Posts by George Darroch
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Does beef-based soap represent the Tallow Peril?
No, that's Indonesian and Malaysian soaps, ( sinetron ). They're perilous. But also quite clean.
Oh sheez. Soap? Washing my nether regions is now fraught with guilt? Is there not one single thing I can buy at the local supermarket which doesn't exploit someone vulnerable or deforest something or exterminate an endangered species?
It's not worth doing if it doesn't exterminate lemurs.
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This is the country that took in the Tampa refugees when Howard was attempting to milk political capital from the issue in "multicultural" Australia.
Technically speaking, yes. But there's a bit of political creativity engaged in by Labour politicians, pleased to speak of "our proud humanitarian record".
New Zealand took them, but for every Tampa refugee we accepted, we excluded a person from our UNHCR quota. The number of refugees (excluding asylum seekers) we accepted that year was 850, the same as the year before and the year after.
For a number of reasons, refugees are usually a huge gain to NZ. It surprises me that the number is kept so low.
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If nothing else (and obviously there's a lot else) the idea that it should be more desirable and advantegous for New Zealand to establish connections with Italy as opposed to, say, China or India, seems laughable.
But not any less. I'd hate to think we would choose immigrants based on their expected GDP growth.
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Some independent analysis of the costs of various ways to move money in/out of the country for businesses of different sizes wouldn't go amiss either - I always feel I'm getting ripped off
I totally agree with you there. The non-trivial fluctuations in exchange rate are a major cost of doing business, significcantly driving up the uncertainty in making investments - make the wrong bet and you could cost yourself considerably. We can't all hedge like Fonterra. And for those who do, it's another cost.
In this era of electronic transactions, the cost of exchanging money for both consumers and businesses is still ridiculously high. I feel like it's a rort, and the Commerce Commission should investigate, but I admit I have no evidence for my position.
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I wasn't sure whether to post this in this thread, or the other one, because the issues are relevant to both.
It's such a pity that racism predominates in employment - speaking from the anecdata of friends who arrived as immigrants and refugees, who arrived weighed down with qualifications and experience, only to have them thrown away by both employers and the state as not local enough.
You're telling me that teeth are different in Sri Lanka, New Zealand?
Perhaps slightly less obvious, but only slightly less tragic as a waste of potentials, is the fact that racism towards language is also seemingly ubiquitous. A lilting accent is a mark against your name. We're missing the fact that speaking other languages and understanding other cultures is in fact very often a huge competitive asset, and gives the business the potential to see and interact with the world in different ways. It's not just foreigners who speak languages that are undervalued. New Zealand's universities ripped out their language departments in the 1990s, keeping only Maori, Pacific, North Asian, and the ever-popular Romance languages.
We're denied the ability to speak with the world, and the world is denied the ability to speak with us.
These things might be changing, slowly, but I'm impatient.
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I'd also encourage (after donating) readers to email their local member, and any ministers they think might be influenced. It is tragic that the ability to escape violence is constrained by limited funding, while billions is spent on new motorways and frigates.
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Okay, forgive me. Being out of the country, and not being one to read the Stuff or NZ Herald websites frequently, I thought that David had made up the marriage.
Brilliant satire! I thought. Now I know that it is all true. All of it.
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there are Hindu paintings showing a queen mating with a white stallion for a ritual
It may have been sexual activity, but I think you'll find that it wasn't mating.
On the other hand, maybe that's where the centaurs came from....
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Having been shown people having their throat slashed by an inconsiderate flatmate, and hearing the gargled last gasps for breath, I'd have to disagree with you there Emma.
A few years ago, after the invasion of Iraq, a flatmate thought it was a good idea to show me a video of some militants beheading an American. With a hacksaw. It wasn't immediately that I realised what was happening.
Like you, I'm not a free speech absolutist. Some forms of expression should be illegal. And provided the reasonining behind the banning is clear, open, and contestable, I have no problem with specific forms of highly objectionable content being blocked. I'm not talking Catherine Breillat films or Two Girls One Cup here, no matter their artistic merits.
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As someone over at the Standard notes, all the while there's a huge giveaway of our land quietly going on in the high country.