Southerly: Spewing Their Usual Election Year Filth
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Well said! Although I, for one, am quite glad to have a physical appearance rather different from Mr Brown ... although perhaps not different enough for him to dislike me on an automatic basis.
Funnily enough there was a NZ First stand at the Kumeu A&P show attended by Mrs_Red and myself a month or so back. I was interested to see what sort of person staffs a stand ... a fat old white guy in a white cowboy outfit. He didn't do as much business as the Kiwi Party with its bloody referendum.
Back to the topic - I agree with you, and Dr Le-Ngoc, that the real danger in these kind of outbursts is that it encourages a substantial portion of the population (certainly much greater than 1%!) to be cruel to those they perceive as different. There are a quite a lot of NZers who, unfortunately, don't need a lot of encouragement in this regard.
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Hear hear!
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If Russell can keep asking the right people hard questions in his show and John Campbell is remains willing to take these guys on there is hope.
Then again, Franks as National candidate for Central Wellington goes in the opposite direction. I have heard him singing from the Coddington book of Asian Angst, which is a worry.
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What would be really nice would be if National and Labour could agree a "pairing" arrangement to shut NZF out of politics.
E.g, if 7 NZF MPs vote with Labour, 7 Labour MPs will vote with National and vice versa.
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Don Christie wrote:
If Russell can keep asking the right people hard questions in his show and John Campbell is remains willing to take these guys on there is hope.
I don't have a telly so I hadn't seen John Campbell's interview -- thanks for bringing it to my attention, Don. Slightly freakish that the intro is so similar to my own.
And maximum respect to John Campbell for taking Brown to task so thoroughly.
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David, I don't have a telly either. Youtube...
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Don: how do you find NZ content in the morass of Rick Astley that is YouTube?
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John Campbell
I was listening to that from the next room. While I wouldn't have given Peter Brown airspace, I realised afterwards it was a good idea on account of said Brown being his own worst enemy.
OTOH, Campbell was so (for him) antagonistic - not that I'm precisely complaining about that - I don't imagine the whole spectacle would have changed anyone's mind.
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Nat, I confess, I let others] do that for me. Three Thumbs Up!
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I felt the Campbell Live interview had too high a setting on 'outraged'. I think a better strategy might have been to give Brown more and more rope until the inevitable inconsistencies and contradictions of his argument manifested themselves further.
While Campbell did point out that the projected increase in the Asian population would include a significant proportion of New Zealand born Asians, i felt he could have really driven the point home that the United Kingdom was currently New Zealand's largest single source of migrants.
The other thing Brown could have been challenged on was his assertion that Asians would in the future outnumber Maori. Can someone tell me how Chinese and Indians (the two largest Asian sub groups in New Zealand but also with little in common culturally, linguistically, historically and socially) can be presented as an accumulation of homegeneous people that will overrun Maori. What a specious and dishonest argument!
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Rules of internet forums, 36(3), sub-section 5:
Thoughtful and admirable opening posts shall generate fewer responses, due to the absence of wrongness with which to take issue, and the sheer dullness of repeated agreement.
Therefore threads shall slide down and off the page, and gain fewer readers than they deserve. They can only be saved by the internet's most loyal citizens, the pickers of nits.
So, I say Cyprus is not in Asia. Everybody take sides NOW.
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Don: how do you find NZ content in the morass of Rick Astley that is YouTube?
Ah yes. All YouTube links now lead to Rick Astley.
Sadly, Rickrolling is yet another example of my son knowing about new nerd-memes before I do. I feel so old.
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Yes, from a certain perspective, New Zealand First's predictable antics are almost humorous. The punchline to Mr Brown's crack-brained press release, of course, is that he himself is an immigrant to this country, something that he seems to have conveniently forgotten.
Apparently it's OK if you're white...
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The other thing Brown could have been challenged on was his assertion that Asians would in the future outnumber Maori. Can someone tell me how Chinese and Indians (the two largest Asian sub groups in New Zealand but also with little in common culturally, linguistically, historically and socially) can be presented as an accumulation of homegeneous people that will overrun Maori.
I'm not Maori, so they might have a different perspective, but I suspect white European folks have done a fair bit more overrunning of Maori in the past 200 years, than Asian folks have done in the last 200 years... and probably the next 200 years as well.
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xkcd on rickrolling (not all that long ago)
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simon g wrote:
I say Cyprus is not in Asia. Everybody take sides NOW.
Ho ho. Okay, I'll bite (I once won a game of trivial pursuits on the basis of knowing the answer to this question). According to the UN's drawing of the continent boundaries (and most, if not all, geographers), Cyprus is in Asia -- see this UN map reproduced at Wikipedia.
Cyprus is the green blob just off the southern coast of Turkey.
But I'll grant you that many Cypriots seem to consider that culturally Greek-speaking Cyprus is part of Europe (and they are, of course, a member of the EU).
On a similar tangent, can anyone speculate on why it has become standard in New Zealand to say 'Afghani' rather than 'Afghan'. As far as I know, and also according to my OED (2005), an afghani is the unit of currency in Afghanistan (with 100 pul = 1 afghani). My OED doesn't even mention 'Afghani' being a synonym for 'Afghan'.
Of course, by default when we refer to 'afghans' in New Zealand we are talking about a delicious crunchy biscuit.
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Cyprus has an entry in the Eurovision Song Contest, with their hit song:
λɑ λɑ λɑBut then, so has Morocco, with the song:
مدينة لوس انجلوس مدينة لوس انجلوس مدينة لوس انجلوس -
I say Cyprus is not in Asia. Everybody take sides NOW.
Haven't brought a bottle of sherry in years. Take from that what you will.
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They can only be saved by the internet's most loyal citizens, the pickers of nits.
So I say that Asia comprises some fifty countries and is not comprised of them, although I'm sure David's OED states that his wordy and confused rendering is acceptable.
an afghani is the unit of currency in Afghanistan
Well, with the people-trafficking that we all know is rampant in that part of the world, maybe Afghans -- better currency these days than afghanis -- have rightly inherited the term.
No wonder the redoubtable Enoch Brown wants to keep such sordid types out. Not to mention the way they confuse and corrupt our healthy and pure antipodean culture:
when we refer to 'afghans' in New Zealand we are talking about a delicious crunchy biscuit.
The "kiwi identity", after all, is in a precarious state: our icons must be protected from potential attack by the politically-correct-gone-mad who, concerned at racially-motivated cannibalistic intimations, may lobby to ban the biscuit.
Speaking of which, have you heard Murray Deaker is advertising this new lesbian porno flick? It's called Clitoral Erectness Gone Mad.
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Consuming an Afghan while drinking tea out of China and resting your feet on a Ottoman is probably multicultural enough for plenty of people.
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Asia comprises some fifty countries
Good lord, that seems to be right. I comprise equal parts of surprise and bemusement.
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But, Creon:
The "kiwi identity", after all, is in a precarious state: our icons must be protected from potential attack
surely the Afghan biscuit is an Australian invention (just like....no, let's not go there...)...
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surely the Afghan biscuit is an Australian invention
Didn't they throw all their afghans into the ocean or something?
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Creon Upton wrote:
So I say that Asia comprises some fifty countries and is not comprised of them, although I'm sure David's OED states that his wordy and confused rendering is acceptable.
I believe we may have had this conversation before, Creon. Yes, the OED does give this usage as acceptable, but you are dead right -- it is much more elegant to say 'comprised' or, I suppose, 'composed of'. I was writing at two o'clock in the morning after a long hard day, dude.
I've emended the original text.
Just as well I only complained about the spelling and punctuation in those election pamphlets, I guess.
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After watching that campbell i/v I thought he went into it a tad over excited and turned what should have been an exercise in shooting fish in a barrell into something less than satisfying. So I've got to agree with Charles umpteen posts ago - he should have done a soft shoe shuffle, let PB hang himself with his own bullshit and then quietly slipped the knife in. As it turned out I suspect Brown actually won kudos from his target audience who probably saw little more than a hamfisted attempt by JC to shout him down and/ or rattle him.
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