Posts by Peter Ashby
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
If multiculturalism had been thought of and put into practice, oohhh say 2000 yrs ago we might all be atheists now.
Oh but it was, you have just described Roman society pre Constantine and his conversion. The Romans persecuted xians and Jews because they were NOT multicultural. This interfered with the smooth running of the state since one of the functions of the various Emperor cults was to distribute free food to the Proles to keep them happy. By ostentatiously not taking part the children of the book (younger troublesome sibling not having been conceived yet) upset the multicultural status quo. So I think you would have been allowed to be atheist as long as you took part in all the multicultural fun regardless of your opinion of Jupiter or Trajan.
He is a bit out of favour now for being too verbose, but that was Gibbon's point in his Decline and Fall, that xianity had ruined and corrupted the Empire from within. That was why it was so controversial in Victorian times when God and the Empire were so intertwined. For a more accessible treatment of what might have happened if the Nazarene cult had been squashed try Robert Silverberg's Roma Eterna .
-
I can remember running an argument that Muldoon was a punk politician. OK, it was after several vodka lime and lemonades in the Whakatane Commercial Hotel's garden bar, back in '83, and, yeah, I never got round to actually writing the idea up, but still..
After he played the narrator in the touring Rocky Horror show production?
-
I have seen women's cricket on the TV here in the UK, but then Sky have at least 4 sports channels to fill and the 4 terrestrial channels all show various sports, sometimes on their digital channels. We have for eg seen the White Ferns play England (and beat them) on the TV. I don't think British Eurosport show cricket, but I wouldn't put it past them though it would probably be Netherlands vs Portugal.
We don't get much netball but, which I think is a shame. Netball games are wonderful drama, especially games between NZ and Oz. I miss those.
-
I disagree that crushing cars is a disproportionate sanction compared to drink driving etc. In the case of the boy racers the prime problem is often the cars themselves, taking them off the road solves a lot of the problems. Drink drivers get their licenses suspended and some lose their jobs because of it, is it disproportionate to expect those who drive as part of their living do so responsibly?
-
@James Liddell
Personally, I'd like to see a maximum engine size (or HP or KW output) for individuals under 25 enshrined in legislation.
Like for beginning motorbike licenses you mean? Not a bad idea actually. The precedence is there for bikes though I can see the objection from Mum & Dad: But our only car is a V8 gas guzzler, what's he going to drive?
It needs to be got through that it is not right to be able to drive regardless.
-
Good point about insurance Tom Semmens. Here in the UK you cannot get your annual tax sticker without a current insurance certificate and a current WoF. Since they now have a database of cars with who has paid their registration it is only those who fly by under the radar who drive uninsured cars and the police are happily involved seizing and crushing all untaxed cars they can find.
Tie the three together: insurance, tax and WoF making it a serious, potentially car crushing matter not to have all three.
-
Or a bit more refined because we aren't stuck with the way things were done in 1800
Indeed, you will hear many Americans complain that their ossified constitution is often more of a hindrance than a help. There are some mighty Byzantine things done in the US purely because they are easier than ammending the constitution.
I suppose you could make a similar complaint wrt the Treaty, but that probably won't become clear for another couple of hundred years after we sewed it into so much of our legislation . . .
I think that one of the ways you can now constrain an administration is to arrange your constitutional affairs such that they must agree with various international statutes, explicitly. Sort of like how things work here in the EU wrt things like European human rights or working time laws/directives. Such things are of course anathema to the US but in a country like NZ with a fairly flat constitutional system (unicameral parliament) this would be useful.
-
I think wrt the Naitoko case a grand jury system would be cheaper than the sort of independent police complaints commission that has evolved over here in the UK. For one thing such a body would have too little to do in New Zealand which would lead to inevitable function creep.
There are a number of incidents of police here in the UK shooting innocent people and not being brought to book for it that has induced real fear amongst people. The Menezes case was only the latest. There was the Glaswegian in London shot for carrying a table leg. The man woken by armed police bursting into his bedroom shot in bed while naked. The introduction of tasers is also making people fearful.
In the NZ situation having something like a Grand Jury would be an intermittent tool to sample public common sense. If the police don't trust the public to fulfil this role then they will have lost the consent of the public to be policed by them. They should not go down that road lightly. People still remember the The Tour and the Red Squad.
-
@Stephen Judd
And that's why Hamas takes such pains only to aim rockets at military targets
The Israelis complain endlessly about how 'indiscriminate' the Hamas rockets are because they cannot be targeted. Which makes the above either manifestly ignorant, deeply biased or just callously indifferent.
-
Almost Islander, its Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict One of the best song titles ever.
BTW why do you have to put two spaces after the italics __? I don't have that problem on other systems using <i></i>