Posts by Biobbs
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Legal Beagle: Practical considerations, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Michael's right. The only way Dr Brash enters Parliament before the next election is beating Hone Harawira in the Te Tai Tokerau by-election.
I so want to see this contest. Perhaps he could kick off his campaign with a speech in Orewa.
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Legal Beagle: Adventures in the OIA or:…, in reply to izogi,
Thanks for that interesting piece, Graeme. I think the most positive aspects of the Official Information Act within New Zealand have been in the precedents that were set around interpreting it from the beginning. I read this Sydney Morning Herald article a few years back (I liked it enough to bookmark it) which is very complimentary to the OIA in the face of what Australia ended up with at about the same time.
If you look at the comments section under that SMH article, you will see a perfect example of Biobbs' Law:
Any time someone claims that NZ does something better than Oz, the probability that an Aussie will come along and say 'New Zealand is tiny and not even a real country , so what they do is trivial and irrelevant to us' is 1.
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Hard News: Any excuse for a party, in reply to Robyn Gallagher,
Charlie's getting married at last
To a pretty girl without a past
Her Majesty's so happy
The Duke's a happy chappy
'Cause Charlie's getting married at lastOh dear lord, was that the one with the oh-so-classy lines "Lady Di, Lady Di, said stick it in your eye/The only guy I'll marry is Prince Char-lie"? I'd forgotten the name of the song or who did it, but that line always seemed to pop up in my memory over the subsequent years as the horrors of that marriage played themselves out.
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Hard News: The Ladi is a champ, in reply to Ethan Tucker,
The introduction to that clip on the Whistle Test DVDs points out that for Marley & the Wailers it must've been one of the hardest gigs they'd played. A freezing cold BBC hangar in Birmingham, with no audience apart from middle-aged pipe-smoking brown cardigan-wearing cameramen. Soon afterwards they would can their first visit to the UK and flee back to Jamaica. And yet this performance is so legendary, and it laid the foundations for Britain's love affair with the man and his band.
...and here is our beloved kiwi equivalent, a treasure of a film from 1987:
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Hard News: Fridays are still for the music, in reply to 3410,
Another Neil Young archival release from one of his country phases.
So, '84 & '85 concert dates with the International Harvesters.
Grey Riders was stonkin' (and maybe others). Some of it's maybe a little on the trad side, for me.I'm really looking forward to Archives Vol. 2 ( Time Fades Away 2, Chrome Dreams, Homegrown, etc.) :)
You're not just whistlin' dixie there. And maybe one day he'll relent and re-release the original TFA: my old vinyl copy is pretty scratchy now.
If you love that Neil guitar sound, try Rich Hopkins: social activism, genuinely nice guy, and a sound that just channels Neil ca. Zuma/Chrome Dreams/Stars n Bars period...
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Hard News: Perverse Entertainment, in reply to Steve Ballantyne,
I recall when Redbaiter first popped up on Usenet back some time in the 1990s with posts in nz.general and nz.politics. His outstandingly nutty rants were actually quite refreshing at first, since Usenet was already in terminal decline back then and most of the posters were plainly drongoes. Redbaiter generally spells quite well and has a uniquely colourful style, which is why I'm pretty sure there's only one of him.
The debates between him and dear old Jim Purdie were legendary. I'm pretty sure it was Jim who first started calling him Rodbeater, the use of which is sadly neglected and long overdue for reinstatement IMHO.
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Re: Coffee. WTF is up with not being able to get a coffee anywhere on Ponsonby Rd after 12pm on a Saturday night? All credibility as 'cafe central' in NZ totally blown.
Yeah, I was thinking that.
Carl to the rescue. Now that's a coffee machine.
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Ross Mason,
William McGonagall is a "poet" close to my heart. Discovered via Spike. But people forget he was a great chronicle of his time. The Tay Bridge Disaster gives a pretty complete Engineering Report of the bridge failure.
But he is so so bad. He has become more famous because of it.
Heh. A former colleague once called me "the McGonagall of the Biological Sciences" after I wrote a poem about the area of science I work in. (It was based around that "in days of old all knights were told" poem).
Those who haven't seen Spike's McGonagall biopic, your life is incomplete. You cannot appreciate McGonagall fully unless you've seen it. I think Spike was determined to make the film as McGonagall himself would have. It's the battiest thing Spike ever did, even by his standards.
McGonagall also featured in Stephen Pile's wonderful "The Book of Heroic Failures". Sadly out of print now, which would delight Pile ("even as failures, we were failures" was his lament at the time about the unexpected success of the book and his Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain). But I have a copy, and of the sequel.
And Kia Kaha Otautahi! I am so moved by all the humanity on this thread and over on Emma's, from the people in my old town and their supporters from all over the world. I can't do much to help from 12000 miles away, but you are 150% awesome and so is PAS for letting everyone share their stories.
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This expatriate Cantabrian/Sumnerite is overwhelmed by how wonderful a forum PAS has been for up-to-date and accurate information about what's going on, and for empathy and human kindness. I want to give it the Nobel Peace Prize. Seriously. Sitting 12000 miles away, you just hunger for good info.
Lilith - did your rellies say how much damage there is to houses in Sumner on the flat ground? Am kind of worried about my currently unoccupied house. Unimportant compared to people with real problems, and will no doubt hear from my neighbours at some point, but still curious.