Posts by Andy Milne
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<complete sidetrack>
Good news: I've just discovered TV1 have picked up the new series of Hustle from the UK.
Bad news: They've buried it at 11pm on a Tuesday! Bah. Wassamatter, not enough home renovation/psychic crime-solvers/treasure islands in it?
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Because I privately scoff in derision at your apparent belief that the police are not basically an arrogant, conservative, bullying organisation with enough power to think they should have more and should exercise for the "betterment" of this society
I scoff at you, blindjackdog, and the hypocritical chardonnay liberalism your ridiculous anti-police rant typifies. Yeah, the cops are all corrupt, power-crazed rapists and bullies, but the moment someone breaks into your house and pinches your Noam Chomsky 1st edition, who you gonna call?
I'm with Kyle. We know NOTHING more than we did a week ago. And yet, because no charges are laid under the TSA, suddenly the Police are incompetent/corrupt/puppets of the State, and all that was happening in the Ureweras was basket-weaving and organic cooking classes.
And I'm actually quite concerned by some of the opinions expressed here - So it'd really have been better for the police to wait until AFTER a terrorist event had occurred than to act to prevent it occurring in the first place? really? I'm sorry, but that's just FCUKED.
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Anna Nother thing...
Minto argues that
Almost a third of our children grow up in poverty and a large proportion will take up low-paid, part-time jobs for much of their working lives. They need to question and think critically about the economic alternatives to the failure of New Zealand's economy to work well for people aside from small numbers of wealthy entrepreneurs.
So if so many kids are ending up in McJobs, wouldn't encouraging entrepreneurial skills be a GOOD thing?
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But is the curriculum, through the solitary inclusion of the E-word, teaching our children to become exploiters? Not unless you think they shouldn't ever aspire to having and pursuing their own ideas;
And not unless you think the education system won't teach kids about reading things in context.
Course it won't! The education system's all about producing docile call-centre fodder. I thought everyone knew that?
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I suspect Mallard would have been up for more severe punishment if there wasn't a tacit agreement from all sides that Henare was asking for it...
...No, I'm not defending Mallard for a secondThats a fairly impressive bit of doublethink there Rob. "Im not defending what Mallard did, but Henare was SOOO asking for a smack in the chops".
Im not a lawyer, but I don't know that "the other guy was asking for it" constitutes much in the way of a defense.I think a more plausible reason for a lack of punishment is that maybe its a tacit admission that Clark is taking some of the responsibility for Mallard crossing the line. As Colin Espiner said in his blog, the owner must take some blame when an attack dog goes feral. That and/or there's not much left in the cupboard to replace Mallard with.
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the logical conclusion of your perspective is that as soon as an MP smears the personal life of another MP, then the first MP has to now STFU while all and sundry have carte blanche to make any kind of salacious insinuation, including inaccurate or patently false ones...
Have you really thought this through ?
Have you?
You are exactly right about the logical conclusion, but so what? Mallard has no-one to blame for the situation he finds himself in but himself. I think it's highly unlikely Henare would have said what he did, had Mallard not opened the door first. If you're going to start scoring political points off your opponent's personal lives, you better make damn sure your own house is in order afterwards.
"...in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." Matthew 7:2
Setting the whole fisticuffs issue aside, would it not strike you as being the slightest bit hypocritical if Mallard had gone crying foul over the incident, given his form these matters?
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Craig, WTF?
Uh, yeah, what Stephen said.
I agree that what Henare said was not fair or in any way justifiable. And my point is that Mallard could have played the "unjustifiable, inexcuseable, blah blah blah" card himself and won himself a bit of sympathy in the same quarter you think Helen was targeting, had he not already done exactly the same thing to Brash. It was Mallard who let the genie out of the bottle, and now he's been finished by something he started.
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While Mallard is a nasty prick, and being a believer in the notion of karma, I'm not buying into the notion he's 'getting what he deserves' either. Still, might be room to contemplate the school yard maxim that if you can't take it back, you shouldn't dish it out. Of course, it's preferably that nobody is dishing "it" out in the first place
Well, I do buy into it. Why isn't Mallard spinning the same line as Helen "He was defending a lady's honour" Clark? He could garner significant sympathy by coming out with something along the lines of "well yes I shouldn't have hit him, but he can't go dragging peoples families/personal affairs (no pun intended) into the debate like that"
Of course the reason he can't do that is because hypocrisy would make him even more of a liability than a potential assault charge. If he hadn't done EXACTLY the same thing to Brash, then he would have had the moral high ground (well, high-ish ground anyway) all to himself.
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Man, I so shouldn't post after 10pm. Clearly I was referring to Hager's submission, not his transmission.
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One thing leapt out at me when reading the transcript of Hager's transmission. When answering a question from DBP, Hager appears to suggest that, while imposing restrictions on political communication from January 1 of an election year is an improvement on the status quo, a perfect bill would apply controls for the preceding two years as well.
So in other words, you could improve the EFB by restricting individuals and groups' abilities to criticise the government not just for the whole election year, but every year. Brilliant. So the Govt of the day can promote whatever they like, essentially unopposed.
For a man with such a deeply ingrained suspicion of authority, it does seem an odd suggestion to say the least.