Posts by Tom Semmens

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  • Hard News: No Bills,

    "Ensure Aotearoa/New Zealand retains regulatory control of the dietary supplements industry and does not proceed with government plans for restrictive trans-Tasman regulation of dietary supplements."

    Wow, an annoyingly smug politically correct sentence (Aotearoa/New Zealand) that manages to also contain xenophobia (restrictive trans-Tasman), and a dissembling use of language (dietary supplements) within its broad walls.


    That, folks, is in one sentence why everyone finds the Greens, more than anything else, just plain irritating.

    Sevilla, Espana • Since Nov 2006 • 2217 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: No Bills,

    Yes - but there is a difference with being seen as being on the side of the people and being seen as an vacillating big ball of nothing, which is what Key is in danger of being seen with all his U-turns. A classic example of this is the headline in the Herald yesterday:

    "Key promises local body change, but won't say what"

    You can't tell me that headline wasn't chosen deliberately.

    Sevilla, Espana • Since Nov 2006 • 2217 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: No Bills,

    Danyl - No, what I am saying is the main T.V. media outlets in particular like to run their political stories with an underlying theme - "tired third term government" or "Brash's constant gaffes'" or - most relevant here - "John Key, the next big thing." I am not saying they create these thematic myths, but once they are in place its very difficult to shift the political narrative.

    I think there is a developing theme that Key will U turn at the whiff of a bad focus group.

    Sevilla, Espana • Since Nov 2006 • 2217 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: No Bills,

    "...Is it just me or does the Green's current goal seem to be to take down this Government in a sort of death by 1000 cuts approach?"

    No, its just the social engineering tail trying to wag the dog and in its arrogance pissing the entire country off.

    Sevilla, Espana • Since Nov 2006 • 2217 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: No Bills,

    National's constant U-turning (on the issue of new rules for press coverage in the house, on the Foreshore and Seabed) and Key's inability to take a policy position on anything is starting to cause that most fatal of political consequences - being taken as a joke.

    As for the Therapeutics Products and Medicines Bill, if it did anything at least removed any lingering doubt as to whether or not Christine Rankin is, to put it mildly, an eccentric crank.

    Sevilla, Espana • Since Nov 2006 • 2217 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Can somebody hook a brother…,

    The rot of warm, flat beer must be stopped.

    Sevilla, Espana • Since Nov 2006 • 2217 posts Report Reply

  • Speaker: I Lost My Arms in Bootcamp,

    Jonty, I would have agreed about school - but only 20 years ago. I was shocked to discover from my brother (a senior high school teacher) that sport is now a definite back-seater at schools these days. Forget about closing the tuck shop - get those spotty youths back onto to a muddy footy field on freezing July afternoons! Let them learn manhodd via the manly trophy of severely sprig-raked backs as they kill the ball on their own line and take it for the team!

    When I was in school, sport wasn't compulsory but to get out was a was a sternly frowned upon opt out activity, complete with a doctors note. The sports themselves had a severe hierarchy: If you were any good, you played rugby. If you were not good enough for any rugby position whatsoever, or you were an insipid pasty recent recent immigrant from the mother country, you were exiled to the howling wilderness of the soccer teams, albeit with a disgusted lip curl from the mainstream New Zealand rugby coaches. The school's quota of homicidal maniacs were armed with hockey sticks and sent off to wreck havoc in the local hockey comp with a minimum of oversight.

    Rugby league wasn't allowed - it was an expellable offense, suitable only for the brown lesser fortunates at the very worst of the state schools, whose foul, run down cloisters were home to all sorts of repellent multi-cultural and working class activities.

    In summer it was cricket, rowing, athletics and swimming in descending order of preference. But that was in the days when the spoil sport nannies of the teacher unions hadn't yet demolished the glorious salad days summer holidays of endless school-free weeks, so summer sports weren't much chop. Actually, getting rid of the long summer holiday was an act of careless cultural genocide that many educationalists will pay for with their lives in public show trails once the revolution comes.

    Sport should be compulsory again. It'll knock the flab from a generation, teach community to lazy teachers who currently feebly wave NCEA paperwork as a pathetic excuse not to engage in thankless hours of extra-curricular coaching and make us mighty again in the pantheons of international sport.

    Sevilla, Espana • Since Nov 2006 • 2217 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Just some links, really,

    It is an interesting story about the origin of the latte in a bowl, but really, the cultural synergy is so New Zealand that it seems inevitable that it would have happened - what else would you expect in the home of the world's best dairy products but BOWLS of milky, hot coffee? In good old N of Z, latte in a bowl just makes so much sense. We live in the land of butter, cream, milk and all that good stuff!!! Unless, of course, the price of bio-fuels means Fonterra exports everything to richer people than us and we have our own version of the 1943 Bengal famine.

    Sevilla, Espana • Since Nov 2006 • 2217 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Don't Panic,

    I don't know about all this stiff upper lip and stoicism being particularly British. The Spanish response to the 2004 Madrid bombings - 191 dead and 2050 wounded - was both reasoned and dignified and brave. I think that where you still have a functioning civil society with active participation then the empowerment of that gives courage to people. I don't want to particularly bash the United States, but its got to be said that for vast swaths of that country their democracy is a crock and many, many Americans have become little more than disempowered, empty consumer drones to be manipulated at will. When you infantalise an entire population then you can only expect an infant's ignorant response.

    Sevilla, Espana • Since Nov 2006 • 2217 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Don't Panic,

    back to school for me.

    Sevilla, Espana • Since Nov 2006 • 2217 posts Report Reply

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