Posts by Joe Wylie
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Hard News: Every option has costs, every…, in reply to linger,
NZ (especially, Auckland) is also not reliably more affordable than Sydney, for example – but we do offer a flexible range of entry routes to suit even the lowest-proficiency cases (e.g., starting at an accredited language school, then into a university-run English proficiency programme, and finally into degree courses proper).
There appears to be no lack of cut-price paths to "degree courses proper" on offer within easy reach of Sydney. It's now sixteen years since the University of Wollongong fired - and was later forced to reinstate - a staff whistleblower who went public with his concerns about the deliberate downgrading of academic standards in pursuit of foreign student cash. Strangely enough, the problem seems to persist in one form or another.
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Speaker: Britain: the crisis isn't…, in reply to martinb,
Yeh, it wasn't the people that infiltrated it was the ideas. And Muldoon did gosh darn broke it. So I've been told. I think that's a red herring, because they won an election and then did the opposite of what they said. That's not the fault of the electoral system!
Even Muldoon, in his late career interventionist Gang-of-One pomp, paid occasional lip service to Roger Douglas-style free market capitalism. Once Douglas was rehabilitated to the opposition front bench from his time in the wilderness, senior Muldoon-cabinet members such as Jim McLay were quick to accuse Labour of stealing National Party policy. As someone, either Tom Scott or Denis Welch, noted at the time, it mostly was National's policy, even if they kept it garaged and only took it for the occasional Sunday drive.
But yes ultimately the answer to Muldoon and two elections won by a minority vote was electoral reform and more checks and balances....The opposite of that is that there are now no or limited backbencher revolts based on what their communities want as most MPs are reliant on the party.
Others will be more au fait with the detailed history than I am, but I believe that sometime post-Muldoon National introduced Party reforms to overrule local branches on candidate selection. After Muldoon saw off an effective leadership challenge from Derek Quigley he all but exhausted his remaining political capital by cynically exploiting the support of the ailing and incompetent Keith Allen. That the ultimately tragic Allen was even an MP was, as Tom Scott put it at the time, due to local branches insisting on their right to send the incompetent of their choice to parliament.
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Speaker: Britain: the crisis isn't…, in reply to izogi,
It causes me to think plenty about how the likes of Douglas and Prebble infiltrated NZ Labour in the 80s, despite having polar opposite ideologies from typical Labour policies. They weren't exactly going to get anywhere under Muldoon, and joining Labour was the only realistic option for getting into parliament at all.
Douglas was effectively born into the party, and was something of a rising star Minister in the Kirk and Rowling Governments. Despite his unprepossessing haircut and dire taste in jumpers, the young Prebble apparently made a great impression with the ageing stalwarts of the Princes Street branch of the Labour Party.
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Hard News: Friday Music: The Inside Track, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
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Access: Fighting seclusion with…, in reply to Neil,
It's important I think to understand the great difficulties faced by treating teams in these rare complex cases. They are experienced professionals who do not take restricting someone's freedoms lightly.
Is this simply a pious affirmation, or do you have solid evidence that this is so? In every case where I've asked people whose job it is to deal with the heavy lifting involved with severe disability about the option of genuinely humane treatment, they'll cite a lack of resources, i.e. sure it could be better, but we do our best in the circumstances.
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Speaker: The Brexlection, in reply to linger,
Why not join Scotland, for a stronger opposition, and a stronger democracy!
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Hard News: Local journeys on the cusp of…, in reply to william blake,
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Hard News: Local journeys on the cusp of…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
James Dann has a piece at The Spinoff which scratches the surface of the madness in Chchch -
All good until you get to the touching faith in Lianne Dalziel to oppose Brownlee - which she's somewhat conspicuously failed to do since becoming Mayor. Sadly Dann seems to have become infected with a touch of the standard Party-line pragmatism that's nobbled Chch(ch) Labour since Mayor Bob sank from sight.
Perhaps we could wind the clock back to before former CERA CEO Roger Sutton got the Rolf Harris makeover. Here he is in 2012:
"It’s no secret I am a huge fan of cycling so of course I am thrilled to see a priority network of cycleways and pedestrian walkways. It creates a fantastic opportunity for people to move about the city easily, in an attractive environment. If someone works at the hospital for example, and lives in one of the new residential developments on the East Frame, they can simply hop on their bike and safely arrive at work a few minutes later. I also love the idea of installing secure cycle parking at the bus exchange and other key destinations and possibly even changing facilities and cycle repair workshops." -
After around a decade of full-on coverage of Mike Moore's media-friendly personality, a bit of barrel-scraping was needed to dredge up further material once he became PM. A childhood friend of the guy who beat cancer and went on to appoint marching girls and footy players as 'cultural ambassadors' while touting lamburgers (and, according to McPhail & Gadsby, chocolate flavoured self-saucing wetas) described the fun they'd had playing in an abandoned house, where Moore would install himself in an empty box and pretend to be the TV. Given the opportunity he could "go all night".
Moore revealed that the Disney movie Old Yeller was a favourite of his formative years. The "best doggone dog in the West" boy and his dog tale took a darkly moral turn after Old Yeller caught rabies protecting his frontier family from a marauding wolf. Boy became a man by stepping up, taking the gun from Mom and doing the tragic necessary. When it came to popping Palmer, Mike may already have had the script, almost like a prophecy.
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Hard News: (Good) Friday Music: In and…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
. . . Stuff comment sections . . .
Where almost everyone seems to be attempting to out-moral-pygmy one another in some kind of audition for the Small Blacks.
Congratulations on your graphics achieving escape velocity.
