Posts by Jan Farr
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I agree with your ankle-flashing points.
I just think that Jenny Shipley is charming and quite bright and Maggie Thatcher and Ruth Richardson are clever and also superficial but not particularly intelligent or insightful - or even ethical - and I suppose that my inherent labour bias makes me squirm at Helen Clark having to share the stage with a couple of people I regard as rather second rate human beings just because they share a gender.
I don't remember the Brides of Dracula bit - did I really say that? Not bad for a girl!
But really Craig - if you have new and enlightening information about these luminaries - please share!
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I think I just did.
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Let’s just hope that we’re going to give a little more credit to the likes of Clark, Shipley and Richardson. And ourselves. Because you don’t have to be a bra-burning feminist to find that there’s nothing clever about treating intelligence like a turn off.
Gosh Craig. Ruth Richardson, Jenny Shipley and intelligence? Now there's a couple of oxymoronic concepts, wouldn't you say?
I see a difference between cleverness and intelligence. Intelligence requires a breadth of understanding that neither Richardson nor Shipley demonstrated.
Helen Clark on the other hand has shown herself to be a woman with an encompassing intelligence, a broad grasp of the issues and clearly one of the world's most effective politicians - regardless of gender - and she's done it for three terms by promoting interests rather than destroying some and elevating others. And if sometimes this has meant that one group or another loses out - that's what happens when you're committed to working with everyone.
She works with all sections of society, rebuilding what people like Richardson and Shipley destroyed - restoring apprenticeships, strengthening industry training, reducing unemployment, restoring literacy, improving housing, restoring benefit and minimum wage levels, abolishing discrimination against young people, closing gaps, working with Maori on settlements, helping working parents, giving us back decent transport systems, improving our health and our health system - all that boring stuff - while also being someone to be proud of in international fora - always having done her homework and rising above the appalling sexist crap that is thrown at her constantly.
Thatcher, Richardson and Shipley, while probably also having to rise above sexist crap, had, on the other hand, only one agenda - the pure Friedman/Hayek one aimed solely to increase the profits of a few with the result of widening the gap between rich and poor.
Being women was hardly the point. Being self-interested, self-centred capitalists was what it was about for them.
Going to war and rejecting diplomacy (Thatcher in the Falklands), putting whole regions on the dole (the British miners), was nothing to be proud of.
Richardson's Mother of all Budgets victimised the aged, the poor, the sick and the damaged. Turning language on its head, as these radical economic libertarians do, she called it a 'moral' document. It helped the rich to the state's goodies by putting the boot into the poor and vulnerable. It was nothing to be proud of.
In the end, in my opinion, intelligence is about what you do.
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Doesn't Lange muse about his father dropping Bassett on his head when he was born?
In his book, I mean. clearly.
Yes he does - I was just looking for the book to find the quote - but I've lent it!
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How come I can't do those quote things - I copied and pasted them and it came out all wrong - Ma.
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What is with these Labour Men of Yesteryear (John Terris is another one), when they turn into raging neanderthals, full of bitterness and imagined slights.
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They were all wolves in sheep's clothing - 'Chicago' boys, carrying Milton Friedman's 'pure' capitalist message to New Zealand while hiding inside the Labour Party. I suppose we were a little luckier than other countries - such as Chile - which got Friedman's policies through avalanches of terror. I'm reading Naomi Klein's 'The Shock Doctrine' - it sheds much light.
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Sorry - first sentence should read 'As I remember from the Helen Sutch interview the other day.'
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As I remember from the Helen Sutch interview that other day, she seemed to say that her father was mystified by the meetings with Rosgovorov who was very obviously nervous and that Bill Sutch was on the verge of refusing to meet with him again. I thought she implied that Dr Sutch thought the man might be wanting to defect (a lovely cold war word). And speaking of cold war words the Guy Powles document has a wonderful clip out of a cold war movie. The Solicitor General's brief for the PM said that
'The national interest would best be served by obtaining from Dr Sutch a full and frank account of his association with the Russians in order
(a) to discover what had been betrayed;
(b) to identify Dr Sutch's sources of information;
c) to identify people whom Dr Sutch might have 'talent spotted' for the Soviet Union; and
d) to identify Dr Sutch's previous handling officers in the Soviet Embassy.
Apart from the ludicrous notion that NZ had any secrets that could have been remotely interesting to the Soviet Union - where did they get these terms - 'talent spotted' and 'handling officers' if it wasn't from an Ian Fleming spy movie? -
I imagine he can't be overly happy that the last chapter in his book was a final attempt to undercut national's election chances, which probably isn't going to make much difference anyway.
Well, possibly Kyle, but I heard Helen Clark and John Key earlier on Nine to Noon. Helen Clark, transparent, crisp and detailed as usual and John Key, fudging and umming and ahing and promising to be transparent one day - um 'trust me (or Bill English, or someone)'.
Eventually he's going to have to come up with something that doesn't involve too much borrowing. NZ voters are not all media-selected vox poppers. -
"Don't these reporters have useful things to do with their time?"
Couldn't they all go mountain climbing or boy-racing or something?