Posts by Nick D'Angelo
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Higher than the forecasted peak of $115 before it levels off to $100-ish. Whoops, already hit $132 last night.
Sometime in the past two weeks I read a thinkpiece on a reputable site (but can't for the life of me find it now) putting forward the case that the really high price of oil really is due to speculators. Evidently in about 2000 (under Bush?) the US markets were allowed to trade in oil futures and since then Bob's Your Uncle. One of our own local news bulletins ran an ABC News (US) item on it the other night. Now all the pension funds and investment banks are putting their money in oil futures because it is a self fulfilling prophecy. OPEC this week said they would not increase production to lower the price of oil, and said the high price was due to speculators.
__as the farmers and Fonterra are fond of noting, the globalised economy means we take the world price on these goods.
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Not quite true. Fonterra Brands pays the world price on those goods and then puts it's own % mark-up on that when it sells to the supermarkets who then put their % mark-up on it ....then we pay.Thankyou, I've bin saying that too, but the MSM don't seem to get it. But the govt inquiry/looksee should highlight this - probably just in time for the govt to take action before the election. Meaning your tax cuts will get you 3 blocks of cheese , not one?
The only thing Budgets have to do with the price of cheese is the amount of GST they raise. That and the lack of imagination shown by the National party speech writers.
Ah but you lost me there. I'd hardly call it brilliant, but it was shrewd since the MSM always refer to the price of the family block of cheese in their reports of kiwi families struggling.
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Oh, and lost amid the general Budget punditry ...
The New Zealand Music Commission gets an additional $4.8 million in baseline funding over four years to do its work.
Given that the commission has subsisted on year-by-year funding since 2000, this is both welcome and significant.
Which gives creedence to the idea that Labour is doing it's best to spend up the surplus so there's nothing left for National! (No complaints in this instance, either). Which kinda links to
It’s a tricky one because, as you say, these stations are not publicly owned and they paid good money for the right to broadcast.
Yes, but let's not forget that the taxpayers owned a nationwide network, before the government sold off ZM, ZB, et al to private overseas media interests. Imagine if they had kept the network and used it to promote a NZ music quota?
Which kinda leads me toI remember writing an indignant letter when ZM went "commercial" again.
I did the same when they took Melle Mel and the Furious Five's 'White Lines' off the playlist because they felt it could encourage cocaine use. I was at pains to point out that the chorus was 'White Lines - don't do it'. Many years later Mel admitted they were coked up when they recorded it and thought it was funny to sample the hook into 'Do it Do It'.
you chose your favourite album as REM's latest
Would rather Brendan pretended his current favourite album was Opshop, as John Banks did recently?
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d'oh!
What really shocked me was the level of comment from your panellists.
I was shocked by Pebbles' comment that the models need to be 14-16 y.o. because by 17-18 your bum gets big and it all over. (Pebbles is 18 herself?)
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What really shocked me was the level of comment from your panellists.
I hate the way sex education is gendered, so that it always ends up being 'girls are pressured innocent flowers, but boys are little horndogs'. It's insulting to both sides.
True, but what's the alternative? Telling boys that girls are just as horny as they are? I think the reality of the gender issue is that it is typically the boys
and yet womens magazines ... are all edited by dumdumdah!!! the fairer sex!
Yes, but they are controlled by a Board of Directors who are usually all male/misogynists.
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Cassette to disk is mandraulic
Thanks for the tip Rich, I'll give it a try. (So stand by, Simon) (ditto for the tracklist Dubmugga)
Is 'mandraulic' a technical term? Back my day all we had was: -
my 14 year old daughter returned from our Japan trip with a French maid's outfit
that's because Playboy is sooo passe these days -- all the kids are wearing it.
I'm not sure 'fiercely independent' is compatible with the emotional shit-fest that is adolescence, and gender is pretty much irrelevant to that.
Agreed. But did any of us have to even contemplate threesomes at 13?
(partly because of my requirement that they not assume that everybody is straight)
One of my friends at school was good looking and a bit of a 'stud' - never short of a girlfriend. It was only many years later we learnt he was gay. We had no idea at the time.
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Not withstanding the enlightened PAS female readership who were quite possibly fierce independent enlightened girls and realised early on that they were in charge ... I do worry that todays young girls are growing up without any understanding that they have a choice. There does IMO seem to be an awful lot of peer pressure to perform sexually and this pressure comes earlier and earlier. My 13 y.o. neighbour was seriously propositioned for a 3-way because her best friend had made out with her boyfriend and given him ideas. Her best friend was 'up for it' and was egging her on too. Evidently she did say No (or so she told her parents) but not without a lot of angst and stress first. She didn't want to be labeled as uncool.
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It's called being a grown-up where not every thought and emotion has to be verbailised and absolute candour is rather obnoxious.
Hmmm. Good advice. Maybe I should apply that to my PAS comments ...
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@ Emma:
I was wondering if/when the PAS Laydees were going to weigh in. I've also wondered if 'mums' are more relaxed because they remember what it was like to be a girl, and 'dads' (with daughters) are less relaxed because they remember what it was like to be a boy ie the constant quest to 'score' with girls.
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Woman's Day editor Sarah Henry disagreed and thought it was the same as the Dolly magazines she read as a lass.
Why am I not surprised that one magazine editor won't criticise another? Her argument is just as sound as insisting that today's marijuana is no stronger than what we smoked in the 70s. Speaking of which, we may all have sneaked a salacious peek at Mum's Cosmo back then, but back then those mags were produced for women, not teens and tweens.