Posts by Paul Rowe
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Hundreds of different factors go into anybody's political views - religion is simply one of them - and they are certainly not listed ad nauseum on Wikipedia.
Quite. I don't care if an MP says "this is my religion and it has an impact on how I see the world and how I want to change it". I'd be fucking amazed to hear one say "I'm a Catholic but I leave that at the doors of Parliament" (That person would be a bloody liar).
What I'd rather not see is a potential politico airbrushing his/her background in order to make him/her more electable. If anything, erasing the bits about Catholocism is all of a one with National's attempts to make themselves as vanilla as possible and not offend anyone.
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Even if Clin-ton can manage the economy better, can create more jobs and provide better healthcare, is that really more valuable than someone who can restore a sense of dignity and direction to the nation?
Jeez Keith, you need to add your sarcasm tag when you say stuff like that, I nearly took you seriously :)
Americans don't seem that keen on policy wonks, they know you can buy that sort of expertise in. They want leaders. It's a bit hard to point to a real visionary leader since Kennedy, and his reputation (like Lennon's) is mightily helped by his early death. As much as I hate to say it, Reagan is probably the only viable candidate.I'm pretty sure all three leading candidates would make good leaders of the free world, certainly better than the incumbent (a baboon would make a better leader, to be fair), but only Obama is really appealing to that need for vision that the Yanks seem to need. (Disclosure: if I were entitled to vote, I'd probably vote for Hilary)
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There are two fundamental issues around New Zealand. One is around productivity, and we have an economy that's not productive in the way that it could be. Certainly there's a lot more to eke out. If you can develop productivity, then wage rates actually grow. That's the really driving issue for New Zealand. We're fundamentally quite a low-wage economy, and that's the gap which you'll quite often hear Don Brash and myself talk about.
"Next contestant - John Key from Helensville, specialist subject: the bleedin' obvious. "
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Dale, don't forget repeal of the Electoral Finance Act, amassing of a huge fortune and buying the next election :)
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Cheers Jean, that is exactly my point.
Shoot, he might have said, "we'd love to see wages [of sin] drop, but we know he doesn't seem to have a view on religion (or he does, it depends who's asking).
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John Key: We would love to see wages [gap] drop.
The way we want to see wages increase is because productivity is greater. So people can afford more.Well, everyone's being charitable to Key over "slip of the tongue". Not over something he has denied actually saying. Say the word he missed was "minimum" how would that read in the media I wonder?
John Key: We would love to see [minimum] wages drop. The way we want to see wages increase is because productivity is greater. So people can afford more.
To my ears that sounds like a viable sentence, it doesn't even need the word "the" that is clearly missing in In/Out's example or the original quote.
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Love the zoo, we bought our eldest a friends of the zoo pass for his 4th birthday, so now it's a free day out for my wife and the three kids during the week.
We once visited Antwerp zoo (pre-kids) because Brussells was so damned boring, and Auckland's is much better. Antwerp had a kiwi, kept in an outside cage. Obviously visiting during the day meant you were looking at an empty cage. I don't remember any big animals, but the sea otter was stuck in something little larger than a home aquarium (well, that's an exaggeration, but nothing like the seal enclosure here). Quite sad to watch him swim the same pattern over & over.
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After using a player to convert LP to CD my records go in to storage until they need to be used as a master again.
The magic of technology. I don't lament the impending death of the CD (at least I hope it is impending) in favour of the truly digital option of using your PC to manage your collection. I would love to convert my LPs to digital, and will do it one day, but the joy of vinyl still exists for me at least, especially those fiddly little singles!
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Perhaps she was hoping to be a part of a Velvet Revolution and she has dejectedly concluded that it's not worth hanging around for something as slight as a Beige Makeover.
My feeling too, but if you suggest that the Nats is not one big happy family in step behind Daddy John you get shouted down by the mob.
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was so pissed off: for two weeks Cat Power's newie, Jukebox, was "this album is not available for download in your country," so I told my darling to just spend the lavish amount of money that a CD costs these days.
When she brought it home, the eMusic version had suddenly become available in NZ. Bah.
I feel your pain. I was surprised to see it come available after a couple of weeks. In my case, my music budget thse days doesn't stretch much past the $20 a month I pay for 50 songs on eMusic.