Posts by Moz
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Access: Right to die?, in reply to Hilary Stace,
that disability will continued to be feared as something unnatural and negative, rather than embraced as just part of the diversity of life and living until death.
Not everyone wants to be disabled and views it as a gift. People like me look at the options and say exactly "I'd rather die", and mean it. I am profoundly skeptical of anyone saying "Moz, you don't really mean that" because I have lived with it my whole life. I am different to other people (unique, just like everyone else) and I have had everything from "no, no, eat that foul-tasting bile, it's yummy" (I am extremely sensitive to bitter flavours) through to "a 21 year old cannot consent to a vasectomy, let alone decide they want one". It took until I was 30-ish to get a permanent one, and more than two years of doctor-shopping to get the first "temporary" one.
I do not want to have to spend two years doctor-shopping to find someone who will approve my desire not to be tortured to death by doctors should that situation arise. Given the ever-increasing availability of death-deferring treatments I think it's very likely to.
will have more pressure on them not to be burdens on carers or the public purse, and they will be pressured to choose to kill themselves or be killed,
So you'd rather see them sedated to the point of idiocy lest they think they're a burden? I realise that's not what you meant, but it's the only way I can see to prevent that happening. Anyone able enough to think about it will realise that they are a burden, and wonder whether it's worth it. That pressure comes from within as much as without. It's definitely part of my thinking, because I just can't see how three people proving round the clock moz-care is a good use of anyone's time. I believe I should have the right to say no. Those who want to should have the right to say yes.
At the very least the "cruelty to animals" laws should recognise that humans are also animals. Except for people who deny that, of course, who count as vegetables.
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Envirologue: 1080, "eco-terrorism" and agendas, in reply to Grant McDougall,
"Environmentalists are the strongest advocates for 1080. It will be a rabid red-neck hunter that has done it"[made the threat, etc].
I thought both of those were obvious? It is to me, anyway. Following on from the NFA "bomb on the chopper" debacle, it might even be a paid member of the right wing PR team. The greenie protesters I know are more likely to eat the 1080 themselves (or threaten to) than try to poison other people with it.
Interestingly most of the hunters I know are greenies first, and "**** you tree murdering b****, I'm going to get a gun and shoot goats until I run out of ammo" type hunters second. It's almost amusing when "kill every deer and pig in the country" meets "I love running round with a rifle" in the pub after a weekend in the bush. I also worked for a few years with a guy who went out on weekends shooting cats and the occasional fox in a fenced reserve area. He was part of a group of what I suspect were middle aged gun nuts, who definitely geeked out about the gear (they had listening devices, night vision gear, special padded jackets for warm weather, you name it.
In Australia we have a problem with (big shiny) 4WD owners deciding they want a (big shiny) rifle, then driving off into the hills to shoot at things. They have NFI how to use either the 4WD or the rifle, and when using either scare the locals. Unfortunately we have the "Shooters and Fishers Party" right wing dingbats in NSW parliament who sell their votes for things like allowing hunting in National Parks. Australian National Parks are more like National-the-party-Parks than National-Parks-like-in-Aotearoa.
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OnPoint: Leviathan, in reply to B Jones,
the difference between mass data collection and mass surveillance is that if I have left a blamelessly obscure life so far, chances are that nobody has bothered to read any of the emails I've sent,...
Technically yes, in the John Key sense of "yes, of course". The data is unquestionably collected, but the human element is in designing the system that trawls the data, not trawling the data. You have to be quite a threat before anyone looks at your data, and they're unlikely to look at most of it regardless.
Much as if you get arrested and tried no-one is going to drag you through evidence showing that you cleaned your teeth before you left for work and every tiny step up until the point you drove through a crowd of schoolchildren. All that matters is the Police opinion of the relevant facts. With the data collection, all that matters is "computer says guilty" and the secret police proceed from there.
The question for them is whether it's easier to prosecute you directly or just arrange for problems to beset you. Especially if you travel internationally, it's often easier to notify the Indonesians that you've got prescription opiates and maybe they should look very, very carefully at that prescription. Or the US and the media files on whatever electronics you have. Can you prove you licensed that ringtone?
I suspect but don't know that McCarthy type processes are already in place - we know that they spy on dissidents in NZ, and do various illegal or probably-illegal things to gain information and reduce their influence. The question is how far does that go.
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Up Front: Adric and the Art of Asking, in reply to sandra,
recreationally I find ...
Now you just have to turn the jackhammering noise into some kind of avant-garde electronica and you're away. Or do the new machines not do that?
And yeah, superpowers! Even (especially?) NSFW ones.
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Speaker: Why churches should marry…, in reply to Jeremy Andrew,
Wow, I'm gobsmacked!
The goods news is that Facebook supports him. I reported his failbook page as hate speech and they've just got back to me to say that it's fine and what he says there is acceptable. I am tempted to make a fan page where I describe in gory detail the various things I think would be appropriate to happen to him. Based on Bible quotes, of course, since there are so many really nasty options. I'm sure Facebook would approve.
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Hard News: News from home ..., in reply to Deborah,
You mean just as Labour did when Helen Clark was the leader of a minority government
Yes, exactly. I was disappointed when Labour decided that they'd govern alone or not at all. Just to be clear, the third paragraph in my post was supposed to explain that:
( I said) And if Labour choose the "anything but government" option again... that's not my preference, and my vote will have expressed that in the only way it can.
Clark seemed to understand what government requires better than the recent crop of Labour leaders, and I think one of her major failings was in tranistion/succession planning. She didn't leave an obvious successor behind, or apparently anyone both able and interested in leading. But we're hopefully past that point and the new Labour leaders will prove interested in government rather than just being "leader of the second most popular party".
I'm definitely interested in what policies Labour bring to the table, and could see myself voting for them. I'm already split voting, because of late Labour have actively campaigned for me to party vote Green, candidate vote Labour. It's very easy to do that when both parties I support are asking for the same thing. Although it feels odd when one of them says they're doing that because they hate the other, and one because they want to work with the other. But not odd enough to get me to vote for Nick Smith. TBH, I'd vote for Kim Dotcom before I'd vote for Nick Smith (and yes I know that would be a wasted vote. That's my point).
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Hard News: News from home ..., in reply to Geoff Lealand,
I am just wondering what or who all those folk merrily abandoning Labour might be offering as alternatives
One can only hope that this version of Labour is willing to accept that MMP is a thing and contemplate governing with the assistance of other parties. Which means that there are many choices for people who kinda like some things Labour (used to?) stand for but don't necessarily want to vote for whatever it is that Little-Labour might turn out to want.
So for me, there's The Greens, Mana, possibly even a Green-Libertarian party if one of those arose. Sheesh, if The Greens appointed Steffan Green as leader I might even vote for the Internet Party.
And if Labour choose the "anything but government" option again... that's not my preference, and my vote will have expressed that in the only way it can.
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Hard News: Garbage in, garbage out, in reply to Kumara Republic,
As in the News of the World that shut down after getting caught in the phone hacking act?
Yes. There is no connection between profitability and hacking, let me assure you of that ;)
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Hard News: Garbage in, garbage out, in reply to Gareth Swain,
If, for example, someone set up a new newspaper, TV news venture, or some other form of news, would the general population not support it to the same level as the existing mainstream media?
When Russel finishes playing with his collection of luxury cars I'm sure he'll explain how profitable dabbling in the investigative news business is. Or you could check on how profitable The Guardian is if you want a more newspaper-on-the-web outlet.
Big hint: Rupert's newspapers mostly lose money, and more news-focussed they are the more they lose - News of the World is kinda profitable, The Australian loses money like a pokie addict.
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Hard News: Housing, hope and ideology, in reply to Chris Waugh,
improving tenants' rights
Both, but a bit of this would go a long way. As with many things, it's all fine as long as your landlord is reasonable (or your tenants are reasonable, as the case may be). The problem is that there's no social pressure to be a decent landlord, and no real legal requirement either. The idea that any tenant should be able to stay in the property until they're ready to leave just doesn't occur in the law, or to most landlords.
The law is almost written around the needs to "accidental landlords", those nice upper class people who get the opportunity to study at Cambridge for a year, or a grant to finish their novel in Paris. So they want to rent out their house while they're away, but they have no idea what they're doing and they might need to come back unexpectedly (etc).
If we flipped that and said to those people "hire a professional", and directed the law at the 99% of landlords who buy investment properties with the intention of renting them out, I think we'd do a lot better by the people we choose to exclude from home ownership.