http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10549394

Is the Herald’s mission statement “To confuse and mislead readers at every opportunity”, or is it just that they haven’t got a clue what they’re doing from one day to the next?

Try this.

RedLogix:

I possess a religious bent

You’re a demon occupying the body of a priest with a thing for choirboys?

Respect skyrocketed after listening to that guy chat to michael moore. Not so sure about the music tho :S

Many thanks everyone, especially SP, Tane, IrishBill and Dancer for all the great work. Lots of stuff I’ve really enjoyed reading, but I hold back from saying so at the time, cos it gets naff if you overdo it. In the end though we finish up undercooking the credit that is due… so here is one great big one to make up for all the little ones that got away.

Although I possess a religious bent, oddly enough I’m not a big fan of Christmas. It would be better if the whole commercialised hoha was dropped and the entire thing given back to the Christians to celebrate the actual birth of Christ in both joy and dignity. I tend to go a bit anti-materialism in reaction to it. This year I don’t have a big family thing do (were saving it till later in Jan), so my Christmas lunch will be baked beans on toast in the spirit of pure cussed contrarianism.

In a way I find it a shame that in the southern hemisphere the Dec/Jan period is an overstuffed mish-mash of ‘end of the business/school year’, Christmas, the annual family reunion, the major piss-up at New Year, the long annual leave/school holidays all jammed into one credit card murdering, liver rotting, sanity sapping burst of madness. Each one of these events would be better appreciated if somehow we spread them out over the annual calendar more. Too many families crack up under the stress of it all, and I can’t see the sense in that. It is families that matter the most. Lots of people who cannot make up their minds if they do not see enough of their family, or too much as it is. The presents, the food, the booze and partying is not so important; your attention and love is.

Many thanks for a great year. (Especially to our bastard sysop from hell, without whom none of us would be permitted to exist.) Next year is full of challenging portents. I’ve no idea what the hell is going to happen, but whatever it is, I think it will change us all. And we are all going to need each other to get through it, family, friends, neighbours and community.

I love you all. RedLogix

That’s all I wanted to say, really.

[lprent: It probably would be - but there isn't a link there ]

The great thing about being a leftie is you can pick and choose when to support market economies. When there’s not enough jobs or the pay and conditions aren’t good enough, then you without exception expect the market to perform one way or the other.

Firstly, as I’m fond of telling people on the left: The left, far more than the right, is a collection of very disparate views, and we’re only unified in any sense because of our agreement that right-wing views tend to damage society more than they help it. You don’t get to make categorical statements about the left, as it’s composed of animal rights activists, environmentalists, socialists, social democrats, feminists, queer rights activists, unions, workers, transnationalists, supporters of free markets, anti-consumerists… and I’m sure there’s far, far more.

The Left in general can’t be inconsistent because it’s not a single person with a single set of principles, nor do we all claim to be. Now, an individual such as Steve can be inconsistent, or an arguement can be inconsistent, or a movement’s principles can be inconsistent. But leftism is nothing more than a catch-all label for people who view society as progressing away from something. We don’t all agree as to what it is, but we know the status quo is not enough.

The point you miss of course is that if people stop buying full stop then the economy will tank and jobs will be lost etc. Not all the economy relies on people buying at Xmas but any jobs lost still hurt.

People won’t stop buying full-stop short of being afraid to leave their homes. I doubt an economic recession would do that. We don’t need the Herald telling us to shop shop shop to stop the recession, in fact, in the long term taking their advice would be bad for our economy as it would increase our foreign creditors. Our problem in New Zealand is not that we don’t spend enough, it’s that half of the stuff we can buy involves sending our money overseas.

$1.6 billion barely buys a superyacht nowadays.

Shame on you, at a time when we should all be giving.

But Merry Christmas nonetheless.

The point you miss of course is that if people stop buying full stop then the economy will tank and jobs will be lost etc. Not all the economy relies on people buying at Xmas but any jobs lost still hurt.

On the other hand, I can accept what you are saying about rampant consumerism – in principle, spending your money on things you don’t need doesn’t seem like a great idea.

Anyway, I think I;ve agreed with one of your comments all year but that doesn’t mean I haven’t looked forward to your posts which often have well-thought out and reasoned discussion which I normally happen to disagree with.

Enjoy your break – I plan to do just that!

Hey Ian I quite like the sound of that. Do you have a pamphlet I could subscribe to perhaps?

Complaints of the season to you all. (Joking)

Seriously though, I hope all you Standardistas have a great holiday season. Thanks for all your work this year from a newbie who’s really enjoying the environment ’round here.

Cheers
DW