Hard News by Russell Brown

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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit

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  • andin, in reply to recordari,

    it did begin to look a bit personal.

    I offer an abject apology if it ever was like that, to you Kyle or anyone watching.

    raglan • Since Mar 2007 • 1891 posts Report Reply

  • Jacqui Dunn, in reply to recordari,

    The wonderful Eddie Izzard!

    I've been looking for another of his I heard once on bFM - laughed so hard I missed half of it - but it was a swipe at the Royals, and in particular, Prince Philip (the Greek!). Can't find it though. I like his one about the fly too.

    Deepest, darkest Avondale… • Since Jul 2010 • 585 posts Report Reply

  • Rich Lock,

    Well, that was probably my worst BDO ever.

    Sorry to hear that. Would it be wrong of me to say at this point that I had an awesome time?

    the Germans probably have a word for thatt

    I would have asked Rammstein, but they were too busy blowing shit up and generally being awesome.

    back in the mother countr… • Since Feb 2007 • 2728 posts Report Reply

  • recordari, in reply to Rich Lock,

    Would it be wrong of me to say at this point that I had an awesome time?

    Not at all. I was well aware of the majority of people letting go and having fun, unfortunately I just wasn’t one of them. Bad hair day, or something. Now I’ve had a haircut, I feel much better. Should have done it beforehand.

    AUCKLAND • Since Dec 2009 • 2607 posts Report Reply

  • HORansome,

    I must be one of the very few people who enjoyed "The Fountain" because, in the end, it's just a story about a man trying to cope with the death of his wife. The Conquistador storyline is her attempt, via fiction, to survive death and the SF storyline is his fiction he uses to cope with her death.

    Tāmaki Makaurau • Since Sep 2008 • 441 posts Report Reply

  • Jacqui Dunn, in reply to Islander,

    I’ve thought, ever since I read GE’s death-bed retort/reply, that she was entirely in command of her mind while dying.

    I've just re-read what you said, Islander, and have to say that something must have fallen out of my brain over the past few days, given my (quite wrong) responses to various people's comments*, because for some reason I didn't understand what you'd said - it seemed like the complete opposite to what I see now. (You didn't do a sneaky edit when I wasn't looking, did you?) Anyway, forgive the lateness of my reply - I heartily agree with you. I think she knew exactly what she was saying.

    *Not bad enough to need righting, however, but wrong nonetheless.

    Deepest, darkest Avondale… • Since Jul 2010 • 585 posts Report Reply

  • andin,

    Time for a highlights package methinks
    Ben Wilson 11 days ago

    "Yes, I think blaming the whole modern condition on baby boomers goes way too far. They’re as much victims of the times as anyone else. It’s them who will need the health care and pensions that can’t be afforded, and a likely scenario is that they will miss out, despite having funded such things for their own elders during most of their lives"

    Kyle 11 days go maybe you should be pissed at Ben for having a lighter touch, anyway

    "Well that's not true. Baby boomers are starting to approach retirement age. During their peak income years - 40s onwards they had large tax cuts while their parents and grand parents had income testing. The 1980s and 1990s are a generational split in our social contract."

    Then Kyle sez 9 days ago

    "The fact that you might not have benefitted personally from the changes (like all generalisations it's not universally true) doesn't negate the fact that many baby boomers from the mid-1980s onwards benefitted tremendously from tax cuts. To go back to the original statement. Baby boomers were at the most 40 years old when the 4th Labour government hacked taxes. During the following 25+ years - their peak earning years when people pay the most in income tax, they did not fund the care of their elders as per the social contract that had built up for several decades. Within a few years their parents and grandparents were having to sell their homes to fund their hospital care."

    Its as if the world suddenly sprang into life (like a biblical scenario) when Lange's govt gained power. IIRC The country was in the shit after Muldoon's "Think Big" era. Were the IMF or World Bank involved behind the scenes? I have no idea, perhaps a political historian could enlighten me. But the policies enacted then in NZ seem eerily similar to those these organisations were advocating at the time. But hey it was the 80's the hippies had been buried, punk ruled, we can fix it ourselves optimism abounded, the human potential movement and all that. As for me, just so you know, I managed to get a job selling hotdogs to the drunks in late night Sydney. 12 hrs a night, $4 an hour getting insulted by drunken yobs. Yep so my career was really taking off. Just to keep you informed....
    Kyle 9 days ago

    "This particular generation is unique in the period after the creation of the welfare state. Quite a few received a well funded education, graduated from university without student loans, and then when they hit peak earning capacity, the government reduced taxes on them tremendously and brought in user pays. As higher income earners, lower taxes and user-pays works out pretty well. It created tremendous wealth, a lot of which we’ve seen go into the property market and put first homes out of the reach of the next generation."

    It almost as if it was ordained. So the labour Govt "hacked taxes' with the express purpose of creating a property boom or human greed (hey common to ALL of us) just took over.You tell me. Those were heady times I guess for some, as I said I, like you, was sitting on the outside looking in.
    Anyway enough
    Ian

    "That Tool Aronofsky has a lot to offer and has made some fine movies, including Pi (can’t find the symbol on my keyboard), the Wrestler and Black Swan."

    I was referring to the sales pitch for The Fountain. If I had been in the room I would have been laughing and saying "This is a comedy right, it's got to be. Who do you want in the lead Ricky Gervais?"
    And from the films you listed it appears I am not a fan of any of Aronofsky's films.
    Call me common and coarse if you like, I make no pretensions to be otherwise.
    Then back to Kyle

    "I’ll concede to the sweeping generalisations. But the point I was responding to was a sweeping generalisation about them funding their elder’s care"

    Then a little misunderstanding

    "And thanks to Kyle for offering an apology.
    What is it with people reading into my posts recently things I haven’t said?"

    OK then how about thanks for making that concession to making a sweeping generalisation.
    Well fuck its raining and I wont be working today. So just thought I'd dig a hole and throw myself in it.

    "Is it time to move on?
    Yeah fair point."

    It seems to have slipped into common usage, Thanks Helen Clark.

    raglan • Since Mar 2007 • 1891 posts Report Reply

  • recordari,

    It's so obvious, but just as a counter culture shift, in a positive note.

    AUCKLAND • Since Dec 2009 • 2607 posts Report Reply

  • Joe Wylie, in reply to andin,

    Its as if the world suddenly sprang into life (like a biblical scenario) when Lange's govt gained power. . . I managed to get a job selling hotdogs to the drunks in late night Sydney. 12 hrs a night, $4 an hour getting insulted by drunken yobs. Yep so my career was really taking off. Just to keep you informed....

    Too bad if 'breaking the social contract' implies an intention somewhere between bad faith and outright criminality. While it may seem to be over-egging things a touch to mention that "boomers" happily drove their elders to penury, the trick is not to relate any of this to your own experience. These things are abstract facts, presented for the general good.

    Now that the breach in the barrier of genteel smugness has been mended it's time to move on.

    flat earth • Since Jan 2007 • 4593 posts Report Reply

  • BenWilson,

    I've been itching to say this all along: The social contract isn't worth the paper it's not written on.

    It's an old joke, but reasonably fair, I think. It's not a contract if (as I understand modern contract theory) there isn't 1. An offer, 2. Acceptance of the offer, 3. Consideration, a change of hands of something of value. Social contracts don't really involve 1, it's not like you offer to a fetus to be born based on decent legal advice about their obligations in being alive. 2 definitely never happens. If I were ever presented with a chance to accept the offer (and I never was) I'd most likely do as I do with almost all contracts, make a counter offer, which secured me more rights and privileges. 3 sort of happens.

    Indeed, I'm especially wary of any contract made with the government ever again. When I took out my student loan it was specifically contracted in there that the interest would be locked at 2% any year that my earnings were less than $10,000 pa. The government simply shat on this later on, changing it to market rates, which were over 7% at that time. So they don't even honor real contracts, let alone unwritten bullshit contracts that philosophers dream up to explain something that doesn't really take much explaining.

    Our obligations to society are simply forced on us, and the only way out of them is to leave, in which case most likely you get the obligations of another society instead. This is exactly what so many people from the X-generation saw in crystal clear terms - that a government that sought to indebt you before your earning life even began was a government that could go and get fucked, and they left, and many never came back. Or, if they earned little, repayment became a distant dream, and they steadily slip outside of the rules and norms of society, refusing to take work that the IRD knows about, which often means taking illegal work, or just becoming criminals outright. Or, more promisingly, doing work for free, typically work that they are good at, just because they think making society better is a good thing.

    The idea of social contracts seems to me an extremely conservative one, just the kind of thing people who are in a sweet position would think of, as a way of locking in a fucked situation for people who are not. It's the kind of thinking that feels it's extremely important to honor the wishes of long dead monarchs. It's the kind of thinking that means children can be born into slavery because of the failures of their ancestors.

    I'm not a fan of deals that transcend death, nor those made by those in extremely strong positions with those in very weak positions. This includes most deals made by individuals with governments, since governments are both extremely powerful and also immortal. More recently, corporations have also become immortal, and have consequently grown in power to a point that they rival governments. The natural tendency of such deals is to concentrate power in the hands of the immortals.

    A better way of looking at the social obligations of baby boomers is not that they broke a social contract that they didn't sign and were becoming unable to afford, but rather to simply look at whether they have sought to make society better, as they could at the time. I think that most of them genuinely did try, starting with themselves and their own. But they can't guarantee that life remains as easy as it was for them. That's not within their power, indeed their power is slipping away every day now. If they have any ongoing failure, I think it's that they don't see that the times they lived through were particularly wealthy. It's also beholden on subsequent generations to understand that the reasons for the good times after WW2 stood on the back of systemic changes in the political economy of the whole world, and recreating those conditions is actually undesirable. I have no desire to live through another "mighty conflagration", and instead would rather that humanity can find a way to evolve capitalism to decouple from its reliance on war. It's on us to remain faithful to socialist ideals, to learn from the fuckups of both communism and laissez-faire capitalism, and to find a path to future prosperity.

    Will it happen? I think so. The western industrialized world will slip slowly from wealth, and learn to eat humble pie, learn to work again, and a fairer world will slowly emerge. The only thing I don't really feel confident about is an end to war. In a weird way, I feel slightly enheartened by the Iraq disaster. While it's obviously wrong to a disgusting degree, I also feel that it's a lesser conflict than previous ones of similar types, that opposition to it was much stronger beforehand, which was quite new, and this will become more and more so.

    But what worries me is that you don't need actual overt war to create warlike conditions. Stealthy dishonest war actually does the job better in some ways. I'm not optimistic about the prospects of Africa in the near future.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • recordari,

    Someone said thread-merging was prevalent.

    All I can say is;

    "Good grief, gimme strength." It must be my sense of in-title-meant.

    AUCKLAND • Since Dec 2009 • 2607 posts Report Reply

  • Danielle, in reply to Joe Wylie,

    the breach in the barrier of genteel smugness

    Oh, *that* explains the flooding.

    Charo World. Cuchi-cuchi!… • Since Nov 2006 • 3828 posts Report Reply

  • recordari, in reply to Danielle,

    Oh, *that* explains the flooding.

    If there's much more of this sandbagging, we'll have to throw in the towel.

    AUCKLAND • Since Dec 2009 • 2607 posts Report Reply

  • Sam F, in reply to Danielle,

    Oh, *that* explains the flooding.

    Ah, so we’re talking about the storm now?

    (I’d suggest that this be nominated from here on in as the designated general discussion thread, but the nature of PAS discussions might not be containable by such means…)

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 1611 posts Report Reply

  • Sacha,

    Perhaps we could have a little less defensivness please. I'm tiring of hearing from people who are quite unrepresentative of any generalised "boomer" experience how unjust it is that they are being lumped in with a whole generation. We should be able to discuss such broader issues here of all places without people seeing only through the lens of their own personal experience of the world.

    Most "baby boomers" were not creative types, and sorry Ben, neither were they trying to save the world. Nor were they evil neer-do-wells intent on shafting their grandchildren. Most just did what was presented as the right way to live and got jobs, bought houses, raised families, got involved in their local community.

    However the overall pattern remains a systemic and politically-sanctioned broad transfer of wealth between generations and social classes. It happened and it has implications for what comes next. This conversation is not going to go away just because it can become uncomfortable.

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

  • Sacha,

    I'd also note Ben's cynicism about the idea of a social contract reflects a certain generational experience. My grandparents expected that things like social welfare and retirement income would continue to be provided for decades into the future beyond political cycles and in return they would contribute taxes and accept other arrangements. I'm sure older Kiwis have many such stories to tell. ACC was explicitly another such social contract which has served this country well, where in exchange for giving up the right to sue personally you were covered by the most efficient society-wide scheme of its type in the world.

    It was all a matter of trust, with moral honour as an underpinning. I believe that has been one of the casualties of the deceitful style of government we saw in the 80s and 90s and an overall change towards more individualistic values. However you'll note this government's pragmatic reluctance to tackle superannuation arrangements in any case.

    There will be big policy choices this year in social policy, savings and other related areas that could set a path for the next couple of decades. This year's election will be taken as an endorsement of those. And that's why conversations like this are still essential.

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

  • recordari, in reply to Sam F,

    Ah, so we’re talking about the storm now?

    Apparently not. But these photos are certainly attention grabbing, as me bestest drives over the harbour bridge. Hopefully it has cleared by the time she comes back.

    AUCKLAND • Since Dec 2009 • 2607 posts Report Reply

  • andin,

    I'm tiring of hearing from people who are quite unrepresentative of any generalised "boomer" experience how unjust it is that they are being lumped in with a whole generation.

    Damn there goes my book deal idea...

    We should be able to discuss such broader issues

    And learn from our mistakes. There are problems with our institutions, and not solely with the populace.
    both motorways closed a combination of rain & high tide, Oh and the slowly sinking parts of the motorway all played a part.
    moving on

    raglan • Since Mar 2007 • 1891 posts Report Reply

  • BenWilson,

    I feel a bit silly, I was just telling some Americans on Friday "No, it never floods here".

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Joe Wylie, in reply to Sacha,

    Perhaps we could have a little less defensivness please. I’m tiring of hearing from people who are quite unrepresentative of any generalised “boomer” experience how unjust it is that they are being lumped in with a whole generation. We should be able to discuss such broader issues here of all places without people seeing only through the lens of their own personal experience of the world.

    Fair enough, though most assertions that have been made “here of all places” seem blinkered to some degree by the constraints of personal experience. Why is it assumed that the middle classes are the only people that matter? Perhaps it’s because if someone presents as passably articulate they’re presumed to enjoy that status. It’s a comforting myth that doesn’t always hold up in later life.

    I’m all for broadening the discussion, provided it can be done without stereotyping. As wealth becomes concentrated in fewer hands it’s misleading to imply that property millionaires are somehow the norm amongst “boomers”. There are plenty of people approaching 70 who’ll end their days in rental accommodation, or who will be fortunate to clear their mortgage. Maybe you haven’t noticed all those grey-haired council workers. Some of them did other things once upon a time, and had rather higher aspirations. Perhaps they only have themselves to blame, as it was their generation that created the dog-eat-dog conditions where once you’re on the scrapheap you learn to make do. Anyway, mustn’t let personal experience cloud the big picture.

    It’s an interesting country these days. One of my neighbours was a red guard back in the day. So was his wife. There might even be enough of them to swing an electorate, who knows. Fine by me.

    flat earth • Since Jan 2007 • 4593 posts Report Reply

  • Ian Dalziel,

    If there's much more of this sandbagging, we'll have to throw in the towel.

    laughs, like a drain....
    :- )

    ps I miss Neil Burnside and the Sandbaggers!
    (the spooks between Danger Man, / Callan and, well, Spooks )

    Christchurch • Since Dec 2006 • 7953 posts Report Reply

  • recordari,

    Yes, our only option now is stonewalling, or is it even stonemaldonado.

    I particularly liked the "unneccessary questions, dramatic pauses, and irrelevant personal reflections" bit.

    [Pause to reflect]

    ETA:

    ps I miss Neil Burnside and the Sandbaggers!

    Actually, I do remember that, although my time was more The Professionals.

    ETA2: Same time, different Bat Channel, maybe?

    AUCKLAND • Since Dec 2009 • 2607 posts Report Reply

  • Sacha, in reply to Joe Wylie,

    There are plenty of people approaching 70 who’ll end their days in rental accommodation, or who will be fortunate to clear their mortgage.

    True - whereas many of the previous generation have superannuated lifestyles that rely on freehold housing to reduce their living expenses even if they don't have an investment or property portfolio. Public policy discussions don't seem to be reflecting that much.

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

  • andin, in reply to Sacha,

    The have’s and the have not’s. Brass or Cold Comfort Farm.
    | Where else could I go?

    raglan • Since Mar 2007 • 1891 posts Report Reply

  • Kyle Matthews,

    I've been itching to say this all along: The social contract isn't worth the paper it's not written on.

    Well indeed, it... or they, only hold as long as there is support on both sides (government and voters, or a voting bloc. Muldoon had a significant social contract with the older generation, one that served him well electorally.

    I guess my point is that a number were 'broken' in the 1980s. Some with the support of the electorate, some certainly not.

    They're a very different beast than your actual contract with the government via the student loan scheme however. That's using your power as parliament to just rewrite contracts.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

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