Posts by simon g
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in politics perception is everything.
Case in point: Hikoi in Auckland, for Maori seats in the Super City. Goff says "Yes". Key says "No". Very clear positions, very different.
So the Maori Party are disappointed. But by some remarkable magic trick, they are disappointed in the government, not the leader of it. Key is painted as the good guy, who "reaches out" to Maori ... and pats them on the head. Go figure.
Goff seems set on a strange double whammy: becoming the bad guy for liberals, while his party has more inclusive (liberal, progressive, choose your label) policies than the government he opposes. But then, who cares about policies? Can we be bothered to read that far?
Thus Danyl:
They'll go away in a sense, in that Maori, urban liberals and female voters will happily vote for the Maori Party, National and the Greens instead of Labour.
Entirely illogical. But sadly, possible.
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And a huge story in Paris, where Ireland have been cheated by a French handball leading to a goal, awarded by referee Wayne Barnes.
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NZ's status as World Cup's Official Favourite Minnow has just been usurped by Slovenia (pop: smaller than ours) who have beaten Russia in the play-offs and qualified for the first time. Congrats to Slovenia, whose reward is to spend the next six months being constantly mistaken for Slovakia, also qualified.
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Arguments about Sport A vs Sport B are pointless (first, because it's obviously subjective, and second, because football obviously wins).
It's not the sport, but the contest. Is it meaningful sport? Southland winning the Ranfurly Shield wasn't a 45-35 try-fest. If a visitor had never seen a game of rugby before, (s)he would not think it was a great spectacle. What made the game was ... it mattered. The reaction afterwards was not corporate-sponsored approved enthusiasm: it was a whole bunch of people going "Yeeeeeessss!" ... naturally.
All Whites fans got excited on Saturday night, and still are. All Blacks fans no longer get excited (though they might get drunk, which has some similar symptoms). These days, they have two reactions:
1) We stuffed it up.
2) Thank God we didn't stuff it up.The last time there was real, unrestrained joy in an All Blacks' win was Sean Fitzpatrick on his knees in South Africa, thumping the ground, and John Hart hugging his players. Why? Because it mattered. They'd done something NZ had never done before: win a series over there.
Now, if the ABs beat South Africa, it's a good platform, with plenty to work on. Nobody gets excited about platforms.
There is only one thing left to get excited about, and we all know what that is, and every four years the All Blacks find a way not to win it. When they finally do, we won't need a marketing department to persuade us to go ... "YEEEEEEEESSSSSSSS!".
And suddenly, rugby will be a wonderful sport.
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Congratulations to coach Herbert Richards and his All-Conquering All-Whites! We all leapt up with Roy Falloon and celebrated as he scored his match-winning point! As a lifelong devotee of the great game of soccer (fave player: Manchester United's David Beckham), I am so thrilled! Let's all get behind the boys as they head to South Africa to take on the Boks in the FIFA World Cup!
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Thanks, that really is a superb post from Graeme Reed.*
Don't forget "hindsight". As in, "with the benefit of hindsight, I accept that constantly trying to grope the office staff and threatening to sack anyone who complained was inappropriate". Because I couldn't possibly have known that in advance.
Extra points for "20/20 hindsight".
*sorry -
Breaking news ... Key in 'Not Relaxed' shock:
"Prime Minister John Key has labelled MP Hone Harawira's email on white people "deeply offensive" and he wants action from the coalition partner the Maori Party.
"Hone has a history of making intemperate and outrageous comments and this one is right up there," Mr Key told reporters a short time ago." (NZPA)
(Looks like the price of the F & S just went up).
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To: PM
From: Kevin Taylor and the Spinners"Photo-ops for Waitangi Day: Holding hands with Titewhai Harawira - cancelled. Suggest revert to car ride, will find cute kid."
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The RWC is shaping up to be a total shambles.
Matthew, I would bet my house and several limbs that there will be an early election, pre-World Cup. If the polls are good for National, then like Clark in 2002, Key will want to cash in (usual line: "media speculation ... bad for NZ inc ... end the uncertainty").
I agree with you about the RWC. Major sports events are a bad news magnet (see many Olympics passim): stories of unfinished construction will be a media staple for the next 2 years.
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It was the same persona that graced his Letterman performance - and that's what charms the folks at home.
Cue soft focus and soothing voiceover: It's morning again, in New Zealand.
From the "been here before" file ... Time magazine, on Ronald Reagan, 1986:
"Here is Reagan, still getting away with a campaign gambit, divorcing himself from any governmental action, even his own, that seems unpopular. He has an eerie gift for distancing himself from failures, for behaving, in a bizarre and cagey act of dissociation, as if what he had just done had nothing much to do with him, as if it had just vanished into the air, passed into nonexistence. ...
And Reagan committed so many press-conference fluffs and bumbles and misstatements and fantasies wrapped in anecdotes that eventually no one paid that much attention anymore, assuming that that was just the way Reagan was. Who cared? The results seemed to come out all right."
Policy debates are for pointy-heads and politicians. We have a President.