Posts by Alfie
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The Herald is running the government spin line on the TTPA.
It starts with an editorial suggesting Maori are misinformed in their opposition to the agreement. Then Heather du Plessis-Allan uses her NZME platform to reinforce the line put forward by Key that the thousands of people who marched through Auckland this week didn't know why they were there.
Too many of them didn't even know why they were protesting.
"I dunno, to be honest," was roughly what one man said.
Those poor, ignorant misguided souls. Maybe they should get jobs?
It's easy to get the impression that this is another of those NZME paid campaigns, such as their recent multi-platform flag promotion paid for by taxpayers. It's getting harder to tell these days.
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Here’s some refreshing news about the TTIP – the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership currently being negotiated between the US and the EU. It’s another of those free trade deals designed primarily to benefit large corporates at the expense of nation states.
The TTIP is pretty similar to the TTPA and contains similar provisions to the deeply-flawed Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) – the European version is called the Investment Court System (ICS).
However things have hit a snag in Germany, with German judges taking a strong line against the obvious threat to democracy. The German Magistrates Association sees "neither a legal basis nor a need for such a court”.
The judges said the ICS represents a threat to the sovereignty of legal systems already in place in Europe, and they put little faith in the EU’s ability to manage it…
The DW story suggests this may be sufficient to scupper the entire deal, proving the value of a truly independent judiciary able to apply some good old-fashioned common sense.
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Hard News: Fix up, young men, in reply to BenWilson,
Alfie’s one right here is a good example to talk to. He has responded to points made by Raena about past and current misogyny, but then he seems (to me) to simply reiterate his perception that things are different now…
I’d prefer to think that I picked up on the point I was trying to make earlier, then expanded into possible causes for the problem. But whatever…
…without really taking into account the point that in not being one of the targets his own personal experience of the amount of abuse going on is not perhaps that reliable.
At the risk of repeating myself Ben, all of the gigs I’ve attended have been in the company of women, sometimes with quite large groups of friends. Of course it’s possible that some of the women were assaulted and chose not to tell the rest of us, but knowing the women involved I find that unlikely.
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Hard News: Fix up, young men, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Careful! ;-)
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Hard News: Fix up, young men, in reply to Steve Barnes,
This, from someone you could dislike for quite a few reasons…
I’m not saying there could be an unterior motive but to be fair, the author of that piece has a mate who has an ongoing and long-standing dispute with the abuser in that case.
Damn… name suppression for prominent NZers really gets in the way of intelligent discussion.
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It’s pretty clear there is a difference of experience being talked about here. As you say part of it is because victims (women) know they are being abused and bystanders (men) don’t necessarily know.
But part of it could actually be that some people lived in an environment that really was different to what is going on now and ignoring that possibility is ignoring the opportunity to identify causes.
This! That's the reason I walked away from this thread on Wednesday night. When an otherwise intelligent discussion begins to degenerate into all men are bastards, then I'm sorry if I lose interest.
And if you had a violent father or men of my age chat you up at bus stops -- they're both bad things. But to suggest or imply that somehow invalidates my experience is insulting. As Russell says, we're all on the same side FFS.
There have always been creepy guys -- they exist in every society. But my own experience of gigs and festivals in the 1970s and 80s is that the prevalence of the misogynistic behaviour exhibited at Laneway was limited to non-existent.
Keep in mind that we were coming off the back of the hippy era and it was an altogether more sharing and caring age. The drug of choice was dope which engendered a chilled out, non-violent atmosphere. And as someone posted above, if anyone had a go at one of the girls in our group, the guys would be there to stand up for them. It wasn't a chest-puffing alpha male thing, just 'normal', civilised behaviour.
So what's changed? Well quite a lot really. The availability of cheap alcohol, pre-loading, easy access to hard core porn for any kid with a cellphone, misogynistic lyrics becoming mainstream, the widespread use of edgy drugs... but mainly alcohol.
As much as anything it's a societal shift which has resulted in a general loss of respect for other people. My solution would be to reduce access to alcohol or at least for us to get over our binge-drinking culture.
But then I'm just an old guy, so what would I know.
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Hard News: A cog in the Mediaworks machine, in reply to izogi,
Would local weather forecasts be so useful?
Probably not. I was just responding to Rich's question about whether it was technically possible. I get my daily local forecasts from MetService and Tidespy and occasionally MetVUW.
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The new TPP flag -- Body in the Herald.
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Hard News: A cog in the Mediaworks machine, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
We’ve never had this, right
Actually we did, back in the 70s and probably even the early 80s. There used to be four regional news bulletins, Akl, Wgtn, ChCh, and Dn, each with local weather forecasts.
These days it wouldn't be too difficult. Our major broadcasters already have regional breakouts for ads, and you could pre-record three or four weather segments and play them using the same system. The increase in cost wouldn't be huge, although it's hard to see either major channel doing this as they've moved away from the regions and a centralised feed suite is obviously cheaper.
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Hard News: Fix up, young men, in reply to Russell Brown,
People come here from a range of places and we try and respect them all.
Amen.
