Posts by Andre Alessi
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I'm not often given to one liners, but honestly I felt it was appropriate in this case. I mean, I'd really like to know the reasoning there?
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but also I'd like to see what type of woman Bailey thinks is beautiful. That would tell me more about whether he was on drugs or worked himself up into a blather over nothing much at all.
wat
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And don't call me Shirley.
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My extremist idealism is probably showing through here, but whatever other considerations are in play, surely if someone says "I don't want you writing about my private life" to a journalist or publication, and they're not committing a crime, that should be the end of the matter, surely?
I don't really see how someone's past history with the trash media abrogates that basic right to privacy.
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Tamaki always reminds me of the less common usage of the word "sleek", which is "corpulent, shiny". "Sleek" also sounds like a euphemism for lesbian sex. Coincidence? I think not.
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Definitely not. Public libraries are used only by communists; every decent person knows that knowledge costs money and nothing is free in the education economy.
Oh, so that's how I become a party member! I was just wandering around the supermarket giving people a secret handshake I learned from the Interwebs. No wonder I wasn't feeling less oppressed!
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Looks like I'll need to say it again.
Muriel Newman. ACT Deputy Leader. MP. Number three on list.
Not some fringe internet nutjob. A Ministerial nutjob we very nearly got.
Sure, and how much of a chance would there be that (for example) Newman was able to ban all "racist policies" if she ever was elected again?
Zero. It'll be like Winston Peters' wanting to virtually eliminate Asian immigration. Sure, it's what he said regularly, even on the campaign trail, but everyone involved (expect for a few, deluded voters) knew the policies he would deliver would never actually measure up to the rhetoric. And he was the Deputy Prime Minister.
Seriously, I'm not making light of the fact that these people are crazy, or suggesting we don't call people out on their beliefs, I'm pointing out that the craziness is inevitably blunted by the realities of the parliamentary system regardless of where they end up in it. This is red meat to some ACT voters perhaps, but virtually noone thinks it'll actually be enacted, so we'd all do better to stop being distracted by the fireworks and instead focus on the genuine dangers of the "reasonable" wing of the ACT party.
After all, it's not like Roger Douglas is trying to make miscarriage a crime.
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Andre, pretty much all the weird stuff on climate change on Muriel Newman's surpassingly weird website translates into ACT party policy on climate change.
Fair enough, you can cherry pick craziness rather easily on the Internet these days, but I'm still not convinced that you can get from there to what is a pretty unremarkable (although IMHO stupid) pro-business/global warming-denialist platform and say that the former caused the latter.
I mean, I remember sitting at a suburban Labour Party get-together in the late 90's (thrown by a local MP, if I remember correctly) and being extremely uncomfortable as a couple of (apparently well-known and tolerated, though not elected) members railed on about the CIA spying on everything we did and Jews driving wages down. I don't for a moment think that those people had an effect on Labour party policy even though noone ever explicitly tried to distance themselves from the statements at any point. These people are part of the Labour party, and may well share some of their more extreme beliefs privately with even elected officials, but as long as those beliefs aren't included in achievable public policy, I really don't care that much.
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Really, go and look at some of the fruiter threads on Newman's website. And then consider that Gibbs et al are about to give her a whole lot of money.
I've been doing just that, and fair enough, there are some pretty certifiable people on that thing. The link above to Maps' blog was enlightening too.
But how much of that stuff ever makes it past the forum (or the podium) into real policy? I'm not trying to suggest that this sort of stuff should be tolerated from elected officials who are actively making policy, but for all that I personally find a lot of what goes on in Muriel Newman, et al.'s head offensive/repulsive, as long as it stays there...
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Muriel Newman has always been pretty crazy, but I think she's no more crazy than some members of other parties (admittedly, I'm using "crazy" in the non-pejorative sense of "holding extremely unorthodox beliefs"-Keith Locke, who I respect immensely, has similarly divergent views from "majority" New Zealand.) It's that Kiwi politeness that has meant that her outbursts haven't been as politically crippling as they might be in a more critical culture-we just nod and smile politely and move on when we hear this stuff.
The "racist" adjective is pretty much par for the course these days when discussing anything Maori from an ACT perspective, too. It's one of those things she can say because she can afford to say it-noone who votes ACT is going to object to the intellectual gymnastics required to define the most inoffensive policies as "racist" as long as ACT isn't depending on Maori Party support for anything.
As for the Kurariki case...I don't know. In a rational world, his behaviour would be taken as evidence that there's no benefit to society to subject a thirteen year old kid with obviously limited coping skills and parental supervision to multiple environments that will only reinforce those deficits, but what do I know? (Seriously, that's not a rhetorical question.) Once again I'm struck by the way reaction to crime is apparently predicated by one's political views: for the most part, those on the right use such events as another excuse to get angry, while those on the left (myself included) are saddened by the tragedy and waste of the whole thing. This kid is gone, and I don't know if he'll ever come back.