Posts by giovanni tiso
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rebel stance against a wowser society
Isn't that a little contradictory? How can it be rebellion if it's something that society and mainstream culture endorse?
Banning drinks aimed at kids, yes, good idea. But not the problem: the problem was lowering the drinking age
Sorry, can't be that simple. Binge drinking is increasing in western countries worldwide. Not all of these countries have lowered the drinking age. Furthermore Italy has always had the laxest drinking laws and didn't have a problem with binge drinking (although it did with drink driving) until not long ago. It does now. There are social changes that have little or nothing to do with more/less prohibitive legislation or the pervasiveness of alcohol advertising.
Drugs, sex, partying are fun, but they're also more likely to be abused if there isn't a lot else to do. My mum - who worked for decades in intermediate education in a variety of different neighbourhoods - will always maintain that it's the core issue: kids getting bored. Provide decent welfare and offer a broader range of educational, cultural and professional options - alongside education on how to minimise the damage we do to ourselves whilst having fun - and then let's take a look at those numbers again.
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I'm not a genealogist, but that's a group that understands the fascination of cemeteries.
In that respect, the cemetery in Waipu is quite fascinating - it's both a graveyard and a genealogical map.
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Geoff is too classy to plug his new History of New Zealand Television website in this most apt of forums. But I am not.
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like NBR's weird and nasty Dick Hubbard hatchet job, which was supplied to John Banks campaign, resulting in the resignation of Banks campaign manager, and hilarious attempts at dissociating himself from the nastiness on the part of Aaron Bhatnagar.
Then of course you had Bhatnagar's inappropriate use of Wikipedia in the next election.
Thank you for that Russell - a lovely trip down Memory Sewer.
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Do you approve of the way in which the Government is setting up the new Auckland Council (the 'Super City')?
No: 8118
Yes: 358
Total: 8476
Yes: 4%
NO: 96%Most petitions get 100% approval from the signatories, you know.
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For some reason I was crazy about semicolons when I was sixteen
The infamous gateway mark that leads straight into hypotaxis - that's a pretty notorious scourge. And there's nothing that families and educators can do: the more you alert kids to the dangers of the semi-colon, the more irresistibly alluring it becomes.
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Interesting article in DomPost today about the careful media management by the Government and implying that Key is scared of a grilling by Sean Plunket
Plunket would truly put Key's feet to the pillow, yes.
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By the way, we still give very little in international aid by world standards, but that doesn't come into any sort of equation, does it? I mean we're quite comfortable with our meanness.
This is coming to resemble more and more the New Zealand that I first experienced in 1997. Cold fucking place, on an institutional level. Not the people, fortunately, but the mood was pretty dire.
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Mileage is GST-exempt too. So I'm doubly unsure what they're on about to be honest.
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In fact, one could argue that reliance on (largely) middle class volunteers only delivers services to those considered to be the "deserving" poor
The majority of volunteers in Italy is actually from the working class. Do you have statistics for New Zealand?