Posts by Bart Janssen
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Ok so it takes disasters or the threat of disasters to get you to write.
Aren't you taking the tortured novelist schtick a bit far?
Lovely to hear from you though and I hope you are finding it possible to enjoy the beach days.
-
Hard News: Time to get a grip, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I actually think expecting companies or shareholders to have any sort of morals is naive and wrong
I both agree and disagree with you. Yes in practice I think it's naive to expect moral behaviour from companies when in practice it almost never occurs.
However, as a society I think we can and should aspire to having organisations, including companies, behave in within moral guidelines that include more than simply "more money is good". The pure free market does not achieve that, theoretically it could but it doesn't in practice. This suggests if we want morally responsible behaviour from companies then we have to moderate the free market. Unfortunately it is for some reason unacceptable to moderate the free market, even to suggest such a a thing is greeted with the kind of horror that is usually associated with the most heinous of crimes.
It can be argued that companies find it difficult to assess morals but in this case mediaworks need only refer to the tone of their own 3news broadcasts around the time of Henry's demise to define morality.
-
Up Front: Where You From?, in reply to Isabel Hitchings,
if you can’t magically fix the sewers and the roads
Sadly their godlike powers are limited to sucking the bad smells from Christchurch and depositing them in their litterbox. But they're only small and so you won't notice the difference there for a while - however, we've noticed the change at our house!
-
Hard News: Time to get a grip, in reply to James W,
genuinely intrigued that Mediaworks has hired Henry
He joins Lhaws, I mean really that station has defined a special place for itself in the market.
-
Hard News: Time to get a grip, in reply to James W,
what is the level where money trumps morality?
For most people there are specific thresholds but for some people there appears to be no threshold essentially more money is the only moral decision. And it's a decision they can spend ages rationalising.
What seems to happen is that our current method of choosing people to manage companies selects for that small percentage of the population that can abandon morals for money. As a result our companies all look like they have no morals.
-
Up Front: Where You From?, in reply to Emma Hart,
Aw, wookit da kitties! D’aw!
Yup that pretty sums up home for me at the moment :).
-
Ok Let’s see if this works and it’s not my fault if this derails
-
Up Front: Where You From?, in reply to Russell Brown,
multiple boutique-sized volcanic cones
When I first moved to the US I was quite literally lost for a while until I realised I was completely used to knowing exactly where I was by referencing which of the cones was visible. In the flat places I was living I actually had to use street signs!
-
Late to this lovely thread, my excuse is we just got kittens and I was distracted :)
I'm really not sure I have the physical home some of you are talking about. I was born in Palmerston North (which gives me the right to bag it mercilessly). Grew up in Titirangi, flatted all over Auckland and rode my bike all over Auckland, spent my summers in Ranui, learned my career in Auckland, spent a few years in the US learning how to do my work properly and then came back to live in Mt Roskill.
But none of that binds me to a place. I don't "have a mountain" I don't belong to a river or a sea. I don't even think I really belong to the house I mostly built (although that remains to be tested).
But I do relate my home to people. Home is where my partner lives. Home is where my cats live (even when I was in the US). Home is where my friends live. And home is where my kittens are tearing apart anything they can. Home is where my mother lives. As I grew up home was where my friends were and those are the things I remember from growing up - the friends not the places.
So for me, home isn't a place, it's a group of connections with people and the things those people mean to me. When I'm closest to the centre of those connections, then I'm home.
-
Hard News: Time to get a grip, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Who the frak voted for Little again?
Um Labour Party members?