Open mike 13/02/2010

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, February 13th, 2010 - 38 comments
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Topics of interest, announcements, general discussion. The usual rules apply (see the link to Policy in the banner).

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38 comments on “Open mike 13/02/2010 ”

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  1. gitmo 1
    13 February 2010 at 7:30 am

    Oh dear.

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10625894

    and once the name suppression is removed this sickening mess will be show up as another failure of our justice system.

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10625918

    • The Voice of Reason 1.1
      13 February 2010 at 9:11 am

      Thanks for the poll link, Gitmo. National’s slide seems to be continuing, eh? And good to see Goff steadily improving.

    • Olwyn 1.2
      13 February 2010 at 10:04 am

      It’s all too sad. Here we are with virtually a 19th century status quo, festooned with a few 21st century gadgets, and a majority are OK with that. It’s OK that a generation of people will not be unable to afford a house, will not have as an alternative a stable culture of leasing or renting, but instead an array of other people’s nest eggs for which to compete, often on a short-term basis, while trying to maintain employment and raise families. It’s OK that there is no living wage, that 20% of NZ children live in poverty, that this government is committed to hounding the unemployed, without an attendant commitment to full employment. It’s OK that our jails are overflowing; that if productive enterprises seem too risky, there are always humans to farm. What does it take for New Zealand to say, it’s not OK?

  2. marty mars 2
    13 February 2010 at 7:55 am

    This is poor politics and poor leadership and frankly makes me ill

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/3323434/GST-rise-not-deal-breaker-for-Maori-Party

    I wish they would just STFU

    • Rob 2.1
      13 February 2010 at 9:41 am

      Of course it’s not. It will have no impact on the Maori elite Sharples serves.
      Poor Pakeha have more in common with the poor Maori than Sharples and his ilk. Treaty of Waitangi claims are not unlike bank bailouts, the money’s going to the crooks at the top.

      • prism 2.1.1
        13 February 2010 at 12:34 pm

        Rob Too cynical. Just because some people in any group are easy spenders and talkers or they don’t always make good financial decisions doesn’t mean all are the same.
        Great things are being done in Maoridom, and the thing I fear is all the snippy, envious pakeha toads who will come out of the woodwork and grizzle and snipe at Maori when they find their way and end with more successful lives than pakeha.
        Then critical pakeha will have to find someone else to diss so they can feel superior to somebody, something. Sheep are so stupid perhaps. (BTW I am a pakeha so don’t go all racial about this.)

        • Rob 2.1.1.1
          13 February 2010 at 7:35 pm

          Great things need to be done for all. The Tall Puha Syndrome is not always a case of the envious mowing down the successful. Perhaps the nature of their achievement needs to be questioned. The last time I looked at the flock there were a fair few black-faced sheep being shepherded into the abattoir.

  3. The Voice of Reason 3
    13 February 2010 at 9:16 am

    As the Pistols used to say, never trust a hippy:

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/3324393/TVNZ-staff-in-drugs-investigation

  4. Paul 4
    13 February 2010 at 9:27 am

    The now Far Right Listener Magazine in both its editorial and politics column encourage teachers and teacher unions to stop protesting about National Standards and to simply “follow the law’. I’m in no way suggesting that the NZEI and teachers and principals are in the same league but what if Ghandi, Mandela, and Te Whiti (though he and Tohu Kakahi were not quite as successful as the others) thought like this?

    • gitmo 4.1
      13 February 2010 at 11:54 am

      The listener is far right …. WTF ?

    • prism 4.2
      13 February 2010 at 12:24 pm

      It seems that the Listener has shifted to the Right to me. It reeks of beautiful people viewing the world from a comfortable seat in a wine bar.

      • Olwyn 4.2.1
        13 February 2010 at 12:56 pm

        I think that Pamela Stirling and Joanne Black express views that seem analogous to those that Prue and Trude – the two women who work in the posh department store in Kath and Kim – would hold.

      • Paul 4.2.2
        13 February 2010 at 1:02 pm

        The biggest idiot is the so called commentary page by Joanne Black who one week disses schools and teachers for all sorts of imagined shortcomings and the next writes about how happy she is that her children are back at school sparing her the job (I would call it responsibility) of caring for them everyday, how overjoyed she is that her children are not coming on holiday with her and her partner overseas and that her children choose to amuse themselves on Ipods and PSP’s rather than talk with their peers and (more understandably) her. She is exactly one of the comfortable world – worried about house renovations and fat guts rather than poverty and other real issues. Jane Clifton however is usually reasonable and her comments whether you agree or not with her point of view usually insightful. But on National Standards she is no more than a follower of government propaganda and as narrowly focussed on this issue as the former newspaper now toilet paper called the Herald. Shame on them all.

      • gitmo 4.2.3
        13 February 2010 at 1:46 pm

        Chardonnay swilling socialists ?

        [lprent: Chundering relics of a medieval feudalism?
        Kind of pointless meaningless name trading. ]

  5. tc 5
    13 February 2010 at 11:45 am

    Well here we are, half way through the term and the sheeps clothing are nowhere to be seen, it’s all Wolf, arrogance, spin etc

    Bash the beneificiaries, screw the workers, sod the environment, reward our rich mates and backers (insurance council via ACC etc), bugger up Primrary schools by ranking them but not resourcing them to correct a poor ranking, and keep the MSM on a very tight reign.

    Helen said it was about trust, those who go back to muldoon already knew that, sadly the PR/Spin worked a treat and a fair chunk of the electorate only knew Clark/Cullen and now we’re screwed with ACT and MP adding to the mess with their own myopic agenda.

    Key will go down as our worst PM and a legacy of late 20th century excess.

  6. randal 6
    13 February 2010 at 11:47 am

    surprised no one notice paulyu beenit comparing gnp to a cake on parliament on the radio.
    so its now let them eat cake time.
    again.

  7. prism 7
    13 February 2010 at 12:20 pm

    Just looking up poet Matthew Arnold on Wikipedia and found he was a school inspector. An interesting quote –

    “Arnold often described his duties as a school inspector as “drudgery,” although “at other times he acknowledged the benefit of regular work.”[4] The inspectorship required him, at least at first, to travel constantly and across much of England….He spent many dreary hours during the 1850s in railway waiting-rooms and small-town hotels, and longer hours still in listening to children reciting their lessons and parents reciting their grievances.”

    Parents reciting their grievances! La plus ca change, la plus c’est la meme chose. (The more something changes, the more it remains the same. My education included French, and how to use Wikipedia, comes in handy with bon mots!)
    I guess this means that all the dreary hours spent discussing national standards and their disadvantages, and what action is really needed, will be repeated with slight changes in another five? years.

    • Mac1 7.1
      13 February 2010 at 8:10 pm

      “And we are here as on a darkling plain
      Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
      Where ignorant armies clash by night.”

      He was bleak at times, eh? Like Anne below.

      At the risk of sounding blase, ” The sea is calm tonight.”

      Let the other stuff happen as it will, as Arnold so beautifully writes in Dover Beach.

      On les aura!

      • prism 7.1.1
        13 February 2010 at 10:21 pm

        Great Mac1
        I hadn’t read Arnold’s poetry so was interested to read your choice. Getting info on him was doing some mind-expanding study, like the night classes we are commenting about elsewhere.

        I’m a fan of Colin Dexter detec’ stories. He may start each chapter of a book with a quotation that he thinks is apposite. It adds an extra to the story.

  8. lprent 8
    13 February 2010 at 12:51 pm

    Great – that has the captcha back on.

    Required me to mount a common directory (plugins) rather than doing a symbolic link. Obvious in retrospect.

  9. Anne 9
    13 February 2010 at 3:16 pm

    @ Olwyn 10:04am
    It’s been said here before but I will say it again. The “majority” are politically ignorant and don’t really care. All these things are “OK” as long as it doesn’t impact on them. The moment it does, they will scream blue murder and John Key et al… will somehow manage to convince them it’s Labour’s doing! You can’t win against stupidity.

  10. Mac1 10
    13 February 2010 at 7:45 pm

    Anne, as the old blues goes, “We may be fighting a losing battle, but having a lot of fun trying to win”.

    The fight against stupidity was won in 1891-1905, 1935-49, 1957-60, 1972-75, 1981 we wuz Robbed, 1984-90 with blips (sorry BLiP), 1999-2008.

    I know what you mean, it is a battle. Let’s still have some fun, though.

  11. Anne 11
    13 February 2010 at 8:06 pm

    Agree Mac1. Do my bit to have some fun both here and on Red Alert. The humour on The Standard can be brilliant sometimes… leaves me in stitches.

  12. The Voice of Reason 12
    13 February 2010 at 8:57 pm

    Found an example of the www3 version, nice work. Has a certain gravitas.

    http://thestandard.org.nz/gerrys-gift-to-future-generations/

    • lprent 12.1
      13 February 2010 at 11:05 pm

      I’m assured that it is the serif font for the post and comment bodies. But I don’t like it on firefox in ubuntu so I overrode the stylesheet at the browser.

  13. kiwiteen123 13
    13 February 2010 at 9:24 pm

    Lynn,
    Can you give me a ruling on my behaviour.
    I don’t want to be banned.
    I don’t think I deserve to be banned.
    Can you please state whether or not you think I’m within the rules (I think I am).
    Regards,
    Kiwiteen123

    [lprent: You’re noisy but within the policy. Noisy = too many short comments with little content – this isn’t twitter, bebo, facebook, or IRC. It swamps out people wanting to discuss things. I suspect it isn’t intentional.

    But remember that there are no real rules (and there is a reason for that arbitrariness). The policy is just guidelines, not rules. The underlying ‘rule’ is that we have to read the comments, and get irritated when they get tedious to read. Eventually a moderator or I will just get annoyed at the noise and ban you for a period just to get some relative quiet. ]