Posts by B Jones
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Hard News: Hope and Wire, in reply to Russell Brown,
a community lawyer making sacrifices to help people post-earthquakes
Like the character Toni Bernette in Treme? She seems to be there to drive the plot with connections to various scandals, but her relationships with her husband (played by John Goodman) and later the detective Terry Colson are something special to watch.
I'll be watching Hope and Wire as a Treme fan - will be interesting to see how it measures up.
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I wanted to go to Pickle for my last birthday, but they closed shortly beforehand for earthquake strengthening, and haven't reopened. Like I said before, there are a lot of good places in Wellington that have shut down in the last few years.
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There are nice dinners to be had in Wellington, but many of the big deal places of five to ten years ago have disappeared. I think Logan Brown and the White House are all that's left standing, although there may be new ones I haven't heard of yet. We've a handful of cheap and cheerful places that have branched out like Chow and Siem Reap, with more than one location. I suspect Blair and Allen Sts have seen better days and are more about hoovering up Friday night drinkers than providing serious eats now.
Restaurants on Tinakori Rd come and go - there's currently a nice Italian one called Cosa Nostra - the waitstaff were half drunk when I was there, but it was still a good night with delicious steak. I've had lovely Vietnamese salad at Restaurant 88 on Tory St.
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Map and a dart, I reckon.
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Can we have some Wellington representation here? What I need is a scientist to invent a time machine so I can visit my favourite restaurants that are no longer in business. I can still taste the beef rendang at Satay Malaysia, the incredible half chicken I once ate for my birthday at Mondo Cucina, a tarte a l'orange at the Provencale restaurant in Oriental Bay, and this incredible peach thing I had at Two Rooms. Part of the savour was not being able to afford such things very often (except for beef rendang, that was something ridiculous like $14).
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Up Front: Dropping the A-Bomb, in reply to Lilith __,
I hate to think what would happen if carers were conscripted.
This is a thread about abortion. Unwilling parents are conscripts too, and there are some horrible outcomes when that goes wrong. At least if you spread it around the population, the caring work and the learning people gain from the caring work wouldn't be concentrated in a small number of people primarily of one gender.
But yes, if you were to seriously consider a policy like that you'd need buckets of supervision and a way you can channel people into tasks by aptitude. It's no simple task. Demand for carers will start to spike in the next twenty years or so - do we have the workforce to meet that demand, or the money to pay at a level to attract more people into that workforce? Not right now, we don't - we need to start thinking how to fix that. Getting good support for people who need help is an aging population issue as well as a disability one, and tweaking the criteria for allowing abortion isn't going to do anything to help with that.
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I think parents, especially mothers, are so immersed in the culture of whatever you do for your kids not being good enough that the thought of stretching even further is overwhelming. I think a better, more equitable solution than trying to limit abortion on disability grounds might be to have some kind of compulsory community service for everyone, helping or caring for people who need it. With a rapidly ageing population more likely to live long infirm lives, we might need to give that some serious thought.
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Up Front: Dropping the A-Bomb, in reply to Hilary Stace,
I don't think Danielle was suggesting that babies with unviable abnormalities should be aborted without reference to the parents' choice. That would contradict the whole ethos of being pro-choice.
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Up Front: Dropping the A-Bomb, in reply to Sacha,
There's a qualitative difference between obligations to pay taxes, obey the road code and so on, and bearing a child against your will - it's the difference between a social democracy and a totalitarian society. Perhaps I've got the wrong end of the stick but if anything this debate makes me more determined that nobody's reasons short of my own get to play a role in what I do in the reproductive department.
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Up Front: Dropping the A-Bomb, in reply to Sacha,
Are you familiar with the violinist analogy?
I really struggle with the idea that there's a group of people of any sort whose existence can place an obligation on an individual to carry a pregnancy to term. If we discovered the last male member of a unique ethnic group, would some woman be obliged to carry their child? I just don't think anyone who makes an argument like that has a proper sense of how personal and overwhelming it is to do that.