Posts by Dave Waugh
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Warfare today has little to do with numbers. Modern weapons allow even small numbers of advanced weapon systems to inflict devastating damage. The key lesson of the Falkland's war was that warships are almost completely defenceless in the face of modern air attack and have no defence whatsoever from nuclear powered attack submarines.
As an advanced, albeit small, first world nation with huge sea frontiers New Zealand is ideally placed to benefit from defensive advances in modern robot weaponry.
Nice attack ala tinfoil you seem to be having.
Well my take on it is that New Zealands economy is far too small to realistically afford a half way decent level of force projection.If we were hypothetically to bankrupt ourselves buying vast amounts of weapon systems, we STILL would not be able to remotely stop any nation that currently has the ability to stage down this far (USA, Russia, China, France, Japan, India are all capable), Even a "bigger than we can pay for military" would just be swatted aside with comparative ease, so it would be a waste of time even trying to foot it in those circles.
We would be far better off specializing in having a smaller highly trained force for use in regional stability ie the Timor or Solomons type deployment.
Sure it doesn't have the macho man/rambo feel good factor of a big military, but that image would be nothing more than an pointless ego trip, I'd rather have a more usable force.Diplomatically it would also work better for us to have such a force, to be seen as "Good world citizens" rather than a nation seen as being in someone elses pocket and suffering a sort of short mans disease. And that sort of playing nice would win us more friends that can apply pressure if in the unlikely event we were ever on the receiving end of hostile behavior.
Heh a big military budget would also bring me back to having a bit of good old fashioned kiwi cultural cringe again as we would look like pretty dumb, cut price, John Howard style brown noser's. (I'll pass on that thanks).
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Besides, what could one hit Key with – a scale model of Te Papa, the Michael Fowler Centre, Queen's Wharf as Party Central?
I think a scale model of the stock exchange might be fitting.... Custard filled of course. ;o)
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Reminds me of the time when the Womans Day editor (sorry been a few years I can't recall her name??) claimed that they didn't photoshop the pics...... Cracked me up at the time as 90% of my job at the time was shopping the pics for her mag (+ Cleo and SHE).
Although I guess technically she was sort of accurate as they (ACP) didn't do it, they just subbed all that work out to other pre press companys to do.
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"If they do nothing other than teach our children to read and write and do maths and be good socialised New Zealand people then they've done a really good job."
Minister Anne Tolley on new school standards
An excellent first step to creating some mindless sheeple.
I'm sure our dear leaders wouldn't want that would they??????Jokes aside that's got to be one of the most moronic NZ political statements of the past 20 years.
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The bit that gets me about all this "double dipton" business is....
For Bill English to claim that he needed the extra allowance to get by on while living in Wellington, would possibly mean that he was living beyond his means.
Is that really a good trait to have in a finance minister during a recession???The fact that now all of a sudden he can get by without the extra cash does this mean that
A/ He didn't know how to budget in accordance with his income (again not the best trait for a finance Minister) and has since had some household budgeting advice or....
B/ Was he lying to the public when he made that claim?
Also as mentioned earlier...... the silence from the honorable "perks buster" hmm what a surprise. -
Another vote here for sweet mothers. :o)
Went to cheeky pipi a week ago, not bad! Very good value for your buck (had a sunday night roast which came with a complimentary glass of wine or tuatara beer). -
Has anyone else been particularly impressed by Maori TV, not just in the way it handled this incident, but in general? They've been screening some very good films, too.
Yes, as a regular occurrence Maori TV has a far better schedule of films and documentaries than TV1,2,3.
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You want chocolate snobbery? Course you do. Now you can buy Schoc on-line. The strawberry and black pepper is awesome.
That is a nice flavour but you need the lime chilli for the win! :-D
Oh, and on the subject of chocolate. Green & Black's 70% cocoa dark chocolate is the perfect addition to a well made short black.
That's been on special at the local supermarket (NW Miramar) this week $3.19 a block for the 70% block.... Goes amazingly well with Tuatara Porter....... The combo has been doing too good a job of converting the missus to dark beers lol
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Was going to say that I'm surprised anyone would be silly enough to forget to run something like body painted models past the interested parties. Seems an obvious no brainer to me??
Wonder if that PR crowds now in the market for a new client? -
Allegedly true story of a guy one of my lecturers knew. Physics PhD in early 80s working with lasers in prefab building. All but finished PhD, laser malfunctioned and burnt the building down...
Did the frickin shark survive?