Posts by Bruce Thorpe
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Sorry Islander, you are trying too hard. It sounds to me that you are a knife collector (me too) and own a working .22 and shotgun, you build it up like the kids used as reporters these days.
I see no problem in drawing up laws that distinguish between licensed dealers and private citizens. And between monitored competition club members and high powered citizens with convictions for drug dealing. And as a citizen who has more than once been exposed to house searches for drugs, and a citizen who has on occasion served time for my breaches of the law, I have no sympathy for those who cannot cope with the nasty day when the police knock on the door. If you cant do the time do not do the crime. Especially when you are a big boy of 51. But then I do not get into steroids, myself. -
As usual the thread has got way ahead of me ... but hang on a minute mate.
Shooting possums is not a very effective means of pest control, and ditto for stoats, rats and ginger.
I also think the myth of the kiwi outdoors bloke or good keen fisherman is rather heavy on the gun fire and bloke posing with large corpse.
I thought the cops did a great job of patience and restraint, and fully endorse the criticism of police association mouthpiece. The only person I want to see lasered.
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I want to say something about the age demographic topic raised on the Media 7 clip you linked from your column.
I am over 70, and recognise it is much harder to sell stuff to an older person, especially one still managing their own affairs.
Generally we have been around long enough to feel confident making decisions and setting of our own priorities.
Even those who were diffident and insecure in the thirties have weathered a few storms and learned to establish our own terms
Quite a lot of us watch bugger all tv.
I have just watched it on demand , because it is a wet Anzac Day morning.
The tv will be repeating cliches, or more skilfully, packaging nationalism but I do not feel like buying any of that today.
I catch most of my news from the 10" screen of my ASUS which is much admired by my age group.Two of us have had them for a few months and two of my friends are planning to buy them.
I got it after asking for advice on the TradeMe community board, picking from the answers on the computer topic.
My criteria were the degree of sophistication to the very restricted dollar. Under a grand I could afford. Downloading the news, email, broadband, but as quickly and efficiently as I could afford.
I liked the idea of portability, from room to room, the lack of furniture, and satisfied my self that if the screen was too pokey, I could organise a bigger screen.
I think tv1 has very little to offer me, precisely because I am a discriminating purchaser, confident I can do better making my own calls.
I listen to national radio, because I live remote from city broadcasts, google a great deal, read overseas news media and local bloggers.
Hard News is a good place for advertisers wanting my attention.
Without your enthusiasm I probably would not have become such a coffee elitist, and I certainly look to public address to keep me up to cultural date.
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At best a paraphrase of Nick Cave "I do not believe in an interventionist God, but believe in prayer."
I can get a very special feel about nature in a very quiet bit of native forest, or near the top of a range of mountains, but for me, desert does it best.
I experience a strong moral urgency, the morning after drinking large amounts of alcohol. As I got older these times of moral sensitivity seem to be stimulated by rather lesser amounts of alcohol.
When spooked in the dark, I have learned to walk steadily and not look over my shoulder.
When things have been truly ghastly, in those long dark nights, thinking on acceptance and humility can finally bring a sense of peace. The I Ching on "sitting still" works a trick.
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Helen is well on the way to being the most distinguished political figure in our history.
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At least in New Zealand, I have found the actual participating sport culture to be democratic and varied. Well it least the players.
There were a lot more issues with coaches and committed fans.
Going all the way back to my student years (we are talking fifty years ago) those who I played sport with were neither bothered nor very surprised that I wrote poetry, belonged to the drama club and played chess.
But boy, the other way around? I guess being outside the majority culture is always the point for a lot of minority subcultures.
I always found it quite usual for my fellow front row forwards to be intelligent, well read and articulate.
But I must say it was rather dependent on the sport. Athletes tended to be vain and illiterate, especially the sprinters.
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Thanks for the reminder. I am buying one today.
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What century do you guys live in?
Perhaps you should ask the LA police department what they think of a citizen recording an overzealous arrest in that citizen's community, or the Russian authority that bungled a terrorist confrontation in a Russian high school, or the US politician who spoke out of the side of his mouth in a television studio.Ask John Tamihere about the perils of talking to a journalist?
Please understand a reporter might be agreeable and in fact a friend at some level, to a politician, and they both should be capable of a relaxed conversation when they come across each other at airports, country halls or sporting functions. That does not mean he will turn a blind eye or deaf ear, or keep secrets from his editor, if relevant fact is presented.
In this case I do not see any law has been broken. It is not illegal, and in fact is common practice for both members of the public and party members to record conversations on policy with m.ps
It is increasingly commonplace for phone videos and recrders to catch snippets from speeches, announcements and answers to queries.
It is not against the law to record conversations, or take videos or photographs, and every politician should know he is seldom asked permission before members of the public press the button.
This should be self-evident, to generations raised since the Zapruder film of Kenedy's death entered the public record.
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I think the story does the party's election campaign some harm, but it does much greater harm to Goff's chances of ever taking over.
Phil Goff is not a well liked person. I suspect most party members regard him as a rather clever weasel
who happens to be in their team.
His many years of well organised energy for in the cause have given him a respected place in the Labour Party,
but this is the destructive behaviour of politician getting desperate - and clumsy in his declining days.
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I had a distant great cousin named Record Reign Diamond Jubilee because he was born on the day Queen Vic hit the big date. I knew him as Uncle Rex.
And for a whole term at fourteen, I daily eyed with enthusiasm a private school pupil named Cherry Orchard.
And George Cross named his children Victoria and Chris.
but these are all very historical... I would not dare repeat the atrocities committed every day by my friends and neighbours.