Posts by Rob Stowell
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How have the Herald managed to make themselves look worse than the PM on #tailgate? Quite an achievement, for a company awash in PR specialists.
I reckon Currie needs to apologise and withdraw some of his statements, fast. Out on a limb; still sawing. -
Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to nzlemming,
“When I spoke to the owners, they told me they had initially thought Rachel was working on a statement to go to all media, along with the photograph,” he says.
“Given the situation, I wanted to ensure they were satisfied with the quotes they had given Rachel and took the rare step of agreeing she should run the quotes past the parties before publication. No objections were raised.”
So it WAS a deception – or at the very kindest reading, a mis-understanding. PR ‘goes out to all media’ – a journalist’s copy most certainly doesn’t.
And Mr Curry fails to mention that objections WERE raised, by the most important of the ‘parties’. "I wanted to ensure they were satisfied" indicates to me Curry was only considering the owners ('they' in the previous par), and probably only consulted them.
Looks like weasel-words; smells like weasel-piss :( -
Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to Bart Janssen,
The Herald, through Glucina and Currie have decided to give up any pretense of having moral standards.
Glucina should lose her job. It's squalid and morally bankrupt. I can accept sometimes deception by journalists is necessary and legitimate when the aim is to hold the powerful to account.
When the aim is to crush the powerless and protect the powerful, it's contemptible. -
Mockery is one of the harder things for a politician to counter. It'll be interesting to see how such a successful political team respond.
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Envirologue: What has Neoliberalism Done…, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Please remember hunter gatherers died young.
Any estimates of their work ethic are wild guesses at best.
And evolutionary arguments to justify behaviour are usually utter bollocks.Sure, let's not romanticise prehistory - or use evolution to justify behaviour. But just as silly to ignore it in when trying to understand who and what we are. Recorded human history is so short.
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Good news on the stadium. Everything about the grand new proposal was wrong. So with a little wriggliness we can slip out of it, and govt can save face by 'blaming' the insurers.
Looks like there's little or no chance of changing the secretive gamble (and in my opinion, the more egregious deal) CCDU have taken with Chch's future in the Convention Centre. Contracts signed, etc. But I think it's important we protest it as strongly as possible. -
Air New Zealand. NZ Rail. Both run down and badly needing investment.
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Speaker: Christchurch: how did it come…, in reply to Lilith __,
Chch is being forced to build facilities that Chch people don’t want and haven’t agreed to, with money they don’t have
It is sickening. But I'm going to borrow this phrase, and use it in submitting to the council on the long-term plan. Love to see it on all the fences around the site
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Envirologue: What has Neoliberalism Done…, in reply to BenWilson,
we insist on making human slog or blind luck the only path
Or ruthless cunning – that sometimes works :)
But yeah – I love the idea of a UBI, because it slices away at the puritanical insistance on a ‘work ethic’ (at least for the poor; the rich have always been as idle as they please.)
People protest it’d lead to noone doing anything. I think that is wrong – stuff needs to be done, and people will do it, if the incentives are there. But also ‘so what’?
What if the idle ARE happy? Maybe that’s the state we are by nature supposed to enjoy? The hunter-gathering we evolved for is supposed to have involved considerably less work hours than most people do today. And if that’s really the case, maybe we should live lives of maximum idleness* – leavened with the pursuit of whatever else makes us happy?
*there’s a certain amount of work that just must be done – we’d need to reward that very well, and to share it out. (And of course idleness might well include many chosen leisure pursuits: singing in harmony, making tapestries, building boats, climbing mountains, discovering planets, preparing the perfect noodle soup.) -
Envirologue: What has Neoliberalism Done…, in reply to Tinakori,
You’re kind’ve right – the threshold for 66% wasn’t terribly high. Dad was a university lecturer, well but not extravagantly paid, and some of his income was taxed at the top rate. But it’d be ridiculous to say we weren’t comfortably well-off.
as a young journalist on an evening paper working lots of hours outside of the standard working hours it took a very high proportion of all that extra money.
That might just be because you had a strong union. You probably got double time for some of those hours; time and half for others, and non-taxable allowances for meals. Paying 66% tax when you’re on double time isn’t so dreadful :) Today’s underpaid junior toilers are lucky to get any of those things.
Why is it a bad thing that a junior journalist, or a freezing worker, or a port worker who worked holidays and extra hours could hit the top income bracket? Doesn’t seem so terrible to me.