Ardern laughs off as ridiculous the awful effect on school children of being online, on screens, during her Covid lockdowns. New research from the London School of Economics proves her wrong.

During her time at the Kennedy School at Harvard, where former PM Ardern is spending her life in exile waiting for the extreme divides she created in NZ to heal before venturing back to her homeland, she's been giving interviews. She has been painting a picture of herself as a leader of outstanding qualities; who healed division; who led with empathy (her brand), particularly toward children. When asked about the effects of her Covid policies on Kiwi youngsters, she dismissively laughed off the question. Since Ardern defined her leadership as being one guided by "experts", she cunningly answered as follows: at 43 mins 40 secs into the Kennedy School session, Ardern says she did a video that was put up on Facebook during the pandemic, where "I interviewed a really well-known clinical psychologist, or maybe counsellor at least, who specialized in kids, where he said to the parents of New Zealand, 'If you're kids are watching a lot of TV, then its fine .. they're going to be OK'", as she laughed, and her host laughed, and the Harvard audience laughed. "That is empathetic policy-making", Ardern concluded. Her Kennedy school professor host replied, "It's a beautiful example". The audience whooped in delight.

Yesterday, I received the latest articles from the Centre of Economic Performance at London School of Economics, where I once worked. One, "A generation scarred by the Covid-19 pandemic", is by Steve Machin, an LSE "big name" in education & labour economics. The study says, "By deploying the latest econometric methods to understand how children develop skills over time, using data from UK cohort studies, we estimate the educational & lifetime impact of mass school closures & deepening social divides on a generation of children. In previous work, we highlighted the likely devastating impact that school closures would have on young people’s life prospects. The disruption of the pandemic on pupils in England will mean lower GCSE grades well into the 2030s. We estimate that a quarter of pupils received no schooling during the first lockdown in early 2020. Pupils eligible for free school meals, those educated at state schools, & those from less affluent backgrounds, suffered learning losses at a much greater rate than their more affluent peers. Even our previous gloomy predictions did not foresee the perfect storm of factors that would exacerbate inequalities inside & outside education in the wake of the pandemic .. .".

NZ's lockdowns were far more severe than the United Kingdom's. So it turns out Ardern is talking uniformed, empty, marketing-your-own-brand, fake soundbites. As for the Profs at the Kennedy School singing along with her, pretending to be common people, they also should be ashamed. There's now exceptionally strong evidence that the effect on children of pandemic policies has been devastating. NZ's Labour Party hit the poor hardest, which will exacerbate inequality in NZ for the foreseeable future. Beware of Ardern, Hipkins and the Otago medical "experts" trying to rewrite history about the effect of their actions.

Sources: https://nz.video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=AwrOrEWMIXZm0DcOBhcfaQx.;_ylu=Y29sbwNncTEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Nj?p=kennedy+school+jacinda+ardern+you+tube&type=type80260-555696122&param1=412725389&hsimp=yhs-002&hspart=sz&ei=UTF-8&fr=yhs-sz-002#id=5&vid=1fa8e2d7dc75a44a12447fffe65bc1e3&action=view

https://cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/publications/abstract.asp?index=10952&mc_cid=8e6d4242e9&mc_eid=91b437965d

Has the New Zealand Parliament and our MPs become Irrelevant to our Future?

Here are six reasons why our present National-ACT-NZ First government, although voted in by a majority of the Kiwis, has become irrelevant to the plans of the left:

1. Monetary Policy is set independently by the Reserve Bank. But increasingly, the RBNZ has re-interpreted its own mandate to allow it to venture into other areas, like environmental policy, all done regardless of what our Members of Parliament think. The way the Governor talks to the MPs at the Finance and Expenditure Select Committee, it appears he has little respect for them and their understanding of what he does.

2. The Courts increasingly don't give a fig about Parliament and have begun to consider themselves the paramount chiefs of law-making in the country. However, many of our judges are highly partisan, yet won't admit it, pretending they are unbiased arbitrators. If you believe that, you will believe anything.

3. The Mainstream Media, our Fourth Estate, has for many years now regarded parties like National, ACT and NZ First, as hostile to its interests and agenda. Our Mainstream Media has been waging a quiet coup on our present government ever since it was elected. It does not regard the new coalition as being NZ's legitimate government.

4. Our universities regard the new government as hostile to their agenda. Because it is. The reason is that universities have become agents of political change, and are presently altering their course prescriptions to indoctrinate, rather than teach the different sides to every issue, which is their job. Former Labour Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson, has more power than ever as Vice Chancellor of Otago University to push his own personal political agenda than he ever had in Parliament. He's the boss of Otago, whereas in Parliament he had to get the support of his colleagues & the House to pass laws.

5. The announcement by Te Pāti Māori to set up a rival Parliament was symbolic. Many of its supporters don't respect our existing one. At some level, our MPs are to blame. NZ is too centralized. Most decision-making goes through Wellington, a city in decline as folks leave, its streets become empty, its water supply leaks, its ferries run aground, its house prices fall, and its roads get clogged as it can't afford to build new tunnels. In nations like Switzerland, most decision-making is done at Canton level - they have different tax rates, varying from 22% to 45%. Competition is good, even for government institutions. It's not just Māori suffering from Wellington's centralization of power - it's all of us.

6. Our Members of Parliament are of declining ability & competency. MMP maybe to blame. You can get into parliament now without ever having won a seat and stood before the public to make your case. The people may not even like you. Your only talent can be to grease up the party hierarchy. Having worked in the office of an MP so you get to know everyone, then you can network your way onto the list. Ironically, our MMP was copied from Germany which at the time was the leading industrial nation in the world, after the US. Now Germany is in an awful state of economic and social decline. We copied a lemon.