Posts by Hilary Stace
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Access: Respect, please, in reply to Glen Koorey,
I hope they use those manual wheelchairs with the horrible little front wheels that get caught in every crack in the pavement and threaten to tip the occupant out.
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Just hopefully there are some decent National Party people who read the book and find this behaviour as shocking and dirty as we do. Maybe they will try to reclaim their party just as we are trying to reclaim democracy.
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Hard News: Not doing justice, in reply to Russell Brown,
David Shearer also said he thought there was a lot more anti-Semiticism around this election and how sad and inaccurate that was.
He would be a great foreign minister. Is comfortable in all environments and with people from all backgrounds. Mentioned that part of his job was showing people around Gaza - like Tony Blair and Ban Ki Moon. Gave some advice in his talk to John Kerry. But as an old hand not in a pretentious way. Also said Gaza was not genocide - Ruanda was genocide - he was there too.
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Hard News: Not doing justice, in reply to Russell Brown,
I went to a packed public meeting in Khandallah this afternoon to hear David Shearer speak about Gaza (organised by Virginia Andersen the Labour candidate). I couldn't believe the numbers there - across the age range - at a meeting in the wealthy heart of the Ohariu electorate on a Tuesday afternoon. David Shearer was a great raconteur speaking on this topic he know a great deal about and without notes. He talked about the irony of having a good relationship with his neighbours in Jerusalem and then driving through the heavily secured wall into the intensely populated outdoor prison of Gaza. He mentioned that it is not about anti-Semitism but about the abuse of state power. In the end he had to leave the area because of the injustice, particularly to children. For example, he mentioned that some Palestinian young people won scholarships to overseas universities but were not permitted to take them up.
Some thoughtful questions and good discussion too. -
Speaker: Why you should vote, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
At the handover of the petition last month both Ruth Dyson and the Greens committed to repealing the Act. Like Russell, I think rushed law changes are bad - much of the bad law in this current government, like National Standards, goes back to the marathon law changes the incoming government did in December 2008. I would prefer a select committee process that let people have input and let the politicians consider the issues properly.
I know you are not voting from a moral position but when I hear about non voting women I just feel so sad for those suffragists who worked so hard for so many years to win the right to vote.
Are you registered in King Country? I used to be on a school board of trustees with the Labour candidate there Penny Gaylor. I would vote for her.
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Hard News: The silence of the public square, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
Why don't you have a vote? Very good policy - wonder who wrote it. But it doesn't specifically mention the repeal of the NZPHDA Amendment Act.
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When I was young I attended a respectable middle class protest where the chant was 'Hey hey, LBJ, how many kids have you killed today?'. We hoped he heard as he drove past.
Haven't today's media/political commentators ever held passionate views about anything political and expressed them collectively?
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Spontaneity seems to confuse and frighten 'political marketers' and comms experts. In their world everything has to be scripted and controlled.
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Hard News: The silence of the public square, in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,
The audience could do those signs every time JK speaks. In fact could be used throughout the country at political meetings. Sort of like a secret handshake.
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I agree with you Victoria but I also think some people participating in awareness exercises do it with the best of intentions. Last week several people participated in the NFD's exercise of wearing those yellow ear muffs. It was only for a short time, but were trying to bring the issues to the attention of the wider community rather than proclaiming any expertise for themselves after that short time. Those people I saw doing it, such as Grant Robertson on Breakfast TV, also engage with disability issues in their ordinary lives and generally try to be allies.
However, during the passage of the Disability Bill in 2008 there was one MP who came and told the group watching from the gallery that he knew about disability because he had once broken his ankle. That was disrespectful but he probably didn't mean to be. To his credit he was willing to learn and got a lot better over the years (as far as I could tell from recent select committees I have attended).