Posts by Lucy Telfar Barnard
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Not the same story, but all part of the same story really: the High Court has rejected two sisters’ request to be able to name the man who abused them. I am so very very angry for them. How can this be justice when it feels so deeply wrong?
Sorry, I know this is not exactly on-topic. Clearly this ruling was more of a trigger for me than the Centrepoint story, and outlets are helpful. As you were. -
Up Front: Fringe of Darkness, in reply to Russell Brown,
I disagree. There is a villain. Luckily, he’s dead. There are possibly other villains who are still alive. Of course Anke is not one of them.
It’s certainly not wrong of Anke to view public files; that is indeed what research is.You say “There will often be a tension between between the party that that wants to tell the story and the party that exercises a right not to speak – this story more than most. It happens in journalism.” It certainly does. But I think journalists sometimes forget that wanting to tell a story doesn’t always give someone the right to tell it.
In this case there is of course the tension between the rights of those who want their story told, and those who don’t (and who have the right to keep their story to themselves). Having now read the Metro piece, I think Anke has done a good job of navigating that difficult path.
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I've no idea who the actress is, or what her motivations were for wanting the book stopped, but: when someone else talks about what happened to you, without your permission, it takes away your control - just as your control of what happened to your life and your body was taken away.
Having been on a commune where sexual abuse occurred, albeit in an entirely different context to Centrepoint (hidden and not condoned once discovered), I would be pretty cross and likely feel disempowered to learn that even a responsible journalist was planning to write about what happened to me, or what other people thought had happened to me, or even what the court proceedings say happened to me, without my input and permission. Alternatively, or as well, it could well be a giant trigger that I might not want in my life at that particular time, because you never know how these things will catch you or when, and you think you're all cool and have found some equilibrium, and then you're surprised to find something catches you off guard and there's some part of it that you're not all cool with after all.
So while you say you "grieve" for the book that could of been, and I have some sympathy for all the work you put in, I find the bulk of my sympathy lies with the actress, whoever she is, because she's the one who's been living with all this all these years, and will continue to live with it well after you've moved on to your next book.
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Polity: So who exactly placed conditions…, in reply to izogi,
I'd thought a law change wasn't needed, as has been pointed out multiple times?
A law change is needed to add Red Peak as a fifth option. A law change is not needed to swap Red Peak for one of the other options. Adding Red Peak as a fifth option is preferable to swapping out (I think) because swapping out risks alienating those who had identified one of the first four as their preferred option and who would probably feel cheated to have their first choice option removed. Even if there is another one practically the same on offer (the Lockwood options) or basically only a really small proportion of the population actually like it (hypnoflag).
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Hard News: A cog in the Mediaworks machine, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I hope nobody dobs my hairdresser in?
Ooo, I wonder if we have the same haircut? But I doubt it. Annabel’s too awesome to allow that. Now I just wish I’d thought to suggest to her that she get the domain name.
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Hard News: Not yet standing upright, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
A flag referendum should start with ” Do we want to change the NZ Flag
That's fine so long as "do we want to change the NZ flag" isn't interpreted as the same thing as "do we want to swap the NZ flag for whatever the majority prefer of the options available"?
I would like a new flag. But I prefer the current flag to any of the four currently on offer. If Red Peak were included in the referendum, but one of the other four came out as favourite, I would vote to retain the current flag.
So I'd want a question on the first referendum to be something like "would you like rather have the current flag or your first choice", which would show whether or not people are open to a change.
It wasn't clear to me in reporting this morning whether Labour still intended us to have that choice at a second referendum (though of course if at the first referendum >50% were to vote "no thanks" to a flag change regardless of the alternative flag, there wouldn't be much point in having the second referendum, which would save a bit of money.
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Hard News: A cog in the Mediaworks machine, in reply to Kumara Republic,
It’s charitable to call it a fucking lie at best, and it’s used by hypocritical cunts as an excuse to slam the door behind them. The late comedienne/disability activist Stella Young neatly deconstructed it:
“That quote, ‘the only disability in life is a bad attitude’, the reason that’s bullshit is … No amount of smiling at a flight of stairs has ever made it turn into a ramp. No amount of standing in the middle of a bookshelf and radiating a positive attitude is going to turn all those books into braille.” When anyone tells me to ‘just believe in yourself’, I have to resist the temptation to say, “I don’t want your smiles, I want a ladder you motherfucking cunts!”Sorry, off topic, but…
Halle-fricking-lujah. I was thinking a variation of exactly this when I took the "Be Accessible” survey. Now, I’m sure Be Accessible has entirely laudable goals. But presenting me with “What’s the best thing about having a disability” with the options “Greater empathy for others/Ability to be flexible, problem-solve/A different experience of life/Other (please specify)” just makes me want to spew, and including “your own limiting beliefs” but not “pain” among the options for “What’s the hardest thing about living with a disability” is similarly insulting.
Did they test this survey before they took it live?Rant and derail over, as you were.
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Chris and I were having a discussion in a previous refugee thread, about the state of what NZ had to offer (e.g. our poor quality social housing), and whether it would really be a kindness to offer it.
I think we ended up agreeing that the important thing was to be very honest about what we are offering.
The importance of this honesty is currently being demonstrated in Uruguay, where a small group of Syrian refugees are demonstrating for longer/greater government support, or to be assisted to relocate elsewhere, depending on which account one reads. (English-language coverage here and here). It’s a sad result given the original optimism about the resettlement programme. The Syrians complain – and the Uruguayans recognise – that they weren’t adequately advised [Spanish] about what they were coming to.
However, I like to hope we do better. We’ve had more practice, I think, in resettling refugees. The Uruguayans, for example, note with regret that they “ignored advice from Switzerland[Spanish] … to settle [the Syrians] together in the same location”. To me this is important because I’ve heard some commentary suggesting that a way to bring more refugees would be to distribute them round the country rather than in larger groups, so the work involved in supporting them would be more widely distributed. To me this sounds like people wanting to be able to participate in helping new arrivals, without thinking about what’s in the best interests of those arrivals. The Uruguayan experience underlines the need to be sure that we can in fact adequately support new arrivals, and support them in groups large enough to give them a sense of social and cultural support and to reduce the sense of isolation that they will inevitably have on coming to the other end of the earth.
So yes, we can certainly do better than we’re doing now, but possibly not immediately. We could expand, or replicate elsewhere, the Mangere Refugee Resettlement Centre, in order to be able to take more, but that will take time. That’s in no way a reason not to do anything, nor a reason not to push for a permanently higher quota, just I guess a suggestion that there be a bit of understanding about maybe why we’re not doing more straight away.
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My average age may well be close to 45, but I'm pretty confident I'm not an angry old man. I'm really not angry most of the time, and I'm definitely not a man. I've also noticed quite a lot of other not-men on the site.
Of course, I may be old, since old is relative. But bear in mind, Daman, that if you're lucky, being old is inevitable, so perhaps reconsider your contempt on grounds of age. -
Sorry micheall michael, but you are not “proof that Hep C can be cured with cannabis oil”. The effectiveness of any medication cannot be proven through the experience of a single individual. I have no opinion on whether cannabis oil is or is not an effective treatment for Hepatitis C (there is apparently at least some evidence that it might be), but even if it is, your experience does not prove it.