Posts by Katharine Moody
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Hard News: A cog in the Mediaworks machine, in reply to Alfie,
Couldn't agree more. Was contacted recently to give feedback to some survey company with respect to television programming. In asking our likes/dislikes and what we watched - there was no Maori TV programming included in the survey - yet we watch a whole lot of Maori TV .. in fact they consistently choose the best mainstream movies across all FTA channels. And their documentaries are excellent too and same goes for their current affairs programs. I had to tick the 'something else' box so often. They likely thought I was watching something else on payTV, but we don't get it and they didn't ask.
Useless survey - I hope it wasn't a NZOA contracted survey!!!
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Hard News: A Stand for Quaxing, in reply to daleaway,
Last year I was trying to negotiate some of Oxford’s narrow footpaths with a wheelchair, and was forced out into the road traffic (bump, jolt) by bicycles stacked half a dozen deep against any available railing. That city is in dire need of proper bike parks just about everywhere, but the UK is a great believer in muddling through, so I dare say it will never happen. Not a great prospect for wheelchair users.
I do wonder from a planning perspective whether there is space for a notion of over/optimum density - a sort of population threshold after which point no amount of planning or infrastructure can ever resolve congestion issues. Kind of like the exploration of the idea of a 'tipping point' in respect of climate change considerations. One of the problems I don't see coming out of Auckland planning is an indication that "Auckland is full" - although I see a lot of non-planners and citizens expressing this idea.
The amount of personal stress associated with over-crowding is something we really haven't thought about/studied to any great degree.
Hoping however it does get better there, rather than worse!
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Up Front: Fringe of Darkness, in reply to ,
Yes, the US history is fascinating. And the NZ history of the environmental movement is a specialist area of interest to me. I am lucky enough to have the opportunity to teach just a small slice of that history to CoS undergrads at Massey.
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Up Front: Fringe of Darkness, in reply to ,
I would be happy to write a thousand words.
I'd be very interested. Grew up in the States during the 60's and so it would be really interesting to get an outside US take on it. I was less interested/exposed to the hippy movement and more a part of the civil rights movement (although of course many hippies were involved in that as well). What surprised me about NZ, was I married a NZer and moved here in 1978. My partner is 7 years older than me - so right in that 18 yo 'sweet spot' the year Woodstock happened. He wasn't at all involved in the hippy movement here, but boy did he know the music - far, far better than me.
Whereas Elvis Presley's In the Ghetto had deep, personal meaning for me - he, for example introduced me to all the lesser known Joan Baez songs like With God on Our Side. He seemed to have an amazing insight into the US foreign policy issues of the time, whereas having lived there I was far more attuned to the US domestic struggles.
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Up Front: Fringe of Darkness, in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,
the decision to live communally is a hippy decision.
Interestingly, that TVNZ doco gives some insight into this hippy or not question. I only watched it once (warning there for others as it is quite disturbing) but my overall impression was that, aside from what are likely the older/original members (i.e., the not-of-hippy-generation) – many of which were those charged and convicted of child sexual abuse – the other residents only discussed the communal aspects of living there in either a reluctant (not-so-sure) or negative sense.
They had one whole community meeting where the guy doing the laundry for the community didn’t like his assigned job. He was critical of all the waste associated with the over use of clothing by some members. So a volunteer was sought to take this work over. No volunteers. So it was then put to the community that perhaps there could be found a volunteer to just give the guy a short break/holiday from that work. No takers. So it was put to the group that maybe more than one person was needed to do the job on a full time basis – any volunteers to job-share? Nope. So they talked about it for another two hours .. and in the end they decided that for a period no one would do the laundry for everyone and they would see how that went.
All I could think was that the reason this community was so dysfunctional was because it was never conceived/developed by Bert Potter and his cohorts with a hippy intention or ethic. The property was purchased as a vehicle – a means to an end – and that end was sexual predation.
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Up Front: Fringe of Darkness, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
And then, how many cults and communes are there of this nature?
Comparing the TVNZ doco on Centrepoint – and the more recent doco on Gloriavale (although both lead by convicted paedophiles) there seem to be significant differences. In particular Gloriavale seems to provide separate accommodation for individual family units, whereas Centrepoint was a far more ‘poor’ commune and thus did not have the infrastructure to do that (bearing in mind that new social benefits, such as Working for Families, did not exist in the Centrepoint days).
That said though, a lot of similarities as well – such as a small contingent of senior, older members being given this sort of ‘leader protector’ type role and the emphasis/drive for younger members to procreate (discouragement of family planning/birth control). Both places I imagine have/had birth rates way in excess of the wider population.
Also worth noting that both profess/ed to be religiously-based communal places - charity status et.al.
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Up Front: Fringe of Darkness, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
I just would expect any parent to want to protect their kids. It really says to me that the parents were really screwed up to begin with.
I think the answer to that might only be found in academic-style research. I doubt many of the parents who might have been there, and could be seen to have been enablers could answer why themselves. When indoctrination and torture techniques are combined with psychoactive drugs – people (I am guessing) became not their rational (or moral) selves. It also seems to me (and this is totally a guess from a non-professional) that part of the routine of ‘life’ on the commune was aimed at creating attachment difficulties between parents and children (attachment explained by Kyle McDonald here);
http://psychotherapy.org.nz/when-love-is-difficult/
In other words, my unqualified assessment is that everything done there by Bert Potter was aimed at dehumanising individuals and severely disrupting familial relationships. Many/most parents became victims, just like their children.
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Hard News: A better thing to believe in, in reply to Alfie,
Great piece by Toby. I'm surpised however that he failed to mention that JK was the inspiration for Mastercard's "Tim"
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Boy oh boy - this is big news;
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11535858
BTW Simon Power moved from Government Minister to Westpac Banking Corporation;
http://www.westpac.co.nz/who-we-are/about-westpac-new-zealand/our-executive-team/simon-power/
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Up Front: Fringe of Darkness, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
I’m just flabbergasted at the sheer size of Potter’s influence on other commune adults. To convince so many to allow such abuse of so many in a place that I thought of just being a hippy commune.
Yes. Watching the TVNZ documentary done in the early days gives some real clues as to the methods of indoctrination used - aligned in many ways to some of Hitler's propaganda methods/techniques as he outlined in Mein Kampf. Aside from the paedophiles who are interviewed in that video - many/most of the other adults display symptoms of prolonged exposure to indoctrination/torture techniques.
