Posts by giovanni tiso
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I think I now owe a lunch at Maria Pia's to everybody. Better start saving.
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Giovanni - 'Home'? Will Wellington ever become 'home'?
Heh... it'll take a while, I think. I'm always happy to come back into Wellington, I would find it really hard to go back to Milan long term (more so than Justine) and yet that's most definitely "home".
Try explaining the meaning and uses of 'for'...
Every good ESL learner knows that phrasal verbs are the work of Satan.
books - how about this
I toyed with the idea of buying Dancing with Beelzebub at the last DCM bookfair. Just couldn't stomach the idea in the end.
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Speaking of which: I'm going home for the school holidays. If the much touted Wellington get together gets organised during my absence I shall have to resort to extreme violence.
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Although I'm disappointed the second is not about Michel F.
Oh, but it is. :-)
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Books ...
And we all agree that it should be called "Did you even bother to read the damn book?!", yes?
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On another point entirely - lets get serious about a book group - Emma set up a shelfari PA group about 6 months ago, but only like 7 people joined.
First I hear of that. But is not something that could happen within PAS? I know there must be excellent reasons, just wondering what they might be.
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...let's face it, NZ on the whole *is* pretty conservative
Really? In comparison to where? I agree that NZ certainly has a conservative streak, and I'm quite glad I'm not there with the current gubmint, but internationally speaking, I think we're not too bad, actually. Scandinavian countries are leading the pack, but we're not in the US league. Although we are starting to slip behind Australia, even after the depredations of Howard and his cronies.
Do I need to quote you the results of the last two national referenda? I know it's unprovable, and may be unfair - how do you compare the degree of conservatism in different countries when the history and the material conditions of the population are so different - but I think NZers are a pretty conservative bunch, it just doesn't translate into worse governance because the political class is reluctant to tap into certain sentiments. What was it that Bolger said, it will win the election but I'll lose the country? Brash had no such reservations and after his first Orewa speech I think we got a taste of just how catastrophically things could turn if the Right had a populist leader with national appeal, and chose to go there. I think we have to be grateful that Brash wasn't a very appealing person and that his party (some credit is due there) wasn't quite ready to follow him where he wanted to go.
I have all the respect in the world for the Labour government, but it wasn't incredibly progressive either - it ran on a very moderate social democratic platform and got crucified for the few progressive social issues where it made some headway.
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I think we're forgetting that our nation's name is a mispelling of Zeeland.
Well put, Tark.
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The fact is that if the national Geographic board wanted to come and change my name to Tark Maslov despite me unanimously voting to keep the staus quo I'd probably be pretty angry too,
The thing is, the geographical board has simply stated what they think the name of the town ought to be according to the kind of considerations that fall within the purvey of a geographical board. They're not supposed to poll the preference of the populace or empowered to do anything other than advise the government on this matter. Now it's up to Williamson to come up with a way of implementing that suggestion, and conceivably there could be a double name or other ways to accommodate the will of the locals. It seems to me (and I may be wrong, I didn't follow it quite that closely) that it's Laws who jumped the gun on this, for obvious reasons of political gain. But he's open to the double name solution himself, and it may yet end up that way.
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Rural poor? Or rural stupid? The mechanism of how Whanganui and similar places get their redeckness is typically that the town has no culture or interesting work, so people with a brain leave as soon as they can. Which of course self-perpetuates.
Kindly substitute New Zealand for Whanganui and observe what an offensive argument that is. Although I suppose since you're currently in England maybe not.