Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: The United States of Surveillance?, in reply to Christopher Nimmo,
Clearly that's just what the illuminati want you to think!
Dude, he's a deep mole for the Illuminati.
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Notes & Queries: Paul, in reply to Hilary Stace,
Patson raises a number of thorny issues, but I'm left thinking, as I do whenever people talk about disabled care without having to actually do it, that every point he raises just shows more clearly how and why Paul is so isolated. Every little moral conundrum pushes people a little further away. Which leaves people like Paul with no-one, or only people who want to use them. To find someone who is really prepared to help out without any family connection or pay is extremely rare. I have only realized this from doing a little bit of it myself.
For some cases, it's really hard work, hard to know what is the right way to help people - every single decision, every moment spent with them is full of doubt. Yet how else can anyone help them unless they are prepared to try, to work constantly at it despite the ambiguities? The helper makes mistakes too, and they're at the end of a long line of other people making mistakes and eventually giving up. A trooper who can keep at it through mistake after mistake is the kind of person I'd trust in the long run to have my back.
So, really, flawed help is a lot better than no help. And no help is precisely the default state with difficult cases.
Regarding the right to tell the story, that's really the only bit that hits me as particularly thorny. But it doesn't sound like there's anyone at all in a better position than David to know whether Paul would, on reflection, if he for some reason had a day when his mind was closer to normal understanding of reasonable, want his story to be told.
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Legal Beagle: D-Day for Dunne (updated), in reply to Tom Semmens,
He thought he was just leaking a sensitive document, without grasping that the leak would be treated as gravely as the leak of a seriously top secret document.
I don't really know that his issue hinges around any laws being broken at all. It's enough that it's obviously him who leaked it to have him fall foul of the government, who are in coalition with him, and should be able to trust him not to leak any documents, whether they are top secret, or just pictures of Key in panties. That he won't release his email means there's something really silly in there that he's prepared to leave office over. Given he's at the end of his political career anyway, it could be something rather minor, that he just happens to find very shameful.
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Legal Beagle: D-Day for Dunne (updated), in reply to Bart Janssen,
it seems a little odd to ses him thrown out for doing something I’d want more from our government.
It doesn't seem odd to me, people always get thrown out for leaks. What seems odd is just how happy people are about it. As you say, what he actually did was mostly the right thing. He's become an instant whipping boy for making some kind of mistake. We don't even really know what.
I don't like the guy. There's a lot of schadenfreude about this. But applauding the fact that a centrist in the current government has just been made into the gimp for Key gives me pause in gloating about his demise.
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Supply and demand are factors in house pricing, but they're not the only factors. Nor is it clear how one can control demand when anyone at all can own a house in NZ, and the supply of houses is not limited to what is in Auckland. No government is powerful enough to control the prices in that way, unless they restrict foreign ownership (which I'm not really a fan of, but I can see the arguments for it). What they can do, however, is make the citizens richer (relative to the cost of property), so that they can afford to live in the houses in their own country. They can control the proportion of debt that must be held in a mortgage so that more of the property is actually owned by by the owners rather than banks.
These are macroeconomic steps, though, rather than addressing the concerns of Auckland particularly. Why Auckland is particularly expensive is not something I can explain. I'd say it's because it's a desirable place to both live and work? Make it a more desirable place (which is of course a good), and isn't that just going to become more of a driver of high prices? So I personally like the DUP, because it aims to make the city a better place. But I don't think it will bring prices down. Auckland doesn't have the power to do that. The NZ government might have that power, but it would involve major changes to the entire way that the economy is managed. I doubt the Auckland price "crisis" will be sufficient impetus to drive the necessary change, and instead piecemeal things that sound like they may work, sound like the politicians are taking proactive steps, are all we can really expect.
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Notes & Queries: Paul, in reply to Chris Waugh,
ummmm….. where to even begin with this?
I think outright ridicule is a good starting point. I'm quite astonished, really, that he could be so frank about being a total bastard.
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Legal Beagle: D-Day for Dunne (updated), in reply to DexterX,
In exchange for the resignation it is likely Dunny will help the seat pass to National and Dunny following the next election will get the cushy appointment of his choosing.
That's a risky strategy. National may not get in. I don't think it's like that at all. I think it's more that Dunne is seriously over a barrel, and he is cowed into total submission and abject retreat in case the info gets out. I don't know what it is, and knowing what a straight arrow the guy is it could be hilariously minor. But who knows, maybe it's the locations of the other Hirsutati!
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Up Front: It's Complicated, in reply to Gee,
Fair enough. It shouldn't be either minimized or maximized as problem, but seen for exactly what it is. I don't think it helps HIV sufferers for people to think it's worse than what it is, either.
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Up Front: It's Complicated, in reply to Gee,
but, obviously, HIV……
Yes, it would be a terrible thing to happen. Also very unlikely. Your chances of dying in a car crash are far higher, and we put children in those from before they are even born.
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Legal Beagle: D-Day for Dunne (updated), in reply to Sacha,
Seems to be a thing for boomer journos to describe their peers that way. Not old. No, not me.
Heh. I'm in denial about being middle-aged, personally. At heart, I'm 25.
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