Posts by Rich of Observationz
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Southerly: Gerry Brownlee: “I Like To…, in reply to Steve Barnes,
You could lend them to Whale Oil when they yank his firearms license.
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Hard News: Calling the race before it's over, in reply to BlairMacca,
Part of that isn't apathy, it's the way registration works on a residence basis.
Currently, voters get chased when they move house, or in regular update campaigns. So once in the system, people tend to stay in it, but at the start, it can take a few years to get locked in (especially if you move often as many 18-21yr olds will).
A solution would be a system where an entitlement database (based on birth and immigration data) is maintained, and anyone can vote either in the traditional way or by showing ID that can be validated.
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Hard News: Why did Stephen die?, in reply to Russell Brown,
I guess they'll need to retrain the dogs. That could be hard.
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Hard News: Why did Stephen die?, in reply to Jeremy Andrew,
I'd imagine that depends on the legal status of the bylaw, the policies of council and police (whether the matter's considered an area where council staff take responsibility for enforcement) and the attitude of individual police.
They certainly enforce drinking in public laws.
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And just as an example of how cops get roped in for more social control, here's Auckland Council considering a smoking ban in beaches and parks.
Sure, it might stop a few from smoking and make things fractionally more pleasant for people who find themselves downwind of a smoker and don't want to move.
But it also means cops being tasked to go and hunt out recalcitrant smokers, and a new sub-group of people getting a negative view of the police. So they get less help, get shunned by more people, and become more isolated and insular.
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Hard News: Crossing the line into idle bigotry, in reply to Angus Robertson,
We've sent live sheep to suffer slowly, in an elongated killing process
I think it's important to differentiate here between Sunni Muslims, who stone the sheep to death with balls of hardened cheese, and Shia Muslims, who ignite the beasts after applying a gasoline enema. Some consider the latter to be more humane.
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Hard News: Crossing the line into idle bigotry, in reply to tussock,
I'm not sure what you're on here, but everywhere I've been in Scotland people wear the same clothes as other Northern Europeans. Also, I'm fairly sure that it's mandatory to wear pants on offshore oil rigs for elf and safety reasons.
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Up Front: Or It's Who We're Drinking With..., in reply to Kumara Republic,
...desperate need to find a replacement for Imperial dominance
I wondered why I had this occasionally craving to get off my face. Now I know. It's a substitute for mustard-gassing Kurdish tribesman, or other baby-bayonetting type activities.
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it's us against the baddies, and the baddies include everyone who enjoys pot
Or doesn't wear a cycle helmet, has a loud car, drinks in public, is young, is brown, is conspicuously outside the mainstream, etc.
So all these people, and when you union them all together, it's a big group, are distrustful and non-accepting of the police. And the police become this closed clique, ostracised to some degree by most of the people they might socialise with, and susceptible to a laager mentality.
The root cause, in my view, is society using coercive solutions for every minor (or major) gripe with the way its members behave.
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a patriarchal tribal culture
Encouraged at various times by the British and the Americans (why we have a Khyber Pass Rd), who found a culture where bribing the chiefs and mullahs with cash, guns and boys was a highly convenient way to forward their geopolitical goals.