Open mike 14/07/2010

19 comments on “Open mike 14/07/2010 ”

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1. felix 1

   14 July 2010 at 7:57 am

   Teetotaler John Banks proudly hasn’t charged so much as a cup of coffee to the people of Auckland but apparently doesn’t mind billing them for his $11500 fresh flower habit: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10658651
   • Jim Nald 1.1

     14 July 2010 at 8:02 am

     Wow
   • Carol 1.2

     14 July 2010 at 8:38 am

     Ah, those righties like to talk tough about crime, bennie bludgers etc. But underneath they’re real softies.

     This is what happens when you develop policies and practices that foreground TOUGHNESS, while repressing people’s softer and caring side. The caring side surfaces in other, often distorted, relatively trivial and/or inappropriate ways.
   • joe bloggs 1.3

     14 July 2010 at 10:03 am

     OMG – Banksie’s caught Chris Carter’s disease! Hope that none were for his partner – that’d be too outrageous!
   • ianmac 1.4

     14 July 2010 at 10:40 am

     Perhaps sadly that flowers were made an issue as anti-Chris Carter ($250?). Now any flowers become a political point. Remember that Bill English spent thousands of dollars on flowers in 2009, but escaped getting roasted. Should flower spending ever be an issue?
2. prism 2

   14 July 2010 at 10:12 am

   Looks like the wealthy have pocketed their tax refunds, or have used them to shore up their over-stretched speculation payments. They can’t afford now to pay the lawyers and accountants that helped them. What a kick in the teeth for faithful retainers.

   Could the thought ever slip through the solidified mass of brain of the pollies that if more practical drug legislation was passed to cut down on the illegality aspect, this would reduce the business opportunities for criminals. Also make policing safer and free up money now spent on expensive helicopter searches and other expensive projects, to bring in a more benign regime that was controllable without the shootings that happen regularly. Carrying on with this untenable authoritarian law which is arbitrary and ineffective and costly creates artificial law enforcement scenarios which end up as a makework for police.

   I read some time ago of the aggro that farmers get from marijuana growers using hidden parts of their property, and the profit that is made must be a huge incentive to participate in the trade, and most of that income isn’t available for taxation.

   A further black side to this law and the law-breaking it leads to, is that it is then used by pollies to drum up scare tactics to the electorate, which they manfully announce they will fix with strong policies on law and order. Meanwhile nothing useful, pragmatic or intelligent is done to improve it – because it suits the pollies the way it is? (And change would not be countenanced by the alcohol barons?)
   captcha – awake – hah!
   • Lanthanide 2.1

     14 July 2010 at 6:21 pm

     The politicians are only doing what they need to do to stay in office. They think that middle New Zealand would be up-in-arms if proper drug reform was passed (and it doesn’t matter how many scientific studies you show middle NZ to prove the fears unfounded) and therefore they would not be elected into office for another term. So nothing gets done.

     Don’t blame the politicians, blame the public.
     • butnahyeahnah 2.1.1

       15 July 2010 at 12:38 am

       “they think that middle nz would be up in arms”
       Can you tell what people think? Though I suspect you are right about the polly’s view on Cannabis Law Reform, I think you have gone far wide of truth assuming that middle NZ would be up in arms. White, fat, middle aged baby boomer nz maybe, but not the middle NZ I know.
3. millsy 3

   14 July 2010 at 11:08 am

   I’d love for the pro-smackers to justify this:

   http://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-news/news/3915913/Girl-denies-lying-about-carers

   This case has been going on in Taranaki for the past 18 months (I have been scanning the papers for this for a fair while now) , and the trial is finally underway.

   Now, if it was a Maori solo mother on the DPB doing this, the likes of Christine Rankin and Garth McVicar would screaming into the nearest mike, but somehow, it is acceptable for a while middle class professional business women to force feed a child in her care wasabi.
   • ianmac 3.1

     14 July 2010 at 3:29 pm

     If that child had been given a good thrashing a few times she would not now be a stupid little girl wasting the Courts time. Just shows what how we have slipped into a weak liberal limpwristed society.
     (Just writing to save Rankin and McVicar the trouble of doing so.)
4. John Dalley 4

   14 July 2010 at 12:24 pm

   So John Banks does not have a credit card.
   “But”
   John Banks PA does!
   So John Banks has a credit card, just not in his name. “WTF”
   Hypocrite anyone.
   • Draco T Bastard 4.1

     14 July 2010 at 12:58 pm

     Banks is a RWNJ so, yes, he is a hypocrite.
5. prism 5

   14 July 2010 at 2:50 pm

   Just a personal note on a meaningful issue (tissue?) – toilet paper. I see it as a crack of doom, an example for the rest of NZ to watch and blanch at. The latest roll of purex has 200 double sheets on it. A roll used to have, perhaps a decade ago, about 280 pieces or sheets. How low can it go?

   Isn’t this a bit like the NZ we all knew and find we loved, though at the time it was so-so. We now have a gradually diminishing NZ going down the toilet. NACT may end up being flushed with success but it will be to the disadvantage of the rest of us.
   captcha – reveal
   • ianmac 5.1

     14 July 2010 at 3:34 pm

     What a shitty story prism! (Actually it is the same principle used by Cadbury: same price, less weight, more packaging)

     We could collect all the used toilet paper and recycle it but perhaps not white.
   • Lanthanide 5.2

     14 July 2010 at 6:23 pm

     Maybe this is behind Countdown’s decision to now put “$ per 100 sheets” on their labels for toilet paper instead of the previous metric of “$ per roll”. If so, good on them for taking the customer’s side.
   • loota 5.3

     14 July 2010 at 7:15 pm

     This country is getting poorer, so are the people within it (4/5 of them anyways) and the only way to maintain the illusion of a vaguely constant standard of living is by cutting corners. On blocks of chocolate, on toilet paper, on naval ships, on weatherproofing for new apartments, and on everything else.

     captcha: avoiding
     • prism 5.3.1

       14 July 2010 at 7:41 pm

       They’d better not start cutting corners off my toilet paper, I’d consider that a cheek.
6. joe90 6

   14 July 2010 at 5:26 pm

   The Christian Science Monitor reviews a book by science historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt.

   Merchants of Doubt might be one of the most important books of the year. Exhaustively researched and documented, it explains how over the past several decades mercenary scientists have partnered with tobacco companies and chemical corporations to help them convince the public that their products are safe even when solid science proves otherwise.
7. prism 7

   14 July 2010 at 7:53 pm

   The story of the octopus in Germany called Paul which was a dab hand(s) at picking football winners reminded me we have our own two Pauls who often don’t seem to know their right hand from their left.

   The two morning hot hosters or toasters, Paul Henry and Paul Holmes both spring out with wild abandon and fall on the dirty floor from time to time. I had to replace my toaster which did that for one with a more controlled spring. Perhaps we could replace our hosters and hire the octopus Paul to make accurate predictions on those knotty problems we would give an arm and a leg to fix.

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