Posts by Rich of Observationz
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Hard News: Fact and fantasy, in reply to Matthew Poole,
why don't we just stop exporting logs and start exporting wood products
Mostly because we'd be competing with much lower wage (and low environmental standards - see pulp mills) manufacturing nations, and would have to either reduce wages or subsidise exports. (Unless we can convince the rest of the developed world to introduce wage and condition linked tariffs, and tolerate paying $2k for a new iPhone).
The other paths would be increased automation, which isn't that practical with something like wood processing, or producing high value luxury products. Not out of radiata, I suspect?
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I know of no change to our environmental regulations under the current government that would make it easier for, for example, our agricultural sector to be more polluting of lowland waterways
Besides abolishing democracy in Canterbury specifically to give farmers a free run contrary to the will of the voters?
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Hard News: The Velvet Underground Etc., in reply to Grant McDougall,
I did not know that. Though if one believes in accountancy, there's the opportunity cost of not closing down and renting the place to Starbucks.
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Hard News: The Velvet Underground Etc., in reply to Graham Dunster,
I don't think they're making a fortune. Think of the amount of cash that's tied up in stock, increasingly expensive Cuba Street space (with chain stores creeping up the street, landlords have been pushing rents up).
I'd say $20 for an LP is a reasonable price for keeping the ability to browse records in a store going? If you spend an hour in a store and buy five records at twice the internet price, think of it as $50 for a more entertaining experience that sitting at a keyboard.
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Field Theory: The Force will be with…, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
what ended "the golden era of early-1970s personal filmmaking" was a metric fuckton of really shitty, self-indulgent film-making nobody wanted to see.
The Danish went the other way with Dogme and let the "stripped-down" concept influence their whole culture.
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Hard News: Triangulated by Fools, in reply to Keir Leslie,
So I went and looked at this horrible site, expecting recipes to cook middle class children and the like. All it had was:
A party finds its voice
A discussion of how changes to Labour's constitution will now involve ordinary members in policy development.NRT: More dictatorship from Brownlee From No Right Turn, a piece of Brownlee's threats to override the democratically elected Christchurch council's plans with his own.
Democracy is not the problem
An article on how the Green party and other movements manage fine in a system where leaders have to get re-elected.My take from this is that the writers and associates are pretty keen on democracy.
Of course the comments can be a bit intemperate, but that's because the site is a honeypot for tory trolls of every kind, and people respond robustly, as one might expect.
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I've never watched any of the films all the way through. Or the Lord of the Ringpieces, etc. Can't stand prolix epics.
My sole cultural exposure was to Paul Whitehouse or someone on R4 discussing (in the course of stand-up) why, when building the fully impregnable death star thingy, they had to leave a little entranceway to a tunnel that Luke Skyshafter or somebody could fly up and blow the fucker up, Really.
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The other problem is that it's not uncommon for the mentally ill to use the courts as a venue.
Typically it starts with losing a custody case and progresses to endless vexatious litigation, often conducted in Latin and involving unusual legal concepts - for instance: refusing to register ones car because Hobson had his toes crossed while signing the Treaty. (The US equivalent is to refuse to pay tax because Texas isn't legally a state).
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Hard News: Triangulated by Fools, in reply to Russell Brown,
...
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Hard News: Triangulated by Fools, in reply to George Darroch,
The trouble with bringing in outsiders is that politics is a skill that needs to be learned. Many outsiders who've succeeded in another field don't have the wish to do the hard yards as a party activist / backbencher / spokesman before aspiring to leadership. They thus tend to rise rapidly to the point where they fail.
(This happens a lot in the UK, where it's easy for governments to co-opt ministers via the Lords. These people have pretty much all had either short disastrous careers or extended disastrous careers - since they can't be unelected, they often linger until death or serious criminal conviction removes them).