Posts by Tom Semmens
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I don't for one minute think DPF is to busy to moderate his blog - it's to him what a souped up Legacy is to a boy from Howick. he keeps a close eye on it.
The bottom line is he is happy to get other people to say what he clearly to smart to say himself.
And that is where he is dishonest and I/S is not.
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I fully support NRT's decision to turn of comments. The usual suspects were starting to show up and attempt to render any discussion meaningless with their infantile carry-ons - a deliberate tactic I suspect. Blogging is indeed a two way street - and one side of the street is the responsibility of posters to behave like adults.
And at least Idiot/Savant position has the virtue of honesty, unlike (to me) the insufferably sanctimonious David Farrar, who posts up carefully selected pieces of dog whistling then pious pretends to be above it all when his slavering pack of Manichean dogs show up to caper in front of their master.
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I don't read Jim Hopkins for the simple reason his prose style is practically unreadable.
The most depressing message you get from all these outraged spokespeople for the middle class is the "us" and "them" approach they adopt. I heard some women on the radio saying she was sick of child abuse being called our problem, since it is clearly a Maori problem. I never knew Maori were not a subset of us all. And never mind the minefield of imposing proscriptive and punitive solutions on a group still suffering the after effects of colonisation. Does Michael Laws actually want John Howard's heavy handed cultural imperialism? The only person who said anything sensible was Hone Harawira, and I was much stuck by his statement - "First of all, Maori MPs have to own this. Never mind pointing the bone at anyone else, and never mind the platitudes." I only differ in saying we ALL have to own this. Child abuse is one of those issues that requires all of us to reject violence against children and all of us to get off our chuff's and report where we see it happening and confront it the supermarket and shopping mall where we see it being committed.
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"...I've got a 40oz of Bombay Sapphire riding on National losing the next election :)..."
I think that is such a negative FPP thing to say! National won't lose, they'll just be unable to form a government. Its a fine distinction, but its an MMP one.
Mind you, if National can't form a government next election at least the right wing bloggers will fall silent. They'll be to busy moving to Aussie, or inciting a military coup, or simply retreating to the bath with a 40oz bottle of Bombay Sapphire and a stanley knife.
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This is turning into a nightmare, slow burner issue for National that will be a test of their political management. So far, their tactics of political doublethink have worked. It will be interesting to see if the wheels start to fall off....
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The underlying message from Family First is of an entire society to lazy to to be bothered to think beyond reflexive violence and to self-righteous to look in the mirror. A peculiar provincial narrow mindedness seems to be a hallmark of our society, and it just depresses me.
My school had a "discipline master" who displayed a grotesque level of pleasure in caning. The rumour was he wanted to cane his way alphabetically through the junior school - just a rumour, but given his hair trigger temper and the delight with which he resorted to the cane, one wonders. Of course caning wasn't as indiscriminate as the school authorities would have led us to believe. Like all institutional violence, it was a weapon of class war and repression against the poor kids, the ones from the rougher parts of town - the "troublemakers." I observed and worked that out at the tender age of 13 that the only people who feared corporal punishment and when punished regarded it as unfair were the middle class kids - who were seldom caned anyway. The troublemakers never complained it was unfair - they had already got used to being shit on.
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"The last time I was in London, it seemed like many people just loved a light dusting of the white stuff ..."
Its quite insane over there, isn't it?
I was quite astonished. I'd hate to think what they would make of it in Levin. -
Craig Ranapia come across on these forums as an unpleasant bully. Sorry to make it a personal observation, but there it is.
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I wonder how the Listener's circulation is going just at the moment. Using my sure-fire circulation monitor (the number of copies left on the shelf on a Friday in my local Whitcoulls) the Listener seems in serious decline.
Pamela Stirling's apparent desire to take the Listener from the teacher's staff room to the Clevedon drawing room seems to be failing miserably.
I Listener was a heroic voice in the wilderness during the height of the madness of the Rogernomes. How ironic it should succumb now.
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"...openly discusses integration of Alternative Medicine/Therapy with mainstream health"
There is no such thing as alternative medicine, there is medicine that works and medicine that doesn't. If it works, it incorporated in medicine. If it doesn't, its called quackery, and Alison Rowe has some for you to buy. Unlabelled.