Posts by linger
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<pedant>Vocal cords. As in cords of rope, or muscle. Journos always get that wrong.</pedant>
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I mostly agree with Labour’s proposal, but there’s still one error in the form shown: granted, they are pretty much indistinguishable, but the Lockwood fern designs shouldn’t have exactly the same name!
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The link to Casey’s review got broken by the default PA autocomplete. Here it is.
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One could claim that the poll methodology is flawed, e.g. self-selection bias. But that’s not what Key says. Instead he’s quoted as saying:
it’s not a terribly sophisticated question because I could produce polls that look close enough to that, when it’s a yes or no question
Is this just an extension of his usual “I can pay experts who’ll say something different from your experts” evidence-ignoring bullshit? Not exactly: he’s saying we shouldn’t trust the poll because my polls say the same thing?! Guess that explains why this process didn’t start with a yes/no referendum on change. Reckon we shouldn’t trust this pol, eh.
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Hard News: A better thing to believe in, in reply to Steve Johnson,
Cult carries its negative connotation for several reasons:
the object of worship or devotion may be relatively unpopular; and/or the object of devotion may be regarded as strange or suspicious; and/or the devotees cannot exercise (or have been forced to abandon) critical appraisal.Rugby in NZ sometimes seems to meet the third of these conditions.
(BTW it also strictly meets the first condition – the sport with the highest number of registered members in NZ is, and has been for some time, soccer.)Political use of rugby in NZ follows the simple associative logic of advertising (your product is surrounded by “good” things/ people => your product is “good”). Which is invalid, but nevertheless effective.
But what makes the identification of All Blacks as heroes so automatic, and so allows this association to work, is the cult of rugby.
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Do I, for example, spend any of my free time volunteering as a teacher to help migrants develop their English skills and thereby land suitable jobs? Funny you should ask. But it’s not that relevant. You exaggerate the amount of ongoing effort required to help refugees – who, by and large, make a huge amount of effort themselves to integrate, and need, first, our acceptance in order to allow them to succeed in that.
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Polity: Refugees and aid - we’re laggards, in reply to Gould S,
stop playing keyboard warrior and actually do some work
Oh, not again! This argument wasn’t sound the first time it appeared in this thread. If we accept your criterion of what counts as pointless activity, then your comment – complaining about the existence of an online discussion – is, by your own criterion, one level more pointless and a distraction from meaningful action. But we don’t have to accept your criterion, because the discussion also contains relevant ideas about how to support and settle refugees, e.g., Lucy’s comment just above.
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Access: Just think of the children, in reply to Calvin Lee,
The incidence of "benefit fraud" is, in fact, extremely low compared to the number of people who legitimately need assistance. Setting up complicated checks and conditions to be met -- in the name of "cutting fraud" -- in practice mostly has the effect of placing entitlements out of reach of those who most need them. (Though you'd never guess that from media coverage, which focusses only on the rare criminal cases, and not on the wider impact of such policy settings.)
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Hard News: A cog in the Mediaworks machine, in reply to Berinthia Binnie,
Nothing disturbing about 1970s TV show presenters at all…
Harry Corbett: And remember, girls and boys: I’ve got my hand up his bum.
Sooty: [nods slowly]
Sweep: [squeak!]… Who’s the puppet master in the current version?
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Polity: So who exactly placed conditions…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
clawing his way up a ponytail