Posts by Jackie Clark
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Thanks again for this Graeme. My work colleagues wanted to know about the referendum, and being able to email them the link to the referendum tool is invaluable.
-
Muse: Indecision '11: Outrageous!, in reply to Tony Siu,
Piss off. You're waiting in a long line ;)
-
Hard News: We interrupt this broadcast ..., in reply to Rich Lock,
Okay, well that's made me think a bit more. I knew I could count on you, oh fabulous one.
-
I’m not interested in Auckland being like every other city in the world, generally. We are what we are – a city the size of Portland, Oregon, shaped by our geography, and our penchant for lots of roads, and bad driving, and short sighted town planning. The public transport thing though – I do find that very exciting. I haven’t been on a train in many years – the last one I went on was as part of the Out West book festival, yonks ago – and I don’t normally take buses (the having to take 3 buses to work thing – yeah). But if there was a linked service from South to Central, I would probably look at it, at least. From my point of view, I find it exhilarating, that not only are we talking about it, but that there are firm plans in place to make it happen. At last!
-
I did try to have a listen to this Odd Future crowd to see what all the fuss was about, but for some mysterious reason, when I tried to bring up a video of one of their songs, the sound was turned off, and my touchpad is munted. I can't imagine, however, that their songs are any more vile or homophobic or explicitly lyriced than many other outfits of their age, and origins. Whether that be hiphop or gangsta rap or whatever. Besides which, Ms Coney has to realise that the audience at the BDO isn't, in the main, anything but teenagers, And teenagers toss around homophobic, sexist taunts as a matter of course. I don't see that banning one group is going to fix that.
-
So what's the best thing to do for all of us, then, who want to see a change of government? Do we all vote Labour, and hope for the best? Do we split our vote and give our party vote to Green? The latter is what worries me. A bit like the Auckland Mayoral election a few years ago, when people gave their votes to others, and Banks got in. Not the result anyone wanted.
-
That sucks, Hebe. I hope the situation resolves soon, for you.
-
Up Front: Absence in the Arcades, in reply to Islander,
Oh dear, Islander. Then you need to cram all your memories together, and make remembrance live!
-
I'm loving hearing all these memories. Christchurch was a city that my family and I went to many times when I was growing up (all part of the Tom Clark Family Tour of the Southern Isle - May Edition) but I remember very little of it, except Noahs, where we always stayed. I do remember never being entirely comfortable there - Dunedin was more my sort of place, even as a child. But however you feel about a place as an adult, if it's a place you grew up, or where you made memories, it's going to be important in your life. And it helps if there are others to build those memories with.
-
I hadn't thought much about this retirement thing until today. I am aware that many of our parents have two jobs, and I was talking to one of our Dads today - a lovely young man of 26 - who indeed has 2 jobs. Now, bear in mind, that many of the people I deal with day to day, all of them Pasifika or Maori, are by and large what we would call "working class", and certainly some are what I would call the "working poor". Amongst those people, I have shockingly encountered a very fatalistic attitude to aging, which is that they won't. Some see 55 as old. Some see 60 as old, and all seem to see 70-75 as very old. Bearing that in mind, and how hard most of these people work, I should imagine that many of them foresee very little down time before they die. Anyway, I'm chatting to this young man, and we're talking about his jobs, and the fact that he only gets 4-6 hours sleep before he's off out to work again. I said to him that he would wear himself out, especially if the retirement age is raised. (And make no mistake, when things are taken from you incrementally, you hardly notice until one day, we will all have to be 7o before we retire). His response was "well, you have to work hard when you're young, and kick back for a couple of years - and then you die, anyway". It saddened me. Because I suddenly realised that that was the expectatation. I had kind of known it all along, but here was this very young man of only 26, and that was the life he saw for himself. We all, surely, deserve to take it easy before we die. To not work, unless we want to of course, for a bloody wage. To be free from being a wage slave, for at least a few years, before we kick the bucket.