Posts by Caleb D'Anvers
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Some background reading on the induced demand created by motorway extensions. Take-home point: arguments that new motorways decrease congestion don't add up.
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I think somewhere you lost track of who was doing all the indiscriminate shooting and killing of people.
LOL. My point, though, was that if it becomes relatively normal for these things to appear in armed offenders' call-outs, it's only a matter of time before some Greg O'Connor-type suggests brightly that we take the protective covers off and have some fun! The police are good shots, right?
We thankfully don't have a trigger-happy, US-style police culture in this country. Increasing the firepower and calibre of munitions available to police, however, might be one way to get it.
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Weren't the police just using the best tools for the job? So what if it meant some LAVs got to drive down Napier's streets?
I don't know. I just feel like an important line is being crossed here. And while it's being done for all the 'right' reasons -- crazed gunman; grieving family -- the (potential) use of purely military materiel on local civilians is a serious matter and deserves more scrutiny.
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It was an armoured vehicle that allowed them to retrieve Len Snee's body under fire. I can't see the point of risking anyone else's life on the basis that an armoured vehicle might unnerve some people.
You don't think bringing something armed with a 25 mm. cannon capable of firing at 200 rounds per minute into action in a suburban area might be potentially life-threatening? And all to accomplish the merely symbolic task of retrieving a body? It seems to me there's something of a flaw in that logic. LAVs aren't designed simply to 'unnerve' people -- they're designed kill, quickly and efficiently.
In this case, no, not at all -- and I don't think this makes a "trend" either.
The 'trend' I was referring to the aftermath of the Project Lincoln recommendations. The use of LAVs in Napier is one of the consequences of these.
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Eye witness accounts say the LAV may even have returned fire when recovering Len Snee's body. Surely this is possibly the MOST unusual aspect of this seige?
Totally. The sight of those armoured vehicles tooling around suburban streets really should be setting off some alarm bells, but the media seem more interested in stories about cuddly little police dogs. This was a massive police overreaction sparked by a bungled drugs raid. Doesn't anyone else find the trend towards militarized policing in this country just a little scary?
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<quote>I have detected a shift to the right in Radio NZ in recent years with Sean Plunkett leading the charge, of course.<quote>
Yeah, I think it's been quite apparent, both in choice of personnel and the tenor of a lot of RNZ's political interviews. But perhaps it's been obscured by the general shift to the Right in New Zealand's political, cultural, and media landscapes since Orewa.
But, yeah. Nat Rad these days broadcasts to people of a certain class, a certain age, and a certain race, and if you're not part of that demographic the biases are very, very noticeable.
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OK... so the story actually seems to be Nat MP seems to be a pretty decent landlord.
Absolutely. He sounds way better than mine.
actually I think the story as written is "shock horror politician sex"
'Cos clearly politicians shouldn't have sex. Or be landlords. Actually, come to think of it, I kind of agree with that.
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Judging by Sean Plunkett's performance this morning, even Morning Report has taken the bait.
Even Morning Report? It's not called Radio New Zealand National these days for nothing, you know. Ahem.
Seriously, though, I'm still surprised that Plunket didn't take his chance and jump ship from Radio NZ last November. He would have made an excellent press secretary for John Key.
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There's an interesting column by Ben Goldacre in yesterday's Guardian :
By Tuesday, pundit-seekers from the media were suddenly contacting me, a massive nobody, to say that swine flu is all nonsense and hype, like some kind of blind, automated naysaying device....
I'm not showing off. I know I'm a D-list public intellectual, but I just think it's interesting: because not only have the public lost all faith in the media; not only do so many people assume, now, that they are being misled; but more than that, the media themselves have lost all confidence in their own ability to give us the facts.
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There's nothing wrong with sympathetic campaigning and highlighting your ability to work closely with another party in coalition. But note that in 1999 this did not extend to the Alliance meekly bowing out and clearing the field for Labour 'so the left could win".
That's what I have a problem with, and its what some labour supporters seem to be implicitly demanding.
Well yeah, but I'd wager that the support bases of Alliance and Labour intersected a lot more closely in 1999 than those of the Greens and Labour in 2009. There are some fundamental aspects of the Greens (marijuana policy and Sue Kedgley, for instance) that just aren't that attractive to a lot of Labour supporters.