Posts by dc_red
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I was channel surfing when I heard she'd died, so stuck on ZB to hear the outpourings. The first caller set on nice tone with her ''who cares, they're all Germans anyway..''
Are you sure you were listening to ZB? My mid/late afternoon they had woken chief royalist Leighton Smith from his weekend slumber in a casket somewhere and he was leading the mourning.
I had heard about the crash, then the death, on NatRad at home. I think I was listening to ZB in the car later on while going round to my mates' cold flat in Sandringham to hang out and have a few cold ones ourselves.
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Great work Graham. I got it by the second sentence. The cynical and tired stereotyping of the original really pissed me off. And the obligatory All Blacks simile. And, well ... you get the idea.
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Oh how dreadful. You poor, poor, opressed person, you. Imagine having to pay some vague attention to driving legally! Truely, we live under a regime of the most vile sort!
Hey, I didn't say I was oppressed, or that policing the roads is vile in any way. It's just that the police-to-public ratio appeared considerably higher than usual.
It's a question of priorities: if you also "heartily approve" of full, timely investigation of alleged burglaries and/or email thefts ... and if it's not forthcoming, then it's sensible enough to wonder what else the Police are up to.
If you think that traffic policing should take priority, because of the threat to life and limb, fine. One still might question the kind of "saturation" coverage I saw on a couple of Northland backroads though.
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Rest assured the NZ Police are hard at work ... with their road safety / speed enforcement duties. Yesterday, on a lazy 400km trip to Northland and back we saw at least 2 mobile speedcameras, and about 9 patrol cars on traffic duty (5 complete with flashing lights pulling some unfortunate bugger over). It was really quite remarkable, especially since the roads were so lightly trafficked.
The impression I formed was that the Police have "nothing better to do" on a sleepy winter Sunday.
This said, I did drive somewhat slower than I otherwise would have; panoptical state surveillance achieved its goal.
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As an aside, the 16 Aug 2000 Stuff archive contains this wonderful headline and teaser:
Clinton bids triumphal farewell, extols record
LOS ANGELES (Reuters): President Bill Clinton bid a feisty and triumphful farewell to his Democratic Party on Monday, giving thanks that a man from "a small southern town" could serve as president and hailing a nation at the pinnacle of prosperity.
»READ MOREAnd that despite his numerous, and well-documented, failings. It's hard to imagine Bush leaving office with anything other than a kick in the ass, and a general sense of "what the fuck is the next President going to do with this mess?"
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Re: push TV. Methinks that avoiding it while still receiving a fair amount of entertainment and infotainment requires moderate amounts of (a) technical nous; (b) up-to-date hardware; (c) disposable income. All of which are in short supply I can assure you.
At our place it's dial up internet and free-to-air tv on a 20 inch screen. And we're one of the better off households in the neighbourhood I'd wager.
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I'm in two minds:
1/ Yes, it probably will remind some of "the whole fiasco", and yes it clearly entangled "the government" and "the labour party" - two institutions which aren't synonymous ... yet ;-)
but...
2/ The public needed some educatin', at least if I'm anything to go by. Despite being relatively interested in politics, and in the age-group which benefits from the newly-reduced health care fees, I had no idea about this policy. I was also a little hazy on the childcare thing. I think some measure of direct communication was appropriate ... but this one's clumsy.
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Alastair Thompson wrote:
I find the second response in this thread simply astonishing. How can anyone continue to cry Clinton in the face of this abomination!
Quite easily ... the point is that the executive power to pardon is so obviously open to partisan (ab)use. This holds regardless of whether the President is an appalling Republican or a disappointing Democrat.
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While I concur that GWB is an abominable president, I'm not sure that this use of executive power is the clincher.
What's the point in being President if you can't get your mates off? More accurately, the president has the power to "grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States" and this one alone has already used that power about 116 times (before today). Amusingly, perhaps, there have been quite a few pardons for those found guilty of abandoning military duty, and breaching alcohol laws.
Bill Clinton issued about 140 pardons and commutations in his last day in office, including one for his half-brother, another for a woman involved in Whitewater, and quite a few sundry Democrats.
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Cheers Kyle - it sure is a bit uncanny walking out at Aramoana Beach. I agree with your analysis of likely Kiwi responses.
That small country factor you mention also helped to explain the massive impact of the Erebus disaster (to the extent we still show documentaries about it).
And you think a bomb in Wellington Railway Station - which is part of a major bus-rail hub literally a stone's throw from Parliament - wouldn't?
Err, yes, I think it would actually. However, the question of how NZers would react, generally, to these sorts of events is a relatively open one.