Posts by Geoff Lealand
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About Bridgend. I do know the place as it was a few miles down the road (Cowbridge Road) from where we lived in Cardiff, for the first half of 2004. It is really dismal, as are other parts of the UK. At nights, gangs of chavs roamed, busting up anything they came across.
The problem is that we tend to get all dewy-eyed about Merrie Old England, and forget that it has a large despairing (and xenophobic) under-class Wales is wonderful but we encountered more crime in our five months in Cardiff than in four years we have been back in NZ.
If you really want to know about the viciousness and despair of the no-hope classes of England, there is a great (if depressing) article "I'll spit where I like" by Ed Jones in The Guardian Weekly, Jan 18-24 2008 (pp. 23-25). It details the experience of one Ed Jones, who buys a house in Salford and attempts to get to know the locals--who eventually turn nasty and drove him out of the neighborhood, largely because he took in foreign (Polish!) lodgers.
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I agree, but in all the references to him I have encountered, he is usually referred to as 'historian David Irving', and only very occasionally "Holocaust-denier David Irving'
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Rewrite history ... why not, when a good deal of history is speculation, after-thought, deconstruction, imagination? The paraphrase Vic Reeves, "65% of all history is made up on the spot".
I think, for example, that David Irving is better described as 'fiction writer', rather than 'historian'.
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When did the financial management mob take over the world (and this blog)???
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I think the critical problem is in regarding the FSTE, SE and all other acronyms as being underpinned by rational processes. They are like a skittery horse, responding to rattle snakes on the trail. If we treat the stock market, and associated economic processes, as irrational (melodramatic rather than coherent) processes, I think we will come to a better understanding.
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Are there some news organisation who are worse than others (as in reporting undigested news releases)? I suspect the Herald may well head the list but could be that it is because I am beginning to regard this paper with deep, deep loathing.
I am thankful for the weekly delivery of the Guardian Weekly and the News Statesman as they give me a world perspective missing in NZ newspapers--but I do long for a local equivalent in the print media (for all that blogs such as this provide).The only problem with the GW and NS is that regular reading can leave you with the feeling that much is not well with the world--or. on occasion, that nothing is well with the world! And should I care about Gordon Brown?
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To understand the mysteries of the MPAA process, get out the doco 'This Movie Is Not Yet Rated', which you should find in any better class of video store.. A greater mystery is how voting for the Academy Awards happens..I remember once reading that the average age of the Academy voter was 70+. This may be one explanation why such dogs of movies get Oscars. Apparently, any movie featuring any kind of human disability/frailty (My Left Foot; My Three Arms, My Left Testicle) is a shoe-in...
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[the personal bit] kia ora Jake...how goes Pittsburgh? Haven't been to see your folks in Helensville for a while, but I intend to.
One of the funniest things I heard at BDO was a conversation on the 2pm bus from Real Groovy to the venue. Two Kiwi males were explaining to a couple of non-local males why it was called Mt. Smart Stadium, "It's because only really intelligent people go there!' I have used this in my piece on BDO, to appear in the Feb issue of kiwiboomers.com
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Thanks for these thoughts. There is probably a whole course in social semiotics here.. Does it make a difference that the 'Jesus' slogan was on her back and not on her front?
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At one point during the Arcade Fire set. I momentarily glanced to my right, to see John Campbell nodding sagely along to "Keep the car running..." Obviously, everyone and half the world, were there..
Also kept a tally of the Most Offensive t-shirt. Saw a lumpy girl. around 18 years, wearing the slogan "Jesus is a c**t". How do you begin to read that one??