Posts by Emma Hart
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Hard News: The Messenger God, in reply to Lilith __,
My experience of pre-mobile-phone public transport is people staring into space without making eye contact. Not much of a loss.
Or reading, particularly on the train. Which is what those people are doing with their phones, yes? And not everyone wants to talk to strangers on public transport, particularly women. Being able to use a phone and headphones as a tacit 'leave me alone' is occasionally very handy.
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OnPoint: What Andrew Geddis Said, But…, in reply to Matthew Poole,
You mean those same people of Canterbury who elected a National Party MP into the formerly safe-Labour-seat of Christchurch East? That "affected population"?
That would be a massive surprise to the people of Christchurch East, and their MP, Lianne Dalziel. The National Candidate in Chch East was a guy you might have heard of before: Aaron Gilmore. He called himself "the National MP for Christchurch East", but that doesn't make it so.
You are thinking of the people of Christchurch Central, who don't live there any more, because it's gone.
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Could we knock off the name-calling slightly? By which I mean, completely and always, starting about now-ish? Ta.
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Hard News: Spread the Noise, in reply to ChrisW,
I'd say that's very good evidence for 'sanguine' being pretty well obsolete ...
Can we keep it for 'exsanguinated' - the sensation of feeling less optimistic because you're covered in your own blood?
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We haven't had a lot of autumn down here yet. Today is ridiculously gorgeous. My harlequin glorybower however is in full berry. These berries can be used to dye things a starting smurf blue.
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Some highlights from last night. (Yes, I am hung-over, and yes my phone battery died before the night was out, yes I am still catching up.)
Surprise highlight of the third reading: Maurice Williamson.
Kevin Hague also made me cry like a little girl. I've seldom been prouder of my partner than when he sidled up to Kevin after the select committee hearing and apologised to him for the shit he'd had to listen to that morning.
The ayes voting paper and the nays voting paper. The number of proxies is... a thing. Two MPs changed their votes - David Bennett from no to yes, and Rino Tirikatene from yes to no. Nobody seems to know why in either case.
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Up Front: Gathered Together, in reply to Raymond A Francis,
On the other hand I wonder just how may same sex marriages there will be as apparently not may went into Civil Unions (anybody know the figures Google doesn’t seem to know)
But, as Craig said, it doesn't matter shit. Some laws are about standing up and making a statement about who we are as a nation. They're bigger and far more important than their on the ground practical effect. This is one of them.
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Something I forgot to mention in the post. I spent some time yesterday reading stuff from the passing of the Civil Union bill, and a question came to mind.
What happened to Destiny Church? Where are the black-shirted incredibly-aggressive marchers? Are they now just holing up and putting all their money into canned food and shotguns?
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Up Front: Gathered Together, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
The likes of Bob McCoskrie and Evil Namesake may be disingenuous, lying fuckbags but there are people who would be perfectly justified in getting their panic on if what they were being told had any relationship to reality.
Yeah, this. I had this conversation with my partner last night, when he thought perhaps I might be getting a little too gleeful. There are people who have been lied to, who are now genuinely fearful, and I feel for them.
But let me be perfectly clear. Those other people? Fuck those people. The ones who did the scare-mongering. The ones who stood up at select committees and said I wasn't fit to raise my children? Fuck those people. Who equated loving consensual same-sex relationships with various forms of rape? Fuck those people. Who cast themselves as the victims in all of this? Srsly, fuck those people and their crushing lack of self-awareness. I don't have to feel sympathy for them. I don't think it's fair to require that any LGBTI person behave with grace towards people who have treated them with hate.
I also don't think it's necessary to lash out at them. The cold gray loveless mean-spirited world they've made inside their heads is punishment enough.
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Hard News: Media3: Panic or Peril?, in reply to Russell Brown,
As Sacha notes, the Lizi Patch column is worth reading. It’s impossible not to feel sad at an 11 year-old boy losing his innocence – and knowing it – because he was pressured into watching a sexually violent and potentially abusive scene by his peers. I don’t think that’s irrational. So what do we do? Or, rather, what do we say?
I read it, and yeah, I agree. I thought the parent handled it really well. There was a pre-existing relationship where the child was prepared to (eventually) talk about what had happened. I don't really think you can do better than that. (One reservation I have is that the nature of the content is never really described. It could have been the most stomach-churning of what's out there. Or it could have been uncontextualised consensual M/f BDSM. I can't tell from the column.)
