Posts by Joe Wylie
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Southerly: Tower Insurance Have Some Bad…, in reply to Gregor Ronald,
I don't know how these people look at themselves in the mirror, knowing that they are ruining the lives of people caught in a disaster, just to earn their annual bonus. I hope they suffer sleepless nights wrestling with their consciences, though I have my doubts.
A culture of studied and furtive contempt for those you profess to serve probably helps. While I don't know, and couldn't really care, what that bizarre Yip Yip does when he/she isn't delivering specious homilies, their gratuitous aside about those awful people who deliberately torched their properties following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake shows something of this creepy mindset.
Once upon a time a gung-ho used car salesman who'd had a couple of drinks too many told me that he owed his success to a certain "method", formulated by a cult figure in his industry. This method was based on one great tenet, which he declined to reveal. After a couple more drinks and a little coaxing he did. "Look, the public think that used car salesmen are the biggest bunch of crooks and cheats out there, right? Well they're not. It's the bloody PUBLIC that are the biggest crooks and cheats. You should see the crap they try and put across with the trade-ins they bring in."
Wouldn't surprise me if something of that get-the-bastards-before-they-get-you mindset is practised in certain areas of the insurance industry. It probably helps them sleep at night.
Regarding Tiny Emirate - this allegation from the group currently trying to prise his fingers from the levers of power is bloody disturbing:
The group was concerned Marryatt would impede Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority chief executive Roger Sutton.
"If Roger tries to get things done, they won't get done, because he [Marryatt] has a record of delaying things or tipping them up."
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Southerly: Tower Insurance Have Some Bad…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
David, I'm signing up as foot soldier in your fight against corporate greed and for real justice.
Roger that.
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Hard News: Christchurch: Square Two, in reply to Matthew Reid,
As in "my house isn't munted, but it is in an area of retreat".
As in, like, Retreat Road, Avonside?
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Hard News: What the kids do, in reply to andin,
I got wedged with a couple of dudes in a
Rock 'n' roll toilet
I'd rather just sit and imagine my food in a
Rock 'n' roll toiletLook at the beautiful patterns that form on the wall
Stick out your finger to trace them just look at them all . . .The Soft Boys - Rock n' Roll Toilet
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. . . but you have to hand to them, they leapt on the bandwagon with some success.
They toured hard in provincial NZ, which couldn't get enough of 'em, followed by regional Australia and Ozrock stardom. A curious career path, though perhaps not so unusual for those times. A bit like those space probes that gather velocity by looping around the far side of the sun before plunging into the cosmic depths.
Best comment I recall about Gary Numan's 1980-or-thereabouts Auckland show: "How many different meals can you get out of a packet of Weetbix?"
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Am I the only one who squirms in their seat when the notion of "beings" such as taniwha are raised to such a status that roads, bridges and whatever need to be bent to accommodate such inventions of the mind?
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Hard News: For the kids, if nothing else, in reply to JLM,
Just listened. Priceless.
Guinea worms. Right up there with kero guns.
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You’re not wrong Matthew. Rediscovering the meaning of fear does tend to galvanize what’s left of one’s mind, not to mention one's priorities.
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OnPoint: On Price Gouging, in reply to David Haywood,
. . . a place to stay
Which you and yours, Ian D, and the esteemed Geoff Lealand, who I've never had the privilege of meeting, so kindly offered when I'd been rather more severely quake-munted back in September. Such things are not forgotten.
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I am wearing your clothes, I speak your language, I watch your films and today is whatever date it is because you say so
Out of its context that quote may be missing a few subtleties, but that Malaysian lawyer sounds very much like a certain Singaporean adman of 20 years ago.
While his Chinese ancestors had arrived in the Straits area in the 15th century, he prided himself on his "cosmopolitan" Western outlook, and treated the overseas trips that his work afforded as prized opportunities to enhance his skills in the grand task of raising the backward East Asian masses to a state of international sophistication.
While post-producing a TV spot for a Singaporean bank at a Sydney video facility he managed to place the end title for the Mandarin-language version upside-down, causing an expensive re-edit when the problem was discovered back in Singapore. Not long afterwards he was eased out of his position in favour of a sharp-suited Mandarin speaker.
TED / Martin Jacques on China and the West.
That was certainly worth downloading. Thirty years ago the average Indonesian schoolchild seemed better informed about our part of the world than we were about them. Even if we accept that, we tend to assign a kind of cargo cult mentality to the developing world, where they equate our culture with our relative material prosperity. In reality they're perfectly aware that these are very separate things.