Hard News: Doing battle alone
39 Responses
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bmk, in reply to
Glad to hear that we are not alone. But it also feels quite strange and a little worrying. We usually have to start using heating from the start of April and haven't even used it once yet this year. While I am sure there would be plenty of people saying that's great and you shouldn't complain on some little nagging level underneath it feels kind of worrying. May isn't supposed to be like this.
Guess it's just a typical human dislike of a changed/unusual situation.
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Hokitika is not NOT South Westland!
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bmk, in reply to
I don't think anyone was saying that Hokitika is South Westland. Sacha was just reassuring me that it isn't only Northland finding the weather unseasonably warm.
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Islander, in reply to
Just pointing out, bmk, that the Coast is a very long province, and what applies to one part of it, Hokitika in the middle, does not necessarily apply to either the northern or the southern end.
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bmk, in reply to
Having driven visited it a few times and driven along it twice a long time back I am very aware of that. Both times I drove along it for instance it was raining heavily in Haast while being beautiful and sunny in Greymouth. I completely understand that weather and much else would vary hugely along it. Beautiful place though with some of the friendliest people I have ever met.
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I watched the Media 7 programme just now. Then I checked my newsreader, and Steven Price at Media Law Journal said exactly what I have been thinking, only in proper joined-up words and everything:
Let me go on record as saying I think Jon Stephenson’s allegations about NZ involvement in abuses in Afghanistan demand a proper independent investigation. Wayne Mapp seems to have admitted many of them, but somehow the government still seems to be saying “Move along - nothing to see here”. At the same time the PM is attacking Jon Stephenson’s credibility in way that strikes me as being both despicable and entirely beside the point.
Was NZ party to war crimes? I want to know.
I haven't actually been able to buy a copy of Metro with Stephenson's story in it -- I suppose it's a good sign that it must have been selling out around Wellington -- and without Media 7 exposing this story not once but twice, I'm afraid I would not have heard about it.
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Islander, in reply to
And some of the nicest - but toothiest- folk too!
O, bugger, cant get my photo of my late wonderful v.much lamented neighbour Bill Minehan- who had extraordinary teeth- to embed...imagine good people, imagine
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
Bill Minehan
this Bill MInehan ?
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Islander, in reply to
Fuck o dear! My naybore who died in 1996 – same year as my also very much lamented Uncle Bill!
Yup.
Note the teeth!
(He glued a couple of them in with Araldite because he couldnt be bothered going to Hoki to the dentist’s….) -
Russell Brown, in reply to
I haven’t actually been able to buy a copy of Metro with Stephenson’s story in it – I suppose it’s a good sign that it must have been selling out around Wellington – and without Media 7 exposing this story not once but twice, I’m afraid I would not have heard about it.
Thanks, Stephen. An unsung figure in this is our producer, Phil Wallington, who has been supportive of Jon for a long time. I do feel that this story has been an extremely important one for us to get behind, and it was useful and gratifying to land via this blog a source who confirmed much of what Jon had written.
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Rex Widerstrom, in reply to
Dismissing facts as opinions is one of the existential problems with the modern conservative movement.
Arrrgh, yes! I'm so used to actually debating people with views opposing my own that I become quite flummoxed by this approach (which is, of course, what it's designed to do).
Here in delightful Western Australia ("We loved the 1950s so much we decided to stay there") the Attorney General is fond of saying "I don't accept that". The speaker can be some looney liberal civil libertarian like myself or some clearly no-nonsense prison officer with several decades of experience under her belt, who both challenged him at the same meeting, and that's the stock answer.
That and "show me the statistics". That worked for about a year, as we all laboured to do peer-reviewed research. Then he'd look at the quantitative data and say, you guessed it, "I don't accept that".
He's also a habitual user of "air quotes" when talking about those whose views differ from his own. He recently addressed a conference I was MCing (wearing my professional hat, so I had to STFU) and referred to a prominent critic as "the (airquote) ee-con-o-mist (airquote)..." The fact that the man he was belittling is a well-respected professor and has been since the AG was in short pants didn't, of course, matter.
"I don't accept that the smell of smoke and brimstone means we're all going to hell in a handbasket. And that (airquote) dev-vil (airquote) has yet to present any credible statistics as to our pending damnation" is, sadly, quite an effective debating technique, as it leaves your opponent homicidal with rage but struggling to appear just as calm and reasonable as you look. Or that might just be me, I don't know.
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Guyon Espiner on Q and A interviewing US Ambassador about this issue. Good interview.
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HORansome, in reply to
If people aren't watching "Perigo!" on Stratos can I recommend you start? Not because it's a good show (Perigo without a leash is an enemy of reason, not it's defender) but because we're seeing the candid opinions of people like Brash and Deborah Coddington being expressed on that show. Brash is adamant, in the first interview he had with Perigo, that climate change is not occurring and that the ETS is a bad idea.
I should point out that think Coddington aquits herself very well on "Perigo!" but that might be because anyone sitting opposite Lindsay Perigo looks rational in comparison.
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Sacha, in reply to
I stumbled across some of Perigo gushing nostalgically with Coddington about their japes with the Gibbs-funded local libertarian undermining of BBC world service radio. Shudder.
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