Thursday, July 06, 2006

Show 95 Thursday 6 July


Watch today's show at YouTube or grouper
or watch me tv.


STICK NEWS

Kia Ora. In Stick News today, unemployment in New Zealand has reached a 24-year-low. There are now less than 40 thousand people receiving unemployment benefits for the first time since 1982.

In New Zealand, people who have no job can get money from the government. This is called a benefit.
There are many kinds of benefits. If you can work, but don’t, you can get an unemployment benefit. If you are too sick to work, you can get a sickness benefit. Single parents can get the domestic purposes benefit.
The Labour party has been in power since 1999. Since then, the number of people registered as unemployed has dropped by 75 percent.
But opposition parties point out that the number of people receiving sickness and invalid benefits has risen a lot.
However the combined numbers have fallen. Since 1999 the number of people receiving unemployment, sickness, invalid’s and domestic purposes benefits has fallen from 372,000 to 280,000.
The social development minister said the figures were a milestone for the government.
“We’ve proven that supportive, not punitive, policies are the right way to go”, he said.


And that was Stick News for Thursday the 6th of July.
Kia Ora.



conversations with sarah
# 63 Why did they do that?

James and Sarah talk about the latest news about North Korea.
Step 1: Repeat James’s lines.
Step 2: Read James’s lines on the screen and talk to Sarah.

James Did you hear the news about North Korea?

Sarah Yeah, they launched some rockets, didn’t they?

James Rockets?!

Sarah No, not rockets, that was America. I mean missiles.

James Yeah. I wonder why they did that. Do they want to start a war?

Sarah Um, I don’t think so. I was listening to a guy talking about it on the radio today and he just said that they wanted to get attention.

James To get attention? Why?

Sarah I don’t know. I don’t think anyone really knows what’s going on, actually.