Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Hard News: So what now?, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Seriously did Len Brown steal Bernard Orsman’s lunch when he was a kid?
No idea, but I think we've have to raise Zombie Freud to run intensive group therapy to get to the bottom of The Herald's obsession with slut-shaming Len Brown's penis out of office.
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Hard News: So what now?, in reply to 81stcolumn,
Okay hands up who knows where the most recent piece of urban intensification is in Takapuna?
That’ll be The Poynton all five storeys of it.
The delicious irony is that it’s actually a pretty good case study in why “intensification” can be a damn good idea. (And yes, it’s ugly as all fuck off but even my genius for hyperbole wouldn’t go so far as to call it a geriatric slum.)
It’s a retirement village that literally has the North Shore Hospital over the back fence, has a major public transport hub across the road, is well served by amenities that are easily accessible. As I understand it, a lot of residents either can’t drive or choose not to keep cars (it’s a pretty serious expense if you’re on a fixed income) and they don’t have to.
The Quarter Acre Pavolva Paradise is more like a nightmare for many people, and it’s about time the rentier media-political-industrial complex got a reality check to that effect. And in a local body election year, I don’t think Auckland is going to get a better chance.
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Hard News: So what now?, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Just like to mention we got intensification on the end of our street a decade ago (55ish apartments)
Just as Councillors Chris Darby and George Wood’s problems with “intensification” don’t seem to apply to retirement home developments. I guess big ugly blocks of over-priced ticky tacky aren’t so bad when they’re being filled by affluent elderly registered voters.
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Hard News: So what now?, in reply to John Palethorpe,
Given Nick Smith’s comments that the Auckland submissions are now ‘nonsense’ due to the withdrawl of justifiable zoning planning, I’d say we’re headed to the Independent Hearing Panel without a strong voice for Auckland.
And whatever you think of Nick Smith (he’s not popular around here, to put it mildly) Auckland’s feckless council has lovingly handcrafted this rod for its own back. That said, and at the risk of speaking well above my competence, as I understand the law being spineless cock Wombles isn’t sufficient grounds to appoint commissioners.
My sympathy is in rather short supply, to put it mildly.
At the very least, those who advocate intensification need to carry the existing residents of the areas planned for intensification.
That superficially sounds delightfully egalitarian, Matthew, but let’s cash the reality check for a moment. These massively entited rentiers who heckled the chair and deputy of the Youth Advisory Panel yesterday will take nothing but complete and abject surrender. Richard Burton’s performance on Morning Report today made that perfectly clear. I do you the courtesy of assuming you’re neither foolish or disingenuous enough not to see that.
I’d like to make something perfectly clear: I don’t think every opponent of “intensification” is a drooling bigot who just doesn’t want icky ethnics, beneficiaries and mental patients stinking up their pristine, over-leveraged streets. But far too many are, and don’t even try that hard to fig-leaf it. They’ve also been aided and abetted by media that range from merely lazy and/or under-resourced to properly cover complex local government issues to the outright deceptive. The Herald has been running a typical disinformation campaign against the Unitary Plan for reasons I can’t figure out.
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Actually Ritchie McCaw's position may be quite right. Change the flag to something not Australian.
With due respect to McCaw, out of the million or so arguments for changing the flag that has to be the worse. If anyone is so confused by a scrap of fabric they think he's an ex-Wallaby and Australia won the last two Rugby World Cups the issue isn't our flag, it's game day pre-loading.
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Hard News: Fix up, young men, in reply to Russell Brown,
I have a photo of the harasser and the two women with him, btw. They’re laughing. They really look like Young Nats.
Of course they do, Russell. It's the cloven hooves and horns that give us away every damn time. I'm going to do you the respect of assuming you can figure out why that's not only a cheap and ugly shot, but not a particularly useful one.
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Another angle on this, it's fucking enraging seeing women in the media being told to "toughen up" or get out of the profession when subjected to male arsehattery. Again.
It's 2016, boys, and a woman's place in the media isn't writing about scones and this season's hem-lengths. Just stop it.
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Hard News: Bowie, in reply to Russell Brown,
What I love about it is that it’s all of us getting to talk about how art moved and made us. We don’t do that often enough.
We're also really shit at saying what artists mean to us when they're still around to care. I really hope Bowie knew how much he's loved and respected, not only by his musical peers, but by people whose lives he was the soundtrack to -- and bloody grim and lonely ones a lot of them sounded like. (As a sidebar, I'm very pleasantly surprised Bowie managed to keep his cancer secret for eighteen months and sincere kudos to everyone who respected his choice and privacy.
Tonight I've been reading and hearing endless variations on "I was the fat kid, the smalltown queer, the girl with the mousy hair, and David Bowie told me it was going to be OK. I believed him. And he was right."
I just can't articulate what Bowie means to me because he's both too big a presence who's been around in one way or another my whole life, and far too intimate and tightly wound around so many moments. But it's nice to know I'm not alone in that either.
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Phil Spector may be a full-service douche canoe, but come on... Darlene Love is the Queen of Christmas. Let's not argue about it. :)
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So let’s take time out from pre-Christmas stress and bitching and Judith Collins’ smug face, and share stories of our favourite murder books.
Here goes, with standard warning that there may be spoilers at the links.
The Talented Mr. Ripley (Patricia Highsmith). Pop culture is awash in sociopaths who get away with it (I blame Hannibal Lecter myself), but accept no substitutes. Tom Ripley's murderous brand of upward social mobility still has no peers.
Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s & 50s There's another Highsmith novel here (and not one of her best IMO), but this is a splendid two volume LIbrary of America set. Worth finding for Margaret Millar's Beast in View alone.
The Hunter Another all too tiresome crime writing trope is the cold-eyed anti-hero on a roaring rampage of revenge, but it was never done better than in Donald E. Westlake's Parker series of which this is the first.
Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers. If you're in the mood for something a little more genteel, here's my favourite Sayers -- and the most atypical. There's no murder, but while the central mystery is fascinating and fairly worked out, the real strength of the novel is Vane's own struggles with her relationship with Lord Peter.
I'll probably think of more a bit later...