Posts by Marcus Neiman
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I was there and a participant in the alleged scene. There was certainly drinking, but not much mass violence.
Certain kids whose parents worked for TVNZ/the NZ culture industry also happened to be involved which may have led to it getting more publicity than it might have otherwise.
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Oops - that should have been "Raise the Drinking age"
And to continue, I also think the booze-violence link is being overstated by some people here. In my experience violence was a key part of a Rural NZ night out, independent from the drinking.
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Basically, place matters. I am saying that Auckland doesn't have its own sources of violence, they are just different to those elsewhere.
This is why I always found it galling that the lower-the-drinking age brigade was apparently a bunch of provincial politicians trying to legislate for a problem that wasn't really a big deal where I lived my everyday life.
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Nobody Important: Actually I don't think this thread has got silly, and your point about the drinking age misses the point. The drinking age is the same accross NZ - however, this sort of idiocy only seems to take place in certain places - rural NZ, including Christchurch.
As an Aucklander who went elsewhere in NZ for my undergrad education I was frankly shocked and disgusted by the routine stories of violence associated with socialising that I would hear from my fellow first-years at the time. Yes, we had booze as a teanager in Auckland, no, starting fights with strangers was not part of the scence.
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I don't blame the kids as such, I blame Christchurch and what Marx delicately called "Rural Idiocy"...
I remember Metro ran a cover story in the late-80s or early-90s discussing the pros and cons of Auckland seceeding from the rest of NZ. Ever since I have thought the idea never got the currency it should have...
Country kids getting spooked by crowds and pumped-up on the self-importance of being a fish in a small social pond...
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Heh, heh, a Labour-lad government...
Anyway, if the Australia-NZ wage gap is going to become an issue both parties are going to have to get past the easy relief of tales of about the former's mineral export boom. Yes, it's big, but no, it's not that big, and it happens to be rather localised. NSW and Victoria have barely been affected by it, except through its contribution to the overall national balance of payments.
Both NZ parties, if they are serious, will have to wake up and realise that guiding markets through good old fashioned economic nationalism, rather than doing next to nothing except following conventional economic rationalism, along with taking redistribution seriously, are the only things that will close the gap.
Small countries are different to the US or the UK - they really have to do more to look out for themselves.
They might be unpopular to the economic rationalist-libertarians, but introducing nationalistic policies such as compulsory savings by workers and their employers (like Australia), building 'national champion' firms, and increasing wage levels at the bottom and in the middle through legislation and the public sector are the only things that will stop NZ and NZers being treated as marginally as they are now by firms that see the country simply as a profit centre.
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Andrew: The Auckland lifestyle block observation certainly holds true about the area where I grew up.
And in any case, as I pointed out earlier, these people to the extent they exist probably for the most part have already jumped ship for a vairety of reasons. I suspect the dyed in the wool Labour-voting investment house owners will not change their votes, and that the marginals have already gone. Why pander to people who aren't going to vote for you anyway, especially when you could perhaps mobilise your traditional constituencies?
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Rich: One game will not break the NZRFU - twenty years of auctioning to the highest bidder though might - and yes the NZRFU does happen to give the right to buy All Black tickets to grassroots people - referees etc.
Interesting anecdote about polo - a bad example on my behalf perhaps. And coincidentally I've read stories about concern about the potential alienation of Yoof from the Premiership vis-a-vis the Bundesliga where tickets generally remain affordable.
I guess I am just saying that there a good reasons to not commodify some tickets to live events that play a communion-like function.
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Anne: Some sports organisations have different goals that you example of the book seller who is solely profit-orientated.
If, for example, the NZRFU wants to ensure that rugby union remains "the national game", it can't make crucial moments of national communion inaccessable to the wider nation, or eventually it would be in the same position as the regulators of polo.
Similarly, governments may try to assist these sports administrators through the law where they see an opportunity to produce social cohension or happy national citizens.
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I'm a bit sceptical about the degree tightening tax on investment homes would be political suicide for the current government (Sure, if the Nats were to do it, there might be a revival of ACT's fortunes).
Just how many Labour-voting investment house owners are there? And surely, I imagine, most of them would already be so marginal that if they were to defect they would have do so already over other issues that upsets their intuitive conservatism - taking away the right to whack your kids, civil unions for the non-heterosexuals etc.