Posts by Joe Wylie
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And I have a website! It's like a blog.
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Anyone who can rhyme Mother Teresa of Calcutta with hot knife through butter is OK.
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Appetite Stimulants for the Starving
Nasty, but nothing new. When the artificial sweetener sodium cyclamate was banned in the US in the early 70s, after being conclusively proven to cause birth defects, multinationals received tax credits for offloading their stockpiles of tainted soft drinks as foreign aid to Vietnam.
There's a huge gap between this kind of deliberate vileness and someone who does voluntary work for Trade Aid who may not be fully aware of the organisation's real impact.
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Joe & Sue
Have you spoken to any producers to check their reactions to fair trade?Not lately - but should I feel the urge to dump on some misguided do-gooding idle-rich straw-person I guess I ought to clear it with a producer first.
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The merits of Trade Aid et al are surely that they're attempting to encourage the development of competitive industry to replace the need for aid . . .
. . . and to demonstrate a willingness, on the part of the volunteers, to work towards an equitable form of globalisation. As long as we lack immediately demonstrable models of 'fair and sustainable' business practices, such efforts would seem to deserve constructive support, rather than bad-tempered condemnation.
Even if a visit to Parihaka '06 has imbued you with little more than a sense of moral superiority and an urge to preach, like the guy who returned from Lourdes with two new tyres on his wheelchair you can only do the best with what you got.
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Thanks Rob, an interesting insight into an era of NZ history that I wasn't around for.
It would probably help to have had a fly-on-the wall's account of the Labour caucus's late-80s Ashburton retreat, where an imported 'facilitator' ran role-playing sessions in a desperate bid to get the squabbling factions to co-operate. All fairly macho stuff as accounts from the time had it, about surviving a plane crash in the Canadian outback. Unlike Survivor, though, co-operation was the keyword. As always with politicians, naked competition is for lesser mortals.
When infighting later broke out in parliament among the Labour ranks Muldoon, by then a backbencher, heckled "Bring back the touchy-feely man!" This was a passing reference to Lange's comment that the recently-held travelling roadshow of public hearings on social welfare reform would not be some kind of 'touchy-feely' event.
You're rgiht, Ben - in his twilight years he was a witty old bastard, although more bastard than witty.
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While I can't recall his exact phrasing, I believe Tom Scott once described Lange as a front man for a bunch of vicious little kneecappers.
Moore proves that old habits die hard.
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I used to go to Frank in Vivian Street, under the Trade Hall.
What is it about barbers & trades halls? There's a barbershop tucked away under the hall in Sydney's Haymarket. In the early 2000s the old Aussie battler barber packed it in and the lease was taken over by a Chinese guy. Head dowstairs for a nice little enclave of Hong Kong Hello Kitty-ish ambience in what used to be strictly a monument to Aussie blokedom.
Another great thing about barbers is that they don't lure poor students into their premises with offers of free haircuts in order to perform experiments on them.
A free lobotomy with every haircut?
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I don't know if truth in advertising is a core value, a principle or an ideological construct.
Me neither - but when the social welfare arms of some churches - e.g. the Baptist City Missions - are doing more to support the victims of loan sharks than the current Minister of consumer affairs, it's certainly an interesting question.
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(I wouldn't open that link at work if I were you.)
Is it just just me, or is my browser doing something weird with the colour? That top-right graphic looks awfully like a heaving mass of excrement on the bed.