Posts by Craig Ranapia
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vintage Craig, thinly vieled misogyny wrapped in thick blanket of piousness
Oh, Snowy. Two penny minds shouldn't use fifty cent words without looking them up in the dictionary. I'd almost be offended if you weren't so painfully ridiculous.
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Completely off-topic, and without vouching for its veracity, I am finding the current Clinton spin about a change in momentum interesting to say the least in light of this
Richard:
OK, I've made it pretty clear my preference is for a McCain/Obama general, but you've got to have a sneaking admiration for just how shameless Clinton is. At the same time she's running that 'red phone' ad deriding Obama as an inexperienced lightweight (and might I add in a way she'd be crying "shame" if McCain pulled it on her), she has proxies saying he wouldn't be a bad Veep. Oy...
Also, it doesn't seem to have gotten much play that on the day of the Texas primary, Bill Clinton found time to call in to... the Rush Limbaugh Show. (The Great Satan himself was conveniently 'off sick', but could you imagine the shit McCain would get from the right if he was doing the rounds of progressive talk radio shows the day of an open primary.)
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Count your blessings. There are US states where taking a leak down an alley at night can get you on a sex offenders' register.
I didn't think the kind of people who hung around alleys at night looking for dick were easily offended. My sheltered upbringing shows again...
It's the "clues" thing I'd be wary about. You don't want to set up the facility for the authorities to just go on fishing expeditions.
Indeed not. I also wonder if Mr. O'Connor would be quite so sanguine if Police management wasted to just have a little poke through the archived texts of one of his members, as part of a disciplinary investigation? The funny thing about people who want to erode privacy rights are so often the people who scream bloody murder when they're on the receiving end.
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LOL, that's funny.
Thanks for the compliment, merc, but I wish O'Connor would bloody cut it out. Call me a wet liberal pussy, if you must, but I actually think there's some relationship between the extremely high levels of public respect for the Police (which the overwhelming majority deserve, IMO), and the idea that they are public servants who are open to scrutiny and criticism.
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I don't regard Mr O'Connor as a great servant of liberty, and I wouldn't expect him to grasp the potential for abuse of such an archive.
Russell, I'd go a damn sight further -- I don't regard O'Connor as a great servant of the members of the Police Association. In the end, he's a union boss and I expect him to be a forceful advocate for the interests of his members. But does he need to constantly engage in the not so subtle moral blackmail of "either you're with me, or you're a hoodie-cuddling cop hater"?
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There was a time in the 90s when it seemed like every year we had a new report by some committee or other on our mental health system all saying exactly the same thing - this is chronically under-funded. They were all dutifully accepted by the government of the day and nothing seemed to happen.
[...]
There seems to be a lot of lip-service paid to using a 'holistic' approach to mental health, and recgnising the importance of whanau, community, peer support and so forth to assist in maintaining someone's mental well being, but the ability of those other parties to actually intervene is severely limited.
Indeed. First the obvious caveat, I didn't know Finn and it would be totally inappropriate (and plain crass) to speculate about his particular case where there's an inquest and various reviews in train. But here's the dirty little truth: You can write all the reports you like, but you hit the hard wall that proper staffing requires a LOT of intestive work by a lot of people with very specific skill-sets and one hell of a thick skin. People like that just aren't that common, and I can't blame most of them for not choosing psychiatric care as a profession. (I was never on the seriously scary end of the mentally ill, but there are still people who don't feel particularly comfortable being alone in a room with me. And I don't really fault them for it; hell, if I wasn't stuck in my own head, I'd be heading for the door too.)
It's one hell of a nasty Catch-22, and one I really doubt there's any political or fiscal quick fix.
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Rob:
I apologise for any cerebra-vascular outrage caused by putting Helen Clark's nipple into your head. Can't you tell I want to be a Herald sub when I grow up. :)
Tom:
It might be kind of interesting if we had something equivalent to Clark Hoyt, who is "Public Editor' at the New York Times, but you want to know something? Would any ombudsman ever satisfy the paranoid numpties of the loony left and the rabid right who see 'bias' whenever a story isn't to their liking?
In the end, I think the only way any media outlet can escape allegation of political bias is either not to cover any 'political' matter at all, or just reprint press releases.
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I quite enjoyed the blogfight with Colin Espiner...
Meh... like most blogfights (and we've had a few back in the day), it was more emtertaining (like watching a family brawl at Christmas lunch while trying to keep the spittle and blood out of your pav) than illuminating.
Talking about Mediawatch, Colin did a very nice reality check on Three's post-Watangi Day outrage over 'Itigate' -- with nimple support from the PM. There was a serious and legitimate ethical issue involved, but it sure got lost in the sight of two bloated media outlets -- neither of which has much credibility to be lecturing the other on media ethics, BTW -- sledging each other and pretending its news.
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Stephen:
Again, I don't think the HoS would have given a toss if Bryers' "free-spending" ways included buying teddy bears by the gross for terminally ill kiddies. Don't you agree?
And even if Bryers has been living an ascetic life in a garden shed, the obstinate fact remains that there are a lot of people who lost a hell of a lot of money investing in a house of cards he was deeply involved in. Perhaps if hacks spent a bit more effort conducting "intensive investigations" of such businesses before they collapse, rather than hanging around whorehouses after the fact we'd all be a bit better off.
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First: Finn. Oh, buggery buggery ballocks. What else you say that isn't totally fatuous?
It's less that there was a complaint made than that this curious non-retraction was deemed an appropriate response. You don't need to go as far as The Standard to think it's a poor state of affairs. I suspect there are some APN journalists looking sideways at their proprietor this week.
Well, Russell, I know there's at least one APN journalist who isn't feeling particularly impressed with Cullen or Andrew Little either. As Audrey Young could testify :), no journalist or editor much likes being called a partisan whore by politicians and their proxies. If our professional relationship ever came to an end, I'm pretty sure you'd take severe except to any insinuation from your mate Murray that you'd been "bullied" into doing so by the Prime Minister's Office.
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