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notices and features - Date published:
5:30 pm, January 21st, 2022 - 42 comments
Categories: Daily review -
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The current rise of populism challenges the way we think about people’s relationship to the economy.We seem to be entering an era of populism, in which leadership in a democracy is based on preferences of the population which do not seem entirely rational nor serving their longer interests. ...
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this needs naming. Young woman understandably upset about the impact of the pandemic on her future, is focusing blame on the policy that makes kids wear masks in schools, instead of being fucked off that the UK government made such a massive mess of the pandemic response.
She's kind of right that no-one cares about her generation, but the problem isn't mask wearing, it's Tory, anti-community, proto-fascist government who simply don't know how to look after the British people.
I see a fair amount of push back against the UK pandemic response, things that we would mostly consider to be okayish here because we used those tools in a completely different way ie in a way that made people and their wellbeing a priority.
https://twitter.com/keddie_donald/status/1484000349681815552
My experience in Korea was similar – masks are frankly no big deal – Koreans have been wearing them in winter since the first SARs outbreak.
whereas when you force people to wear a mask they're not used to, while treating them like shit, they're going to have a reaction.
Anything a person does they have not done before is going to take time to get used to. I hated the mask when I first started to wear them. So I got someone to make me masks that fitted me better and now I am very comfortable in them.
I'm afraid that student put me off with her talon-like finger nails. That told me she's high maintenance and maybe not a good role model. If teachers were yelling at kids (and we only have her word for the 'yelling' bit) then it was likely because they were frustrated with those students who refused to wear their masks and had no exemption.
Whether you believe it was a good idea or not, the teachers are the ones who would have been in the gun if it was discovered they were teaching mask-less students.
Edit: Just seen joe90 @ 1.2. Methinks the “yelling” was at best an exaggeration or at worst it never happened.
No different to traffic rules – rage how one may, one is obliged to obey.
Pretending to respect the bullshit is self-defeating.
pretty long distance between pretending to respect and treating people like shit. Are you suggesting that the way the UK government has treated its citizens isn't a factor in resistance to the useful parts of the pandemic response?
I'm sure it hasn't helped – but the kind of antivaxxers who run around calling people sheeple and trying to peddle Soros/Gates/Ivermectin and/or chemtrails need not expect support.
you appear to have completely missed my point.
No, I've seen it – I merely reject it.
you think there are no cultural reasons why Asians are much better at wearing masks than Australasians?
As with traffic rules, I simply don't care.
These rules are made for public safety in consultation with relevant experts. We do not get to bush lawyer them any more than we can road safety regs – and humouring those who do only encourages further antivaxxer nonsense.
good luck with effecting big social change by forcing people to do something they don't want at the same time as treating them badly.
What treating them badly – and what social change for that matter?
The public health laws have always been strict – and beyond appeal – because they need to be. Covid doesn't care about antivaxxer feelings – appeasing the loons only encourages them.
this is why I think you missed my point. Don't worry about it, it was just a misunderstanding way up thread.
Requiring masks, and ridiculing the pathetic repeaters of QAnon crap is not treating people badly.
obviously requiring masks isn't treating people badly. Looks like you really did misunderstand my original point.
So you keep saying – but we've had this argument before – and you seem to have nothing to add to what you asserted last time.
now I have no idea what you are talking about.
I essentially agreed with your first comment and added a short statement pointing to the cultural difference between Korea and NZ. You've gone off on something that is not what I was saying.
here's my point again, in more detail.
There are cultural reasons why mask wearing is more acceptable in Asia than in NZ. Because it's not a culturally accepted practice in NZ prior to the pandemic, people need to adjust, learn new skills and practices and that needs to be integrated into the culture.
Where there is high stress associated with that, ridicule, being mean, being unkind, and generally treating people badly is a hindrance to that integration. I'm not talking about Qanon followers here or antivaxxers, I'm talking about Joe Blogs who is sick of the whole thing and wants it to go away, isn't bothering to wear a fitting mask, often lets it hang open or off his nose so he can breath better, is starting to think the whole thing has gone to far. Those people are the ones we need to call in.
Where there is high stress associated with that, ridicule, being mean, being unkind, and generally treating people badly is a hindrance to that integration.
I know that you believe this, but the basis of much of our country's administration works in the opposite way, especially since the advent of neoliberalism, punitive measures have become routine. Departing from administrative norms, like choosing not to jail Brian Tamaki expeditiously for frank breaches of Covid regulations feeds the false narratives that Covid rules are somehow less serious than other regulations. The classical approach would have been to use him as an early example of the universal application of rules – pour encourager les autres.
Perhaps you have studies demonstrating the ineffectiveness of a punitive approach – if so there are many governing mechanisms that would be in need of revision.
Largely speaking it is not QAnon followers per se, but those who recycle their garbage, having got it second hand initially from acquaintances or like secondary sources.
The young woman is a Tory talking head and former Conservative party candidate who's since had a bit of a roasting over her performance. Now she's insisting that the clip was misleading.
https://twitter.com/sophielouisecc/status/1484313674760085508
https://www.battleofideas.org.uk/speaker/sophie-corcoran/
must admit I spent most of the clip wondering who she would vote for.
Suffering shit people. I see Mayor Goff has donated 25k from his mayoral fund to Tonga. This is just over 4weeks of his salary not including perks. Furthermore it's not his money it's ratepayers money.
As a person who has espoused socialist policies i.e. collective responsibility, all of his tit sucking life I find that someone at the head of an enormous Pacific community is showing his true neolib colours. That is, how many votes are in this for me ??
sorry, what's the problem?
Good question, sorry I'm not that good with words.
Answer, multiply 25k by 10 then you wouldn't have heard from me
send more money to Tonga? Sounds good to me.
Context makes it clear, it's exactly what it's supposed to be:
"The support is provided from a charitable trust fund—set up for the purpose of disaster relief in the Pacific—to which businesses, individuals and Auckland Council have contributed over time."
(italics added)
https://ourauckland.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/news/2022/01/auckland-mayor-phil-goff-pledges-25-000-from-mayoral-relief-fund-to-support-tonga-recovery/
(and it dates back to 2012. A few seconds of Google-checking saves a lot of outrage, you know).
Wherever the money comes from, in my eyes is immaterial. I would be too embarrassed to announce such a pitiful sum to the public if I was mayor
Lol.
Would all the proto Maoists care to give themselves a clap on the back? The Covid narrative is dead, but the agenda, as I fucking well said in my "loony" post last week, goes on…and on.
The affected person must be treated as a person who has received a booster dose (and may continue to carry out certain work) if,—
(a) before 15 February 2022, they receive a booster dose; or
(b) on or after 15 February 2022, they receive a booster dose before the close of the date that is 183 days after the date on which they were vaccinated.
https://legislation.govt.nz/regulation/public/2022/0004/latest/whole.html?search=ts_act%40bill%40regulation%40deemedreg_COVID-19%20Public%20Health%20Response%20(Vaccinations)%20Amendment%20Order%202022_resel_25_a&p=1&fbclid=IwAR3tl8dDS_l2s4WC10vy6zY1gCfuWgWdbHS5JjxmmODngtxD8xokmukoPE0#LMS629669
I'll bite. Was hoping Lprent had simply banned you from posting altogether because of your unhinged vaccine sceptic stance. Seems not.
I feel like the promotion of anti-vax themes by yourself and your stablemate, Redlogix, does irreparable damage to The Standard.
Justice for bwaghorn by the way. A great contributor, lost. There’s a man who was brave enough to say what everyone else was thinking.
Here is the remarkable thing; you are still here and free to express your opinion, within the usual boundaries of site policy and moderation.
By contrast the orthodox medical and political establishment is now so deeply invested in the safe and effective narrative, that questioning or admitting to anything which might be seen to contradict or undermine it is no longer tolerable and must be silenced. And you seem right on board helping them out with that.
Best of luck.
Commenters cannot attack authors on this site. Or they can, and they can expect to be banned. Which is what happened to bwaghorn.
I think there are all sorts of problems with Bill's position and how he argues on site. But that comment from bwaghorn was way over the top, the worst attack I've seen on an author in a while. I would have given a short ban and a very strong warning of a long ban if it ever happens again, but regulars here know how different moderators operate, and can take some responsibility for their own actions.
As you have just demonstrated, it's possible to say what one is thinking without being abusive or attacking an author.
Well who knows what a 'proto Maoist' is and who cares.
Reading the careful legal drafting in the extract reminded me of having to analyse, as a law student, a legal passage in some UK export regs about ground nuts coming from West Africa some that were ground ground nuts and some that were whole ground nuts. When we were presented with it most of us felt we could do it better. Wrong, wrong. Our first goes either left out vital bits or changed the impact.
There is an art & science in legal drafting and a facility with English that most of us would only dream of used by our Parliamentary Counsel in the drafting of Bill/Acts /Orders and Regs.
So I salute the law draftspeople especially b) which is a tiny and not very complicated example of having dotted the I s and crossed the Ts.
Good review of a biography of Smedley Butler, the USMC general and war hero who wrote "war is a racket" and exposed a 1930's attempt by wall st financiers to overthrow FDR as president.
Looks like an interesting book, and the review is on a US military affairs oriented website. Interesting place to be mentioning the US history of imperialism, even indirectly.
Good find.
' his late-in-life epiphany that during his 33 years of Marine Corps service, he and his men fought, killed, bled, and died more to shore up the profits of Wall Street than to defend the United States from foreign invaders. '
Nothing's ….changed.
Just hangin' out with the bros.
I wonder if dolphins always surfed like this, or did they copy humans.
Copied humans …I would say.
Got a couple living next door and they're under water with their….mortgage.
Doubt it. Their divinity, shape-shifting antics, aquatic prowess and bow-surfing turns up in all manner of mythologies.
Besides, wtf could drown in a puddle apes teach these gorgeous, ocean going beasties.
I love the way they hang about in groups waiting for the right wave to come along. Just like their human companions.
David Seymour asks his Destiny Church kinfolk to stop playing guitar at the gates of MECF because it disturbs his other kinfolk, rich white people in nice Mt Eden apartments.
Quite the conundrum.