Posts by Nick Russell
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I just like to say cocksplat. It gives me enormous pleasure, as Stephen Fry once said.
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Since National was first elected, the PM has been extremely good at tracking opinion in the electorate and making sure that the Government never gets too far behind or ahead of it. Informed, as you point out, by the formidable skills of Mr Farrar & co. On the rare occasion the Government gets that badly wrong, they can change track very quickly - as they did on the need for reform of the trusts regime after the Panama papers. So sooner or later it seems likely the PM will change his tune on this, if the polls remain solidly behind legalisation/decriminalisation. And if he doesn't, I guess it will probably be one more symptom of the dreaded third termitis manifesting itself.
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Access: Patients X, Y and Z, in reply to Hilary Stace,
You do realise that it is possible for reasonable people to disagree about what constitutes the good of us all, right?
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One thing that bothered me about the response to the story about the Chiefs and the stripper was that so many seemed to think that the real problem was in having an Aussie league-style mad monday binge in the first place. I can understand that on one level - it's very unprofessional and a bad look for the game and all that. But having a binge or hiring a stripper really wasn't the big problem here. The big problem was the profound and disturbing lack of respect for a woman who was just trying to do her job.
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Hard News: All right, then – take me to Rio, in reply to Russell Brown,
Which is really the only viable explanation for the referee whistling not only a foul, but a red card. That was bonkers.
When the last defender fouls an attacker who would otherwise have a clear shot at goal, they referee quite often gives a straight red card. The analogy with rugby is the professional foul to stop a try, which results in a penalty try plus a yellow card.
Not saying that happened in the NZ game - but it's clearly what the ref thought happened. Referees can also be goaded into that kind of response by a noisy and partisan crown, which was clearly an issue.
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K Road is great but it will never be Cuba Street....
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Hard News: The war is still with us, in reply to Carol Stewart,
It’ll be interesting to see whether the Chilcot report stirs up any soul searching in Australia.
I wouldn’t bet on it. There’s an awful lot of denial going on in all quarters. The Tories in UK supported the war far more than the Labour Party did and the Tory press were rabidly in favour. You wouldn’t know that from reading the Daily Mail. They were happy to believe Blair then and they are just as happy to condemn him now.
I don’t recall who said it but there is a famous quote that all newspaper editorials ever do is bayonet the wounded after the shooting has stopped. I think that’s where we are on this now.
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Hard News: The war is still with us, in reply to Rich Lock,
Because while the Chilcot report is utterly damning it falls frustratingly short on most of the Stop The War Coalition bumper stickers. Does it actually say for example that the war was illegal, or that "Blair lied"?
Blair is touting those lines for all he is worth.
What surprises me now is that Blair has been (quite rightly) damned by one and all but that Bush and co in the US seem to be getting a free pass. Maybe it's because we expected better of Blair.
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I reckon the Chilcot report is to the UK Labour Party as the EU referendum was to the Tories - a bone thrown to the base by the leadership (Gordon Brown in Chilcot's case) to keep them happy. Both have been remarkably effective at making sure that arguments are polarised, positions entrenched and prejudices or suspicions reinforced.
I'm sure this must be good for someone, somewhere, but I don't know who.
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Speaker: The Government you Deserve, in reply to David Hood,
As I am familiar with the New Zealand census, I was looking through the British census for variables to look at. One of the reported categories is “social class” which just made me go wut?
Because we don't have social class in NZ?
At least they admit it in Britain...