Hanson pins childhood obesity on Skywhale!

astrojax said :

and of course hanson conveniently forgets that the beautiful and intriguing and beguiling and eminently worth it skywhale was co-funded; so not all the three hundred kay came from gov’t coffers. conveniently disingenuous, who’da thunk that, eh?

I thought it was $300k that the government put in, the rest was from a philanthropist? Or the philanthropist put $50k towards the total of $334k? Something like that? I understood that the government had limited what it would pay to $300k which is why they had the extra funds from the private organization. Still more than the price of that program from the government.

I don’t mind it but I do think it’s a shame that relatively important things like homelessness services have been massively cut while they could find the money to pay for something we don’t even get to keep.

MrMagoo said :

I’m by no means a fan of the skywhale and agree that the $300K coudl easily have been better spent. However, both Mr Hanson and Mr De Castella can stop bleating about the loss of this not so wonderful program. Smartstart is not an anti obeasidy program but rather a program that targets kids that already have a base level of fitness. Those kids that don’t meet standards set by Smartstart are left behind while those kids showing some ability are pushed futher along. Again it is another program that does nothing to attract those kids who aren’t already doing anything physical. Kids that don’t make standards by the baseline testing aren’t encouraged to undertake more acitivity and they are left as outsiders and open to more playground harassment as a result. Seriously, not a great loss and $250K that could be better spent on my PE teachers working in Primary Schools.

Smartstart measures kids fitness level, as well as some basic coordination It doesn’t ‘target’ any level of kids. It is mostly about collecting data.

I’m pretty sure that if 1 cent was donated towards the hindenboob for every laugh that it generated around the country, it would have paid for itself by now (at about 1.5 laughs per person). I’ve certainly had my money’s worth of entertainment.

If there is one thing I know for certain about the Hindenboob is that it has a phenomenal BMI. Negative in fact.

and of course hanson conveniently forgets that the beautiful and intriguing and beguiling and eminently worth it skywhale was co-funded; so not all the three hundred kay came from gov’t coffers. conveniently disingenuous, who’da thunk that, eh?

DeCastella claims the program is successful, but the UC report he refers to appears to be invisible to Google, so it’s just his word.

Warning!!! Pinning something on the Skypigtittycarp may make it go off with a BANG!

If it means there’ll be none of this red light, green light jargon on the tuckshop menu then I’m not sorry to hear this.

I’m by no means a fan of the skywhale and agree that the $300K coudl easily have been better spent. However, both Mr Hanson and Mr De Castella can stop bleating about the loss of this not so wonderful program. Smartstart is not an anti obeasidy program but rather a program that targets kids that already have a base level of fitness. Those kids that don’t meet standards set by Smartstart are left behind while those kids showing some ability are pushed futher along. Again it is another program that does nothing to attract those kids who aren’t already doing anything physical. Kids that don’t make standards by the baseline testing aren’t encouraged to undertake more acitivity and they are left as outsiders and open to more playground harassment as a result. Seriously, not a great loss and $250K that could be better spent on my PE teachers working in Primary Schools.