Posts by Suze Vermeer
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The DPB is not more than the dole, it's the same amount.
Short of eugenics, the underclass can't be stopped from breeding and, as the underclass won't be going away any time soon, let's throw meaningful health and educational resources at these children so they can have a the sort of start in life every social specialist seems to agree that they need. Let there be schools with creches so these young solo mothers can complete their education, such as one in Welly which has excellent rate of educated young mothers and healthy children. There's nothing wrong with teenage girls having babies. They are at the right biological age for breeding. If alot of these are solo parents, let's support them, not make it hard for them. Let's build on this so the peole we need to contribute to society in the future aren't angry and anti-social. So no one tapes over our mouths in the old folks' home.
And good on youse, all you paid thinkers. Of course you deserve your pay packets, but let's fund these babies coming into the world in unencouraging circumstances and see if there are any potential intellectuals/analysts out there among the poor. We'll never know otherwise. And unless you've got heaps of examples of Once Were Warrior children becoming policy anecdotes, no anecdotes please.
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Absolutely what Danielle and Islander just said. Let's hear it for some humanity. Otherwise, this way robots be.
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Dammit, Peter, you're right. I forgot the Listener's music columnists and funny Fiona Rae. God, this looks like a complete climb-down. I have to admit the Listener does have some good stuff. My complaints really are I suppose about the editorial line and main stories.
On Wikipedia. At my second-to-last job we were forbidden to use Wikipedia in any story research.
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Yeah, Craig, that was a bit flippant touching on the Clifton/McCully domiciliary arrangements. I was just being shallow about his not-so-goodlookingness. In no way do I think Clifton's Tory-thinking starting point is the result of pillow politics osmosis. I think she's a child of the establishment all on her own instincts.
I'm not sure why you bring up Cate Brett, as I was not thinking of "poster girls for women in the media". Yeah, the SST is often tabloidy, relieved by some good pieces. Most print press tabloidy in desperate bid to hold on to circulation against electronic and digital media.
Sorry Danielle. My language not very PC. Didn't mean anything anti-woman by using the word "girly". I should have put inverted commas around girly, but you know what I mean; things usually found in the so-called women's mags. I'm forgetting that y'all don't really know me so I shouldn't write things here that might appear suspect in tone.
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The Listener's been going downhilll since the women took over. Sorry, sisters, but you can't deny it's gone all girly. Lifestyle, excellence in education, mortgage headaches, health issues of the middle-class worried well, homes and gardens, cosmetic surgery ... Not to mention a firm heft toward the comfy conservative side of the political middle line.
Yeah, Jane Clifton is a great writer and I love her skewering the pompous and bloated on either political side and the fringe, but she starts from a Tory place in her assumptions (e.g. that all Kiwis want a tax cut and that buy-back of rail is a noble but silly idea). Mind you, how else could you live with Murray McCully?
Isn't editor Pamela Stirling's husband a secondary school headmaster? Maybe that's why the Listener bores us with endless NCEA stories.
And do we really need blow-by- blow accounts of other columnists' misadventures in house renovation?Brian Easton and Diana Wichtel only goodies left now you've gone Russell. Oh and also Guy Somerset's arts and books good.
Gave up my sub some time ago, but still read it in supermarkets and at friends', which I guess makes me one of their high readership statistics. Circulation is the key measure, not readership, which can only be an estimate. Readership always cited when circulation gone south.
I believe Listener's tardiness in getting stuff online is to make us buy the hard copy.
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It would be nice to know what contribution mortgage ads on TV and real estate ads in the paper make to their respective bottom lines...
Property ads are a huge contributor to newspapers' profit. When newspaper bosses talk to staff about "difficult financial conditions", they usually cite a drop-off in property ads, so yeah, it is better for the bottom line when property is booming, but I don't think there's any conspiracy going on. It's merely a sign of the sad state of our reportage now that no one dug harder on the Bollard warnings and checked it out.
It's easier to fill column inches with REINZ hand-delivered press releases, esp in the advertorial section where a reporter writes soft stories hand-fed by real estate agents. I've had to do this and it leaves a horrid taste in the mouth.
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Our savings record is dismal but heavens forbid anyone suggest that leaving the credit card to gather a little dust would be a good idea.
Actually, someone did suggest that. Bollard issued warning after warning last year, long before the US sub-prime market went belly-up, to rein in our over-spending and over-use of credit in light of unrealistically high property valuations. The centre couldn't hold, he warned us.
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I like coffee, I like tea...
and very occasionally I like instant. I don't see that it's snobbery to enjoy something you eat or drink.My biggest bitch is getting served tepid flat whites in cold porcelain cups, so now I just order them all takeaway in paper cups. (Yeah, someone will tell me it's not meant to be drunk piping hot, but that's the way I like it.) And not all that froth (crema), please.
There's a good (I think Nescafe) instant coffee called Short Black, I think.
Of the multi-nationals, coffee barista'd in McCafes is better than you'd think.
I couldn't get a good coffee in Melbourne recently, which was a bit of a surprise because it's such a foodie city. But I was only in the CBD, not in Lygon or Brunswick. Flat whites, or whatever they call them, were really weak even when we asked for a double shot. We wondered whether we had been spoilt by good coffee in NZ, or perhaps primed to like over-strong coffee?
I guess Stephen is right. We should not take our strict coffee expectations on holiday with us so we don't become like those tourists hunting out MacDs and Starbucks. But that week in Melbourne showed me what a sharp little addiction I had.
Whoever said Welly baristas are surly is going to the wrong places.
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Things that will never happen:
Cleverest US foreign policy move would be ditching Israel as No 1 Middle East ally and getting onside with Iran. -
Simon P
A cutting wit. Made my morning.Sacha
Love rofflenui. Request permission to use it , and variations (lolnui) henceforth.