Posts by robbery
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Most never recorded but, damn, they could play.
how bout a thread on the lost albums. the bands that had a great album in them but never finished it.
I'll start the ball rolling
Beat Rhythm Fashion (recently attended to posthumously) -
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Its weird talking about great nz albums when there really are very few that attain the status of both "great" and "album" in the same way that radiohead's "the bends" and stone roses first album did that. ie a collection of songs, no duds and the result is greater than the sum of its parts.
New Zealand excels in great eps as has been noted.
The first snapper ep, straightjacket fits first, JPSE flex ep, possibly better than any of their subsequent albums, as a collection of songs that just work together.
The reason for this is that it takes a lot of time and effort to write enough songs to cull out a collection of 10 that just work together. In NZ it was such a hard road to get the resources together to make that first long player slab that the band were lucky just to cross the finish line, let along get an independent set of ears to access and produce the works. Bands had to be singlemindedly determined to push the project through.There are a couple of very important albums that really were ground breaking though.
Blam blam blams "luxury length" and Screaming mee mees "if this is paradise.." albums. Its hard to explain how important these albums were in the modern climate of accessible recording and manufacturing technology.Prior to their recording and release it was a near impossible vision for a band to make an album, hell a 7" single was a hard slog as attested by the number of great bands that never recorded and released anything, let alone some of those great bands who's classic album of live material never made it to a classic album of recorded stuff. Don't get me wrong, there were many many bands who had a full cache of the goods, but the obstacles to getting it out there were apparently too much.
And then there were these 2 albums, which proved that it could be done, and done really well. The songs were good, product was pretty damn good for the time, and packaged and presented exceptionally.
Propeller sowed NZ that great nz albums were possible, and if you didn't know that the cost almost killed the company and the damn bands split soon after their completion and release the these two albums were an inspiration to all kiwi artists, including me. -
just a personal favour (using one's workplace resources, possibly in a manner that might be met with mild disapproval by one's superiors) in return for a personal favour.
(ricky gervais voice) how is a cop finding the guy accused of stealing something 'doin' a favour'
its their job.
you're just trying to wind ben up aren't you, ..... keep him going a little bit longer, -
Fair enough, I will take on the chin that my story may have come across as an attempt at warming hearts. It was actually intended as a piece of advice on how one can get help on petty crimes that the cops wouldn't usually have time for, with no morality attached.
ok, understood. rather than condoning the way your situation played out you were giving us pointers on how to make the flawed system work for us.
That I can deal with.on a similar note I've been reading a fair few posts on american blogs re police hard handeness.
overly violent arrests caught on film, excessive tazering etc.I've noticed a general slide into acceptance (not universal) of said tactics. People saying if a cop tells you to do something you do it without question etc. an endorsement of the police state ethic.
I guess this is easy enough to swallow if you were born into the period but if you grew up in a time when free speech and the right to use it was vigorously defended, and authority monitored and questioned to keep it straight, its a shock to the system, be it a slow creeping up on you shock.
Sometimes the easiest way to deal with the situation is to work around it with in the parameters known, and on an individual level that is probably the best way to deal with things cos one person can't change much unless they're gandi or someone, but .......
the revolutions got to start somewhere
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pay $2.50 and get the owners name (from the plate number)
Yup, that would be a good idea. That way you could talk to the person without even involving the cops.
That would be a bad idea in this case. if someone destroys your car and drives off they're not likely to be up for a heart to heart chat when you pop round to their place.
the whole point of cops is so that people don't take the law into their own hands. obviously thats not an option so much these days and the cops want to push some of their workload back onto the people.Ben, ........your story would have been more heartwarming if you'd walked into the police station, made your complaint and they took it seriously, and then you fixed his printer.
The way you told it it made it look like you doing the cop a favour was the reason he did his job. surely you can see the less heartwarming implications of the way the story came across, regardless of how you meant your story to impact on people.Your story taken in isolation isn't an issue, but compiled with many other police isues and my own personal experiences it starts to tip the scales (of justice) in the non favourable way.
and I agree I'm not up for teaching people the art of customer service, but it can be done, as has been the case in the libraries and also I note in the health system.
If mac donalds can do it then why not the cops. but feel free to burst the bubble of the Utopian dream of fairness and respect in the government service insustry..... pop -
Your anecdote really only tells us that the cops could catch the crims if they could be arsed, but they can't.
I think it does illustrate a problem in the police force and personal experience has bought out the same example, although I never fixed anyones printer so my case remained unattended to.
I got the same fob off attitude and the same "we're so hard done by we're not going to put any effort into our job till we get recognition for our over worked under paid status".
Its a mind set and a bad one to get into.
if you're around co workers that are continually complaining about their job and thus undermining the nature of what you're doing then thats contagious, and it makes for the situation we see in the police force today, that being one of fuck all results and this negative unhelpful vibe you get if you ever need them.It doesn't need to be like that, and it will take a serious shake up at managerial level to fix that.
I note that national libraries have dealt with their issues of "begrudging public servants" and I've had amazingly helpful results whenever I'm in a library looking for something difficult.
I take it this has come from an initiative at the top which requires employees to be helpful and cooperative to the client ie the person in the library reading books.
They're there to help as are police, and the sooner they get their minds around that and off the mindset their in the better it will be for people in the community.
Its a win win cos they'll start enjoying their job more and they'll get the respect they so desperately want from the community which they're not getting while their being pricks.I've been in a few other countries where the cops are really helpful (not america) and its a welcome change, not that they're their to give directions to lost tourists but it sure helps to make them be seen as part of a health community and not only there in times of trouble.
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I now have two gmail accounts (social and non-work business) which works well except that gmail doesn't allow me to login to both at once. I really don't see why anyone would use anything else.
because downloading via pop3 from their servers can be incredibly slow or stall. I some times have to forward mail with large attachments to my isp address to get it down to my computer.
Yahoo has taken to filtering much of my outgoing mail into spam filters. I've no idea how to unspam it but if its anything like xtra apparently it is going to be hard.if IPs don't fix this overzealous filtering then the bad internet people will win anyway in that in they'll make email unreliable and shut the whole thing down.
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it wasn't that long ago that common or garden variety criminals spent up to 18 months on remand awaiting their trials. A month is pretty good going, really.
its still too long. what exactly is it that the legal system is doing that requires so much time.
They can write a parking ticket out in 60 seconds, surely if they've got a case it doesn't take too long to write that down on a piece of paper.
you can get a hip replacement in less time... -
Sure, I have no problem with keeping an eye on them; very sensible. Armed raids and locking them up without trial for a month is another matter altogether, especially when only 5 at most of the 17 were making such threats.
as much as I think the core of the people involved in this stuff are idiots who deserve the full scrutiny of the law, what's the hold up. isn't swift justice part of the process. why 18 months till the cases can be heard.
if its clogged law courts then surely throw some more resources that way. There is no excuse for sitting people in jail without being charged. isn't the american Gtmo example reason enough to pull finger and make these things happen at a reasonable pace.Maybe the accused could get fair go to sort it for them. They've done wonders for slow mo car repairs and builders.