Posts by Riddley Walker
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and forgive me for shooting fish in a bucket, you can hardly expect garth george to be able to count when he spends so much effort trying not to dribble, but by my reckoning a petition of 600,000 does not constitute a majority of a population of around 4,000,000. me thinks he may have suffered a few too many loving thrashings as a tot.
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yeah, after reading Garth George's rant it really does make me appreciate Russell's work all the more - a disturbingly rare voice of calm sanity and reasoned consideration opposing a tsumani of misrepresentation of this issue in the msm.
the hysteria of right-wing whackjobs railing against this bill gives me the creeps and i never stop wondering why they are given so much airtime/column space. of course they're usually the first to also wail about child abuse stats too, but then you can hardly expect conservatives to be logically consistent.
the public are unlikely to ever understand the full complexities surrounding this bill's justification (although there are plenty of pretty convincing simple justifications too for that matter).
the "hitting kids is god's way of showing we love them" lobby had a great success with duping the msm into dubbing this the "anti-smacking" bill though. the ignorant outcry would've been a bit more muffled had it been rightly coined the "anti-thrashing" bill.
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Having recently discovered poor people, and not content with eliminating the underclass with muesli bars, Lord Key will storm the country with a Fashion Parade for Poverty. It will be announced that the reason poor people are poor, is not only because they are lazy and hate freedom, but also because they don't dress nicely.
National Party MPs will play volleyball in the street and start wearing their dress shirts untucked in solidarity with the poor; an Australian t-shirt manufacturer will supply free t-shirts with pictures of plastic tiki on them, empahsizing the fake and appropriated use of something once important.
In order to help the public understand that millionaires understand the lives of ordinary kiwis, and indeed are just ordinary struggling 'battlers' like us all, Big John will move his family to McGehan Close so they can mix and live with his New Best Friends.
Key will leave the blue ribbon seat of Helensville and stand instead in Mangere. His Parnell mansion will be converted to a drop in centre for the dispossessed and his many millions will be donated to charity for the poor, demonstrating his commitment to helping the underclass instead of just lobbying for more priveleges for the privileged.
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Did you like the book Manakura? I loved it, although it was some time ago.
Anyway, wanting source material is fair enough, my apologies for the sloppiness - here you go:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/search/story.cfm?storyid=0005CEA2-16F6-15C7-BBB983027AF1010E
And yes you are quite right to acknowledge there were other reasons for a more amicable atmophere this year, but i still stand by Aroha being used as insurance.
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What ever happened to that good old hoary tory chestnut of blaming the parents? Is Key really saying now that Government has a responsibility for the welfare of its citizens and the upbringing of children? Give me a break!
Oh no, I forgot - Key wants to give a schoolkid feeding contract to oz muesli bar company Tasti foods. Now that sounds more like it. Must have shares in it.
BTW, anyone notice Dr Jacqui Blue is "human shield against dangerous protestors" Aroha's mum and nana's GP?
Do you really think Key just happened across them in McGehan Close?
Do you really think he actually "charmed" them into compliance?
Have political journalists in this country never heard of a PR set up?
Oh, I have so many questions! If only the MSM would ask them.
How close does the association have to be? Aroha's mum and nana have Dr Jacqui Blue as their GP. Surely just a coincidence.
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Is it just me or am I really the only one to notice that National MP Dr Jacqui Blue is the GP of Aroha's mother and nana, signifincant ne pas?
Isn't it odd that Lord John Key had never heard of McGehan Close, then visits there after making headlines from Wellington, to find an "at first hostile, then receptive [target brown] family, won over by his charm"? And what excellent luck to find a photogenic yound Maori girl to do a Kirk (and Maori boy at Waitangi) photo re-enactment with, and, a la Senator Foley, to act as a human shield to make sure protestors don't get too nasty while you visit. What a shame he didn't want to take his own kids with him to act as human shields. Guess the underclass are good for more than just keeping wages down and cleaning the mansion after all.
I don't think it's just that McGehan is close to Clark's electorate (though it's actually in Goff's) - it's that IT WAS A SET UP from the start.
I would love to see a reporter that doesn't just live off PR feeds go and door step Aroha's mum and ask her if she is willing to sign an affadavit stating that she had no prior contact with the National Party over this before Key "just happened to turn up and meet them". Me thinks she would blanche at the suggestion, especially if reminded of the penalties of making false sworn statements. I mean crikey, just how lazy are the corporate media?
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I see that John Key, in the best traditions of Mark Foley, is taking a 12 year old girl from McGehan Close, aptly named 'Aroha', to Waitangi with him - to act as a human shield against flying debris directed at him, and of course as a prop for those inevitable photo ops.
Now that he's discovered the PR potential of acknowledging the existence of poor people, who knows what'll be next? Perhaps he could have one stay at his Parnell mansion and even let them like, eat at the table.
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great post, many thanks indeed.
i was at that lecture and it dawned on me that Dearest Bill ain't all that bright at all. i don't know how he ever managed to promote that idea, that much was smart i agree.
but remember his brilliance achieved one of National's greatest ever election humiliations. remember that boxing match PR stunt he did just before the election with his mate? or his performance in the TV election debates? the man is none too clever believe me. and i know he can't help it, but having an accent reminiscent of a stroke victim doesn't help him much either.
anyway, after his lecture and during the questions he was ripped apart. his inability to think on his feet was quite breathtaking. i guess a few years in Treasury and shoving your arm up cows' bums doesn't make you a mastermind after all. (that was a reference to his herd by the way. i think Mary English is genuinely smart, and quite charismatic. she really would be an effective politican.)
i also remember his attempt to coin the term 'treatyology' - a cheap shot at denigrating the treaty and the significance of studying and understaning it. after that Prof Andrew Sharp tried to push it too for a few weeks, which was rather disappointing in one who was once an admirable 'treatyologist' himself. i suspect his students forced him to drop that albatross after a few weeks. anyway he's gone now, so has 'treatyology' and talk of 'living documents'.
do you remember The Don's crack at floating the term 'Living Document', and how the ToW wasn't, and therefore was not an appropriate document to base our nationhood on? well Bill parroted Don's 'living document' line too. i mean WTF? what is a living document anyway?
the funniest part about his 'live' performance (i use the term loosely), was his reaction when asked if he thought the bible, or the Magna Carta were "living documents". he went all red and stuttered something about team new zealand and christianity is faith and the all blacks and we are all different but equal and i can't play the guitar but my wife does too. it was pretty funny. the AU politics dept filmed it, you should see that too and don't just rely on the written speech - i think he skipped a few pages in the actual presentation anyway. but it really is quite a good laugh, and i expect far less plausible sounding when heard aloud rather than when read from the page.
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i think The John is more of a Lord Quimby type - mayoralty is clearly not enough for him is it?
i also agree with those revolted by Toyota Ad Nationalism, it has always been there to sell something, be it toilet paper or an invasion of your neighbours. it has never had anything to do with anything like the enormous complexity that might begin to describe people's actual sense of belonging to a place.
as for land, well the truth is without land you don't have the means of obtaining security, let alone means of production and all the power that goes with it . you can put nationalist or spiritual glosses on it if you need to, but land is the foundation of all the shit that makes up a complex society.
but getting back to the original topic of this thread, what strikes me the most about Shiney New His Lordship's speech was how tragically bereft of ANY originality it was (kids' lunchboxes aside of course - the vision of the man!)
twee nationalism, privatisation and market solutions, tough on crime, i love poor people, get rid of the bureaucracy, i mean christ not ONE original proposal. i would have thought someone so clever had at least one new idea, or at least the decency to dress up some of the staler items on the menu with some kind of whizz-fang fusion sauce? it's almost contemptuous the way he seems to think tired old bullshit and crooked white middle class smiles will be enough to fool enough of them.
i mean since when have we identifed with millionaire bankers as the embodiment of who we are? unless we're like fay or richwhite of course. it's oddly both pathetic and offensive all at once. i guess that's one novel aspect to his speech