Posts by Simon Grigg
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Field Theory: How's that working out for…, in reply to Russell Brown,
PS: Will get on to that email for you soonest.
Whoops - another tweet :)
It wasn't aimed at you, I promise, but so many businesses in NZ. You try to put money in their pockets but the reaction time is often appalling when put next to trans-Tasman counterparts.
On the other thing, take your time, I'd rather we all did it well and got the desired result - as we will.
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Field Theory: How's that working out for…, in reply to giovanni tiso,
It's 80 minutes. Guards, seize him!
Oh, fuck. I was tempted to google that bit. I've actually tossing around for airfares to NZ in late Sept - there all sorts of specials going surprisingly - but may keep my safe distance after that. I bet it goes on my passport file.
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Field Theory: How's that working out for…, in reply to Russell Brown,
See above, re: unsolicited information as to how many people go to things in Proper Countries.
I was one of those and I think my comment is kinda being misconstrued a little/lot. Point of smoothing first: I kinda think that the RWC has allowed or forced some work that needed to be done to Auckland (at least - I have no knowledge of what has been done further south) to be undertaken without the endless - years - of enzild bureaucratic to and fro in a country staggering under the weight of such things.
Too, having 50-90,000 people, whatever the number will be, spending dosh and having happy experiences in NZ cannot a bad thing in the long term.
And I hope they (being the ardent followers of the game) have a happy ending, as anything else is going to cause grievous national trauma for years - the length of this thread is perhaps a mild indicator of such a possibility. This thread is sprinting towards copyright battle length in a couple of days.
My tweet - I can't speak for others - was a reaction to the endless barracking in the media, face to face and elsewhere I faced about the size of this in international terms when back in NZ. It's disinformation - untrue even. It made no qualitative judgements about our unique national fervour.
I promise to tread more lightly when discussing the hallowed 90 mins in future.
ETA: that fucking cloud thing still ranks as one of the ugliest buildings I've ever seen, not having had the displeasure until last month.
On a harbour like ours too..
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Hard News: London's Burning, in reply to DexterX,
some 20 people got shot or were killed in one incident.
92 people died in the troubles - horrible - and the first major incident was the one in Khao San Rd in April, which may be the one you are referring to. In that incident there seems to be some agreement that the Black Shirts (the pretty hardcore armed wing of the Red Shirt movement - mostly former special forces guys - there are a few photos I took of these guys on my blog) fired first. Soldiers died as a result. They fired back but did not use anything like the firepower they had at their disposal (that was a feature of the whole two months).
There were a series of other fairly minor incidents over the next few months but some serious ones, including RPGs being fired by Black Shirts at soldiers, who mostly didn't react.
When it all turned to shite in May and the government was really forced to do something to bring the situation to an end - the country was losing millions and some 30,000 jobs were at risk just in the CBD - it got pretty bloody but both sides were targets. It was a lose-lose for the government. It had to be cleared but the Red Shirts simply refused to either go or make movements to resolve the impasse. It was their intention simply to stay until their ever changing demands were met. That could not be allowed to happen in the centre of one of the world's largest cities and a major commercial hub for Asia.
One wonders too, how most governments would react to multi-million dollar malls (Central World was the world's 3rd largest at the time) being burned and looted.
It is a country where each day they publicly play the National Anthem in the central parks in Bangkok and people have to stop what they are doing and be reverent otherwise they may be arrested. This is quite a subtle control of the people.
I like the way that people stop at the bottom of escalators when the National Anthem plays. Do they do it because there is a cop watching? Uh, no - they do it because the national reverence to the monarch is extreme and almost unanimous. I spent several days walking amongst the redshirts, photographing, talking and just watching - images of the king were everywhere, as they are elsewhere in Thailand. Ask your Thai friends and family - who, likely, like some 99% of the nation, also hold a 'royalist POV'. I imagine most Thai folk would get pretty tetchy if a Farang told them it was about 'subtle control'.
From an article dated 28th July 2011
and
Also from the AIT News this:
That pesky constitution, eh? Still, that procedure sounds less messy than the last UK election, and several in the US and NZ in recent years.
Also recent travel advice is as follows
Tell me you are not seriously touting NZ travel advice pages as evidence of anything.....
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Hard News: London's Burning, in reply to DexterX,
Just to close this off. The cabinet that doesn't exist, from today's Bangkok Post (one of the two English language dailies).
The guy in the chair in the top photo is the King - snubbing them I guess.
My favourite is this dude:
Education Minister:
Worawat Ua-apinyakulMr Worawut is a Pheu Thai MP for Phrae province.
He served as culture minister and had come up with ideas of black magic amulets, including phallus and buffalo-shaped ones, as souvenirs for tourists.
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Hard News: London's Burning, in reply to BenWilson,
Unfortunately, sitting where I am, I'm not allowed to agree with that observance.
The succession, though, will cause a fairly profound change in the way folks here see their king. The extreme devotion is to the guy, not the title.
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Hard News: London's Burning, in reply to DexterX,
You obviously have a far more nuanced and informed understanding of the Thai electoral process than the Thai media and many / all Thai political observers. A few seats have been challenged, there is a court case or two - gosh that's unusual in a democratic process.
The delay in royal assent was, aside from some speculative stories offshore, not seen as a royal snub. All Thais are aware the that the king is very unwell - it's a matter of concern both politically and simply because this nation is devoted to the guy in a way we can't imagine - and that a delay was always inevitable.
She was sworn in exactly pursuant to the constitution, after the first subsequence (and scheduled) parliamentary session.
The ease of it all has caused a national sigh of relief.
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Hard News: London's Burning, in reply to DexterX,
It is interesting to me that in Thailand an organiser for the red shirts was shot in the head at a rally or on the barricades and that although there has been a democratic election with a result that favoured the red shirts the govt/prime minister has not been sworn in.
I have no idea where you get that from.
Yingluck Shinawatra was confirmed by Parliament in the first post-election session, exactly as required by the constitution, on the 5th of August and sworn in on the 10th, without issue. She's the current PM of Thailand and her cabinet was sworn in on the same day.
Nobody, beyond those who did it, knows exactly who shot Seh Daeng, who was not an 'organiser' but a so-called security advisor - the leader of the militant Black Shirts - on May 13, some 60 days after the protests began. Nor do they know why. There are all sorts of theories, but those who do know are not talking.
The red-shirt movement was not 'swiftly and violently put down' as you put it. It was anything but - the government spent two months trying to work its way through the impasse. Imagine if MLK had moved 50,000 marchers into Wall Street and Times Square for two months and shut down all commercial and financial activity and you have a rough equivalence (aside from the fact that the populist Thai movement has no MLK equivalent). The government was anything but 'oppressive' in its reaction and there was broad public support for the way it handled the protests. Where it lost support (and thus the election it is said), was by its pretty poor handling of the aftermath and the inquiries.
The ending was nasty, but it was nasty on both sides and I think all parties at the time breathed a sign of relief that it wasn't very much worse.
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Hard News: London's Burning, in reply to Sacha,
Who'd have expected sense from Russell Brand?
Or from the Telegraph?
In the past 24 hours I've seen sensible commentary on both the Telegraph and Time sites. I'm with Ben - this may well be the end of times.
David Cameron, Ed Miliband and the entire British political class came together yesterday to denounce the rioters. They were of course right to say that the actions of these looters, arsonists and muggers were abhorrent and criminal, and that the police should be given more support.
But there was also something very phony and hypocritical about all the shock and outrage expressed in parliament. MPs spoke about the week’s dreadful events as if they were nothing to do with them.
I cannot accept that this is the case. Indeed, I believe that the criminality in our streets cannot be dissociated from the moral disintegration in the highest ranks of modern British society. The last two decades have seen a terrifying decline in standards among the British governing elite. It has become acceptable for our politicians to lie and to cheat. An almost universal culture of selfishness and greed has grown up.
It is not just the feral youth of Tottenham who have forgotten they have duties as well as rights. So have the feral rich of Chelsea and Kensington. A few years ago, my wife and I went to a dinner party in a large house in west London. A security guard prowled along the street outside, and there was much talk of the “north-south divide”, which I took literally for a while until I realised that my hosts were facetiously referring to the difference between those who lived north and south of Kensington High Street.
Most of the people in this very expensive street were every bit as deracinated and cut off from the rest of Britain as the young, unemployed men and women who have caused such terrible damage over the last few days. For them, the repellent Financial Times magazine How to Spend It is a bible. I’d guess that few of them bother to pay British tax if they can avoid it, and that fewer still feel the sense of obligation to society that only a few decades ago came naturally to the wealthy and better off.
Yet we celebrate people who live empty lives like this.
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Hard News: London's Burning, in reply to BenWilson,
Also, the existence of major non-Western rivals who are militarily unassailable has meant that the ridiculously high incomes enjoyed by quite a lot of the population just can't be sustained.
Crucially, yes. The before and after of 1929 saw the power base in the same geographic place. The ructions of the last 4 years has seen, or is concurrent with an increasing shift in the fulcrum east.
It bemuses me when Western observers and commentators continually talk of the global financial crisis. The ripples - stock fluctuations and the like - flow east, but are viewed in large parts of the world with almost detachment from what are somewhat good times economically. From Indonesia north, with the possible exception of Japan, Asia isn't in crisis, quite the opposite.