Posts by David Slack
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I think it was the Electoral Finance Bill but I'm not entirely sure
I think you can thank/blame Jane Clifton for popularising it. She's been using it for at least as far back as the Listener is archived online.
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Just as he goes off the boil here, the Americans discover him.
Credit to Peter Cresswell
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Democracymum posted this interesting find at Kiwiblog:
Why did Winston say on One News tonight that he was not at the 2006 Karaka Yearling Sales (and therefore could not have met with Owen Glenn) when this photo clearly puts him there?
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Sounds like John Key won't be in the flock.
(Can't be flocked?)That was exuberantly unequivocal of him just now with Mary Wilson.
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On the subject of war, Sam Hunt offered this marvellous Pablo Neruda poem on Kiwi FM this morning.
I'm Explaining a Few ThingsYou are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?
I'll tell you all the news.I lived in a suburb,
a suburb of Madrid, with bells,
and clocks, and trees.From there you could look out
over Castille's dry face:
a leather ocean.
My house was called
the house of flowers, because in every cranny
geraniums burst: it was
a good-looking house
with its dogs and children.
Remember, Raul?
Eh, Rafel? Federico, do you remember
from under the ground
my balconies on which
the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?
Brother, my brother!
Everything
loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises,
pile-ups of palpitating bread,
the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with its statue
like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:
oil flowed into spoons,
a deep baying
of feet and hands swelled in the streets,
metres, litres, the sharp
measure of life,
stacked-up fish,
the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which
the weather vane falters,
the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes,
wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea.And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings --
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.Jackals that the jackals would despise,
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate!Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives!Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain :
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers,
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes,
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land?Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
The blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
In the streets! -
Dad was in J Force, which went into Japan after the surrender. He's talked a little about it, and from time to time we ask again, but the conversation never goes far. You've moved me to try again.
Jim Mora interviewed a marvellous old guy last Friday about his adventures as a fighter ace. He has just published a memoir that I'm going to buy next time I'm in the bookshop.
JAYSUS IT'S JIMMY. Love it.
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(bear in mind though, Crikey comes out daily and would run to ten pages easily - if printed)
I would be more likely to read it all the way through each day if I did print it off, but it seems wrong (for the cost, for the planet) to do that. I wonder if something not quite so voluminous might have more appeal.
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Do you have insider knowledge of how much money the contributors actually make? Are we talking need for a second job, breadline, fair pay?...
Don't have any insider knowledge, sorry, but the income of 14,000 subscribers plus advertising would give you quite a bit more to pay your contributors than a blog with banner ads.
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I omitted to say this in the last discussion the PA contributors had about this, but I regard Crikey as the most viable model to emulate. It works.
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I know that my fellow PAers are already well-and-truly sick of me going on about this/
I'm not.