Posts by bronwyn
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I too, have a winter top layer that I'm inordinately proud of. It's not a coat, as such, but a thick wool, bright red, nurses cape, complete with name label of the last sister who wore it.
Purchased from an op shop in Gisborne during what was meant to be a scorching hot summer East Cape camping trip turned out to be anything but (except for the East Coast, that was still present and correct).
I'm embarrassed to say it has led to many many sitcom-esque jokes with a co-worker who insists upon calling it my superhero cape - e.g. "well, my budget came in under this month, that's how amazing my super powers are etc. etc."
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And I wouldn't need much of that before reverting to my "fuck you" default setting.
And I'm sure anyone who has flown more than, ohh, once with our national carrier has seen that as well - I don't think this is just happening on Jetstar - although it sounds like they have more than their fair share of "it's more than my job's worth mate" types.
I occasionally accompany visiting musicians with the aim of holding their hand whilst they check in (in a purely professional capacity, that is), and recently was witness to a incredible display of unhelpfulness from an Air NZ empolyee - "well, the manual says I can't possibly let you bring that very fragile violin on as carry on as you also have a laptop with you", but I suspect the more she got shouted at, the less helpful she was inclined to be - as we all would be. Nevertheless, it wasn't an overwhelmingly convincing introduction to that famous NZ friendly hospitality.
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but they don't seem to have done the unglamorous footsoldier stuff
To be fair, I did see Russel Norman out at the Avondale markets at 8am on a grey Sunday morning. I can't say he looked very excited to be there, but he was there, complete with Green promo-girls signing people up.
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On a different note, is anyone else finding it a little peculiar that both of the woman involved in this case are constantly referred to as an "Indian woman" and a "Korean woman". I'm not sure why their ethnicity is constantly mentioned - seems like a way to make them even less anonymous given all the other details we know about them...
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I am a touch biased, of course, but the on-the-money Jose Barbosa also managed two "live crosses" (or perhaps just calls from people on the bridge), including one from one of the organisers - who was rather explicit about how excited he was...
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Re. ' a re-launch of the Community Employment Group' scheme - it has been resurrected, albeit on a much smaller scale and with what seems to be a much more stringent application process as the 'Enterprising Communities Scheme'.
Of course I can see the need to be accountable with use of public money etc. etc. but it seems to me to be a pretty inflexible source of funding of exactly the sort of thing, such as community/iwi based employment and education programmes, that Pita Sharples would seem to support. Part of my job is assisting people with applying for funding, meaning I do it a lot, and even I have struggled a bit with the Enterprising Communities application - a current one is sitting here at about 60 pages long.
So, perhaps Sharples and like minded politcians could look at what's already in place and see how they could make it work better (i.e. make it easier for people to actually use the money) instead of hatching grand plans to establish yet another scheme...
(or maybe that's just too simple)