Posts by Joe Wylie
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Speaker: What PACE actually does, in reply to steviant,
Nice nick :)
-
Hard News: "Orderly transition" in #Egypt, in reply to Neil Morrison,
. . . all I know of Marshall McLuhan comes from Woody Allen movies . . .
There was the walk-on role in Annie Hall, but that was about it for his screen career. My favourite McLuhan tech quote:
“The future masters of technology will have to be light-hearted and intelligent. The machine easily masters the grim and the dumb.”
-
OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!, in reply to DexterX,
NZ power largely comes from Hydro and if there is a massive drought that affects power generation what will happen.
Much the same as happened in 1992, when South Island lake levels fell and Aucklanders were reduced to taking cold showers. The conventional corporate wisdom propounded by State Enterprises Committee Chairman John Robertson and Electricorp Chairman John Fernyhough was that the drought was a "one-in-100-year" crisis. They continued to repeat that mantra right through to the following year as they argued for Electricorp's full privatisation.
As corporate received wisdom doesn't appear to have evolved, the next real drought seems due in around 2092.
-
OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!, in reply to nzlemming,
What seems odd to me is that the SIS interviewed any of his referees and didn’t get a sniff of his short-comings (even though he nominated them himself). Even Momentum, had they bothered to check, should have picked that up.
Not much chance of Walter Mitty's secret life being exposed when he's probably vetted by his own kind. It was the SIS-affiliated Special Investigation Group that paid and encouraged the deluded provocateur Rob Gilchrist to spy on NZ activists.
-
Hard News: Because it's about time we…, in reply to Jacqui Dunn,
We’re largely ovo-lacto vego, so eat cheese, yoghurt, eggs.
And no longer moderately advanced but cowardly.
-
Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to BenWilson,
Unless they fuck up badly . . .
No doubt this kind of cautious fumbling would be seen as a dangerous lurch towards fucking up badly by the Catch Up With Australia cultists,
-
Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to andin,
Muldoon had a significant social contract with the older generation, one that served him well electorally.
Talk about skipping lightly by!
Nobody played to intergenerational issues like Muldoon. Late 70s TV advertising featured Fiji cruises and La-Z-Boys, pitched to the presumably happily superannuated Rob’s Mob, who were encouraged to dob in solo mums and overstayers.
No wonder the class of ’22, as a mid-80s Listener editorial described those who’d experienced WW2 as young adults, felt somewhat aggrieved when the privileges their immediate elders had enjoyed were wound back under Labour. In the 90s they really copped it, before superannuation levels were somewhat restored by the Clark Government.
In an early 80s TV interview Colin Scrimgeour predicted – with heavy irony – that Muldoon could be remembered as NZ’s last real socialist Prime Minister. Like the then rural rump of the National Party his socialism was highly selective, but even the unemployed on PEP schemes received award wages during the reign of the self-knighted gang of one.
-
Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, 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.
-
Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, 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.
-
Up Front: Giving Me Grief, in reply to Lara,
It’s the not being able to talk to people that always gets me . . .
Thanks Lara (and Jacqui, Sacha, recordari & Jackie). We figured that my niece should be the first to speak at my Mum’s send-off, as she’s an accomplished actor with real stage experience, and we might take our cues from her anticipated polished delivery. Instead she could barely manage her prepared speech, and was reduced to shedding real public tears for her lost granny. All the more moving for being so unexpected.
Jacqui:
It took me several years before I stopped, on the point of picking up the phone, thinking of giving a quick ring….
When someone goes slowly with time to say goodbye I guess you think that you’ve dealt with it. It’s two months today and yes, only this morning I had to remind myself that I wouldn’t be sharing a certain joke with her. Clunk.
Thanks Emma, anyone who can be trusted like that with a teddy bear is a real treasure.