Posts by Danielle
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Hard News: 2014: The Meth Election, in reply to Jake Starrow,
You can edit within fifteen minutes of posting by clicking the edit button at the bottom of your post. (You need to hover your mouse down there for it to become apparent.)
-
Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,
you need to have an NZ-citizen parent as well.
Or a permanent-resident parent.
-
Heh. I got "take a deep breath", "in a tiz", and the implication that I needed to calm down! It's the sexist response trifecta!
-
Hard News: 2014: The Meth Election, in reply to Jake Starrow,
But calling the National government "psychopaths" isn't actually vitriol directed at YOU. (Unless you're Jason Ede, finally out of hiding! That would be awesome.) So it seems a bit excessive to get all huffy about that descriptor, no matter how ill-advised it is. I mean, I could write your rebuttal for you ("I don't think using mental health slurs is an appropriate way to describe the actions of the National government; on the contrary, they have been completely justified in all of their actions and here is why I think so"), but, well, I *don't* think they're justified. I think they're corrupt and awful. So the making of the argument is on YOU, paid-up member of the John Key Fan Club. Have at it!
-
Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I was previously in the position of being on my iwi register but not being a NZ citizen. And as a citizen by descent I needed to have my children in New Zealand or they would have had no NZ citizenship despite also being on the iwi register. It's an odd one, that.
-
Hard News: 2014: The Meth Election, in reply to Jake Starrow,
"Sock puppeteer" isn't an example of "vitriol": it's just a description of what you were doing, which is coming back under another name and pretending you were someone else with the same opinions. That's an example of the problem: you don't seem to be very good at making your points without almost immediately going into the drama-flounce death spiral. "YOU GUYS ARE MEAN AND YOU SUCK!" isn't actually an argument, y'know?
-
Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,
Maybe you think the permanent resident should be able to vote too?
Heh. It just occurred to me that I *did* lose my right to vote when I was away, because I was a permanent resident until my late 20s, and only got my NZ citizenship by descent a few months before my return. (That explains why I can't remember how I voted in 1999: I *couldn't* vote in 1999.) Your last paragraph describes me almost exactly!
To be honest I don't really understand why citizenship (and turning up to vote somewhere) shouldn't be the bright line between voting and not voting from overseas: it's almost impossible to work out who's truly invested in NZ's future, and moreover it's actually not up to us to judge WHY people are voting, is it? Plenty of people within the country use the franchise in ways we might think are ill-considered, but that's up to them.
-
Your connection to your home is not just a function of your presence in it.
Exactly.
I left for four years and my visits back were fleeting, but that didn't mean I wasn't invested in my country. I would have been really peeved to have my voting rights removed.
-
Up Front: Oh, God, in reply to Stephen R,
Some of my favourite music on earth is explicitly Christian or gospel-influenced. I find it beautiful and comforting in a humanist way, if that makes sense? That we could make this art for ourselves, because we're frightened, or joyous, or thoughtful.
It's still not a reason to have Bible in Schools be a thing in state education, of course, but it's not like I'm completely hostile to all religious feeling.
-
Rosemary, I've been posting here under the same name since 2006. What's with the scare quotes?
How people do or do not engage with Christianesque* religious festivals in their own time is actually irrelevant to the argument at hand, which is whether *primary school children*, *in state funded schools*, should be taught religious dogma as truth by *non-qualified individuals* on a weekly opt-out basis. I don't think they should.
*I celebrate Christmas as a family and food festival rather than a religious one. We like lights! We like giving each other presents! We like elaborate meals! We've taken the fun parts and left the other stuff alone, and that's fine for us and makes us happy. Anyone who got up in my grill about my consumerism or non-church attendance would be given... rather short shrift, because seriously, WTF with the weird judgeypants concern trolling? How is it any of your damn business?