Posts by Rich of Observationz
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paying for water made it uneconomic
Use grey water. Or black (yuck, but it works for the Chinese. Don't blaim me if you get cholera).
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Do the herbal "medicine" manufacturers standardise the hyperforin/hypericin in the product?
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The Beatles were steered by McCartney into thoroughly middle-brow/fluff territory
Um, which songs? Yellow Submarine?
I think you might be judging them with 40 years hindsight. Most of the Beatles music was pretty innovative for its time and laid a path which was then, it is true, trodden by a lot of insipid fluffy pop.
However, McCartney has never produced anything decent since he left the Beatles. Maybe this had something to do with his mythical death in 1966. (In the same way that Sting never created anything good after he was kidnapped from the Police's rehearsal room in 1982 and replaced by Bad Sting).
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the Survivalist Blog
Mad. Americans.
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The first party to suggest that some sort of price control/local quota system for our local agricultural produce be introduced would be onto a vote winner.
Maybe when the streets aren't full of fat kids and we don't have some of the highest obesity/diabetes levels in the world?
Maybe we need a bit less of the propaganda that convinces people that red meat five times a week is a healthy diet?
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History shows this [gold] to be the safest way to go.
http://www.research.gold.org/prices/annual/
Depends entirely on the period, like anything else. As the above chart show, if you bought gold after it peaked in the early '80s, then you'd have taken a very long time to get level, and that isn't even inflation adjusted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:DJIA_historical_graph.svg
The Dow has at least been reasonably consistent, at least until GW Bush got elected. -
I'm thinking that unless there's a further world shock, like a major bank crash or the US invading Iran, then the NZ economy will (overall) have a few slow quarters and then recover.
I'm not so sure on house prices. A lot of rental "investors" must be running out of options to fill the mortage/rent chasm - and others must be wondering why they are pouring money into that chasm when they aren't likely to see a capital gain in the near future. If people start selling, especially through forced sales, prices could fall 25% or more quite quickly.
But the NZ economy has a massive imbalance between those who live off earned income and those who live off capital (not helped by the way our "Labour" government has unaccountably maintained a tax system biased towards rentiers). If a crash helps remove some of that imbalance, then it'll be a Good Thing.
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"They didn't have anything to eat before they were liberated."
To me, those words could have come straight out of the mouths of a New Zealand settler in about 1880, speaking of Maori. Or Chief Justice Prendergast, talking of "mere savages".
Re: Maoist rebels in Nepal, they have come to a form of settlement since the King gave up his absolute powers last year. And they have received little recent help from China (a cynic would argue that the Chinese don't want any of that Maoism spreading back into their country).
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Similar to Northern Ireland and South Africa (not to mention, to a much lesser degree, New Zealand). What rational people did in those countries was to come to an arrangement where minorities had their rights and culture respected by the majority.
The present Chinese regime isn't going anywhere near that. It simply wants to destroy anyone who disputes its right to hegemony.
Which is why, although we *have* to deal with them economically, as decent people we should keep this to a minimum and not be cowed from speaking out.
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vigorous and interesting
Compared with the usual purple-inked drooling on Guardian comments forums, it isn't that bad. I got about halfway through the rival 1000-word historical essays before giving up.
For me the point is simple. It's not really down to whether the Mongol's at some stage conquered Tibet, bringing it within the Glorious Greater Chinese Empire. It's that a lot of Tibetans seem to be somewhat opposed to Chinese rule.
China could sort this by giving Tibetans basic human rights and a plebiscite on whether to become independent, have autonomy within China or remain as today. Instead, they shoot 17-year old kids.