Posts by Idiot Savant
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Hard News: Is that it?, in reply to Hebe,
Let's hope some of those targeted are National Party offspring gone to seed who are forced to live at home with their parents.
By definition they won't be. The Independent Youth Benefit is available to 16 and 17 year olds who cannot live with their parents - which means either orphans or abuse victims.
Scarily, one effect of the policy may well be to force the latter back into the clutches of their abusers. But that would probably be regarded as a success, as it would reduce benefit numbers.
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Hard News: Is that it?, in reply to Pete Sime,
I’d go with ephebiphobia
Again, that's fear rather than hate.
Misepheby? Misopaedy? Surely there's a classics major out there who can help!
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So, I'm looking for some ancient Greek. What's the paedo- equivalent of misogyny? Because I think we're well beyond fear here, and into hate.
(Next stop, anger. And then the Dark Side)
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Hard News: Is that it?, in reply to Bart Janssen,
And over all I can't figure out what is the aim of the policy? Is this meant to get them to want to get jobs so they can mange their own money?
To get votes from old people who hate young people. It is that simple. Whether these measures target an actual social problem, or even do so effectively, is irrelevant.
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Hard News: London's Burning, in reply to Marcus Turner,
the anarchist groups, who have always been fairly organised
Anarchism <> chaos. Just because people oppose the state, coercion, and pretensions of "authority" doesn't mean they can't get together voluntarily to work towards their collective ends.
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Hard News: London's Burning, in reply to Rich Lock,
By throwing up in their own throat in an unmonitored cell and suffocating on it.
Or, to put it another way, by the police failing in their duty of care towards those in their custody. It is largely a failure of police attitudes, of them not giving a shit.
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
And not for the first time, I wonder why Farrar didn't either leave the comments closed or park 'em up in a moderation queue and quietly delete the ones that made Beck look rational by comparison. He can do both.
My gut instinct? Because that would be work.
This was one of the reasons I shut down comments on NRT: I thought about the work that would be required to police comments, and the criticism it would inevitably engender, and went "fuck that, I'm not playing that game, that's time I could spend posting". And DPF has an order of magnitude more comments than I ever did.
At the same time, the fact that he hasn't pulled the plug yet tells us that DPF is happy enough with the current situation. Which in turn tells us quite a lot about his character.
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Up Front: How About Now?, in reply to Sacha,
Interesting. Any figures on how that has changed over the last few decades?
Its gone up, from 12.4 years in 1988. Check out the tables here.
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Up Front: How About Now?, in reply to Raymond A Francis,
Does anybody have a figure for the number of civil unions that have ended in divorce, I seem to remember that it is quite high
According to the December 2010 marriage stats, there had been 2214 civil unions in NZ since 2005, of which only 51 had ended in divorce. But given that the median age of marriage at divorce is 13.7 years, I think we've got a while to wait yet before we have decent stats to judge.
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Up Front: How About Now?, in reply to izogi,
The only reason for a party to change its policy for voters is if those voters suddenly start making it an issue and saying they'll switch support because of it.
Which is what we need to start doing. Asking candidates for their position is the first step in this. But we also need PR - editorials, letters to the editor etc.
I'd also love to see a repeat of the civil union ad campaign, which solicited funds from around the country to fund newspaper ads. I'd happily chip in and put my name to that again.