Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: Someone has to be accountable…, in reply to Steve Reeves,
Or is it just that we don't (or won't, or can't) look as deeply as other countries?
I think it's because our kind of corruption is different. There's no need for overt crookedness when the game has a stacked deck built in. In NZ, it's considered outrageous if you put a bottle of wine on your government credit card, but it's par for the course to just hand ownership of whole industries to powerful interests with bugger all public consultation. To fuck up how much something is going to cost, when that cost is in the hundreds of millions, just doesn't exercise people here. We don't call it corruption because we find simple incompetence so much easier to believe and, for some reason, to accept.
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Legal Beagle: Voting Referendum: Jus' Sayin', in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Single Transferable Vote (STV) is generally accepted to be a proportional system, in which minority views are properly represented.
I'm still yet to be convinced it works well. The complete wipeout of the Green Party in Ireland isn't a good look. The problem I see is that its proportionality is non-guaranteed side effect, and it seems sensitive to a whole lot of balances being right, the main one being the number of candidates that will be selected in any discrete election. It does seem to serve the bigger parties well, though, but what system doesn't do that?
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Legal Beagle: Voting Referendum: Jus' Sayin', in reply to Raymond A Francis,
voted for MMP last time (apparently the only person in NZ to admit that) and I feel I will vote for it again. The alternatives seem to range from sexually transmitted disease to an accountant’s wet dream with the people in charge not able to grasp the finer points
I didn't vote for it, and feel ashamed to admit that. But I will vote for it this time because it seems like the best system for delivering a range of representatives. The others boil down to clever ways to exclude minority interests.
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Hard News: Someone has to be accountable…, in reply to nzlemming,
If you're going to say things like that, Cassandra, you'd better post more often.
Yeah, nice first post. Did anyone say "Don't be such a Cassandra" about it all, Cassandra?
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Hard News: Someone has to be accountable…, in reply to Steve Barnes,
In 2011, the Auckland Supercity became self-aware. Our fate was decided in a microsecond.....
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Hard News: Someone has to be accountable…, in reply to Neil Morrison,
I'm a programmer, but I don't have any feel at all for what one could achieve with that much money. It represents about 8 million of my hours, which would come to me beavering away at the code for 4,000 years. Considering the number of open source libraries available these days, I can't even imagine what could be achieved. Sad to think that much effort has been expended just counting beans in this little city.
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Hard News: Three months after, in reply to Sacha,
Maybe I should start a self help group "advice givers anonymous".
Heh, everyone sits there biting their tongue the entire time? Telling their own story - "It's been 9 months since I gave advice <applause>, I used to do it all the time because it made me feel powerful and worthy, but actually it destroyed my job and my marriage <sympathetic awww>, now when I feel the urge to give advice, I remind myself that I'm actually a know-nothing bum <nods and smiles>, and that no one will ever listen to me anyway, present company excepted <puzzled frowns>".
It's quite a tough thing to avoid, when people tell you about their problems. Particularly when you actually can see a solution. It's quite an art to realize when the giving of advice will be helpful - even when people actually directly ask for it, it's often not a good idea to give it.
A good example is when someone is thinking of breaking up with their partner and asks you if they should. If you answer with an honest yes, they will think you don't much like their partner, which could be bad in the long run if they want to stay with them. If you give an honest no, then they could resent you for making it harder for them to break up if that's what they really want to do. If they agree with you, and follow your advice, they could come to blame you if it turns out that it was actually a bad choice. Advice is something you have to own.
OTOH, good advice is something that is very good to get, at the right time. I'm eternally grateful for some of the good advice I've received over the years. So it's not set in stone that advice-giving is bad. Even unasked-for advice - how else are interventions ever going to happen for people who are destroying themselves? How else can hard truths be delivered? Do you refrain from giving advice to a person considering suicide, when they ask you straight up if they should do it?
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Hard News: Three months after, in reply to Bart Janssen,
No it isn't different. Depression is a state
I know but what's different is that lots of people are feeling it at the same time and their reason for not wanting to talk about it is not entirely internal. It's because there is a very real external factor causing it, to a whole lot of people in the same place at the same time. That's not the sort of thing your standard counsellor is trained to deal with (in fact, in Chch, they're probably suffering from it!). But my own experiences of depression suggest that talking to anyone is better than bottling it up. Counsellors are especially handy because they have to listen, at least for as long as you've paid them for.
Drummls discovery seems like a very good one for CERA to be aware of.
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Hard News: Three months after, in reply to 3410,
I don't want to bang on, but the post screams "needs counselling" to me.
Needs to talk with someone about it, anyway. Which, in some way, she's done by proxy through Russell. It's not enough by a long shot, though. She says it clearly that the worst part is being unable to complain. That's a crushing feeling.*
Edit: I don't know who the "someone" should be is, that's half the problem. If Cantabrians can't talk to each other, who can they talk to?
But this is different to "normal" depression. This is depression with a primarily external cause.
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Muse: Hooray for Wellywood (Really!), in reply to giovanni tiso,
Argh. Let's not do the thing again where meaning is in the intention of the author, shall we?
No, let's not. We can agree to disagree on the relevance of the author in the meaning of the author's writings. Out.
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