Well if the answer is “yes” then I hate to be the one to disappoint you, but research shows that sending your child to an exclusive private school rather than a public school in the same area will have no impact of their results. If anything, many public school students out perform students from neighbouring private schools!

Despite this though, government schools are left to struggle financially and I think that’s just wrong.

Today the government has released a report on recommended changes to school funding. The review, chaired by David Gonski, recommended an extra $5 billion be spent, however the government will not say how much it is prepared to spend.

I certainly hope it means elite private schools will get much less of the funding pie. Right now many of them get more than is prescribed under the system John Howard introduced and that’s because that same funding system guaranteed the elite schools wouldn’t go backwards in funding. Gonski branded this system as being confusing and complex.

I hope the ALP has the guts to reign in this largess. The Gonski report certainly aims to address educational inequalities. The report recommended funding for public schools be pooled and then distributed at a federal level, whilst states should be responsible for providing funding to private schools.

I see a bitter irony in the contrast between private health funding and current private school funding. We’ve got a government that just decided millionaires shouldn’t get government subsidies for their health cover, but we still have a situation where millionaires do have their kid’s private school education subsidised. It’s crazy logic.

Let’s never forget; sending your child to a private school is a lifestyle choice. It is not a necessity!

They’re called ‘private’ schools for a reason, because they are separate from the government, and I think that means they ought to stand on their own two feet. Don’t you?

Honestly, it makes me ask why we bother having the Reserve Bank trying to control monetary policy at all when you’ve got greedy bankers totally ignoring them. The RBA made the unbiased decision that the economy would be best served by keeping interest rates on hold, but the profit driven bankers had another agenda – their own selfish bottom line.

And then to rub salt into the wounds the banks came out this morning and announced they’d be quite prepared to ignore the RBA again and increase their interest rates at any time!

I’ve said it before, but something has to be done about these banks. They simply don’t give a toss about their social obligation – their obligation to the community in which they operate. Instead they have become like bloated leaches feasting off the community.

And it shouldn’t be forgotten that it was you and me – the taxpayers – who during the GFC propped up the banks and their profits by guaranteeing their deposits.

My simple question for these grossly overpaid bank bosses like Westpac’s Gail Kelly and ANZ’s Mike Smith is this: Just how many billions will it take before you guys are satisfied? Seriously, it’s a genuine question. Or is too much profit simply never enough?

I’d love to hear what you think about the banks and their arrogance.

The RSPCA helped film secret footage of abattoir workers beating pigs over the head with iron bars and prodding the faces of cows with electric cattle prods. It really makes me question our humanity when I see stuff like this.

Thankfully it was staff members at the abattoir who blew the whistle on the treatment. They went to the RSPCA, and in my book those people are deserving of high praise.

But the whole thing raises other questions for me. How do we know this sort of thing isn’t going on else ware in Australia? I guess the answer right now is that we don’t.

The federal agriculture minister, Joe Ludwig, has refused to buy into any of this. He said that it’s a state matter so he wouldn’t do anything. Well Joe I think that’s a typical politicians response, and frankly I think it’s a shameful response too.

I think that the way a society treats it’s animals says a lot about a society itself, and if we allow this sort of thing to continue then shame on all of us. Do you agree?