Posts by Mikaere Curtis
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And despite what some folks will assert, I don’t think you could fairly say the Fifth Labour Government appointed nothing more than cronies and sycophantic arse-lickers who were handed a script and told any ideological deviationism would be looked upon most unkindly.
Agreed, but I got a totally different sense of what the Labour government was trying to achieve. There seemed, in general (although not always, F&S and all that), to be a genuine attempt to bring the major players and stakeholders together and to work on a plan together.
Contrast that with the Welfare Working Group's ability to create "extreme" proposals. When you have long-time coal-face players such as the Methodist Mission issuing media releases like the following, you have a problem:
Mary Richardson, Executive Director of the Christchurch Methodist Mission says “I am concerned the Prime Minister is suggesting the adoption of the report’s recommendations even before there is the opportunity for public scrutiny. Welfare reform is always a hotly debated topic. But it is a debate often centred around misleading or speculative data”.
“In that debate” Richardson says “the convenient caricature of benefit dependency and welfare costs is often built on little more than urban myth.
And that problem is one of doctrinaire ideology. Spite for beneficiaries runs deep on the National Party. Last time they were in power, they cut benefit levels and oversaw a massive increase in poverty. I fail to see how anyone can support such cynical vote-mongering, given the human cost.
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Gordon Campbell's article in this month's Werewolf addresses the myths on which the likes of Rebstock are building their recommendations.
As Campbell says:
It is a very odd situation. The same politicians who have been unable to manage an economy so that it employs people, are now blaming people for not finding jobs that do not exist.
When the jobs are there, as they were in the mid-2000s, the dole queue empties out, and when there aren't, it fills up. Chucking people off welfare because they aren't sufficiently diligent in finding jobs that simply do not exist will not address the situation; it will only serve to increase hardship, poverty and crime.
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I couldn't face the parking chaos, nor dragging my two tweens into all that sun.
But my wife went, she was the NZSL interpreter on stage for 3 hours in the baking sun. She came home pretty fried, but said it was worth it to support her gay friends.
She observed that both Goff and Key went on stage each with a dutiful posse in tow, and contrasted that with the Green's Kevin Hague, who was on his own. No sure why that was, maybe because the Greens are so gay-friendly that it didn't occur to try and up his gay credibility. Then again, as an actual gay MP, and former executive director of NZ AIDS Foundation, his gay-cred is about as high is it can get.
On the gay-marriage thing, the sooner the better. As in the onionverse, it is only a matter of time.
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The only solution is to have a big party and revel in turning 40
Word.
For mine, we hired Whatipu Lodge for a weekend, had the family-friendly event on the Friday, complete with a kids fantasy adventure larp on the Saturday morning. After lunch the kids were all taken away and then it was an all night party.
In my mid 20s I started wearing sarongs, they have great patterns and are, IMO, quite masculine. I still enjoy wearing them out, even though I'm not as svelt as I used to be (although working on it more seriously this year...)
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As it happens, New Zealand has the highest rate of vasectomies. I wonder why it's come so widespread and, indeed, culturally acceptable here.
Sheer bang-for-buck practicality. It is, I suppose, the same reason why Aotearoa is the only country in the Western world where women regularly mow the lawns (I got taught that a long time ago in a Consumer Behaviour course, but it still seems apparent).
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Once my wife's IUD was removed, we started using condoms. It really didn't take long for me to decide that the Big V was the way forward. The procedure wasn't too bad, although I do know someone who had a major reaction which sounded terrible.
My wife has had a people mover for years, they are great, although our one handles like an ill-tempered bus.
Hillary, what's a "D and C" ?
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Hard News: "Orderly transition" in #Egypt, in reply to Raymond A Francis,
Yes, when I heard I that the military were not going to act against the protesters that was a"game over" moment
Hope so, although Robert Fisk, who is actually in Cairo watching events unfold, isn't so sure.
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Cracker: Gimme Shelter, in reply to Rich Lock,
Those LED teeth thingies are pretty cool, but I think he actually used wired LED lights in his mouth.
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I've patronised Starbucks in places like Singapore, because it is clearly the least-worst option for a long black.
Which is precisely why I frequented SBs while I was on my OE. As for Asia, when I first went there in the mid-90s, I didn't find much coffee, but there was this stuff called Nescafé...
It's also the only place I have seen someone go and get their money back because they took too long to make the coffee.
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Fair call, I thought the Smashing Pumpkins were great at the BDO, but caught them a year or two ago down at Vector. Worst concert I've been to in a long time, so incredibly disappointing.
I'd booked tickets to Christchurch that Easter, and spent serious money extending my whanau's stay by a day so my wife and I could attend the Pumpkins concert at the CHC arena. Seems that Billy had chilled out since the Auckland gig so it was a great concert, so many good songs and a nice vibe to boot.
I caught them at AKL town hall in October and the set was entirely different apart from about 4 songs. Both gigs were chock full of great tracks, and both were fantastic.
I cannot think of another band, apart from maybe Pink Floyd and Prince, that has that level of quality music available. Smashing Pumpkins, due to Billy's prodigious writing skills, are in that rarefied space where they possess enough songs to rock out without having to resort to playing their list of known crowd-pleasers.
In contrast, Tool have four singles, all of which are killer fan-fucking-tastic, but that's not a lot, really. I appreciate their bombastic metal-funk, and it is very technically astute, however none of their filler tracks can match Aenima, Sober, Schism or Stinkfist for pure art-metal musical genius. It says something that they can only play three of those four, yet still turn out a great set. And their light show was something else. I thought the skull on top of the crane was pretty cool during the daytime. Once it was dark, it emitted *laser* from its eyes !!!
I know Russell doesn't get the whole Tool experience, but I think its a case of diamonds in the (very amicable) rough (but not the Airbourne sense). The four songs I listed above are, IMO, great tracks in their own right - as long, I suppose, as you like metal guitar...