Average woman dates dozen men, spends over $2K before finding Mr Right

Wellington, May 10 (ANI): An average woman would date dozens of men and shell out thousands of dollars before finding her Mr Right, according to a Kiwi dating expert.

A survey by a British dating site found the average woman goes out with two dozen men and spends more than 2000 pounds before finding that special someone.

But Verity Molloy, owner of Auckland”s Speed Date, claimed that these results are conservative.

Molloy, 37, said that a woman on the prowl for a lengthy period could date “at least” that many suitors.

And Molloy said that she could easily spend 440 dollars to look her best for one of her company”s singles events, although she wouldn”t spend that much for every date.

This could include 40 dollars for a spray tan, 60 dollars for hair, up to 100 dollars on an outfit, 40 dollars for accessories, 100 dollars for taxis and another 100 dollars for drinks.

“Everybody”s different but 4200 dollars is not excessive at all,” the New Zealand Herald quoted her as saying.

The British survey of 2173 women found 7 per cent went on between 41 and 60 dates before finding someone and 1per cent had up to 80.

Sasha Madarasz, dating agent and owner of Auckland matchmaking agency Two”s Company, says most Kiwi women might have between one and five “matches” before finding a relationship, and may go on two or three dates with each person.

She said it was hard to pin down how much money her clients might spend, but suggested women would spend “thousands” making themselves look good.

“If you go on first dates with four men you can wear the same outfit and save money, but if you”re going on three, four, five dates with the same man you”ll want a new outfit each time,” she added. (ANI)

NSW teachers join NAPLAN boycott

Public school teachers in New South Wales will join the boycott of next month’s national literacy and numeracy tests (NAPLAN).

The Teachers Federation executive has today voted unanimously to support the Australian Education Union’s (AEU) call for a moratorium on the tests.

Teachers Federation president Bob Lipscombe says the boycott could still be avoided if the Federal Government bans the creation of school league tables.

“We’re not opposed to NAPLAN, we’re not opposed to the My School website, but what we are saying is if NAPLAN is used to provide the data to create league tables then we’ll take that action against NAPLAN,” he said.

The New South Wales Government will take the state’s public school teachers to the Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) over their decision to boycott the tests.

Education Minister Verity Firth will seek an order which would make the boycott unlawful in New South Wales.

“There are penalties if the IRC rules that this is an unlawful action, that it’s an unlawful industrial action, then they can be fined up to $10,000 for the breach of that order,” she said.

Teachers threaten $6m NAPLAN boycott

Teachers across New South Wales are challenging the Federal Government to prevent a boycott of national tests that could cost the state more than $6 million in protest against the My School website.

The Australian Education Union (AEU) will vote next week on whether its NSW members will boycott the NAPLAN national literacy and numeracy tests over its opposition to the way the results are used on the My School website.

NSW Education Minister Verity Firth says the state will have to spend more than $6 million hiring freelance exam supervisors if every teacher pulls out, but she expects the participation rate in the boycott to be lower.

Ms Firth has threatened to take the union to the Industrial Relations Commission if the ban goes ahead.

“These tests are too important, the information is too important,” she said. “It’s simply not fair that the public should have to foot the bill to obtain information that rightly belongs to the parents, students and teachers.”

The union says the test results are displayed on the My School website in a way that damages disadvantaged schools and could lead to the publication of simplistic league tables.

AEU president Angelo Gavrielatos says the Commonwealth could prevent the ban by negotiating on the website’s content.

“The Deputy Prime Minister has refused to meet with us since January this year,” he said.

A survey conducted by the union late last month found more than 80 per cent of principals did not think the website gave an accurate depiction of their school.

Revealed: Marriott bomber’s live suicide stream

The ABC has obtained a chilling new bomber’s-eye video of the Marriott hotel suicide bombing that killed five people, including three Australians, in Jakarta last year.

The images show teenage Marriott bomber Dani Dwi Permana was streaming video back to his handler Syafudin Zuhri up to the moment he confirmed the foreigners were within range and detonated his explosives.

Zuhri urges Permana on as the murderous mission begins.

As Permana moves through the hotel’s lobby, he uses his mobile phone to send a live video stream back to Zuhri’s phone. Zuhri uses a video camera to record the images and prays for the success of the mission.

“God keep watch over us and keep us close to you,” he tells the doomed bomber.

As Permana crosses the lobby the morning light reflects off the Marriott’s hard floor. A large work of art, seen in the hotel’s own CCTV footage, looms on the right.

Then the assassin pauses and checks his progress in the mission.

When a stranger crosses his path, Permana casually wishes the man “good morning”.

Then he starts to move toward the dining room where local and foreign businessmen held their regular breakfast meeting.

As he closes in he is challenged by a security guard but calmly explains he has come to see his boss, “Mr John”, to deliver the item he ordered.

He makes his way into the breakfast room where his victims can been seen gathered around a large dining table.

The fleeting pictures are the last known images of Australian trade official Craig Senger and businessmen Garth McEvoy and Nathan Verity.

Their colleague from New Zealand, Timothy MacKay, who died not long after the blast, is prominent at the end of the table.

The camera scans to the left. For a brief moment two people are silhouetted against a large window.

The fifth victim, Indonesian waiter Evert Mocodompis, cannot be seen at this point but he was obviously close by.

Then the camera moves back to the breakfast table as the bomber chooses his target.

The windows again dominate the scene and then it freezes. Zuhri’s handycam records the dull sound of the explosion in the distance.

As the cell members flee in a getaway car, the camera keeps rolling, aimed at the back of the car seat. They remark approvingly on how Permana responded when challenged.

The next images show the terrorists in a safe house recording the live TV coverage of their attack.

An image of a stricken Timothy MacKay appears briefly in the reports and then he too is gone.

Zuhri and the man who allegedly planned the attack, Noordin Mohammad Top, were killed in police raids last year.

But the alleged members of the support network are on trial and the prosecutors are trying to show how one was connected to the other and eventually to Zuhri, who recorded the chilling images.

Letter campaign fights for Dalwood centre

Opposition education spokesman Adrian Piccoli says the community is backing a letter-writing campaign to save the Dalwood Assessment Centre and Palm Avenue School in Sydney.

Temporary arrangements are in place until the end of term two for children with severe learning disorders who have previously been helped by the Dalwood Centre.

Mr Piccoli says he hopes the sheer volume of letters being sent to Education Minister Verity Firth will leave her with no doubt about the value of both facilities in improving learning outcomes for rural students.

He says a Dalwood Stakeholder Group has been established to discuss the ongoing process relating to the closure of the school, but there is no current parent representative appointed to the group.

The Parents Council’s Country vice-president, Dorothy Creek, says an assurance has been secured from the State Government that services will continue beyond the end of the next school term.

Ms Creek says an outreach program to the children in regional centres is a possibility.

“We think that it will be more likely that they will do outreach to rural centres perhaps like Wagga, Dubbo and Orange. Even then they really need to come up with a plan for people are needing it,” she said.

NSW to examine education stimulus spending

An Upper House inquiry will examine how the New South Wales Government is spending federal education stimulus money.

The State Opposition has secured cross-bench support for an investigation into the Building the Education Revolution (BER) program.

More than $3 billion is being spent in New South Wales on new assembly halls, classrooms, libraries and covered outdoor learning centres.

But the opposition’s education spokesman Adrian Piccoli says there is concern that many of the projects have inflated costs.

“The purpose of having an Upper House inquiry is to get to the bottom of why these BER projects are costing three, four and five times what building costs ought to be,” he said.

“This is a huge cost to taxpayers. Schools aren’t getting value for money and we want to get to the bottom of it.”

The Education Minister Verity Firth says program costs are being audited by four separate bodies and there’s also a Senate inquiry.

“This is probably the most heavily audited and transparent program of public expenditure in Australia’s history,” she said.

Ms Firth says there is no evidence the program is being mismanaged and she has described the inquiry as a political stunt.

She says the government provided the Opposition last year with every document it had on the program.

“After poring over these documents for a number of months the opposition found no evidence of anything,” she said.

Australia’s Mary Poppins found

After a worldwide search, an Adelaide woman has won the coveted role of Mary Poppins in the Australian production of the musical.

Verity Hunt-Ballard will play the world’s most-loved nanny when the musical opens in Melbourne in July.

Producer Cameron Mackintosh says the search for the perfect performer has been the most exhaustive he has done in the 30 years he has been bringing productions Down Under.

Hunt-Ballard, who will star opposite So You Think You Can Dance? judge Matt Lee as Bert, got the role after a final audition in Amsterdam last weekend.

Producers last year launched a worldwide hunt for the perfect Australian to play Mary Poppins after auditions with more than 650 performers in Melbourne and Sydney failed to turn up the right woman.

They even accepted audition videos posted on YouTube.

Hunt-Ballard, who is currently playing Frankie Valli’s lover in Jersey Boys, said: “Like Mary Poppins, my feet haven’t touched the ground since I received the news.”

The show goes into rehearsals in May.

- AAP

NSW Police boss involved in breastfeeding ban is a woman

Melbourne, Sep 11 (ANI): The New South Wales Police boss, who forced a breastfeeding mum to work overtime for every minute she spent expressing milk, has been reported to be a woman.

The revelation came as Women’s Minister Verity Firth told all public service agencies to review practices to ensure they were providing support to breastfeeding mums.

The female sergeant told her civilian employee that she was not entitled to paid breaks, and denied her access to a private room, all in violation of an official State Government policy that is ignored throughout almost all of the public service.

However, it is suspected that the woman officer may have been overcompensating to fit into a blokey culture, with experts likening aggressive women in uniform to “religious converts”.

Feminist Eva Cox said the sergeant herself was probably the victim of a male-dominated culture, suggesting that she was trying so hard to fit in that she was tougher on women than her male colleagues.

“The women who get up through the system are the women who are really supportive of the system – they’re like religious converts,” the Daily Telegraph quoted Cox as saying.

“They’re scared to behave in any way soft or feminine and it makes them harder on other women than blokes,” she stated.

However, NSW Police Assistant Commissioner Mark Jenkins said that both genders were always treated equally in the Force.

“Police who rise up through the ranks of the NSW Police Force do so because they are the best people for the job. Gender is irrelevant,” he said.

NSW Police is now developing a new breastfeeding policy, and is taking steps to address the employee’s complaints – including a request that all the overtime she worked be reinstated.

The Public Service Association has lodged an action in the IRC seeking to enforce the Government’s 12-year-old policy supporting new mums. (ANI)

Sydney protesters to continue their fight against Muslim school construction

Sydney, May 17 (ANI): Despite a court order approving construction of a Muslim school being built in Sydney’s south-west area, the protesters have decided to fight against the plan.

Bankstown Council lost its second appeal to stop the school from going ahead in the Land and Environment Court last week.

The 1200-student Islamic school to be built at Johnston Road, next to Bass Hill High School.

Bass Hill Resident Action Group spokesman Vern Falconer said: “We’re not going to walk away from this, we made a pledge to the community. There will be due diligence done on traffic and the impact on residents. We’ll also be talking to the State Government.”

The group has vowed to take their fight before Bankstown MP Tony Stewart, Education Minister Verity Firth and Planning Minister Kristina Keneally, The Daily Telegraph reports.

The group is also going to offer assistance to other community groups opposed to plans for Muslim schools in Liverpool and Camden.

“We’d give advice for what is was worth. I’d advise them that public interest doesn’t seem to be something the Land and Environment Court pays much attention to,” he said.

The proposed new school will be a kindergarten to Year 12 campus of Al Amanah College.

Principal Mohamad El Dana opined that the community fears about the school would be allayed once it opened next year.

“We understand some people have concerns and we assure them that we want to address their concerns. We have a need for this school because we have a long waiting list at Bankstown and we can’t serve all of the community’s needs,” he said.

Residents of Johnston Road are considering selling their properties now because of concerns about traffic congestion and noise. (ANI)