Posts by Rob Hosking
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Less than 24 hours after being elected, Banks is big-noting about "I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do that"...
From the perspective of this Wellingtonian, Hubbard and Banks remind me of Scooby Doo and Scrappy Doo...
-
The "armed training camps" fantasy is not restricted to the more, umm, excitable elements on the right.
I was assured by some hardcore Marxist flatmates of mine - this would have been in the late 80s - that there were armed Maori camps in Northland preparing themselves for The Revolution.
They believed it because they wanted to believe it, of course...
-
We're not talking about "armed sectarian conflict" here; we're talking about a few isolated nutters with guns and no popular support base (something absolutely vital for any real terrorist movement). And it's entirely proper to treat them as such. But please continue your hysteria, it's most amusing
We don't actually know what we're talking about here yet.
And since when do "real terrorists" need a popular support base? You mean like Bader Meinhoff, say?And, while we're at it, you seem to assume that "isolated nutters with guns" are harmless, which shows a fair degree of either wishful thinking or blind ignorance.
-
TV3 has an office in Wellington?
Err, yip, infact it is about 3 blocks down from the house in question,
Following the changes to the Willis/Abel smith intersection, I suspect it they may have even walked there, it would have been quicker than driving :)They could have cycled up the footpaths, of course, and across the "cross now" signals on the crossings...
-
As an etymological aside I notice some people using the word 'hippie' as a derogatory term. Could someone please explain why this is so? I don't understand.
Punks.
Young Ones.
Neil.
-
Perhaps its the people I hang out with, but I have far more difficulty imagining women doing a barbie than I do imagining them playing rugby.
I guess its because I've actually seen the rugby thing - worked as a groundsman at Uni Park in Auckland for a while - but not the barbie thing.
And on the Liz Phair lyrics - thought the line was about "your eyelashes sparkle like you did grass". (It's the only Liz Phair song I know, btw).
-
Robyn wrote:
I think it's cos a) otherwise even a 40-minute flight would be a bit boring without the distractiong of a cuppa, and b) there's the 1960s mystique of the jet age - even though air travel is now only slightly more glamorous than catching a bus, we still like reminders of the olden days, of martinis, San Tropez and trolly dollies.
Yeah, but (a) is best dealt with by a book; (b) wasn't that a long way ago now? Even I'm too young for that image, and I'm in my mid 40s.
I see it on the Cook STrait Ferry as well - I swear half the passengers head straight for the cafe as soon as they get on board. There's not a huge amount of glamour attached to the Cook STrait Ferry, unless I've missed something, and that Warratahs song about Cruisin on the Interislander is the acme of sophistication...Actually I quite like the Warratahs, which shows just how uncool they are.
OK, the coffee's not bad on the Ferry these days (not great either, but better than in the air) - certainly better than it was on my first trip in 1982, when you got it from a machine, and the tea, coffee and hot chocolate all came out the same spout, so you had to hope the last person had the same drink you wanted.
-
Re: the airline food and coffee:
When did it become so necessary to eat (and drink) while travelling anyway?
Most trips in this country are what, two hours, max? Three hours on the ferry would be about the longest.
You're not going starve in that time. You're not even going to get a rumble-tum, unless you're particularly badly organised.
Just have a meal and/or a coffee beforehand.
Slarty for Truth, Justice, and the NZ way....one other truth about air travel is that if they really cared about our safety the seats would face backwards. Better chance of surviving a ditching, apparantly.It looks to me that that thing they advise you to do - lean forward and place your head on the back of the seat in front - is just so you die more quickly, because your neck will snap on impact.
-
Yeah, but being Kiwis they probably thought they could get away with restocking the fridge in the morning from the local 7/11, before the maids got in.
Ahh, so you've done that too.
Re: Lomu: remember after one of the other defeats - 1999 I think it was - he was one of the few ABs who stayed on the field to shake hands with the winning side. Most of them scuttled off.
-
Kyle,
The less well off ain't 'debt averse'. If only. Take a look around the main drag in Otahuhu or Newtown. They're full of loan sharks. They're lending to people who are already in debt - that's what's behind all those TV ads offering to rationalise people's debts into one package.
It's our own version of the sub-prime lending mess.
One of the biggest hurdles to higher education for the less well off is not debt-aversion: the trouble is too many of them leave school without basic literacy or numeracy skills.
About 20% of school leavers in NZ, according to one international study (could have been OECD, not sure)
Anecdotally, a mate of mine teachers technology at at mid-decile Auckland secondary school. He gets the less academically inclined kids. Too many of them can't read the textbooks.