Posts by Chris Waugh
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Capture: Two Tales of a City, in reply to Gudrun Gisela,
Keep Out! Mainzeal.
Does that sign include the slogan "Building Certainty"? Hardly seems appropriate given the recent news.
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Cousins checking out the fish.
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Capture: Art On The Street, in reply to Lilith __,
Thanks, though I think I should warn you she has quite a fiery temper, too...
And I'm told that when I was out setting off the New Year morning fireworks - just to make sure Nian gets the message - that she was bouncing up and down, hands in the air, shouting "Yeah! Yeah!" with the roar of the crackers. When my wife asked her if the fireworks were scary, she said "Scary!". If only she'd taken a video of that.
ETA: Very interesting wall. I'd definitely not be brave enough to attempt that kind of art until well after the shooting has finally stopped.
And this morning's fireworks. I'm very happy with my new phone. No way I could've done that with my crappy old Nokia.
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Capture: Someone, Somewhere, In Summertime, in reply to Nora Leggs,
So the rumours I heard about the lack of yangge were wrong. They came nearby this evening.
And the drummers.
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Capture: Someone, Somewhere, In Summertime, in reply to Nora Leggs,
Don't know if there'll be any opera, and I haven't heard the village yangge troupe yet, although I did hear somebody comment that there won't be any yangge this year. But I'll try.
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Capture: Art On The Street, in reply to Gudrun Gisela,
Thanks. I agree wholeheartedly.
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Capture: Someone, Somewhere, In Summertime, in reply to Nora Leggs,
one of the fireworks took off horizontally
Ouch! I’ve had a few run-ins with dodgy fireworks myself, including small bombs shooting along the ground instead of up in the air. There was one that fell right next to my hand and exploded – fortunately only a cut that healed pretty quickly. Then last year one landed on the bonnet of my car then threatened to crawl into the engine past the wipers, but fortunately bounced out and fell on the ground. It’s good that it’s mandatory to carry a fire extinguisher in your car here, but I’d rather not have to use mine. This year I decided the calls online to set off less fireworks this year for the sake of the air quality – inspired by January’s severe air pollution crisis – were a good idea, so I’m cutting down the amount I blow up this year. By the sounds of it, nobody else in our village is cooperating, though.
Here’s our village opera stage – could use a little paint and bigger 福 characters, I reckon.
The eagle doing his duty. It's a bit hazy already, but I suspect that's half natural haze and half from coal heating stoves and vehicle exhaust. We'll see what the firework smoke does to the air tomorrow...
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I read about Chinese New Year celebrations planned in Auckland - anybody going? I'm getting kinda curious about how it's celebrated in mid-summer where fireworks are banned for ordinary people.... It'd be nice to not have to worry about the glue freezing before you can get the couplets up, though.
Got the couplets up with only one small patch freezing too quickly, though. A few years back we had to retreat inside and wait for the sun to finally reach the last door post.
And perhaps one for the cool cars thread...
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And happy Snake Year, everybody.
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Interesting. Until yesterday I thought parliament should have 5 year terms for all the usual reasons of giving a new government time to settle in and properly develop and implement policy and programmes. But I think this thread has at least started to persuade me that shorter terms are better. Graeme and Ben, thank you, you have argued most thought-provokingly.
“efficiency", something that it often competes poorly on against authoritarian systems.
Authoritarian systems can be efficient when they want to be, but they can be just as hopelessly inefficient as democracies. And there is the problem of not being able to vote out governments who push bad policy. For example, it took Beijing's streets to get thoroughly clogged and vehicle exhaust to become the #1 source of Beijing's air pollution before the Beijing city government realised that encouraging people to buy cars as a way to stimulate the economy was not, perhaps, the smartest idea they'd ever had. And it took several more years before they did anything to discourage car ownership. It took winning the right to host the Olympics to spur development of the subway system, and that has been just as slow as anywhere else.
Anyways, I'm now thinking that if there is a problem with NZ's system of government, it is, as Chris Harris (welcome) points out, the concentration of power in the Beehive. For proof, see the current government and Canterbury, or the troubles Auckland is having getting a proper rail system built like any real city. I don't think NZ has the population base to revive the provinces and go federal like Canada or Australia, but I do think a lot more power needs to be devolved to the local level and tighter limits on central government's or parliament's ability to interfere in local affairs need to be imposed.
Otherwise, I would say the real problems are not in the comparatively short term of parliament, but in the political culture. We need far more of our parties and politicians to be pushing long term policies based on the realities of the future issues we face and strategic visions of where we want our nation to be going. I don't see any of that in Act or National or Winston First, and far from enough in the others.
