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notices and features - Date published:
5:30 pm, November 21st, 2024 - 15 comments
Categories: Daily review -
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Remember kids, don't do downers.
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The last time I reviewed a book by Jordan Peterson, a cleverly edited excerpt of my negative opinion (I described it as “bonkers”) appeared on the cover of the paperback edition, giving readers the misleading impression that I had endorsed it. So this time I shall have to be clear. The new book is unreadable. Repetitive, rambling, hectoring and mad, We Who Wrestle with God repels the reader’s attention at the level of the page, the paragraph and the sentence. Sometimes even at the level of the word.
[…]
If We Who Wrestle with God offers the reader any relief at all it derives from the inadvertent comedy of Peterson’s attempts to combine humourless Biblical analysis, pop culture fandom and conservative polemic in the space of a single misbegotten sentence. Internet pornography, we are told, “has turned young men into online sex addicts pathetically mating with Tinkerbell, the porn fairy”. (Peterson’s campaign against porn stars, “the modern whores of Babylon” vaunting their “delectable but untouchable succubus delights” is a diverting sub-theme of the book).
https://archive.li/S1LrE (the times)
Luxon. Rhetoric versus Reality, a daily series. Episode 264 …
Action Man:
"We are not mucking around, we are beyond talk and we now need to get to action and that's what we are going to do with the new National government … I'm not mucking around doing 'Kumbaya' and marshalling consultation. I'm getting things done…"
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/497364/national-waikato-university-planning-third-medical-school-for-years-luxon
And over a year later …
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/534445/act-leader-david-seymour-raises-doubts-about-waikato-medical-school
Not yet agreed, never mind started. Still waiting for a business case, maybe next year. Around they muck.
Yeah the government that claims to get things done….crap.
Seems to me they've spent most of the time up to now getting things undone (ferries, anti-smoking measures …. ).
Not so keen on the touch up on the footy field but more of this.
https://www.facebook.com/100063477886576/videos/trent-pickering-and-his-buddy-from-taranaki-/408205005569260/
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360491542/promising-rugby-player-gives-fight-name-suppression
Isn't it funny how political neutrality has suddenly become so, so important for the CoC?
We've had the associate education minister threatening students, teachers, principals, and school boards, dictating what they can and cannot teach,. And now, despite no complaints (just government staff and/or RWNJs combing Facebook for woke cops*), we have Police officers no longer allowed to participate in or support their communities.
How's is that going to work out?
*This is a big deal, it reminds me of what went on in Nazi Germany. Fascist government workers searching for dissent and having the public dob in rule breakers against the state.
Makes a change when they're being overtly "political" on what's usually the other end of the spectrum. (Ignoring calls from the Hamilton protesters in 1981, when the latter were being attacked by frustrated rugger-buggers, is the sort of thing we're more accustomed to seeing.)
All the same, I don't think they should have been seen to take sides like this. If you're wearing the uniform, then stay out of the dispute. Both sides of it.
So, the NACTs are trying to use some police officers as scapegoats for their incompetent handling of the Treaty issue and their lack of wisdom:
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/hikoi-to-parliament-police-officers-identified-supporting-hikoi-protest-to-be-spoken-to/PEBGSKGMZVDZ5AQLISJZSTSVKA/#google_vignette
Yes, Anne, I also touched on this @4.
I think it shows extreme desperation by the three factions of government who are under immense pressure because of the national and international publicity the Māori party and Hīkoi mō te Tiriti have generated for indigenous rights.
Despite the Hīkoi being a magnificently run and powerfully orderly, disciplined, and accessible event, they resort to minimising the scale. They resort to dismissing participants’ motives. They resort to threatening primary schools. They resort to linking it with criminals…
…And now they attack their own Police women and men for the crime of engaging with their own communities.
Disgraceful behaviour by Mitchell and this new police commissioner.
Given the philistine police minister and his personally chosen police commissioner, I didn't think it would be long before the attacks on perceived foes started. But I didn't expect it so soon or aimed at their own kind.
Those police officers will get more than a verbal telling off for doing nothing wrong. They'll be sidelined and promotion prospects will be hard to come by. Went down that road in the Public Service years ago – a spot of whistle blowing did me in.
I sympathize…
Standing up for the rights of the end user got me 'performance not met' for 3 years running, which resulted in no cost of living adjustments and would have started Performance Management, had I not left after 27 years.
Virtue is definitely its own reward in today's public service…
As part of an informal study into repudiating the claim that democracy works for all people, I wanted to know what the voter turnout by electorate was.
I ended up on this electoral commission page but they still only do stats as a percentage of enrolled voters. I want to know the turn out by electorate of all residents, not just enrolled voters.
The non-enrolled people outside the voting system are part of society, and democracy should also work for them.
This is central to the idea that when RWNJs claim that democracy is pure, sacred and infallible, they are talking bullshit.
Can anyone help?
https://archive.electionresults.govt.nz/electionresults_2023/statistics/index.html
Thanks, still a bit to do to get Total Votes Cast (i) as a proportion of Electoral Population (k). Under General Statistics 2.1 they do (i/j), j being Electors on Master Roll, but they don't do (i/k).
This is just sad.
The Mayor of New Plymouth wants the government to be liable for compensation to those who invest in oil and gas exploration if a future government changes the rules.
Why is a mystery, all the past government was to decide that there would be be no further offshore oil and gas exploration permits granted.
And for the government to reduce the amount of royalties, to tout for new exploration.
He favours gas over coal use, as involving less carbon emissions. But not all gas …
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/526479/lng-imports-is-coal-twice-as-bad-as-liquefied-natural-gas-for-emissions
He is concerned about the need to import coal. But … .
https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/11/01/how-the-fast-track-saved-new-zealand-coal/
He prefers gas over the coal as it has less carbon emissions.
Less than gas is better still
He should be all over the seabed mining blocking wind farms off Taranaki – this would lead to onshore battery storage, but he is not.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/360484193/what-mountain-coal-tells-us-about-our-messed-energy-situation