Posts by Dylan Reeve
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able - god. Not enough sleep.
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The council is absolutely abel to decide who can and can't march with permission.
Edit function? Plz... Kthx.
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Dylan. It is irrelevant what might happen in other situations. My point is that in this situation the council has been shown as impotent. If you agree that, even with such a trivial matter like deciding who can or cannot march down Queen St., the council is next to useless then what point even having a council?
Boobs on bikes is not the first and will not be the last parade or march to go ahead on Queen St without a council permit.
The council is absolutely who can and can't march with permission. If people do so without, then it's up to the council to decide what action to take.
The council, oddly, has a number of roles that extend beyond deciding who may parade on Queen St, I think writing them off entirely because some people didn't do what they were told is absurd.
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Would it be surprising that Bishop Tamaki would be willing to reject proper authority? Because I am certain that had his request been rejected he would have gone on anyway.
And while you might be confident that you wouldn't promote things 'they' would disapprove of, that's entirely depended on who 'they' is. Dare I say that if the participants of this forum represented authority then I suspect thing you might like to promote may disapproved of.
The council may disapprove of boobs on bikes, but the evidence today was that many thousands of people didn't have any such objection. Why should the council's personal tastes and preference be able to applied as they see fit?
What if Steve Crow's mayoral bid had been successful, would you be happy with the authority then?
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Grant:
The point I entered this thread on is that a council should be able to rule on such trivial matters as they see fit. If they cannot then there seems little point in having a council. Do you have a comment on that?You seemed to propose that the council should be able to rule on the matter and that we should all have the common decency, or respect for authority, to abide by whatever ruling that may be.
Which is a valid opinion, albeit one I think is fundamentally flawed, but it cuts both ways. In this case, for example, they ruled against the titty ride, but the organiser decided to ignore that ruling. The council then sought to get legal backing of their ruling, and failed. Even if they had been successful I suspect it still would have happened. But would you be as happy to submit to the council's authority if it was an event you didn't disagree with (I picked the Destiny march as a real example that I suspect might find favour with you)?
I don't begrudge the council their right to say what is and is not deserving of a permit, but it someone wants to carry on without one and face the potential consequences, then so be it. No crimes were committed (I use 'crimes' to made the distinction between a crime, and breeching a by-law).
The harm of an event like this really is negligible. Given the publicity and mass interest there was almost no chance that some 'innocent' passerby was going to be assailed by boobs unexpectedly.
Russell:
Pregnancy porn only involves the consenting grown-ups, though. And I don't see any real difference between a woman posing nude pregnant or not, although you could say there's a particular sexuality to pregnancy.There certainly are a host of mixed and confused feelings and emotions tied into pregnancy. I personally find the pregnant form quite fascinating, and in the case of my own wife, somewhat alluring. But I have no particular desire to see any other pregnant people in a sexual context.
Childbirth porn -- and to be honest I have no idea whether it's really even a genre or just something Crow tried to do once -- crosses a line for me though, big time.
I doubt it's a genre, but I also doubt Crow was the first to consider the idea. I've seen childbirth, and above all else I can't imagine it being a sexual thing - it's almost the complete opposite.
I have less of an issue with the 'unwilling participation' angle - realistically the child is a 'bit player', and unless there is some insane amount of very invasive publicity there is unlikely to be any lasting stigma.
I just don't like Crow at all, in part because he teamed up with one of my other least favourite people, the corrosive conspiracy nut Jonathan Eisen, to make the stupid Uncensored magazine.
That magazine truly is a giant turd. Didn't Mikey Havoc have some involvement at the beginning? I think Wishart's magazine is paranoid and stupid, but Uncensored just takes it to a whole other place.
The more I examine my thoughts on this, the more I think I'm making aesthetic judgements. BoB = tacky and predictable commercial dodge by a known jerk. Hero Parade = grand community naughtiness after dark, with way better costumes.
They are barely comparable at all I think. The parade of funbags was really just advertising, despite Crows protestations - no other alternative was really presented, there were no displays celebrating our greater freedom of expression or anything. Hero was something else - a gala, the celebration of all sorts of things. Even that never felt overtly sexual to me, and there were people in trucks dry-humping. There was some larger sense there.
I miss Hero. I miss the Herne Bay Hair Event and having Craig Parker shave my head for charity or something. Come back poofs, all is forgiven! I bet Hubbard would have made them welcome again.
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Grant I can't be bothered quoting, but let's take a real-world example. I found Destiny's 'Enough is Enough' marches a couple of years ago to be very offensive - along with the whole opposition of Civil Union legislation. I would have had no objection to the council banning Destiny from their march (well, actually I would have, in what that ban represents, but I'd have been happy to see Tamaki's idiots stay at home).
The sentiment behind 'Enough is Enough' was not in the majority of society I don't believe. Would you have been happy for the council to just say no to them? I certainly don't think it was appropriate for a bunch of dicks in black t-shirts to block the country's busiest business district with their hateful shouting.
I also find the guy who stands on Queen Street on Friday nights yelling at the top of his lungs that people are going to hell (not 'people' generally, but actually directed at individuals walking past) to be incredibly offensive. Should the council be able to order him to piss off?
As for breaking laws you see fit to break - yeah, that's probably a good thing really. We all have the right to break whatever laws we want, but have to be aware that there may be consequences. Civil disobedience often involves systematically flouting laws which are being protested. Or other laws which may impact the ability to protest.
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For all Crow's sleaziness he's really just an entrepreneur. He's found a niche and produces a product to suit the market. The birth in the porn thing was motivated by two factors I reckon - willingness and audience. There is an audience for that sort of thing (pregnancy porn) who would probably be keen to get something unique, and the woman involved was keen.
He provides a product to meet a demand, for money. Same as McDonalds or BMW really. He'll do whatever he thinks is going to make him some money, which is probably true of most of us generally.
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Looking at the photos and stuff, I think I would have been disapointed had I Link-bussed my way to Queen St. All that fuss over what was really only a few tits, and none that were especially fantastic (at least by my measure). Not since the iPhone have I seen something so over-hyped (and before that it was just about any other Apple product, really they are all hype).
But hey, I've never really been a tit-man. And I hate Macs.
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Oh, you were tying to be witty too? Ahhh. :)
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Morgan, no matter how hard you try to be awesome, I don't think russ is going to pony up the Coffee for you.