Posts by Tom Semmens
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Tom, I think you mean "ni!".
No. I think NEEP. Which means I probably am the only person who thinks "Neep!" when he sees the word shrubbery, since all the other sheep think "Ni!".Having shrubbery and hedgehog in the same sentence is inherently funny IMHO.
I also think I am the only person who on seeing Roger Douglas at the the ACT party conference immediately wondered if they were holding the thing at the Crossroads Shopping Mall.
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Shrubbery. Am I the only person who can't see the word "Shrubbery" without immediately thinking "Neep!"???
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The sort of local cronyism/exceptionalism being exhibited by the local ruling class in Hawkes Bay has always been present.
But when I was a lad, information wasn't controlled by the local caudillo's like it is now. Newspaper wise we had the old-school Labourish Napier Daily Telegraph and the voice of the farmers, the Hasting's Herald Tribune. They were tempered by a local ZB station that had local reporters and covered local news. Now the only source of local information the vile Hawkes bay today, a paper that now exists (in my view) purely as a vehicle for the fundalmentalist religious views of its editors.
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I got two for one as well! Can't complain about that.
As a born and bred Hawkes Boy (hell, my great great gandmother was Hawkes Bay born and bred) I'll tell you what the HB DHB row is all about: An insular, born-to-rule local squatocracy is immensely resentful of an outsider coming along and upsetting the crony applecart that is business as usual in many an isolated provincial town.
The extra twist of bitterness comes from an extraordinarily poisoned right wing exceptionalism that has seeped into every nook and cranny of this particular sleepy hollow, if you don't believe me just check the editorials in the back issues of Hawkes Bay Today.
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I still remember the day it dawned on me EMACS was a recursive acronym.
P.S. Mr. brown - don't tell people where the exchanges are! they don't have signs on them for a reason.... What if Te Qaeda were reading??? -
"...Also, it looks like John Banks has actually done something..."
I was stunned at that as well! I just hope he gets his wife to start the car for him in the morning from now on. -
I thought Paul Henry's questions were petty and ridiculous. When he tried the old "children with cancer" type question I thought to myself, that would be funny from Ricky Gervais but from a “journalist” it was just sad.
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I thought John Key looked tired on breakfast T.V. this morning. And - though I can't believe I am saying this - the petty, hectoring and patronising style of Paul Henry during the interview made me feel sorry for Mr.Key. If John Key had have reached through the monitor and punched Paul Henry on the nose I am sure a mighty cheer would have gone up throughout the length and breadth of the land.
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One of the leaders of Bomber Command in World War II once remarked that any operation that that saw its participants win a V.C. was by its very nature unfit to become routine. I don't think we lack checks and balances. I just think we routinely expect our health professionals to win V.C's.
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It seems to me that our health sector struggles but just about keeps up - and often on a lot less $$ than you would expect given the excellence of the care and service. The only exception to this seems to be in the area of mental health, which I get the impression is treated as an absolute Cinderella. And I can't wondering if the inability of those with a mental illness, which is still kind of a taboo in our society, to fight for themselves means that that wheel is never squeaky enough to get any oil. I would like to pass on my condolences to Mr. Higgins' family and partner.
The Herald's behaviour over this "correction" issue is an abrogation of its basic journalistic role - not just because senior APN management may or may not have interfered. The paper has refused to report on the story in its own pages, effectively censoring itself and in turn denying one million plus New Zealanders who have the Herald as their main paper the chance to decide for themselves on the importance or otherwise of this issue. Given the self-serving self censorship on this issue, the paper's apparent inflating by over 300% the numbers who attended the anti-EFA march on Saturday, as part of their childish anti-EFA campaign as its part in defending freedom of speech makes for hypocrisy of a truly heroic order. And did anyone else think the story had - yet again - nasty RWNJ undertones (..."bound and gagged like Benson-Pope...")? And Ralston had yet another economically illiterate rant, and it goes on and on.