Posts by Don Christie
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It's one of the most damaging fiscal mistakes this country has made since Muldoon froze prices in the 80's.
No it's not. Even the oft mis-interpreted and poorly researched NZIER report demonstrates that that impact on GDP is hardly measurable over the time period it assesses.
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This issue does seem to be a storm in a tea cup, more to do with hypocrisy and credibility than matters of law.
For more interesting is looking at the lengths the Privileges Committee is willing to go to investigate a party funding issue. Is this a precedent being set, an admission that all is not right in the secretive side of our democracy?
And, it seems we can go all the way back to the early 1990's with these investigations...stuff to drool over I would have thought.
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Also, Fran's flaming The Standard.
That's quite remarkable. How long has The Standard been going for? A year maybe. And all this MSM attention. If that doesn't help drive their readership up nothing will. One reason they get this attention is because, however partisan they are, their articles are so well researched. The speed with which they are able to comment on a refute positions that the MSM has glibly reported must be quite worrying for those on the other side of the fence.
They must be very pleased with themselves.
The Standard's Achilles heel is still the anonymity thing. That being said, the Exclusive Brethren they are *not* (sorry Graeme, the EBs were liars and probably still are, huge difference).
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passed a stinkingly awful amendment to the Indecent Publications Act that effectively let nameless Customs officials decide what anyone could read.
The 2008 version is called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The great thing about this millennium's version is that it is being negotiated in secrecy, has nothing to do with "counterfeiting" (as far as I can tell) and not subject to Parliamentary oversight.
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I suspect this debate over bloggers vs. jornos is a one year wonder. More of a battle over who controls the message to the wider public than anything else.
I do remember the anguish in the Press Gallery at the thought of having to admit a Newsroom representative, followed by Scoop. The thought that the Internet could provide serious news was, well, silly.
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Regarding the Scots and their inventiveness...It all comes down to a long tradition of equal access to education. They had the original knowledge economy.
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giovanni, well, the Italians can claim those biscuits with flies in them.
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Again, anecdotes aside,
Oh Tony, you're not going to give us facts are you? How intellectually arrogant of you...
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I loathe Wuthering Heights...
Probably why I love the "Eyre Affair" by Jasper Fforde.
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Yes, it would have been nice if the death of Gottlieb Braun-Elwert could have been reported without the (unsurprising and not entirely inappropriate) PM angle being laid on quite so thick, but really...
Well, like Russell I caught the first report. It was a bit freaky. But then I thought how these guys (the PMs group, and guide) obviously doing what they love and there are worse ways to go than that.