Posts by Tim Hannah
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You don't have to go very far before seeing evidence of the strength of willful ignorance. It's very easy, and inviting, to tag all war crimes on bad apples, very difficult to accept that your own side is capable of building a state apparatus that gets to the point of using torture on innocent people (much easier, apparently, to accept torture of 'non-innocent' people).
[lhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-worthington/a-truly-shocking-guantana_b_305227.html|Innocent Man Was Tortured to Make False Confessions]
Not drawing a strong parallel between Nazi Germany and the US, but the lack of interest and desire to excuse and rationalise of most citizens of both countries is indicative of some pretty basic human psychology. With or without a vicious military dictatorship giving encouragement.
Nor is there any interest in New Zealand in finding out what actually happened to prisoners taken by our troops in Afghanistan. The US says they're fine...
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Bunkle was a Green MP.
Alliance, she stayed with them when the Greens split.
Tim: Wouldn't it be nice if that was the case?
What part wasn't the case, Craig? They were Ministers, they got in trouble, they 'offered' their resignations, which were accepted. Bill English was a senior opposition MP at the time who must - or really should - have taken some interest in it.
I'd expect a man in his position at that time to think pretty carefully about that position. I assume he did, and came to the conclusion that it wasn't against the weak rules and the political risk wasn't that high.
If he's so unreflective that the thought that moving his family to Wellington while claiming his home was in Dipton and accidentally collecting several hundred thousand off the deal might look bad never crossed his mind, well that's his lookout.
And on the undesirability of distractions, judging by the last few days, it might be more sensible to drop the Deputy PM lark first, that caper has seriously impacted his wonkery over the last few days, I'm sure.
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I'd really rather that Bill English was giving his full attention to the economy, rather fire-fighting over the relatively small sum at stake in his accommodation expenses problem.
Yup. 'Nuff sed.
Wait, if he hadn't told an untruth about where he lived, by any reasonable definition, then he wouldn't be distracted. There's one party primarily at fault here, and it's not anyone who's questioning his judgement.
Bunkle and Hobbs resigned over similar (not exactly the same) issues. English was a senior opposition mp at the time, don't tell me he wasn't aware of residences and allowance issues.
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Perhaps we need an allowance for MPs that live in Wellington, yet have electorate consituencies elsewhere. In addition to the budget they have for their constituancy office, they could get a "visting my electorate" allowance.
Wouldn't that be the standard parliamentary business allowance for staying away from home?
Problem is that, in order for to qualify for it in their electorate, an MP would have to admit that Wellington was their primary residence, which would mean they wouldn't be eligible for housing allowance for a house in Wellington.
[It may also be that electorate MPs aren't eligible for it within their electorate, but I doubt it]
I'd assume that the Wellington allowance is more valuable than any daily allowance an MP would get for travelling to their electorate for a few days every week or two.
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MPs should not get to have secondary houses paid for outside of Wgtn. The idea is that they represent the communities they live in and are compensated for the expense involved in coming to Wgtn so much.
If they choose to live in Wgtn while claiming to represent an area outside it, there's no expense involved in coming to Wgtn, so nothing to compensate for.
Or nothing that standard rates for MPs travelling on Parliamentary Business wouldn't adequately cover, which might make it harder to flick tens of thousands of extra dollars into your family's trust, but them's the breaks.
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I can definitely vouch for the noise of the crowd. Word on the street is that I did three laps before realising that Boston (ref) had been yelling at me to go to the penalty box! ooops.
heh, good times, she was just starting to look a little, hmm... frustrated? pissed off?
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Come now, at least you got to be a student, whereas they spent those years fighting World War Two.
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Then again, looking at the art in question more closely, I'm starting to side with you, Giovanni.
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"[The artist] deliberately pictured beautiful bodies so it wouldn't be offensive"
The generous reading of that line is that the artist painted bodies (which happened to be beautiful) in such a way (not naked) that it wouldn't be offensive.
Or maybe it does mean that the artist thinks beautiful bodies aren't offensive whereas others are.
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Do we, Mark? Is that what we do, or are you just making shit up?