Posts by James
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do you also blame John Key when it rains?
Actually Craig, until you mentioned it, I hadn't thought to blame JK for anything. As a smart politician, he gratefully took the opportunity offered him.
But now that you have mentioned it, yes, it would been rather prime-minister-in-waiting of him to change the subject back to whether it will ever rain in Australia again, and what his country should be doing about it ...
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I've been horrified by news coverage of APEC
Can't agree more. It seems at least marginally interesting that the US and Australia failed in their attempt to pull APEC countries out of working within the UN/Kyoto system. Where is that in any New Zealand commentary? Morning Report chose instead to give John Key a chance to create a new mini (sterial) scandal. Wouldn't his opinion on the slow collapse of Australia's attempt to ignore global warming be of at least passing political interest?
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Out of curiosity - any advice on where best to buy a Mac at the moment?
The websites apple.co.nz and apple.com seem to have a slight ... lag on the exchange rates:
apple.co.nz 20" iMac, standard specs: NZ $ 2,399 + GSTApple.com 20" iMac, same specs: US$1,499 + sales tax
which at an exchange rate of 80c, is about NZ$2,000 + tax.
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re the Listener ... isn't the point really that it is no longer a 'left-leaning' magazine?
What rankles *me* is that the Listener has never run an editorial announcing its new position on the political spectrum. The articles are much easier to read when you realise where they're now coming from.
I far prefer reading the Economist. I don't share its political views, but I enjoy the way it is forthright about them.
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Encouraging tourists to trample on the mana of the local people
Hmm, didn't express myself well enough then. No, I'm not trying to defend that particular practice. I was trying to respond to someone mispresenting me as saying that working there would be morally improving for the locals. All I claim is that paid work tends (many other things being equal) to make it easier to be happy, well-adjusted people.
We all know that ain't always true - miners aren't often lovely people either - but creating jobs, or creating the means for jobs (eg land) would be a much better policy than sending in the AFP if Howard actually wanted to improve the Aboriginal lot. Which he clearly doesn't.
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So james are you saying that the suburban oasis that Che describes as in: "the place is a complete disconnect from the reality of the deep desert" should dictate social norms to people that live in the desert 100 meters from that reality.
As others in this thread have pointed out better than me, viable export industries are hard to create in the outback. If it's an irrigated oasis that pulls in the punters, so be it.
What it is matters less than who owns it and who makes the money out of it.
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I don't see how walking in and out of that to work each day, would resolve sexual abuse anyway.
Work creates wealth, and a sense of purpose, and of a better future. Which creates communities. Who set and enforce norms. By themselves.
Yes, abuse - of all sorts - still exists in rich communities, but there's less of it as long as the community spirit can flourish.
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Well, at least it's consistent with the Australian attitude to the Pacific - send in the boys to sort it out.
Putting a teacher and a police barracks into each community isn't the same as development. How about the really hard task, finding a way to link rural & indigenous people into the world economy?
When Australia figures out a development policy for the outback, then it may earn the right to help in the Pacific.
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Give the kids' votes to their parents!
Idea from rom Belgium , translation by Google:
By depriving the children of the voting rights, the adult vote for all encourages the politicians to grant less weight to the interests of the children than to those of the voters. The best means of guaranteeing than a taking into equitable account of the interests of the children - their to grant the voting rights - runs up however against the fact that a child does not have necessary intellectual competences to exert his voting rights. As an incapacity of exercise of a right does not imply however necessarily the loss of this right, I endeavour to determine if the democratic principles on which are based the Western policy systems do not require to grant to the child voting rights which would be exerted by its legal representatives.
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Overall, isn't this a positive endorsement of New Zealand institutions? Our privatisations weren't that different from 1990's Russia - they even had some people in common. But they were restrained enough by our courts and democratic processes that very few succeeded on the scale of Fay & Richwhite.
The current settlement is a nice reminder of how close to the abyss we actually were...