Posts by Ethan Tucker
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Personal experience has shown that motorways are excellent enablers of crime. They are particularly handy, for example, if you wish to evade police cars by driving against the flow of traffic at high speeds in a stolen vehicle.
(I should probably point out that I mean in Grand Theft Auto, right?)
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The Herald today has two relevant stories: Aussie banks' rates higher in NZ and Lack of transparency 'fuelling distrust of banks'. There's even a Your Views. But, as we'll note in the show, there's much more stroppiness on customers' behalf in the Australian media.
It will be interesting to hear the panel's views on whether Australian bank ownership has resulted in a trans-Tasman divide in service standards and profit margins, i.e. is the NZ market is being flogged?
And as previous posts have pointed out, you have to wonder how critical TV news bulletins can afford to be when whole segments of their programmes are sponsored by the banks themselves.
On a personal note, I'd like to think my loyal service as a primary school banking monitor in the late 1970s will be rewarded eventually. Can you put a good word in?
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I wasn't suggesting it was any party's policy, or that anyone was suggesting it as a serious idea for New Zealand, but if it came to it that the United Nations called for peacekeepers to be sent somewhere, and we sent money to pay for private security firms instead of sending our soldiers, I'd call that privatisation.
The Fijians might do it if we asked them nicely. They've already got a bit of a Foreign Legion thing going on, after all.
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Apropos Nanny State vs Boot Camp: the advocates of both expect that other people will be nannied/booted, while detractors fear the boot/nanny coming for them.
Otherwise known as a Bootenanny?
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Great stuff Keith. Am currently illuminated solely by the light of my laptop, so that's gotta count for something.
But the pressing issue for me is: with all the refuseniks and disgruntleds out there using the 'nanny state' as shorthand for whatever it is they don't like about society, has anyone asked the nannies how they feel about their job title being co-opted into political discourse as a code for wanton interferers and busybodies? Maybe the nannies should band together and hire Crosby Textor to finesse their image, or maybe just shift the blame. Librarian state? Anyone?
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Bring back the dandy, I say, and open up the range of options for menswear. No matter whose watch it is.
Then Black magazine (whatever that is) has the look for you.
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I can see the same thing working in some neighbourhoods in New Zealand -- although it's not much use for those who don't have computers at home. Which is a fair number of people, most of them already disenfranchised in various ways. Which is troublesome.
You're right about the lack of reach of online publications, but would Mr & Mrs Disenfranchised be newsprint readers either?
And I'm still traumatised by the small yappy-type dog who used to bite at my pedalling ankles as I sped away from his house in Jubilee Ave. The sods probably ordered the Star just for the exercise it gave him.
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Don't knighthoods all come from the crown via the GG, upon advice of the government?
Yes, currently.
How could parliament make someone a knight anyway? Takes a monarch to make a knight by definition surely?
While it would be unorthodox and would take a bit of getting used to, my preference is to require two-thirds of the House to vote in favour of legislation containing the names of those to be honoured, which would then be forwarded to the GG as Parliament's recommendations for honours, instead of the Government alone deciding and advising as it chooses.
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You might want to check your facts on this one, Douglas Myers has never been Knighted
He probably didn't need a knighthood anyway, what with his beer baronetcy and all, given that alcohol vending is next to godhood in the NZ pantheon of achievements.
IMHO, one crafty way to dilute all the justifiable cynicism about the most senior honours of the list, whether they come with titles or not, is to amend the legislation so that appointments to honours at the level of knighthoods and above should be made by legislation in the House with the support of a minimum of two-thirds of its members. In the current overhang Parliament that would require 82 votes. That would reduce the temptation to reward individuals of debatable merit.
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Since you've read the damn thing (and I've absolutely no interest), I'd appreciate your opinion Ethan. If this was on the news pages, and Myerson was making allegations of "vicious -- semi-criminal even" conduct against a third party, do you think her "exaggerations" would have made it to print?
One story she told was about one of her teens returning from a very late night out, covered in a messy substance that turned out to be anti-climb paint (which never dries, so it leaves ugly stains on your baggy jeans and Bench hoodie if you brush against it whilst climbing in a nefarious fashion). The teen refused to reveal why he'd been climbing a wall, and the column ended in a note of parental paranoia - what has my child been up to? - but also frustration and worry, because she couldn't extract any information from her child and therefore started fearing the worst.
Accusations made about an unrelated member of the public would not have been noteworthy; the veneer of anonymity made the column acceptable and readable. In the last months there were a series of tales that built on the theme running through the column, that modern parents felt besieged by stroppy and ungovernable teenagers. (I don't know if Myerson examined the possibility that she and her husband had contributed to this in their parenting).
I suppose the only reason I was reading these stories was because they had the tang of realism, and presumably the Guardian published the columns because they fitted the profile of its Saturday magazine, which seems to be aimed at lifestyle readers in their 30s and 40s, many of whom will have school-age children.
(There's still good writing there, of course. Current Guardian Saturday Magazine columnist Tim Dowling does much the same thing as Myerson did in his family sketch-pieces, but with a lighter and more self-deprecating touch, and under his own name; Lucy Mangan pours forth with witty columns too, despite being housebound with husband Toryboy's progeny).
As the reporting of poor behaviour increased, I started to wonder if the column was becoming rather too voyeuristic for my own tastes: feeding off the problems of a troubled family. But the distance that anonymity provided mitigated my admittedly mild concerns. After all, I was primarily reading it for the jokes and the sometimes outrageous revelations. (So, yes, I'm complicit too).
Ah, but it wasn't on the news pages and that was surely the point. The semi-anonymous anecdotal form occupies a different place in the world of the paper - the Mere Male/Over the Teacups/Bridget Jones's Diary/Letters to Penthouse section, where a degree of self-dramatisation and fictionalising is not just allowed, but expected. See also David Sedaris, whom I doubt is fact-checked on as rigorous a basis as other contributors to the New Yorker
There's so many of these columnists in the British press, and I definitely agree that their role is to entertain first and be accurate second. Myerson has set an example of succeeding through opening up her family to public scrutiny, and - if some critics of her new book are to be believed - augmenting a novel of middling quality with tell-tale stories from her own family experience.
You're right when you point out that this story has received so much attention because of the ever-increasing salacious clamour for conflict and notoriety in the British media. And in interviewing Jake, the Mail (or was it the Mirror?), will doubtless go all out to uncover a 'political correctness gone mad' angle here. That's their meat and drink.