Posts by Stephen Judd
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The Press version of that story has comments.
This might be as good a place as any to note that our household will be migrating to the People's Republic of Christchurch in about 3 months. Who knows what local government will look like then...
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Is it wrong of me to have guffawed at the YT clip title?
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Just a little note: the version of 3410's story on the Press' subsite in Stuff has comments.
The way Stuff works is that when a story from a newspaper subsite appears on the main site, it's actually a copy which can diverge from the original, and it may have comments off, or if they're on, a different set of comments. Don't make me explain why.
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Hard News: Nobody wanted #EQNZ for Christmas, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
What happens in Hamilton, stays in Hamilton…
or so it seemsSpecifically, we were talking about how the stadium suffered massive cost overruns. There were no penalties for late completion, the job was effectively time and materials, and the contract had been let to a local firm without tendering.
Subsequently, the V8 races ran at a large loss to the city.
These events happened during the Marryat tenure. When he left, he had a 6 figure exit package negotiated.
These issues were widely discussed in Hamilton at the time.
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Do council CEOs get performance reviews? Would they be OIA-able?
Dad came down to visit from Hamilton last week. What an interesting talk we had about the stadium and the V8 races and the organisation thereof.
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I can see that there must be some small retailers whose views do align with the tobacco companies. I know with service stations, petrol has such tight margins that it's the food and grocery lines that make the profit as people come for the petrol but buy other stuff, and I imagine that some tiny retailers perceive that the extra traffic from tobacco addicts who then buy some other stuff too is the difference between survival and not. If those people aren't troubled by being dispensers of a poisonous drug, I imagine tobacco money to present views that protect their marginal businesses is very welcome. For those people, ACRA is doing the job that Carrick Graham et al claim it is.
But it is a moral problem to be a dairy owner who doesn't want to dispense a poisonous drug. If you don't sell cigarettes, you might lose custom to the next dairy that does. If I ran a dairy, I'd welcome legislation so that I could act morally without suffering a penalty relative to my competitors. Perhaps if we polled dairy owners, we'd find most of them were happy to have more stringent regulation, as long as it was applied to everyone so no one had to take a hit by volunteering.
This front group has effectively neutered any attempt to form a genuine grass roots organisation that might express a different view.
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Bloody hell. We're supposed to be flying to Chch this evening to visit the beloved's family (who have all checked in ok). Dunno what'll happen now.
Heard the news as one of my colleagues ran in to tell me that server load was spiking (we look after Stuff's servers).
Big hugs to shaken people. We hope to be among you soon.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Rob Stowell,
But somehow neo-lib orthodoxy rules, and these things are hardly thinkable, not able to enter the political conversation.
My sense is that while the Labour caucus still harbours people for whom these things are thinkable, they are terrified of the caning they expect they would get in the media. Almost all of New Zealand's political commentators have thoroughly internalised the neo-lib outlook and report accordingly. Since Labour no longer has a mass membership with alternative channels to get its message out, there's no way to get around the hugely unfavourable coverage such policies would attract. O'Sullivan, Trevett, Barnett, Armstrong, Clifton, Harteveldt and all that crew would rubbish Labour, and then their opinions would run as news.
These things are thinkable, but not sayable in the political conversation. Yet.
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Southerly: Coming Up For Air, in reply to David Haywood,
We are now complete converts to oat milk
Not as good as ow milk or eep milk, in my opinion.
All the best for a root-growing, permacultural and stable 2012.