Posts by linger
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Speaker: Talking past each other:…, in reply to Rebecca Gray,
Very helpful summary, Rebecca.
(Ironic that "obesity = name-calling" is a reductionist position.)
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On reflection, I've reworked my poem a bit as follows:
Key calls his lawyer's ethics "high",
and few can fault his thinking:
ethically, he seems to be
not merely high, but stinking. -
Hard News: Media Take: The Panama Papers, in reply to Alfie,
Key’s lawyer’s ethics are said “high”.
We must support his thinking,
in that his standards seem to be
not only high, but stinking. -
Speaker: Talking past each other:…, in reply to Sacha,
Nobody *needs* coke.
A line sure to have some snorting in derision...
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Speaker: Are we seeing the end of MSM,…, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
the full depths have been sounded
Not yet; wait until he starts using his toothbrush creatively onscreen.
Then perhaps the remaining audience might finally bristle in response…* Um, a cautiously worded explanatory note: amongst other meanings, sounding is something Alfred Kinsey famously enjoyed doing with his toothbrush, bristles first, and with camera rolling. I humbly suggest "plumbing the depths” might be more appropriate here, as more directly connoting that the content is shit.]
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Hard News: A cog in the Mediaworks machine, in reply to Alfie,
That doesn't sound entirely confident!
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Polity: Geography and housing options, in reply to James Bremner,
the prevailing orthodoxy [… of …] a belief in compact cities and urban boundaries, […] is failing disastrously […] with a population unwilling to densify
More accurately, property owners unwilling to allow surrounding densification. The “orthodoxy” of compactness hasn’t “failed” as such, because it hasn’t yet been allowed to be seriously adopted.
The only truly failed prevailing orthodoxy here is the belief in deregulation and letting the market decide. -
Polity: Geography and housing options, in reply to Sacha,
That was in 2012.
Bear in mind, nett increase from migration was near zero between 2006-2013 – but rose to double the nation-wide natural increase in 2014-15.
Still mostly bound for Auckland.
If, even in the lean years, Auckland’s population growth was 40% attributable to migration, the influence of immigration has to be much higher now. -
Polity: Geography and housing options, in reply to Hugh Wilson,
All cities experience population growth (as in natural growth, not migrations) – on account of this alone Auckland needs more houses, and this trend will not go away. About 3% pa is normal.
On the migration side ‘economics’ or the ‘market’ should help disperse people around to other centres.(i) In Auckland, natural increase is negligible relative to increase from migration (from overseas, and from elsewhere in NZ).
(ii) Economic factors currently favour migration to Auckland, not away from it. There are not enough jobs in the provinces. As already discussed here, NZ tried incentivising migration away from Auckland through preferring immigrants with job offers outside Auckland. Result: foreign immigration to Auckland fell, a little, for a few years, but population growth in the targetted areas was zero; and direct immigration to Auckland went straight back up, to higher than previous levels, once the available jobs had been taken.
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Hard News: Labour's medical cannabis…, in reply to BenWilson,
Nor are the harm/benefit calculations for different drugs in any way independent. You note reduction of alternative drug use; but the interactions can be even more systematic. For example, take the proposed use of psilocybin to help people quit smoking. Twice as effective as any standard treatment, apparently, though there are huge caveats concerning the small sample size and nonrandom selection of individuals for study.