Posts by Craig Ranapia
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I hear Baltar continues to get his end off in season four
Well, Gaius Baltar's truly freaky exercise in damage control (and nothing is more damaging than being on trial for your life) is about all the 'person of the people' flummery I can handle at the moment. Key and Clark really need to hire Ron Moore to write their material - once the WGA strike is over, that is - because his dialogue is so much better.
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And what's the score so far:
Folks who are already convinced John Key is the anti-Christ are unmoved.
Folks who are already convinced John Key is the Second Coming, ditto.
How its going to play with the peasants who aren't politically obsessive blog-reading policy nerds? Don't know, and care even less.
Me? I've still got half the season three box of Battlestar Galactica to get though, and if this thing hasn't been recut to include Jamie Bamber stark ballocks naked and reciting National's tax policy I can wait for another go round.
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(Before Craig gets up in arms, allow me to reiterate that Pete Hodgson, the senior minister on the day, was incoherent, and people did notice.)
Not at all. If Cunliffe knows his shit well enough to stand up before an audience of industry insiders and the geekerati without making a fool of himself, big ups. It's called competence, and should be encouraged wherever it may be. :)
As for "vacuity", I thought both Clark and Brash deserved a (figurative) kicking for letting Paul Holmes anywhere near their homes before the last election. They were both painfully and visibly uncomfortable, and it was humiliating for everyone involved except Holmes, who I think had the part of his brain that control shame removed at birth.
Yeah, I found that Key thing curiously charmless, but I tend to approach politics as something rather different from cruising a dating website and it wasn't aimed at a roomful of policy nerds. And to be fair, Russell, I also think Clark's done some really air-head things when trying to present herself as 'just folks' - remember when she went to the league, and was generally (and deservedly) laughed at. I just wish they wouldn't bother, because it always ends up looking fake, insincere and patronising.
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That's a childish comment. Of course he's borrowing ideas.
And if X. has worked somewhere else, and it can actually be meaningfully applied to New Zealand why shouldn't you? In most areas of life, there are enough difficulties without having to re-invent the wheel every morning.
British experience suggests that when things go wrong with PPP's, they can go badly wrong.
I think it's fair comment to say that British experience suggests you can turn anything into a giant mound of custard if you try hard enough. This is a really interesting discussion because, like most people I just pick up the phone and expect it to work, and get rather tetchy when it doesn't. How it actually happens is a delightful mystery by and large, but it seems that there are going to be a lot of very delicate and highly contentious decisions that need to be made.
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Che:
And getting equally angry, how about you save your condescending bullshit for someone who actually gives a damn and finds bold print even slightly intimidating? Since folks keep bringing up the Treaty process here, I've talked to some folks who think apologies are all very nice and enormously moving, but the hard yards of meaningful negotiation, being taken seriously by people acting in good faith, and a real outcome meant even more.
If that's 'partisan sniping', Che, I just give up. Thought it was a statement of the blindingly obvious, but what do I know? Talk is cheap, except when it comes from a politician - then its completely worthless, and I'm quite happy to be absolutely non-partisan on that.
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Craig if Private Public partnerships are the only way to do it so is it. But at least ensure NZ inc stays in control and drives investment ideology should not enter into it.
Which strikes me as a rather 'ideological' statement in itself, then again I don't regard 'ideology' as the political equivalent of dropping the F-bomb in church.
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I'm just not sure that 'we' should go telling Aborigines what's important for them. Particularly since it costs nothing to do so.
Kyle: PAS, and the rest of teh bogisfere, would be a very quite place if we didn't feel entirely confident about setting the world to rights from the end of an internet connection many thousands of miles away from the action. :)
But, hey, if real live Aborigines get a warm, fuzzy glow on far be it from me to criticise them. I just think its entirely reasonable to hope there's a lot more substance to come from Rudd. That's where the hard work begins.
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The government, he said, is "exploring alternative investment models" -- indeed, soliciting suggestions on same -- that could fund the development of open-access fibre in urban regions, and an alternative fibre link across the Tasman. (The problem with New Zealand's international bandwidth, he pointed out, is not a constraint on capacity -- it's a lack of competition, and the consequent pricing.)
This kind of investment, with its long, secure, debt-style return, seems like a sitter for KiwiSaver funds. That, of course, is not something you could have said 10 years ago -- not only because such funds did not exist, but because here would have been ideological outrage
Well, let's not put that in the past tense yet because if those "alternative investment models" include the whisper of a public-private partnership, I don't think the ideological outrage will be entirely confined to the left.
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BTW - This in the SMH from Rudd: "We will say sorry."
KEVIN Rudd has vowed to act quickly after he is sworn in as prime minister to make a formal apology to Aboriginal Australians on behalf of the nation.
At last!
Gee, that and $3.50 each should buy Aboriginal Australians a cup of coffee. Sorry, Charles, but this is about as impressive as Tony Blair's apology for his ancestors making decision that lead to a famine in Ireland that killed a goodly chunk of my ancestors.
Who needs real policy when you're got the empty politics of gesture and moral self-congratulation? Perhaps Mr. Rudd might want to forget the photo op, and show Aboriginals that his Government actually takes their desperate social deficits seriously.
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Craig, if I were to trawl through all your references to politicians on this blog, strip them of irony and context, and present them to people unaware of your- hm, hyperbolic style, I bet I could make you look a little unhinged too ;-) Perhaps you tone it down significantly when talking in private with people you trust?
Rob: I'm sure you'd find with very little effort any number of disobliging references to The Evil Demoness Helen Clark over my signature - a good number of them not worthy of the Miss Manners seal of approval.
I would, however, be rather surprised (and properly ashamed) if I ever went so far over the top as to suggest murdering Clark would be a good idea. I imagine Russell would have a zero tolerance for such commentary on PAS.
Look, I could also draw up a long list of comments where I've made it clear that IMHO the Police's handling of this case has been less than impressive, and there are many politicians and media folks who should STFU and stop throwing around terms like 'terrorist' with gay abandon. Don't think we disagree there, at all.
However, that doesn't mean I'm buying into the ridiculous meme that this was just some racist, Bush-fellating plot to put the frighteners up some uppity nig-nogs and tree-huggers either.
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