Posts by davidamstalden
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Sorry, now that I've posted my thoughts I think I came across as a bit of a precious git. I really didn't mean to post a lecture.
My point really was that sometimes it's easy to forget about the forest when you're counting trees.
Or: "It takes ten people with their feet on the ground to support one person with their head in the clouds."
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I've just got home from the pub, (where I've been working), and after skimming through the comments here I really just had to chip in my 3 cents worth. Hope you don't mind.
I spend my nights getting people pissed and making sure they have a good time. Occasionally I'll have to break up a fight, (2 tonight), but it's usually nothing serious. It's not that sort of pub. My customers are plumbers and accountants, labourers and managers, but they're all pretty similar people. Just ordinary folks with the normal sort of problems and gripes, which I'll listen to and sympathise with. I'll hear a lot of casual racism, (from all sides), and if politics or religion are ever brought up it's usually with the general condemnation that neatly captures all the main culprits in a net of equal disdain.
Which really brings me to my point, (if you've managed to read this far). The comments on this blog seem to echo the current political debate in New Zealand, in that there is such a disconnect between the reasoning and arguments put forth at the highest levels, and what really matters to the people on the street.
Now, I really don't want to come across as some sort of anti-intilektual wanker dismissing what he can't be bothered to understand. I enjoy reading this blog, and the discourse that blazes back and forth in the comments section. I'll often end up learning something useful and it's always good for a laugh. But I have to tell you, I wish there was some way to connect what I read with the people I mix with every day.
Seriously, Ayn Rind? Lindsey Perigo? Marxist running dogs vs corporate blitzkriegs? It all has as much relevance to my customers as...well....something with very little relevance. The anti-smacking bill? Seriously, no-one gives a damn, because we still smack our sons on the back of the head when they forget to say please, (and they still laugh when we do it). Carbon trading? Sure, why not come up with another way that finance counsellors can steal our parents' life savings. John Key's a smug multi-millionaire? We already knew that. And Helen Clark's a passionless intellectual autocrat? We got that one a while ago, and we don't care.
I'm just saying, A lot of the debate I've been hearing, and reading, this year just doesn't seem to resonate with the actuality I see every day.
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Vote National: It's a Lucky Dip!
Yay!
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On the topic of National policy releases, their broadcasting policy seems about as substantial and well thought out as their Kiwisaver policy, with Shane Arden first saying that small businesses will be exempt from contributions then reversing his comments the next day.
Seriously, it's getting beyond a joke. I'm getting quite angry with National. It's one thing to drip feed policy, but what policy we're getting just seems to be a mess, confused and undefined.
4 months out from the election, and we don't even know who the National candidate will be in our electorate. Seriously, WTF?
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In this time of the print media's concern about their readership slipping away to the internets it seems they've hit upon a winning strategy.
Offer less substance, less analysis, less local news, and outsource the perception of accuracy and due diligence in their reporting for the sake of short term cost-cutting.
Brilliance.
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Reconsider
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Grant
Do you agree or remain silent about every decision that gets made?
Of course not, but if the overwhelming mass of opinion is against my position, then that at least makes me pause to consider whether my conclusions are the right ones.
I wonder, has that ever happened to you?
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Grant
There's a simple way to solve this. How do you feel about Democracy?If there was a referendum held tomorrow in which Kiwis were asked if they preferred to maintain the status quo on the availability of abortions or if they should be much harder to obtain which way do you think the outcome would go?
Would you have a problem with that?
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Grant, you're using some pretty conveniently twisted logic there.
You say: 'How is the fact that a baby can die evidence against the fact that a baby is alive and human!?!?' But the argument was that there is no way to actually keep these embryos alive outside of the womb. Completely different.
You say: 'Is consciousness a pre-requisite for being human?' Maybe not, but a lack of conciousness doesn't necessarily make you human either. What's your point?
You say: 'How is the ability to die evidence against humanity?' You know that wasn't the point being made.
You say: 'My position is simple...' You got that right, at least. What a shame we don't live in a simple world.
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I agree, New Zealand could do much more for it's children and mothers. Unfortunately it seems that if you are a solo mother the very same people who were willing to go to extreme lengths to deny your choice of an early abortion are the very same people who believe that the DPB is an attack on the 'Family'. Oh the irony.