Posts by Robert Harvey
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Fit of the munchies
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Craig, I think it's great to call racism. I don't think it's great to call age. Isms of all varieties have been taught to children for generations and are taught today, by their parents and carers, teachers and mentors, and the various media of communication. Until an -ism is challenged it is often unconscious. In my personal opinion I think the best thing that has ever happened to Auckland in my lifetime is the growing multi-culturism. But I do not think it right to imply that just because there are numbers of elderly (of all races) who express rascist ideas, that such behaviour is an essential characteristic of any particular age group.
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Isn't the problem that if public servants (including politicians, civil servants, local government staff, etc - that is, people paid from the public purse) are seen to get away with 'lies' of whetever kind or form, then that sets the acceptable level of corruption in the governed society. Unless the level of ethically or morally challenged behaviour by public officials is not kept in check, we all end up in a more corrupt society.
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Ah, the National Party: "Keeping New Zealand safe for corporate greed"
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On this morning's RadioNZ news an item about how a capital gains tax will hurt the 'most vulnerable' -- in this case it's renters, since landlords will have to increase rents to cover increased tax liability. Far more serious IMHO is the prospect of an increased GST rate, or a rate which varies across different market sectors. This is likely to have ramifications well outside any forecast envelope.
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Item now posted on slashdot:
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/01/13/1657249/Googlecn-Attack-Part-of-a-Broad-Spying-Effort?art_pos=5
with some additional links. -
Thanks for the article and the responses; together they make for informative reading. It is my impression that Austrian culture, unlike German, is still distinctly and overtly anti-semitic in places -- I was reading somewhere that you have no chance of employment in the civil service in Vienna if you are Jewish. And in interviews with Wagner family members some have been quite outspokenly Nazi. And note that British/Commonwealth/US memories of their own atrocities tends to be marginalised (e.g. the bombing of Dresden, Ireland, and more recent events in Afghanistan and Iraq).
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songs about technology...
Hot Club Sandwich's glorious 'Poddy Understands Me':
and it's Kiwi! -
Just how uniform is NZ society anyway? I realise that these surveys go to great lengths to balance their polling, but there is a sense in which those lengths are based on presumptions about social place which may well have shifted. Rural NZ is vastly different from urban NZ as we know. But I am starting to suspect not only that there are major differences between the urban areas, but also wildly diverse differences within urban areas. So I wonder how well opinions from say Ponsonby correlate with Parnell, or Hamilton with Dunedin? Just how much has Auckland's significant influx of people from Asia (and there are many variants between these, both on ethnic origin and generation) moved its perceptions relative to those of Wellington, which generally sees itself as the cosmopolitan capital on NZ? What with the often polarised opinions within the limited confines of my own family, I wonder how well a mere 750 people can reflect the whole country.
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dnc.org.nz gives us the additional info that the site registrant and administrator, Cameron Slater, is contactable at [redacted -- RB] -- but is this enough for the lawyers?