More meaningless whining

New Zealand Universities are loosing ground when compared to their international counterparts, I read this morning.

And nor is a surprise on reading the article to find the reason, apparently, for this is "the low level of investment in the New Zealand university sector".

Cry me a river.

Another significant story in this mornings news is: Hamilton council 'hiding gays away'

And this grievance arises from the Hamilton city council refusing permission for the bedecking of bridge lamp posts with rainbow scarves during Gay Pride week.

And the whiner in this story is a Professor, one Professor Lynda Johnston from Waikato University, pictured on the left.

So out of curiosity I googled her to find out who she is

Research Interests:
In 1995 I completed a Masters thesis in which I argued that bodies and spaces of gymnasiums are gendered. In gym spaces female body builders resist, subvert and reassert normative understandings of gender.

My doctoral thesis, awarded in January 1999, is entitled ‘Body Tourism in Queered Streets: Geographies of Gay Pride Parades’. For more than a decade I have published work which adds to social, cultural, feminist and queer geography, tourism knowledge and research methodologies.

My current research interests are:
- 'Hamilton Pride: Spaces of Sameness and Difference’
- drag queens: sites of excess
- queer activism
- food, place and identity for migrant women in Hamilton
- queering Queenstown: gay ski week
- queer, feminist and poststructurist theories
- qualitative methodologies

Is any of this a good investment I wondered? Are Universities spending the money invested in them wisely I ask myself.

How do my children or anybody else's benefit from all this?

Perhaps it is not the the low level of investment in the New Zealand university sector" which is the problem, perhaps it is how the Universities themselves allocate their resources which needs a good hard stock take.