Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Hard News: How long the leash on the…, in reply to merc,
See this is really just plain weird,
A little presumptuous of Mr. Farrar to be handing out shadow cabinet portfolios, anyway. :) Don Brash staging a leadership coup before he’s even become an MP – that’s plain weird. But, yeah, I think David’s right (that’s David F. not C., S. or P.) – I don’t think very many people on the center-right would find Shearer intrinsically repellent. (For that matter, I'm not David Cunliffe's BFF but he wouldn't be a total oxygen thief either. Apart from his MILF-y brain-fart about Collins, he's not been a disaster in finance.) YMMV on whether that’s a good thing, but it certainly didn’t do National any harm replacing Brash with a leader who was couldn’t be easily dismissed as being on the flaming ideological fringes.
And as for questions whether Shearer has the experience and “mongrel” for retail political leadership. At the risk of being accused of trolling Tom and Steve B., I remember one or two people saying the same about Key – and he didn’t do too badly. :)
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Y’know, a smiley doesn’t really negate tasteless imagery – just sayin’
Yes, Ian, I don’t claim to be any more a paragon of good taste than Mr. Clarkson (possibly significantly less so in some respects) but I’ve got limits he apparently doesn’t have. (Yeah, I don’t really find mock Nazi salutes and gags about the invasion of Poland terribly amusing. I’m dour and politically correct like that.) And I still fail to see what point Andre was trying to make with a pretty tasteless gag about the well-documented deaths of over a thousand human beings, except to take a cheap and well off target shot at the British Prime Minister. (I don’t think the Camerons are ever going to cross the Atlantic in steerage.)
ETA: In Andre's defence, to be fair, I'd be a lot less fussed if How to Survive the Titanic or The Sinking of J. Bruce Ismay wasn't languishing on my bedside table. It's not a bad book by any measure, but infuriating and heart-breaking in equal measure. So many people died, and it didn't have to happen.
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Hard News: How long the leash on the…, in reply to Caleb D'Anvers,
Well, 2012 is the centenary of the Titanic sinking. Just sayin’. Cameron’s lot do seem rather … reminiscent … of a certain set that we thought the events of the early 20th century had taken care of.
Yeah, a maritime disaster that killed over fifteen hundred people – including 84% of the men, more than half the women and two-thirds of the children in third class. (The rescue rate for the “certain set” was significantly higher, at least for the women and children. )
Most of the dead froze in sub-zero water in the dark. – and I wouldn’t wish that on a fucking dog.
Golly, I guess I need to CALM DOWN AND LEARN HOW TO TAKE A JOKE (tm) but that wasn’t only tasteless but your cheap shot missed the intended target by a wide margin. And the irony becomes that little bit more tasty, given the context. If you find Jeremy Clarkson so distasteful, try not to sound like him. M'kay?
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Hard News: How long the leash on the…, in reply to Rich Lock,
And if you’re buying the papers and watching the TV, then don’t complain about the content?
I wouldn't bitch so much about The Herald being a tabloid in all but format if it wasn't, effectively, the only daily newspaper serving almost half the country's population. The Daily Mail , The Sun, The (Sydney) Daily Telegraph and The New York Post may only be fit to be used as arse wipe in a long drop dunny, but at least they're not the only game in town.
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Hard News: How long the leash on the…, in reply to Tom Semmens,
Make of that what you will.
Not to put too fine a point on it, nothing that is of legitimate public interest or that reflects poorly on David Parker's character but says everything (and nothing flattering) about what passes for ethical and editorial judgement at the Herald on Sunday.
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Hard News: Democracy Night, in reply to Steve Parks,
As I said earlier, Labour don’t have to do anything in particular to get back most of the vote they lost to NZ First; it will just come back naturally if Labour improve their overall performance as opposition.
And I'll keep saying any political party that thinks voters are just going to wake up and come to Jesus deserve whatever electoral oblivion they get. :)
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Up Front: What if We Held an Election…, in reply to webweaver,
*sigh* I do love people-watching. It’s fascinating.
It does – and after the tumult and the shouting of the campaign dies away, it’s rather sweet that election day itself is conducted with a degree of seriousness that doesn’t tip over into po-faced, poker-up-arse absurdity. Only ever seen one scrutineer who was a dick, and she was quickly bailed up in a corner and given a polite but firm ear-flick. (To a discreet non-partisan fist-pump from everyone else, I must add.)
Sorry for sounding like a broken record, but our electoral agencies do a bloody wonderful job that’s too easily taken for granted. Which is the way of the world, I guess – when you get it right, you never get any thanks. Because that’s what people do – and should – expect. But run out of ballot papers in a polling place where traffic is heavier than anticipated, and God help you!
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Up Front: What if We Held an Election…, in reply to Rich Lock,
I think most of the problems Emma relates came from being on or close to a boundary – voting papers for one district getting stuffed in the wrong district box.
Quite - I live in North Shore, and just inside the East Coast Bays boundary and a short drive from Northcote. I've been a scrutineer at the nearest polling place to my home, and come away with even more respect for poll workers who could resist the urge to shake some people. Hell, just being a scrutineer - with incredibly strict rules about how you conduct yourself in a polling place - was *cough* character forming. :)
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Legal Beagle: Election '11 -…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Tariana Turia caught quite a bit of flak in The Press letters page yesterday for her ill-considered comments:
“Ill-considered” is putting it mildly. I can understand why Turia would be more than a little pissed off at condescending finger-waggling from Winston Peters and Shane Jones and listening to the usual line up of white, middle-class media folks sharing their profound knowledge of what Maori really think. Losing Te Tai Tonga was a blow, of course. But damn, Tari, if Rahui Katene could accept her defeat with considerable grace and dignity (as well as due respect for the will of the electorate) you should be able to follow suit.
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Hard News: How long the leash on the…, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
Brad must be his drunken name.
And here’s something else the lamestream media seem rather disinclined to do.
I got that wrong. Zac Guildford not ‘Brad’.
Apologies for the utterly unforgivable fact check fail.
(And that was done without the threat of legal action or a BSA ruling. Only as hard as you choose to make it, folks.)
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