Posts by daleaway
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I watched a dingo giving birth in Taronga Zoo once. As the pups emerged, the other dingos were waiting ready to eat them.
Went in search of a keeper to report this. "They do that", he said, and sauntered off in the other direction, for a fag.
Unlovely animals. The dingoes, too.
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He's really milking it, isn't he?
I think we need a visitor like him once in a while to remind us why our ancestors left England in the first place.
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I'm with your Mum on that, Damian - she sounds like a woman of sense and sensibility.
I go further and refuse to buy magazines which have truck with paparazzi. The likes of No Idea etc have in recent years turned from carcase-picking scavengers into predatory attack beasts - going after celebs with cellulite, celebs on a bad hair day, celebs looking old or fat or in private moments that should stay private. This is nothing short of sick, and my dollar will not go towards supporting it.
Another trend is for news outlets to pick goodies and baddies among prominent people, and hound the ones they have predetermined to be villains.
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We would all wish that to be true.
But then talk to the ones who moved to Queensland... -
Morrison and Glenn should both take more water with it.
And Paul, you seem to be affirming what I said rather than the reverse.
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I've always felt that a number of people move to another country because it lifts from them the burden of having to feel responsible for or even think about local politics and issues.
It all adds to that irresponsible, floating, holiday feeling - the thought that making the country work is someone else's problem. You're just there to enjoy yourself. I've been an emigrant to someone else's country, and I know the feeling well.
I've never seen it cited anywhere as a reason for migrating, but from the frequency of posts to other fora stating that they are leaving for Oz to get away from gangs, or from Treaty problems, or Helen Clark's ****ing nanny state, I'd say escape from solving New Zealand's problems is a big spur to some.
Which they then dress up as "weather", "lifestyle", "opportunities" etc (which may also be true of course. Or not.).
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I enjoyed the Chinglish on the Rainbow's website, ta DeepRed. The beds are inside the rooms! That's a relief...
But some of it has not been fully translated from Managementspeak; eg, "The hotel has shaped up its development and management integrative infrastructure." Anyone care to have a stab at what this actually means?
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Wellington had an ice skating rink for years - roughly about where the library is now in Kilbirnie. I've skated there myself. It wasn't a financial goer then, so it folded, and I doubt one would be now either, though I'm always willing to be proved wrong.
The Kilbirnie library is a roaring success though. Wellingtonians do like to give the mind a workout.
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A propos nothing in particular, I have written elsewhere that milk bars and the 40 hour week both put in an appearance in New Zealand at about the same time, and both vanished about the same time too.
It does seem sinister that families which could once be supported by one man working 40 hours, have in my lifetime moved even beyond needing two full time wages to support them. And both of those wage earners are probably expected to put in more than the basic 8 hours per day.
It's only partly employers pressuring workers to put in more hours, it seems to me. Workers contribute to the situation by ever-escalating notions of what an acceptable standard of living is. Both sides are in need of an attitude shift.
I have known a few enterprising people find their own unconventional solutions to combining careers and family life. One professional couple who alternated two years on, two years off each; they sustained that for 30 years. Another two couples I know worked 2.5 days per week each - the first were finance industry high flyers and the second an electrician/sales assistant combo. None of them sacrificed home ownership, but they certainly eschewed fashion and recreational shopping, because their values did not prioritise it.
I've also worked with a chap who is now CEO of a large local authority and a very smart cookie. In his public service days, in an office with a culture of macho see-how-long-I-can-stay-at-the-office posturing, he flatly refused to work after 5.30pm, and many were the mutterings about him in the Ministry. But his work did not suffer, and he toughed out the grumbling. I hope he is bringing his sane attitudes to work still, now that he is a major employer himself.
But it's going to be a long time before sanity prevails in community towards extended work hours - too many of the decisionmakers have got too much to profit from it staying the way they have pushed it in the last 20 years. And too many of those who set the bars are not dealing with difficulty or compromise in their own lives so have no empathy with those who are.
(Emma, I do feel for you in your situation. Life throws most of us some curve balls and it's amazing how we adapt as best we can. But what a loss to the country of skills and talents when business and government operate in "15 hour days or nothing" mode. )
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The Hot Chicks with Douchebags site's message was spelled out long ago by Robert Graves:
Why have such scores of lovely, gifted girls
Married impossible men?
Simple self-sacrifice may be ruled out,
And missionary endeavour, nine times out of ten.Repeat 'impossible men': not merely rustic,
Foul-tempered or depraved
(Dramatic foils chosen to show the world
How well women behave, and always have behaved).Impossible men: idle, illiterate,
Self-pitying, dirty, sly,
For whose appearance even in City parks
Excuses must be made to casual passers-by.Has God's supply of tolerable husbands
Fallen, in fact, so low?
Or do I always over-value woman
At the expense of man?
Do I?
It might be so.