Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: The Editorial Image, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I wouldn’t piss on Laws if his head was on fire, but cheap (and dishonest) Nazi analogies trivialize the violence done not only to thousands of individuals but a nation’s sense of cultural identity. There’s a large part of the world where that’s not just a rhetorical trope but real, and in many ways still raw, history.
We do have our own unfortunate history with eugenics, though. As Te Ara notes:
Organised New Zealand eugenics groups in the early 1900s advocated sterilising those who were 'unfit' to breed. They urged upper-class and middle-class women to stop using contraception and to breed more, to stop the country being dominated by 'defectives'. This report of the establishment of a Eugenic Society in Christchurch appeared in the Poverty Bay Herald in August 1911.
This longer essay indicates how widespread and respectable eugenicist ideas were in New Zealand in the early 20th century -- not least amongst our proto-feminist heroines.
The same ideas, in less high-minded form, are behind Laws' poisonous talk about "ferals" and his 2009 proposal to sterilise the underclass. They were echoed in his descriptions of Arie Smith.
The difference is that most of us now think of Laws as a sick little man. There was a time when his ideas would have been regarded as forward-thinking.
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Folks, if you're thinking of coming along, click through and get your ticket now. It's very nearly full up.
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I added Keith's visualisation to the above post after it was published, so if anyone missed it, it's here.
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Hard News: Press Play > Budget, in reply to Steve Barnes,
I have just watched our Prime Minister embarrass the entire country with a speech of which Mike King would have been proud.
That was pretty awful. Clearly, he enjoys it, but I wish the Prime Minister could bear in mind that his job is not stand-up comedian in chief.
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Intriguing the was the TV3 coverage has basically ignored the speech and gone straight to reactions.
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Hard News: The Editorial Image, in reply to Emma Hart,
And why would a pragmatic policy focus solely on women, and not also on men?
Also, why would a serious policy be funded at $1m over four years?
When you consider that, it looks more like a dog-whistle than a policy.
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Hard News: Press Play > Budget, in reply to Kumara Republic,
Has Treasury actually done any scrutiny of the Roads of National Significance?
Bill English admitted yesterday that it had not been subject to the standard Treasury cost-benefit analysis. Which is astonishing.
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Hard News: Press Play > Budget, in reply to Hilary Stace,
I'm going to be looking closely for disability stuff. However, only the feel good headlines about extra spending will get a mention in the speech - the details about what and where and at what cost to other programmes is usually hidden deep in obscure departmental detail.
Sector knowledge is so valuable. Richard Pamatatau's flagging of the outrageous bung to PEDA in 2010 is an excellent example. He read the detail and know something was wrong, because he knew his round.
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Hard News: The Voyage of a Lifetime, in reply to Sylvie Zlami,
That’s a great initiative and a fantastic opportunity for Aucklanders.
Any chance of a live stream?I has been discussed, but there's some concern about spoilers for similar events in other centres. I'm keen on it.
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Capture: Dogs Love Cameras Too, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
People should always be weary of their surroundings whether it be an animal, a road, a car, bike, train ,plane and cliffs. Surroundings are not always your friend. And people too.
You kinda left out the part about the responsibilities of dog owners there, though. Assaults aren't generally regarded as the fault of the victim, are they?
I'm not trying to be niggly, but it does irk me a bit when dog safety is presented as the problem of the person who might be attacked.
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