Posts by Matthew Poole
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
oh - a "sub arachnoid haemorrhage" is a real thing - initially I figured you were just pulling (all 8 of) their legs
It surely is a real thing. At least, it is if my father's death certificate is to be believed. You'd be thinking of a sub-arachnid haemorrhage when it comes to pulling many legs :)
-
Sam's right, there's an awesome Dan Brown novel in here somewhere.
With the entirety of Pakeha New Zealand as the bumbling-yet-effective pillager of the fortunes of the oppressed, and the intrepid "Mr Honiara" as the leader of a secret society rallying against the iniquities of said pillager. Trying to work out the ancient symbology that could be interpreted by Langdon, though, given that writing wasn't exactly a strong point with the Maori. Maybe reading the direction of features in carvings, such as which way the head of a tiki is tilted?
-
Baycorp is another baby the Justice Department do
huh? Baycorp/Veda Advantage/whatever they're called this week is strictly a private company.
-
Can I suggest a bus?
That was pretty much my first reaction. Other than, say, Britomart, University of Auckland has to be about the single best-served destination in the entire isthmus for public transport. By bus, by train, by ferry, you'd have to be crawling on bloodied stumps for it to be more than 15 minutes' walk from the termination of any CBD public transport route to the main campus. The majority of NZ Bus' CBD routes come right down Symonds St, for crying out loud.
I know that Auckland has issues with public transport, but the University is the most-common destination for public transport users. Bar none. That's not by accident. -
tussock, if you can prove income for the last few years, and what's on your asset sheet is roughly in line with what someone of your age and income would own, you're very likely going to win a balance of probabilities test just on that basis.
You don't need to prove lineage of every last asset. You just need to prove, to a better level than the investigations of the Police have established, that your assets are in your possession by legitimate means. That is not hard! They can't "just tot up what you can't prove and take it", that's not how it works. Yet a-fucking-gain, the intent of the law is not to chase innocent taxpayers who happen to have got on the wrong side of a cop. It's to go after criminals who have significant income from things like drug manufacturing. The courts are required to interpret the law as a whole, and also to consider Parliament's intent behind the passage of the law. I would strongly advise reading this thread in its entirety. -
andin, would you be happy to pay all the additional tax that would be required for the state to pick up the slack?
Disturbingly, you may not be in much of a minority with your views. Bashing churches is popular, and becoming more so, and a lot of people are unwilling to apply any real analysis to the organisations beyond pointing to their historical faults and current material wealth. If you haven't noticed, many of the major churches advocate for the voiceless in our societies - the s59 repeal, welfare reform, justice reform, etc. They actually are forces for secular good, assisted by their organisation and close ties between denominations. Not that any of that appears to matter to more-than-a-few people, you included, who will happily bag them for things (they mostly didn't do, in this country) in their past without the slightest willingness to commend the good that they do now.
-
Glad to know you're happy to accept mediocre service from your politicians. When I'm paying to fly someone over half way around the world on a business trip, I expect their full attention to the matter at hand.
I think you'd find that most employers would deem Harawira's actions to be serious misconduct, and we all know how fond MPs are of comparing themselves to private-sector managers.As for the email, I don't see how it matters a damn if it's true or not. Or is he blaming the thieving Pakeha for his lacking work ethic?
-
and exactly what of whiteys rules did he break
Being an adult, and doing what he was being paid to do - go to the meeting. He wasn't being paid to skive off to Paris, he was being paid to represent NZ as part of a multi-party delegation. If he wanted to go to Paris while he was in Europe, I don't think any of the people who're currently screaming blue murder would've batted an eyelid if he'd shuffled his flights back by a day or two and gone to Paris once the official trip was over. We were going to be paying for him to fly home one way or the other, so big whoop if he changes the dates.
Anyone who thinks that Harawira is getting hard done-by and Hide is getting tickled with a feather needs to pay a little more attention. Rodney's the one who's getting thoroughly roasted by the Herald, with Hone as almost a side-show. Hell, if it hadn't been for that intemperate email it's entirely possible that the trip to Paris would've been ignored until the Speaker's decision on partial airfares repayment. But he had to go and play the race card, and now he's digging the hole at a rate nearly equal to the dis-Honourable Member for Epsom.
Looking at Granny and Stuff, the number of articles on the gaffes of Hone and Rodney are roughly equal. So there's no obvious bias in coverage based on ethnicity. They both fucked up, live and in colour, and now both are, as Tom says, discovering just why NZ has such a reputation for being free of corruption. -
White motherf...ers have been raping our lands and ripping us off for centuries, and all of a sudden you want me to play along with their puritanical bulls... .
cos it's not as if that statement is untrue?
If Hone wants to take whitey's money and play in whitey's sandpit, it's a bit rich for him to then blame whitey when he's caught breaking whitey's rules. As Buddy Miakere observed, nobody made him become an MP.
If you don't like the rules, don't play the game, but don't start claiming that your ethnicity gives you a free pass to break the rules.
-
Oh, there's no doubting that Winston was a xenophobic arse, but he didn't generally try and blame those upon whom he heaped derision for calling him on not playing by the rules.