Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: Getting to the bottom of…, in reply to Chris Waugh,
Chris, I really appreciate hearing what you have to say about China, it's most enlightening to hear from people on the ground there. You're not the only person I know there who regularly brings some reality into my perceptions from afar. I feel vaguely ashamed that I've never seized the opportunity to go there.
One thing one of my other in-China contacts often says is that our perception of their lack of political involvement is heavily skewed by our own perspective on what public life means, particularly the fixation on elections. Getting involved in politics is something people do there, they just do it differently - you join the vast party machine at a local level and involve yourself in decisions that way, if you're interested in doing that sort of thing. Of course you have to respect Mao, and other ideological things, or at least not speak out against them, but in a funny way we have similar mechanisms here - if you can't speak our economics, you don't have credibility, even if our economics is also based on some pretty unjustified assumptions. You're allowed to speak out, but you will be ignored and excluded if you do.
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Hard News: Finally, the Teapot Tape?, in reply to merc,
Hey, that's a d-vice device.
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Cracks me up that the police want to interview the other patrons in the cafe. "Did you notice anything out of the ordinary happening that day?".
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Hard News: Finally, the Teapot Tape?, in reply to Russell Brown,
That's pretty funny.
Yes, if they were poking fun at Brash at that point, it was not without justification.
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Wow, no wonder you're considered an A ESOL student if you can master the NZ accent. I'm struggling to transcribe one especially interesting 7 second bit there, it's taken me several minutes, and this is my native tongue and accent. Key talks really fast. This is the bit I was intrigued by:
2:40 Banksy: Someone's told me, haven't they, you're going to be working with ahhhh....? Key: Yeah, yeah that's good,'s good, yeahnah, that's totally, yeah I reckon you guys are, yeah, yeah well unfortunately that's always the case..<Banks>I didn't</Banks>Key:No, heh <Banks sniggering in background> But you guys are tracking solidly, good luck. So what I'm gonna do when I go out...<etc>
I'd say this one was 90% non verbal, it's exactly how I talk to friends when I'm concerned about being overheard - you use a nod or a raised eyebrow in place of the word that could be embarrassing. Most interesting, from a linguistic POV. I have no idea who they are talking about.
In terms of revelations, well, we all picked it on day one - who cares? Peters spun it because everyone else was too scared. Key handled it really badly, if it had been released it probably would have increased his popularity, he sounds so god-damned kiwi in there. Now they're stuck on the path of overkill.
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Yeah that's really hard to hear. Banksy is a real mumbler. Key, OTOH is hilariously Outrageous Fortune all through. "Yeah, nah,..." "Yeahyeahyeahyeah, heheh, eh?". It's a tiny bit heartening to hear that he's not putting that on most of the time.
Edit: I thoroughly recommend the Soundcloud one, it's way clearer than the YouTube
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Perhaps I’m just a wet liberal(-ish) pussy
My favourite kind of pussy. Nothing worse than a dry, conservative pussy.
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to nzlemming,
Apparently we have porous "boarders". Who knew?
Everyone! The whole idea of the RWC was to wring as much as possible out of the foreigners. We showed the whole world that it actually is possible to wring your own neck.
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to nzlemming,
PS is that a big grey patch in your hair? :-p
LOL, I found myself staring at it too. I thought it was sunnies pushed back on the head, which struck me as being too posy even for TV. But no, it's a bit of a grey and a curious dent. Maybe a dent where the sunnies had been?
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As the only person game enough to admit to ever watching Breakfast, I'll say "good interview, Russell, nicely summarized the issues there".
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