Posts by Rich Lock
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Hard News: Democracy Night, in reply to Christopher Dempsey,
You're asking the media to do their job?
What can I say? I'm an incurable optimist.
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Hard News: Democracy Night, in reply to slarty,
Anybody fancy having a whip-round for 122 copies of The Spirit Level? (and 10 copies of Zombie Economics...)
Season well with a couple of copies of Machiavelli's 'The Prince', and Sun-Tzu's 'The Art of War'. Garnish with 'Eat, Pray, Love' and 'The Secret', and serve hot.
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Hard News: Democracy Night, in reply to Rob Stowell,
The left needs to talk, listen, argue and develop an alternative, more collective and communal vision for the country. That’s work, and it needs working on :)
I agree with most of what you said, but I'm not entirely sold on the crude characterisation of the political spectrum as left/right anymore. It's not that simple, and political parties need to take that into account.
Also, for me personally, while I agree that 'we still lost', I think that the media have (again) failed in their duty by absolutely calling it for Key without any hint that there might be even the possibility of an upset. Sure, it's Joyce's job to spin it like that, and it's one thing I don't begrudge him for. But they didn't have to swallow it wholesale.
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Hard News: Democracy Night, in reply to Stephen Hill,
then Nat/Act/UF would have 60 seats.
And that leaves Lab/Greens/NZF/Maori/Mana with 59 or 60? Quite an unholy alliance...
The underlying and unaddressed assumption in some of the print coverage has been that the Maori party will happily line up with National. I'm not saying that won't happen, but it might not be the rock-solid lock that some are assuming.
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Took my two-year old daughter to the polls for the first time, just to show her what this democracy thing is all about, but mostly for the amusement value of putting an 'I've voted' sticker on her. Those stickers really were awful - only stayed on about 30 seconds (which admittedly is around 27 seconds longer than the lifespan of the joke).
I'm mildly troubled by the papers unequivocally calling it for Key two days in a row (HoS, SST, today's Herald) - it seems like once the specials are in, there's some room for an upset in the negotiations. Or have I missed something.
I'm also troubed by the spin around the asset sales: Key is spinning the increased percentage of the National vote as a mandate. But that ignores the decreased turnout/overall numbers of voters. I've not crunched the numbers, but if the overall number of National votes is less than 2008, that's not exactly a ringing endorsement. Anyone enlighten me?
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Hard News: Sharing the Wealth, in reply to BenWilson,
The viral spreading of the undead infection has never been convincing. The most dangerous viruses are the ones with a long infectious period before you show any signs.
Anti zombie combat is also quite easy. Only with massive weight of numbers are they any threat at all, and even then, finding a simple defensive line will enable even the most lightly armed defense to inflict 100% casualties.
For containment, there's the difficulty of recognising an outbreak for what it is in time to set up effective quarantine lines - 'yeah, they're walking dead. Of course they are. GTF out of my office'.
World War Z deals with both these points quite well, although it's zombieism has a long enough incubation to allow the infected to move undetected within the large numbers of refugees before they succumb. It also makes the point that a lot of modern weapons are designed to incapacitate or injure humans, and have a psychological element to them that doesn't affect the walking dead.
It is being made into a film, but I'm not all that hopeful it'll translate well from page to screen.
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Crowdsourcing the PAS hive-mind, and as I'm too lazy to do the research myself, anyone got any good info on Ben Clarke? He doesn't have a chance of winning against that... gardening ....woman, but I'm wondering whether to throw him a bone with my candidate vote.
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Hard News: Sharing the Wealth, in reply to BenWilson,
Jesus hates zombies.
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When you hear the contents of the #teapottapes, just remember that #HipstersForGoldsmith heard them, like, way before you did
Pfft. I own the Japanese tour bootleg on vinyl.
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My reading of that Casey quote is that she is summarising the Grey Power take-home message: it's not her position.
Full quote:
At an Auckland Council hearing into the Auckland Plan, councillor Cathy Casey questioned the group's motives and asked whether they had anything to do with the election.
"I heard you on the radio this morning and I thought I was listening to Winston Peters. I'm very disappointed and I'm actually quite shocked," she said.
She said immigration wasn't a council issue. Mr Rayner said he was surprised by Ms Casey's attitude. "Maybe it's because she's Irish and fairly new ... I just don't know."
Ms Casey hit back saying she was Scottish, not Irish, and had lived in New Zealand for 25 years. "This is not about my migrant status, it's about telling Asians they're not wanted."