Posts by Kerry Weston

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  • Island Life: Tune in, turn on, score…,

    Gotcha. The dollar value of creating a burden to society - I just love how our Money First - Values Last system prioritises pushing women out to work caring for others at the cheapest possible rates, but resists paying women to care for their own children or other loved ones, because the money-go-round matters more.

    If human values came first, the rest would follow - because you purchase the intangibles - goodwill, co-operation, an emotional investment in developing better ways of doing things because citizens feel affirmed and secure. This is where Real productivity is born.

    I also think there is a cultural streak of Needy is Uncool - probably rooted in the pioneer ethic and exacerbated by the current political climate. As they say, you find out who your friends are when the chips are down - too often they've vanished. The compression of time, space and demands means spare energy for helping your fellows is rare.

    It's actually disabling the intrinsic human spirit.

    Manawatu • Since Jan 2008 • 494 posts Report

  • Island Life: Tune in, turn on, score…,

    I would also like it noted that ultrasounds do not necessarily pick up all "birth defects" associated with NTDs. If my own NTD son had lived, he (Paul) would be 20 years old now. What the ultrasound picked picked up was high level spina bifida, meaning a sac high up on the spinal cord where it had not fused. From this, they could say that he would have no feeling from the neck down, they could also see that respiration was impaired. What they couldn't see was that he also had a hare lip and cleft palate.

    While I appreciate what Hilary and Sacha are saying about quality of life and not making presumptions on behalf of those disabled, i think parents are entitled to make those choices. Having said that, I am profoundly grateful that I never had to make the final decision to abort because my son died in utero. I cannot be 100% sure, but i think i would have chosen to abort - I couldn't see much quality of life for him - or for myself.

    Also, folate deprivation may or may not have been a cause - at the time, I was playing Romantic Artist living in a bach on an orchard. it simply never occurred to me that the vast amounts of spraying done by the farmer wearing his spacesuit was dangerous to me and I hadn't planned a baby.

    Manawatu • Since Jan 2008 • 494 posts Report

  • Island Life: The Guilt of Clayton Weatherston,

    Simply, because he has no disease of the mind. He has a personality disorder.

    Yeah, but, surely he was in a psychotic state when he acted? He was psychotic, deranged - I don't know what else it could be called?

    Manawatu • Since Jan 2008 • 494 posts Report

  • Island Life: The Guilt of Clayton Weatherston,

    @ stephen judd:

    the legal defence of insanity was not available (google up M'Naghten rules).

    I still don't get why an insanity plea was unavailable to Weatherston, if:

    a person is legally insane if she is so deranged that she lacks substantial capacity to appreciate the criminality of her conduct.

    (from some online legal dictionary).

    Manawatu • Since Jan 2008 • 494 posts Report

  • Busytown: Cry me a river,

    She said every writer needs a wife. (She never had one and ended up burnt out, unable to get out of bed for several years.)

    Yeah, mandatory advice for all artists and writers - if you don't have money, marry it. Otherwise get a wife.

    why I walked around in a self-obsessed daze sometimes. It's easier if you both do it.

    Do you spark off each other creatively? Critique each other's work, or do you go for outside influence? creative partnerships are interesting things, how you find a balance that works - it can take a long time to work through the options until you find your optimum working conditions, just for yourself, let alone combining that with everything else.

    Manawatu • Since Jan 2008 • 494 posts Report

  • Speaker: What Diversity Dividend?,

    Their solution? Vote Labour.

    Yeah, a lot of us made that mistake.

    what culturally deprived NZ needed was a big influx of West Indians.

    Guess he never went up the East Cape, then. plenty of hybrid Rastamen up that way.

    I think one of the reasons many people in NZ fear immigrants is because we're still reeling from the changes since 1984. The bottom half paid the highest price and feel powerless to influence politics - that their vote counts for bugger all anyway, because successive govts push through the same agenda regardless. People get very protective over what they have left. The anger surfaces when the opportunity arises - the truckies protest, s. 59, foreshore & seabed. The nation built on 'a fair go' doesn't feel like it's had a fair go for a very long time.

    Manawatu • Since Jan 2008 • 494 posts Report

  • Speaker: What Diversity Dividend?,

    I think you're quite wrong. Brasch and Fairburn et al did, and were shaped by, their OE in the 1930s. Before that, Mansfield left and didn't come back back, but Maori chiefs were doing their OE to Britain 150 years ago.

    Yes, but they were exceptional. Brasch & Mansfield came from old money, as did Frances Hodgkins - they had money and family networks/contacts to enable their travel. Few working class members travelled. Some of the more impecunious authors & artisits were able to travel with either formal or informal support - travel bursaries & scholarships, supportive networks. Some very determined impecunious kiwis left & usually didn't return.

    I think all these views are true - including Tom's. I can't think of any British migrants I've met who don't scoff at "how we give it all away to the Maoris" and no longer feel at home in the UK. Someone I knew who was a high-ranking kiwi bureaucrat spent a decade working in the UK and on return was full of dire warnings about NZ "heading the same way" with regard to immigration. You might not like their opinions, but they are also part of the conversation.

    Even supposedly multicultural Aussie has had race attacks recently, directed at Indian students i think. Some of these attacks are by Lebanese and I note a comment on the link that the Syrians hate the Lebanese, so they should 'deal to them'. It's not simply a matter of being "racist".
    Indians attacked

    Manawatu • Since Jan 2008 • 494 posts Report

  • Up Front: Because You Should Know,

    Hey Joe, didn't mean to cause offence calling CW mad as a snake, it's the chilling effect from the tv coverage - instant flight or fight response and I wanna run out of the room whenever he's on. It wasn't clear from the psych evaluations reported whether he had treatment for narcissistic disorder prior, or whether they'd just come to that assessment. Not that I picked up anyway, but I might have been out of the room.

    Have you read the full Elias speech? You can click thru from the Geddis link of Kyle's. It's interesting reading. She mentions a Corrections report of 2001, "About Time" on intervention strategies to avert risk, which she claims has languished, because it identifies those at risk as experiencing "an unrelenting series of adverse life effects" , such an idea being anathema in a climate intolerant of excuses and that stresses individual responsibility.

    You're quite right, it is due to that cynical nonsense. We are reaping the inevitable harvest that comes from economic policies that are not grounded in reality nor rank human values above theory.

    Manawatu • Since Jan 2008 • 494 posts Report

  • Up Front: Because You Should Know,

    Happens anywhere when constitutional conventions are blatantly challenged.

    It was a speech to the Women In Law Society, in honour of Shirley Smith, first woman law lecturer in NZ, not a press release. The most pertinent parts of her speech, to me, were about mental illness - possibly up to 70% of male prisoners have an anti-social personality disorder and 50% of prisoners with major mental health issues don't get any sort of treatment. Clayton Weatherston anyone? He's mad as a snake - what will prison do to him?

    Abysmal failure by our govts, for decades, to adequately resource mental health brings us to this point. It's not the only reason, but IMO it has greatly exacerbated the problem.

    Manawatu • Since Jan 2008 • 494 posts Report

  • Up Front: Because You Should Know,

    Ciavarella - him and his mate, both a pair of skunks. We'll find out when they privatise the prisons, aye?

    I found it interesting that Simon Power got curmudgeonly over Dame Sian Elias' comments about early release of prisoners etc. Amazing how the Chief Justice isn't worthy of respectful attention, while they swallow whole, without overt signs of indigestion, the fact we have the second highest rates of imprisonment in de world.

    Does this mean we're just a bunch of bad bastards??

    Manawatu • Since Jan 2008 • 494 posts Report

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