Posts by Joe Wylie
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Speaker: Doing the right thing on retirement, in reply to linger,
Depends what you mean by “proper” I suppose.
Heh.
I played hockey for a bit to spite my dad, who was a rugby tragic. And because school sport was, you know, compulsory, I played with the shufflers who couldn’t be bothered coming in on Saturdays to be properly coached.Anyway, a couple of the guys from the ‘mental farm’ team spotted me biking to school with my hockey stick, and told their coach, an attendant who my dad affected to pity because of his dedication to an inferior sport. Because one of their less stellar players had been released into the wider world and gone up north I let myself be talked into donning the green & gold of Levin H & TS. And hell, we beat the A team from my high school, though I doubt that my participation was crucial to that victory.
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Speaker: Doing the right thing on retirement, in reply to Hilary Stace,
Joe, the language was much worse than that - 'mental defective', 'unfit' (nouns not adjectives) used generally in NZ and elsewhere . . .
I believe that the term 'oxygen thief' had its origins back then. Never heard anything that bad first-hand. The ugliest stuff I recall was from the season where I was the only non-'patient' in the Levin Hospital & Training School hockey team. A bit of a revelation to hear what people would say when they assumed you were 'special'. Also a sweet victory to trounce a 'proper' hockey team.
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Speaker: Doing the right thing on retirement, in reply to Sacha,
You might be understating the difference your particular upbringing made.
Probably because I'd read somewhere - and from a few certain reference points I can't have been older than 13 - that the nazis targeted the 'mentally disabled' or 'intellectually handicapped'. As you've rightly suggested these were common phrases in the world I grew up in, and the connection with people I knew was horrifying.
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Speaker: Doing the right thing on retirement, in reply to Sacha,
. . . most people don't even realise the Nazis systematically exterminated disabled people as well.
Those stories seemed to be common knowledge in my youth. I remember having a bad childhood dream about Hitler turning up at the head of an armoured column at the Levin 'mental farm' where I grew up, with the clear intention of liquidating the lot. Staff and patients peeped out of windows, probably my dad in his white coat was among them. No-one wanted to front Hitler.
Suddenly struck with powers of oratory that I'd never had in real life I climbed to the top of the enormous coal heap by the laundry, and made an impassioned speech about what fine folks the 'patients' were. Hitler glared at me from where he stood in the back of his half-track, but my pompous gassing on wore him down. He gestured impatiently to his driver, and the whole bloody lot of them zoomed off.
Of course it should have ended with them bearing me on their shoulders to the mess for celebratory bangers & mash, but dreams are rarely so tidy.
Anyway, it wasn't just the Nazis.
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Speaker: Doing the right thing on retirement, in reply to Jackie Clark,
. . . when things are taken from you incrementally, you hardly notice . . .
I hadn't until recently, and I confess that while I knew things were tight I had no idea that the pattern had become so widespread. So many people in what should be the lead-up to the prime of their working lives, either straddling two jobs just to survive, or doing take-it-or-leave-it 15-hour shifts because it's more convenient for management to minimise the number of employees.
This seems to be the current reality for the unskilled in jobs such as labouring and despatch - and 'unskilled' can mean articulate intelligent young people who've accumulated student debt to acquire skills which for reasons beyond their control there's no current market. A certain amount of the dirtier work in the current Christchurch rebuild seems to offer little reward beyond week-to-week survival.
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Hard News: Occupy: Don't call it a protest, in reply to Kumara Republic,
Not sure they have such an overt presence here these days, but the point is clear. The building they used to own is now tenanted by an Aussie insurance company.
That’d be 151 Queen St, right? One of the Council requirements for Fay Richwhite’s ‘crunchy bar’ was that it include child care facilities in the form of a day care centre or creche. When its absence was noted at the time of the building’s 1988 opening the developers cited technical difficulties, though they had no problem including a tennis court. As with so many of the ‘accidental’ demolitions of heritage architecture back in those heady days, the Council was very understanding.
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Speaker: Doing the right thing on retirement, in reply to DexterX,
What people do about it is up to them, people need to cut their ownlunch and not rely on the governement or put blind faith in any political party.
So, shut up you whining c_nts and eat your nice baby boomer.
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Hard News: Occupy: Don't call it a protest, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Well done that man!
Not wrong.
Seems like only yestermorn that he were gracing this very neck o' the web. -
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Southerly: Tower Insurance Have Some Bad…, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
As for security for Key?
At yesterday's mall opening, Protecting JK from the big guy?