Posts by Joe Wylie
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Up Front: One, in reply to BenWilson,
Extremely tempting, though. Has anyone at all in Christchurch not been guilty of this behavior?
Seeing as you ask, yes. While I appreciate that your assumption's based on some kind of attempted empathy, rather than any stereotype about the behaviour of southern crackers, such things are a hell of a lot more complex than most of us have yet got to grips with.
-
-
Awaiting the group hug, Chch botanics gardens, Sunday Sep 4.
-
Across the street from today's royal visit-style cabinet meeting. About 14 police, around 3 times that many protesters. Only accredited media allowed to film or photograph from footpath outside hotel, dignitaries left via back entrance.
Toot. -
OnPoint: Sock-Puppeting Big Tobacco to…, in reply to tussock,
. . . less dangerous than things still promoted locally as health tonics, like red wine.
Uh-oh.
"A cheeky little cab sav with a hint of kiwifruit. No idea of the year, as there's nothing on the label but a picture of a diseased liver." -
OnPoint: Sock-Puppeting Big Tobacco to…, in reply to Carrick Graham,
. . . democracy is poorer for excluding people/companies from shaping policy in New Zealand.
Not to mention people/animal hybrids. Our "democracy", like H. Feet's quasi-human status, is revealed as a hollow sham when he/it is shipped into exile , callously tossed overboard, and robbed of the opportunity to establish his/it's right to a fishing quota as defined by section 57D of the Fisheries Act 1996 .
-
Hard News: Those were different times ..., in reply to George Darroch,
Australia’s often reduced to simple caricatures, which have some basis in fact, but which strip away the tensions and the richness that lies in Australia’s culture. It’s by no means black and white (except, of course, when it is).
Having spent close to two decades of my adult life there I can only agree. I'd assumed that the shrimp on the barbie posturing had died when Hawkie lost his mojo, but suddenly there was Steve Irwin. Most Australians weren't aware of him until his TV persona was parodied on South Park ("I shove me thumb up his butthole, really piss him off"). Only those with cable access to the US shopping channel knew who was having the piss taken out of them.
A bit disappointing that he wasn't laughed off Australian TV once he went mainstream. Still, nice that he's doing his bit to save whales in the afterlife.
-
Hard News: Those were different times ..., in reply to Simon Grigg,
A failure of the Howard government was the inability to deal with the fact that this had changed.
Definitely. Perhaps the most rapid about-face of the Howard era was his hand-on-heart vision of Australia as regional 'deputy' to the US. Once his minders pointed out the implications the refrain instantly switched to 'Mama take this badge offa me'.
I find it interesting how little NZ seems to have gained from the independent foreign policy of the 80s. In retrospect, no nukes seems a convenient distraction for the left while 'their' party pursued policies that were vastly more Reaganite than the overtly pro-US Hawke would ever have contemplated. Perhaps it's significant that the main perpetrator awarded himself a made-under-license 'British' knighthood.
-
Hard News: Those were different times ..., in reply to Simon Grigg,
Australia has always been brilliant at working out where they sit in the world and adjusting their gaze to suit.
Except, perhaps, where that brilliance has been eclipsed and bedazzled by things imperially American. The Hawke-endorsed Crocodile Dundee posturing, essentially a mass fawning to a US audience, might have faded with Steve Irwin, but it's one of the more resistable traits of the Oz national character.
-
Hard News: Auckland City Nights, in reply to Simon Grigg,
But watch out for the salt - often in the cheaper places it's chicken salt.
Don't they just have a chicken fly over a vatful of the stuff before they package it, as they're reputed to do with chicken flavoured chips?