Posts by chris
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Polity: So who exactly placed conditions…, in reply to SteveH,
What if we’d had the “do you want to change?” referendum already and decided on change, and then the panel had presented these same four alternatives to choose from? There might have been rioting in the streets.
I see a similar line has been taken in this today’s Labour slamming Herald editorial:
This proposition became tiresome long ago. People cannot sensibly consider a change of this kind without knowing what the alternative would be.
We really must be a gormless bunch, if that dismissal continues to have legs. We know what the alternatives are. The Herald has been publishing pics of them everyday, I assume the anonymous vac who wrote that works for or is at least vaguely connected with the Herald. Is it unusual to expect this writer to at least be observant enough to have seen the alternatives? Is it unreasonable to expect that this writer be sufficiently equipped to make these kinds of hazardous conceptual leaps. the alternatives are very real, in your newspaper, on your website. Who pressed ‘publish’?
As for your example SteveH, assuming we didn’t have the alternatives, assuming we do hypothetically go back to before this began and in the first referendum ask “Should New Zealand change its flag?”
Then hypothetically we could also be back in a time where we could delay any of the proceedings, e.g. the appointment of any panels, the submission of any designs, the selection of any shortlist, the holding of any FCP meetings, until – and this is really the crux of the thing – UNTIL, we’ve decided if there is – to quote Russell – a “groundswell for change”
So yes we could venture back at 88mph and do all that without one iota of riot.
They’re just playing us for fools, the Herald appear to honestly believe that its readership are thick as porridge.
John Key had a twinkle in his eye when he did an about-face on Red Peak, offering to add it to the options if all other parties (except New Zealand First) agreed
A nine year old could disassemble these jazzy constructions, and fortunately that’s about my mental age, Why Labour and ‘not New Zealand First’? Why not ‘not New Zealand First’ and also ‘not Labour’? If ‘not New Zealand First’ and ‘not Labour’ as a possibility is anything beyond an arbitrary accord the PM refuses to make, then what’s with your headline?
Editorial: Little should lighten up on flag options
Who exactly holds the balance of power in this democracy?
Is the balance of power in New Zealand held in place by nothing more than a corrupt or inept media establishment towing the party line?
Please excuse all the phlegm Steve, most of it is not directed at you.
But one more time with feeling, because it’s awesome. :
This proposition became tiresome long ago. People cannot sensibly consider a change of this kind without knowing what the alternative would be. We probably would not have adopted MMP if the 1992 referendum had asked, do you want to change the electoral system?
quack.
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I’m not sure which thread to put this in, it’s a bit rugby but it’s also kind of flag:
There’s a reason why Richie McCaw, Conrad Smith and all these [All Blacks] have come out and said change the flag – everywhere they go in the world people wave their [own] flags. We don’t do that,” he said.
TPPA? Or perhaps we need a thread dedicated to the shit this guy talks…
He said the secrecy around negotiations was not something to be worried about, given that was how all Free Trade Agreements came about
Key used an example of selling a house worth $600,000 for $500,000 and telling the media.
“Are you really telling me you would go to the paper and say ‘for sale, one house – $600,000, wink-wink, nudge-nudge if you offer me $500,000 I’ll take it’?
“No one does that."
Auckland property has $1 reserve
Home with $1 reserve sells for $605,000Analogies? The real estate industry? I no longer have confidence that our Prime Minister understands how either of these things work. He’s unquestionably way behind at to the goings on in the Auckland Housing bubble. Are there writers who fashion this stuff for him to mindlessly regurgitate or is he coming up with it himself?
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Hard News: A better thing to believe in, in reply to Danielle,
I can’t quite agree with this, because my grandfather was one of the finite praisers
I can understand and respect that. There was a generation who lived through world war(s) and the great depression, life was tough, at times a brave face was all that many had, it was in a lot of ways a natural response hewn from the misery of the age, not isolated to this country I’m sure. It’s more the ongoing inheritance of this stoicness as a conditioned response, beyond the influence of comparable hardship, as a model of something essentially kiwi, through to the present age and on into the future that I’m alluding to – not so much who we inevitably are as something some of us became and never stopped being, quite possibly assisted by the timing of the advent of television, without much else in the way of reference or memory.
Further back, In our World War 1 mythology, for better or worse it was boisterous enthusiastic young men who queued up to fight the Kaiser. Having said that, as intermediaries, Johnno and Ben are all over each other, a teary John Campbell was embraced by the nation, so there have been and are an increasing number of visible alternatives models for the ‘blokes’. I’m sure that this penchant for stoicism is on the wain, and will one day lose its foothold in the provinces, but the mood of the old guard of that movement remains inextricably intertwined with that of the All Blacks.
Tangentially I was attempting to watch some Fred Dagg yesterday, and I couldn’t get passed the misogyny in almost every clip, while satirical in intent, I can see how it may have missed the mark completely and even how elements could be construed as positive reinforcement by certain demographics.
But yeah, recently my nephew trialed the Steiner kindergarten and seemed to enjoy it, but his dad who is of the rural/ rugby persuasion put his foot down “I don’t want him turning out like one of them”. I see rugby in his future. Just as Alec concluded “Whaddarrrryaaaaa!!!!”
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Hard News: A better thing to believe in, in reply to andin,
But thats just me
Trust me Andin it’s not just you. Like Russell and others here, sports played a significant role in my paternal bonding. I first played rugby for a season when I was 8, I had no idea what was going on, I knew I didn’t like it so I switched to soccer, playing it until I was 12. The shock didn’t set in until my parents told me that my grandparents had commented that I ran like a girl, as if that’s a bad thing. As much as I – a genderqueer – was down with running like a girl, their tone was a form of pressure to get hard. In retrospect the best thing I could have done at that point is announce that I’d prefer to take up ballet, but kids…
That year we moved abroad and I was forced to play rugby again, and of course I played rugby, I’m a New Zealander, I did okay, as with the soccer, I still hadn’t clocked on to the fact that if it was known that I could run like Forrest then I was always in danger of being picked for a team. So I hardened up. I was invariably sporting at least one bruise or sprig mark, but I was currying more of the type of praise Russell referred to.
Our team sucked, we lost every game but the very last of the season and I hated it,I hated it so much that not long after my 13th birthday, under a pile of bodies, I decided I’d had enough, I cried out in agony, was carried to a car, taken to the hospital, nodded and responded vaguely to the doctors and was exempted until the last game of the season when I was subbed on, scored a try, got run over, was subbed off and had a welt on my back till christmas. The next term – sevens season – having cottoned on to the fact that playing with restraint would keep me out of contention, I managed to cower on the sidelines with the exception of the one occasion when dad’s friend from NZ was visiting, I made an effort – rugby being our national religion and all – and was again selected.
When I started secondary school I again made the error of overdoing it on trial weekend, but I managed to work myself down into the F team by the end of the first week only to discover a bunch of likeminded souls. Our team was never permitted to play an actual match, we just turned up twice a week to earnestly practice our own form of rugby tainted comedy.
We moved back home when I was fourteen and more rugby was the name of the game, because you know, New Zealand, do the old man proud – and all that. When they drum into you “the bigger they are the harder they fall” they’re not exaggerating. Every winter weekend that year involved a long bath after the game and a Sunday basically immobilised. In response I just got angrier, I was no longer able to distinguish between being tackled to the ground, run over by sprigs, dived on, kicked in the ear and say punching someone in the face. It was all violence, 4 days a week. In my last rugby game I was sin binned for the first and second time of my rugby playing tenure though I have no recollection of exactly what for.
Since then, being a rugby spectator has always remained a point of connection with dad and others, but I can’t say my heart’s in it. Like Llew, while I was overseas rugby was one of those connections with home. Like Robyn I can’t fathom why anyone would voluntarily play the game. Based on my experience in and amongst this national celebration of brutal athleticism I found the Section 58 conflict ironic, though I understand that hardening up does entail degrees desensitisation. I’m not at all surprised that New Zealanders suffer such a high number of domestic violence incidents – bit of off-field biffo – we’ve all heard the gushing commentators. I’m also inclined to connect the violence of rugby with that other equally inane pastime, the celebrity charity boxing match. our country’s celebrities aren’t quite ruthless enough to raise money playing celebrity chess, which IMHO would be far more entertaining were it the go-to duel du jour. There would be some real cracker matches.
Topping the list, ACC paid out $56 million for rugby-related claims in 2011-2012,$64 million for rugby injuries in 2012-2013. 2014 ACC figures show new claims for head, neck and spinal injuries among 15-to-19-year-olds hurt while playing rugby and rugby league have risen from 2336 in July 2009 to nearly 3000 in June of that year. Which I’m sure all balances out to some degree given the popularity of the sport.
offering praise in the cautious way that men of his generation did, as if there was only a finite supply.
I think what most affects me about this line is that it’s not limited to Russell’s generation. I recognise in this the same experiences I had with my dad who was a kid in the sixties, and I’ve no doubt there are countless dads of my generation on the same terms – with many more to come. This sense of finiteness and whatever conditions conspire to foment it are one of the saddest features of our people and culture.
This is not to imply that rugby is the cause. in all likelihood it’s just another symptom, an outlet through the repression, an opportunity, unbound by alcohol for the kiwi male to momentarily unburden itself of the stigma of self expression and sound its distinctive call “you go son!”
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Up Front: Stand for... Something, in reply to Alfie,
That's righteous, thanks for posting it Alfie.
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Hard News: A better thing to believe in, in reply to Sacha,
It is, I’d never have guessed, I’ve been waiting for someone to ask what position he played.
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Hard News: A better thing to believe in, in reply to Alfie,
When you’re an All Black the whole country loves you; but when you’re an MP half the country hates you.
When you’re Richie McCaw, the whole country loves you, but when you’re Carlos Spencer, or Taine Randall or Sonny BIll Williams, or Stephen ‘Beaver’ Donald, or when you’re out of form, or when the team’s not winning, or when you get knocked out of the RWC after repeatedly gunning for a try instead of taking the drop goal, you might as well be Quade Cooper. Richie’s a genuine rugby great, I admire his playing style, his captaincy, and the fact that he’s a pilot. That last Auckland match was the first I’d watched since the 2011 RWC final, and I tuned in simply in honour of it being his last test on home soil, but he did make the above quote on the same day as he weighed in about his ferny flag preference, says a lot about the impenetrability of the bubble and the possibility of memory loss caused by head collisions.
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Hard News: Not yet standing upright, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
I read all of that - not helping Sophie ;)
As someone who's spent almost her entire life subjugated by a totalitarian regime, lured here by the promise of our great western democratic system, I'm still getting a similar result on every attempt to outline our process to change a flag - fits of laughter.
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Polity: So who exactly placed conditions…, in reply to Pete Sime,
That’s the beauty of STV,
If you’re selecting a rugby team.
When you’ve got two choices that are basically identical to anyone who is colour blind in that area of the spectrum, in a nation where 200,000 people suffer from colour deficiency, when the number signing a petition for inclusion of a fifth flag is less than 50% of the number in this nation who are sight impaired, when the demographic most engaged by the issue (children) aren’t even legally able to vote, when there’s a possibility that no one’s first choice will win and a high probability that many people’s third choice might, when we’re seriously proposing relegating the incumbent a minuscule weighting compared its potential usurpers, when the most likely outcome and only real upshot of this system will be a nation of semi-winners, when we’re here to learn who exactly placed conditions on a flag meeting…
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Polity: So who exactly placed conditions…, in reply to SteveH,
I hear you, and no offence intended SteveH, it’s certainly not personal. This process, this constant media barrage, our flim flam PM, the combined total emotional investment demanded, the waste of paper, time, school hours, Government sessions, fuel, electricity, news segments, crayons, felt tip pens and paint….