Posts by Joe Wylie
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Access: It’s just a bout of Chronic Sorrow, in reply to Sacha,
However the current service system is so broken that vouchers may actually be a disruptive improvement – but only if they’re implemented alongside investment in market information and advocacy mechanisms. And whoever sets the value of the vouchers will still have too much control of the results.
Hasn't Roger Douglas long advocated a voucher system for such things as education, along with his crackpot flat tax rate? Hearing this from English struck me as an attempt to revive the agenda by stealth, starting with the most vulnerable.
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Speaker: Christchurch: how did it come…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
First do no further harm – doesn’t seem to be part of EQC’s operating system – they had one job! To do the right thing by insured homeowner and turned it into save money for the Government and enjoy a bit of bullying on the side – tossers – not all, but enough of them for it to be a problem that needs urgently revisiting…
The EQC are holding to much the same line as they were two years ago. After three decades of made-under-license Thatcherism our onetime bureaucratic obfuscators were supposed to have morphed into hyperefficient decision-makers, minds focused and buttocks clenched. Instead, between CERA and the EQC the ‘rebuild’ seems to be run by the cast of Glide Time.
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While it's years since I first saw Ira Wohl's remarkable Best Boy the moment when his elderly Aunt Pearl talks about how one can't help but have moments of feeling singled out for a kind of divine special punishment has stayed with me. Vulnerable, dignified and utterly humane.
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Hard News: Anzac Day II, in reply to Marcus Turner,
I remember someone crashing a PA Vauxhall into that Waikouaiti memorial.
The PA Vauxhall had an unusual linear speedometer that changed colour the faster you drove. I suspect that simple curiosity about what colour you'd get if you really put the foot down led to a few accidents.
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Access: It’s just a bout of Chronic Sorrow, in reply to Hilary Stace,
It was hard to write and hard to admit to such feelings.
One of the finest pieces that's been published here.
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Hard News: Anzac Day II, in reply to Just thinking,
so I marched in the dawn parade and when asked carried a flag (one I had previously stolen from my parent unit)
That sounds good, because I doubt that a bought flag would work properly. Back when there was a speakers corner in the Sydney Domain the star of Sunday afternoons was the formidable Webster. When Webster appeared with his distinctive yellow ladder the bible lady and the conspiracy theorists could only look on impotently as their audiences deserted them for some real entertainment.
One afternoon an amiable Aussie bloke carrying a toy flag of the type sold at knick-knack stalls called out “Mind if I bring this into your meeting?”
“No!” bellowed Wenster. “Because you probably paid for that, and the Australian flag is not for sale!”If Webster’s style in the archival footage in the linked clip appears familiar it’s because the Wizard of Christchurch once served as his understudy during his pre-Chch Australian sojourn.
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Hard News: This Anzac Day, in reply to BenWilson,
“LET THESE PANELS NEVER BE FILLED”
Bravo :)
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Appreciate that Megan Woods has taken the trouble to provide an email heads up and a template submission for the narrow window of opportunity to make one's voice heard on the wretched shenanigans surrounding ECAN. That said, Woods has been something of a Loch Ness monster in her own electorate, in that she's rarely sighted. Still it's mildly encouraging to receive a communication that isn't about the greater glory of Jim Anderton.
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Hard News: This Anzac Day, in reply to Sacha,
to the surprise of the Kaiser et al.
The Kaiser wasn’t a player in the 1918 surrender, having been forced to abdicate some months earlier by the military dictatorship that had effectively ruled Germany since 1916. The WW1 focus on the dastardliness of the largely ineffectual “Kaiser Bill” was mostly British jingoism.
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Hard News: This Anzac Day, in reply to Sacha,
The impression I got was that Germany were not forced to properly admit they had been beaten
I'd suggest that the problem might have been that they really had their collective nose rubbed in it.