increases over the years.

So now the living costs doesn’t cover it - unless you have students living in sub-par conditions. We have just been looking for a new place to live, it appeared the average was somewhere in the $90 (per person per week) mark for a decent place to live. We have ended up in a $100 per week place. And this is only in Hamilton! I was looking for similar bedroom places in Auckland, and boy are those things expensive, it makes me wonder how Auckland students get by!

The alternative is to live in houses that would be bulldozed over if it weren’t for students, or have 2-minute noodles as a regular meal, or not have the essentials needed to pass University. Essentially, not having a good standard of living.

So, why can’t the government let us borrow more per week? $150 does not nearly cover living costs anymore for good living conditions. They should call it a “Top Up,” as that is all it is of use for these days. It isn’t like we don’t have to pay back the money that we borrow (hence why it is called a loan).

Students at a University should be focusing on passing and getting through Uni. Having to worry about finances all because the government fails to recognise that our requirements have changed over the years isn’t fair for all of us who are learning to become better people for our country, or world.

The government won’t let us have a universal student allowance - so why not let us borrow a bit more to help us through the week?

I’ve been using MySpace for a little bit now, and am quite appalled at how it lacks in many areas. Has Tom even bothered to update anything on the site since it was online? It is pretty damn poor. Here’s some ideas that I’d implement if I was running MySpace:

• Make customised profile styles easier. They know that lots of people do it, but it is pretty hard to do it yourself. The profile page should be massively updated, adding ID names to everything and having a special “Styles” tab, instead of making people go through loop holes. I made my own style, however the site got real jittery when I put it up and wiped colour styles and stuff. It isn’t how I originally made it, and while making it found out how much MySpace sucks and making custom styles.
• You can browse, or search - but not both. I can’t even search for people in my city because I live in a country other than US, UK and Canada. I want to specify criteria and search terms. At the moment I can do a search on MySpace for search terms, or I can use the “Browse” to select a country and some other various criteria, but not any keywords. MySpace sucks at finding people.
• A simple Hi goes a long way. At the moment, I just have people sending me Friend requests. Nothing else, just a friend request. I don’t even know you, and you don’t have the decency to say “Hi”? Reason, the process takes a little long. If you send a Private Message and send it, then you go back to the users profile then make a friend request. Why not combine the two together, send a PM and attach a friend request to it, or just add a “xxx is not your friend yet. Add them.” somewhere on the page. MySpace sucks at friend requests.
• Editing the profile is too long and too much of a process. Get this. You click on Edit Profile, you click on the section you want to edit, you click on the Edit button to the field you want to change, you click Preview, then you get to Save. What was this guy on? Why not make it a clean and tidy single HTML form, that detects what I change and Saves at a single click? MySpace sucks at editing profiles.
• The links are all in the wrong places. I keep going to an area of a page where I think a certain link should be, and it isn’t there. The main navigation bar at the top is really bad, it mixes site sections with your tools. I can’t access my Profile with one click, nor edit settings at that ease either. It needs to make a distinction with all these. MySpace sucks at navigation.

So that’s my rant of the day. I’ll still use MySpace, many people use it, but are these people using it because of the fact all their friends are on it? Sure, MySpace would’ve been fine when it launched, but now it is a huge social network, that really needs an update to complement it. And from what I’ve seen, all that changes is Tom breaking something weekly.

…doesn’t look very confident. Maybe they should just sack the whole board, spin off TVNZ and let it run it’s own course. Or better yet, drop the charter. Either way, Labour would get more money in it’s coffers thanks to TAX.

Oh, and why the hell are they telling these people with leaking homes that they have “no right” to sue the Building Industry Authority and now the Government, with it’s billions of dollars in surplus, wants costs to be paid by the people that gave them the money to pay it in the first place.

My word.