Posts by Matthew Poole
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Hard News: RNC 2016: A literal shitshow, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
Another anecdote here
Having this morning read the New Yorker piece that Jason quoted, reading that Guardian piece is quite the mind-fuck, what with all the quotes from “The Art of the Deal” that are treated as being Trump’s own words.
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Up Front: The Best Possible Taste, in reply to linger,
They can’t be called cunts, because they lack the warmth and depth.
Cunts are lovely, useful things. Neither adjective is generally suitable as a description for most people at whom the charge is levelled.
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Hard News: Hate and guns, in reply to Angela Hart,
it's a ten year license with no review process to trigger for mental health or any other concerns.
Uh, say what? The Police can revoke anyone's firearms licence at any time if they believe the "fit and proper person" requirement is no longer met.
Or do you mean no statutory requirement that a person who is subject to care under the Mental Health Act have that notified to the Police so a firearms licence can be reviewed? Domestic violence is specifically in the legislation as grounds for failing the F&PP test, which takes care of a big risk factor.
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Hard News: This. Is. Crazy., in reply to Brent Jackson,
Surely the Meth test is not a binary Yes/No ? Trace amounts should be ignored. It should be blatantly obvious if it was used as a lab.
If it's anything like the Narcotics Identification Kit tests used by border services all over the world, it's exposing a sample to a combination of reagents and looking for a specific colour change. Those tests are cheap and easy, but really binary. Slightly more advanced is an ion scanner, but even those are pretty binary and can also give false positives. Truly sensitive and accurate testing of contamination levels would mean a gas chromatograph and/or mass spectrometer, and those are expensive.
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Hard News: About the King's Arms (updated), in reply to Rich of Observationz,
The M25 in England is up to 6+6 lanes in places and still jamming solid
The southern approach to the Auckland Harbour Bridge is already 5+5, and I believe the plan for the Northwestern is 6+6 through to Te Atatu once the causeway widening is completed.
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Hard News: About the King's Arms (updated), in reply to Russell Brown,
The parts that expire inSeptember are those to do with establishing new SHAs and the rest rolls on until 2018.
Does that mean the designation also expires in 2018 unless utilised?
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One thing that did bug me about the article was its bundling of Methanex (a local company) with profit-shifting multinationals for the sole reason that Methanex paid no tax on a reasonable profit. Methanex did so because it, entirely legitimately, had been carrying previous years' losses on the books and could thus deduct those losses from present profits. It's not at all like taking advantage of offshore parent companies and Irish offices and the other ways in which Apple et al avoid paying ethically-due taxes, and I was rather annoyed that the two were conflated.
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Hard News: The flagging referendum, in reply to linger,
Russian usually omits the copula verb (except in past tense), so that may well be the closest possible idiomatic translation.
Ran it past a Russian colleague, who said that Winnie’s claimed translation is correct and “a tidier translation is definitely available”.
ETA: hopefully voters who are relying on the translation have enough sense to know the intended meaning. I think Winston is being rather disingenuous on this matter.
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Hard News: The flagging referendum, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
If the flag changes and/or the coat of arms needs upgrading for whatever reason, I don’t share Mr Poole’s nonchalance that that won’t have a large implementation cost – web sites alone will mount up at the current consultant rate I read about elsewhere on PAS
At what point did I say the costs of revising the coat of arms would not potentially be significant, Ian? I said the costs of changing the flag are being hugely overblown by people who seem to think the national flag is used as logo and livery hither and yon within the public service, and not a single person has presented a shred of evidence to the contrary.
I also said that the coat of arms stands alone in its validity whether or not the flag within is representative of the national flag laid down by statute. My point about the crown is that it was added after Liz became the queen, and since the immediate heirs are all male it is unlikely that they will wear that crown at their coronations; thus, given the rationale for its inclusion, at the time one of them takes over it would be logical for the coat of arms to be revised. That will apply with or without a change to the flag.
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Hard News: The flagging referendum, in reply to Sacha,
From my understanding of flag etiquette, the convention is that the conquering flag flies over the conquered flag.
Interesting to hear how the voting paper ended up as it did then.
Given all the other psychological tricks that were apparently played in the guff that came with the ballot papers, I imagine it was a deliberate choice to try and eke out a few extra "yes" votes.