Hard News: About Arie
646 Responses
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You don't think that the fact that there have been three major disasters under this current administration won't dent the enthusiasm of those who might be a little superstitious (a significant proportion of the population and not including PA readers), to vote for them again?
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No. But the All Blacks not winning the world cup might.
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James Butler, in reply to
No. But the All Blacks not winning the world cup might.
Don't make me think unpatriotic thoughts, now
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An astologer on television last year said that not only would Australia win the RWC but that November 2011 was not auspicious for the PM. (He was the one who predicted Len Brown would win the Auckland mayoralty.)
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
Let’s face it, it is going to take a monumental cock-up of unprecedented proportions for National to lose this year ... just imo. Yep, full of the joys of Friday, me.
Or something of Icelandic proportions, for that matter.
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
Civilian NZDF or service employees are only subject to the Armed Forces Discipline Act when the unit they are working for is on “active service”. A civvie sent to Afghanistan, such as a member of Willie Apiata’s PR team, probably would be. A librarian in Trentham wouldn’t.
Not quite that simple. There are support personnel in HQ roles who are also covered whether or not they're in NZ. Thinking here of people who work in support of Sigs and Comms.
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Sacha, in reply to
I saw the army out in the street and I thought court martial, firing squads
First time I've seen the statement - but if accurately transcribed, isn't "thought" a little different than actually saying it out loud to the guy he was visiting?
Not that I'm disagreeing with the comments above about a moral compass impaired from years of politics (and some sadly ineffective advisors right now, one suspects).
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
No. But the All Blacks not winning the world cup might.
Don’t make me think unpatriotic thoughts, now
The nation's future? Or the outcome of a game?
I'll put my patriotism on the nation's future every time. If that means the All Blacks have to remain true-to-form and choke some time during the quarter- or semi-finals, so be it. -
Russell Brown, in reply to
First time I’ve seen the statement – but if accurately transcribed, isn’t “thought” a little different than actually saying it out loud to the guy he was visiting?
Ideal Goff response: ” I was clearly describing my immediate emotional response, which I suspect was shared by many New Zealanders. That's not what we do in a civilised society."”
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Sacha, in reply to
Ideal response from any leader really.
Boy are we starved of it at that level.. -
I suspect that in PhilWorld talk of civilised society is for wimps and losers who don't know how win the middle.
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I think it's more a case of having lost the way for many of our established pollies. Some of the fresher ones are more impressive. I believe none of them take on a job that difficult for trivial reasons whether those tend towards service or power.
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A decent leader wouldn't have to come up with that response because they wouldn't have considered saying something so stupid.
A decent response to reports of looters would be something like "well, there are several hundred thousand people in Christchurch, not all of them are good neighbours, but we need to concentrate on those who are, and on getting help where it's needed."
But his instinct is "hang 'em high". Pity.
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Gordon Campbell links two current failures of government leadership.
Pike River's contractors being gypped:
The bills owed to local contractors when the mine exploded amounted to $7 million – and the support package promised in December was always expected to include a cash element to help meet those unpaid bills.
Now according to papers released under the OIA to Radio New Zealand, there doesn’t seem to be a ‘ stimulus package” at all.
...One can only contrast the approach to the mere $7 million owed to the Pike River contractors with the way the government rushed in last year to pay out $1.8 billion to the speculators left high and dry by the collapse of South Canterbury Finance.
And the RWC games that never had the slightest real chance of being played in Chch:
At Pike River, the authorities left families in limbo, to gradually infer that the miners were probably dead. If this was meant to be an act of kindness – a letting down of people easily – it plainly didn’t work. The families were merely encouraged to cling to hope and then had it dashed, in an agonizing fashion.
Much the same reluctance to front up and prepare for the likely outcome now marks the decision over the RWC games set down for Christchurch. It will be left to the International Rugby Board next week to play the heavy and state the bleedingly obvious – that the stadium, the training facilities, the accommodation resources and the public transport system in Christchurch cannot sustain the influx of 40,000 plus visitors for a world class international event. Especially when the aftershocks keep on coming.
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Wouldn’t it be better if our political leaders had shown some leadership and helped prepare people for the inevitable outcome? Instead, the politics of ‘good news’ governance mean that the Prime Minister has so far expressed only his preference that the games be played in Christchurch – just as I’m sure he will express his sympathy afterwards when the decision to shift the games is finally announced.
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I believe none of them take on a job that difficult for trivial reasons whether those tend towards service or power.
I like to think so too Sacha.
I also wonder though, if the loss in whatever quality it is that we are talking about in senior politicians is a result of modern politics itself.
As if the change isn’t so much that as pollies spend time in the game they lose their spark, but rather that in order to win, in order to lead a large broad based party to victory, the spark has to, at the least, be hidden.
I wonder this because of the way modern politics is done. Somewhere in the nexus of our media, comms theory, and campaign science the spark becomes a negative in terms of that next necessary vote.
The base of a party needs to believe that the spark is just being hidden, and that the stuff coming out of the leaderships’ mouths is just sloganeering to gain those marginal voters (voters whom the base hopes will be disappointed by the reality of the person hiding beneath the bs rhetoric).
I genuinely think the leaders themselves believe this. That they are not betraying the base, but just making some uncomfortable, but necessary for the end result, noises.
Where it all falls apart is that it is rotten to its core. Those marginal voters don’t become less marginal after an election. The game doesn’t stop. Those soundbites and practised message lines that are tossed out to catch a marginal demographic aren’t, in fact, extraneous to the values of a party. They are the issues an election is won on. They are the mandate.
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Harumph. Not “I will…”
Nice job being my electorate representative, Grant. Do you also “truly hope” that I’ll vote for you?
Did you want him to run down to Canterbury and drag a couple of cops before parliament for a special hearing?
Tell that to Geoff Palmer. ;)
Mike Moore is a bit of a lesson for everyone in the Labour party at the moment not to end your parliamentary career by rolling someone just before an election.
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Kracklite, in reply to
Did you want him to run down to Canterbury and drag a couple of cops before parliament for a special hearing?
What the fuck, yeah. I’d like someone in the Labour Party to grow a fucking backbone and risk losing to show that they have one single principle that isn’t determined by focus groups and market research. I’d like Phil effing Goff to commit seppuku on parliament steps for that matter instead of quaffing pints of Brut 33 and trying to grow chest hair.
Yes, I’m angry.
Look, to make myself perfectly clear, the presumption of innocence and the right for people presumed to be innocent not to be beaten up by police or by persons unknown whilst in their custody is not some fringe issue to be delicately minced about. It is fucking central to democracy. It is not negotiable.
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Addendum:
... because otherwise, they're letting Judith Collins of all people dictate their policy and timing de facto ("Who defines the terms wins the argument" as the supposed Chinese proverb has it). This is not an opposition.
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3410,
Mike Moore is a bit of a lesson for everyone in the Labour party at the moment not to end your parliamentary career by rolling someone just before an election.
Well, sure, I can see that. It'd just be nice if that wasn't the only consideration, though.
Besides, it wasn't just losing the election that did Mike Moore in. His completely mental "victory" speech must have helped.
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… because otherwise, they’re letting Judith Collins of all people dictate their policy and timing de facto
Arie is now a political pawn for Labour to hit National over the head with? Excellent.
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Kracklite, in reply to
That, frankly, is a despicable misrepresentation and trivialisation. If Labour does not stand up for habeus corpus, then we all are pawns in their game of power-seeking.
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Kracklite, in reply to
(and by the way, I have put my money where my mouth is. It cost me severely in years and health, it paid me five figures and I don't regret it for an instant... and Massey University are bastards... just sayin')
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Rex Widerstrom, in reply to
If Labour does not stand up for habeus corpus, then we all are pawns in their game of power-seeking.
Thanks for re-focusing the debate Kracklite. Even I (he says grandly) have been sucked into saying "he was only carrying two lightbulbs FFS" as though it might have been justifiable if he were seen making off with two screaming orphans.
It wouldn't be. You're right...
It is fucking central to democracy. It is not negotiable.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
First time I’ve seen the statement – but if accurately transcribed, isn’t “thought” a little different than actually saying it out loud to the guy he was visiting?
Yes, but no – it’s not what I really want running through the mind of a man who 1) would really really like to be Prime Minister by Christmas, and, 2) whose own record as a civil libertarian while Minister of Police wasn’t exactly pristine. It's a lovely day in Wellington, can I get depressed later?
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
That, frankly, is a despicable misrepresentation and trivialisation. If Labour does not stand up for habeus corpus, then we all are pawns in their game of power-seeking.
Then again, there is probably going to be plenty of opportunity for discussion of how the previous Labour Government (like their British counterpart) where quite happy to subject civil liberties to the death of a thousand cuts. (Anyone anyone thinking of crying "Craig-Bot" really needs to stop. Now.)
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