Posts by rodgerd
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The cost of diesel is entirely the cost of diesel, the tax is applied later through road user charges.
That's rather the point - people at my workplace are bitterly complaining that the shrinking gap in diesel prices have rendered them about as expensive to drive as their petrol compatriots. It's not only eaten up the price per litre adtanage, but the efficiency advantage.
A cynical person would suspect someone at Shell, BP, et al, has done a bit of math around making sure there's parity between the fuels. If anything, diesel may be more profitable now.
SUV's make the roads more dangerous for everyone.
Worse yet, they're crap at the job most people claim to buy them for; fitting more stuff in. I can cram more into a Camry than a Land Cruiser.
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The police don't bloody enforce the red light laws now, so what's the point of giving them harsher penalties to not dish out?
Actually, I've seen them (in Wellington Central, anyway) sit at problem intersections and pull person after person over on occasion; but really, it must be a bit of a "why bother" feeling for a $150 fine. Sure, that'll sting some people, but a lot will just laugh it off.
I expect being able to do points on the license will make some plods a great deal keener.
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Sub-editors are often a print publication's institutional memory. They know how to spell the unusual names, and the particular quirks of individual writers. Great subs are the soul of the publication. Outsourcing that duty to a sausage factory loses you so much.
Oh yes. When I worked at WNL it was the subs that basically kept the thing going. I'd head up from the computer room in the evening when I was supporting the Dom. The editor would be gone, the deputy would be going,and most of the reporters would be out the door. The core of the subs would be grinding work out, laying stuff out, fixing stories, and whatnot.
They were a very... unreconstructed lot. The Chief Sub of the day, Brett Webling, who looked a bit like Chris Knox's bigger, scarier brother, would be hunched over his keyboard, hammering away at it, then would pause, glare around the newsroom, and bellow, "Which of you useless cunts wrote this?"
You know the joke about New Yorkers using fuck as punctuation? Yeah, well, that was Brett, only he didn't use fuck. It wasn't offensive enough.
But I've seen the copy the reporters handed in, and I've seen what came out, and I'd support the notion the late shift subs floated over beer, wine, and cigarettes (smoking law? What's that?), which is they deserved most of the credit for any Quantas awards the paper won for reporting.
That time gave me, incidentally, one of the great (and I think unused ) headlines: "Like Rats From a Sinking Shipley"; and, seeing some of the notes going from the editor to the reporters, a healthy contempt for anyone claiming liberal media bias.
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mainly i just want to know how it feels to be robbery
I'd noticed.
When you tolerate one, others follow...
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Does anyone want to explain how, if South Auckland is such a hotbed of social conservatism, they elected the not-very-socially-conservative David Lange seven times?
Because conservative churches in New Zealand have often been associated with white conservatives who don't exactly inspire Joe Samoan with confidence on issues other that 'moral' ones?
none of the Pasifica people I know actually go to church any more than Europeans.
Oh, well, there we are then. That's obviously a representitive and accurate sample.
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Well, Density Church exist, so we do in a minute way.
You should keep an eye on them. You might be surprised how prolific they are around Maori and other Polynesian communities. Various members of the Maori party certainly seem to feel there's value in keeping on their good side.
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I MERELY THINK THAT BOTH PARTIES SHOULD TECHNICALLY HAVE SOME RECOURSE INTO WHAT HAPPENS WITH THEIR DNA
We do. If I don't have sex with women, I can't get them pregnant.
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Some timely links, via MetaFilter,
just to put a bit of perspective on where society was prior to legalising abortion. The second link, in particular, is not for the easily upset.:Repairing the Damage, Before Roe
Bastardy and Baby Farming in Victorian England:The primary objective of professional baby farmers was to solicit as many sickly infants or infants under two months as possible, because life was precarious for them and their deaths would appear more natural. They would adopt the infants for a set fee and get rid of them as quickly as possible in order to maximize their profits. The infants were kept drugged on laudanum, paregoric, and other poisons, and fed watered down milk laced with lime. They quickly died of thrush induced by malnutrition and fluid on the brain due to excessive doses of strong narcotics. The costs of burial was avoided by wrapping the naked bodies of the dead infants in old newspapers and damping them in a deserted area, or by throwing them in the Thames.
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I could write a bit about the hilarity of watching a bunch of predominantly white, middle-class women carp about how hard done by their white, upper class candidate is compared to a black American; or one, could suggest Clinton supporters contemplate the fact that Clinton was pro-Iraq war, pro-Iran war, sucked from the same big-money teats that people don't like, and how this contrasted with Obama's small-money stratgey and forthright anti-war positions; but instead, I keep getting diverted by this fact:
For all the harping on sexism, not once did the Obama campaign resort to using sexism to get elected.
Clinton, on the other hand, was happy to resort to racism. She waded into that cesspit to get votes. So fFuck Hilary Clinton, and fuck those of her supporters who can get excited about sexism, but don't seem to give a shit about her blatant attempts to use racism to get votes.
And if her supporters would rather have McCain that a black guy, well, that's up to them. No doubt they'll blame the black guy for any of the ill effects of that, too.
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(Not, I hasten to add, that I would characterise Walker or Morgan as being lefties, but rather than Walker as a Maori activist and Morgan as a political/economic commentator are both on their respective fringes of mainstream political thinking these days)