Posts by dc_red
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Some of the recent reporting around this case has been interesting ... the best being a rather breathless account of 'cannabis being smoked at a staff christmas party.' Oh, the humanity.
Drinking toxic quantities of alcohol at such parties the length and breadth of the country doesn't merit media concern of course.
Interestingly christmas parties here in Canada seem to be quite sober affairs by comparison. I'm not sure why, but expect there might be legal liabilities around employers providing drinks. Or cannabis for that matter, which is still technically illegal. Possession of cannabis still accounts for the majority of drug arrests in Canada.
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For the year:
"Gay red top" (just for comedic value at the end of the day)For the decade:
I'm going to nominate the letters "i" (as in Phone/Pad/Mac) and "W" as in Bush.
Sesame Street Styles. -
Hard News: Triangulated by Fools, in reply to Tom Semmens,
Clark was a minister in the fourth Labour government too - and Cullen as well. In what way was their fifth Labour government not social democratic? It looked pretty much like textbook social democracy to me - aka "communism by stealth" for John Key and right wing bloggers.
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Hard News: Triangulated by Fools, in reply to Tom Semmens,
It's grossly unfair to tag Goff with the neoliberal do nothing brush. And he doesn't stay still long enough to get a fat arse. He remains one of Labour's hardest working and most effective MPs (and there's too few that display half the energy he does).
Your opprobrium re: Mallard is well directed however.
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Hard News: Triangulated by Fools, in reply to Barnard,
Well Shearer was stirred into life - so that was something.
Truth be told though he's received little support from that problematic front bench over the last year.
Even in Education, National's problems have been almost mostly self-inflicted. Labour's Christchurch-based MPs helped out over the school closures debacle, but the official Opposition Spokesperson for Education seems to be completely, um, "inert" (to put it politely).
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A really good article in The Listener: anyone who claims Cunliffe wasn't in the stages of mounting a coup is a bit disingenuous (at best).
It's a shame in the sense that Cunliffe was one of the few reasonable performers on a pretty woeful Labour front bench. At a time when National is going from bad-to-worse, they really need a more energetic and competent line up. There are at least 5 chronic under performers in the top 10.
Just like the Black Caps really.
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The NZ accent, as portrayed in the TVNZ clip, seemed a bit more "English" in 1972 than today? At least among the majority of those speaking on camera?
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Does anyone know the significance (if any) of Mountain Standard Time reference on one of the captures? It seems strangely out of place.
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OnPoint: Because Statistical Rigour, in reply to Hilary Stace,
a sad but resigned mother reporting that her local school had rejected the enrollment of her almost 5 year old autistic daughter. She had decided she hadn’t the energy to fight for the legal right of her daughter to attend the local school, and had found another more inclusive – although further away – school where her daughter could start her school career.
A common story from what I hear. It’s fucking atrocious that schools are getting away with this … and everyone knows they’re getting away with it … and nothing ever happens to make them, y’know, obey the law. Basically I think parents need to start covertly recording the conversations in which it’s made clear their child is not welcome at their local schools. These conversations would illustrate that as far as the schools are concerned the law (as well as basic human decency) be damned.
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The doco 'restrepo' is well worth a look for a bit of insight into the fucked-up-ness of the afghanistan war and the fuzziness of who the resistance/insurgents and taleban might be.
One thing that struck me was the bizarreness of how the fairly minimally equipped, outgunned and technologically primitive insurgents could hold the might of the US at bay not just for weeks or months, but years. E.g. The americans had helicopter gunships and the insurgents had rifles and radios.