Posts by Stephen Judd
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Apropos ethnic neighbourhood in American cities: the Italians have largely left Little Italy. The Chinatowns are shrinking. The Jews have moved on and out to the suburbs, and in general, after a few generations, immigrants have dispersed and assimilated, leaving behind a remnant for tourists or such of their fellow countryfolk as continue to emigrate.
Immigrants cluster a) because they can get support from those who have already arrived and b) if they don't have money, they'll go where it's cheap to live, which is probably where their mates are. Once they (or their descendants) don't need the support, and have attained a reasonable standard of welfare, they leave, and some other group will take over. Anyway, American immigrant neighbourhoods are transient, like they are the rest of the world over.
The more persistent Chinatowns are a special case, the legacy of harsh discrimination against the Chinese in America.
Eg, my great-grandparents' old district in the UK was Chappletown (sp?) in Leeds, and it was solidly Eastern European Jewish. Their children upped and left, and the jews were replaced by West Indians, but even they are starting to move on, and probably be replaced by whatever the current newest group in the UK is.
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Rodger: my observation about the economic underpinnings of antipathy towards migrants was specifically directed at Neil, who brought up the "grievances of less well-off white communities" in Britain. I agree that there are many other sources of discord.
Having said that, I think that economic fear makes those other sources of discord more powerful. I think this is what Bebel meant when he said "antisemitism is the socialism of fools".
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There is a group left behind who didn't make that effort
... and another who did make that effort, but did not succeed, because part of being really poor is being more vulnerable to serious random life events than people who are not poor.
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Neil: in my mind the "real grievances" are only real in the sense that they are genuinely felt. Otherwise, they seem to me to be proxies for economic anxiety. Hatred and fear of migrants is justified by one's sense of being at the bottom of society, or fear of falling to the bottom.
But looking at the economic roots of anti-migrant racism would open up a discussion that many comfortable people don't want to have, which is why it is so often limited to the "middle class echo chamber" that Tom talked about.
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I admire that attitude.
And yet I think it's ok to be a little bit cross with Peter Brown. Who's doing more to foment division, friction, resentment than Brown himself?
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You'd want a chemist to confirm that there won't be anything too dangerous resulting, but you could lower them slowly into a strong acid, say hydroflouric, inside a fume cupboard, while doing Bond villain impersonations alternating with falsetto cries of "help me! I'm melting!"
Or if you know someone who works at Glenbrook, they won't contaminate a batch of steel much.
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Yeah, about that website: I'm prepared to donate money or labour, or just a spare ethernet cable.
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Apropos apples: you can get trees that have two or three varieties grafted on to one stock, which means you can have a succession of apples off just two trees.
Apropos cider: I understand that there are special cider apple varieties which together with the sheep carcase and the rusty bicycle frame will give you the scrumptious flavour you seek. Dessert apples don't have the right balance, I hear.
Also, the malic acid ferments to produce something specific to cider which contributes to the fearful scrumpy hangover. Before I went to the UK I thought cider was a girls' drink; after a few unexpected episodes drinking cider in Black Country pubs I understood why only the hard men drink cider all night.
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Re coffee: you can get 1-2kg per tree, per year, in good conditions. Anywhere apart from the very warmest part of the North Island is likely to be marginal, since the trees won't stand frost and seem to go dormant at 10C or below.
The cherries don't ripen all at once, and they need fiddly treatment to get the bean out from the pulp safely, so it's a very labour-intensive crop. I understand this is why some Australian farms are getting out of coffee, even though their product is excellent: they simply can't get it to market it cheap enough.
If you were serious about "living off the land" in NZ then the only consistent way to get coffee is to trade some delicious speciality of your own for it, which will make it the rare treat it was for your great-greatparents.
Tea might be a better bet. I think tea bushes tolerate more temperate conditions, and there have been various ventures to grow it here over the years.
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Whoah Jill!
Thanks for delurking with that comment: that is complete news to me, and as a Kiwibank customer, it makes me feel a bit queasy.
I can't take my business to TSB; I don't have a mortgage.