Posts by Joe Wylie
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Hard News: Meet me at Camera 2: White, in reply to Kumara Republic,
In this context, white privilege is a subset of bad old Social Darwinist dogma, with the worst of both worlds of old money and new money: the 'born to rule' aspect of old money, and the 'taking away the ladder after climbing it' aspect of new money. All the above can be combined into one simple term: neo-feudalism.
As Mihingarangi Forbes's resignation illustrates, the feudal aspects of Maoridom can once again be relied upon to find common self-interest with white privilege.
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Envirologue: Choose Wisely, Grasshopper:…, in reply to william blake,
It is too late to discuss this.
The sheer persistence and hard work that the Greens put into gathering signatures for the no asset sales petition gave the impression that they were the party that genuinely valued the opinion of ordinary people. I'd hoped that Shaw's leadership might see a continuance of that, but you seem to be proclaiming that the leadership now knows best.
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Speaker: SIBs: The reality of…, in reply to Stephen Judd,
Eric Crampton of the NZ Initiative has been vocal expressing his concern that SIBs here will fail because of excessive monitoring and bureacracy.
Eric Crampton is a sneering apologist for third world child sweatshops. And if you disagree with him, you're smug, so there. Seriously, what's wrong with us that we import ghastly idealogues like Crampton and Paula Rebstock?
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Hard News: Campbell interviewed, in reply to Rob Stowell,
Good managers know the limits of their own knowledge; know when to delegate; can balance organisation and creative chaos; and don't cling to authority as if it were their mortal soul.
Sounds like my favourite fictional manager, Flora Poste, from Stella Gibbons's Cold Comfort Farm. Being possessed "of every art and grace save that of earning her own living" she's the quintessentially modern figure, subtly grooming a bunch of reactionaries and misguided souls into engaging with a modern world that might otherwise have rolled right over them.
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Hard News: Meet me at Camera 2: White, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Let's look at that esteemed liberal institution, the University of California at Berkeley. Use the wrong words to describe non-white people there, and you will be in serious trouble. However, for the last sixty years, tucked away on a mesa in New Mexico, UCB has run a lab...
Sounds as if they're simply mindful of the lesson dealt by history. The overwhelming majority of physicists involved in the Manhattan project were Jews from Nazi-occupied Europe, whose presence in the US was mostly due to their being stripped of privileges to a life-threatening degree in their homelands.
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Hard News: Campbell interviewed, in reply to Sacha,
It's not staff who hinder our various organisations from performing better. Yet look who trousers the most money? Broken system.
But-but-but it's a grand NZ tradition - or at least, trying it on is. It's probably all of 25 years since the new "management" team at a provincial hospital, in the course of priming the place to become a Crown Health Enterprise (remember those?) decreed that medical staff would have to pay for car parks. Management, however, would be exempt. If it hadn't been for the entrenched clout of doctors they'd probably have gotten away with it.
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Hard News: The epitome of reason, in reply to Russell Brown,
jh’s single-issue obsessions over immigration and multiculturalism.
Strangely enough, the preening academic snobbery that jh complains of is there in spades in Bolton's self-servingly selective reading of Australian history. From having lived in Australia through the Pauline Hanson phenomenon, I can say that even the few nominal One Nation supporters I met would have found Bolton's fanboy credulity good for a giggle at best.
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Hard News: The epitome of reason, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
Auntie Jenny has advice for those in the North....
Too bad about Christchurch
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Access: I'm not laughing, in reply to Moz,
It's socially contagious - people who piss me off find that a wheelchair to the shins impairs their mobility.
"Why are you in a wheelchair?"
"Because I dissed someone in a wheelchair". -
What I don't get about articulacy as a virtue is that it seems a skill of politicians rather than voters. In the interests of clear communication I think I understand its importance, but when Grant Robertson's supporters praised his commitment to "core values" it appeared to have descended into inward-looking jargon. As often as not the purpose of jargon is to exclude outsiders, rather than to communicate.