Posts by Sacha
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to recordari,
sparodically derailed
bird pisstake train?
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Hard News: Holiday Open Thread 2:…, in reply to Kracklite,
those moments in love
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to andin,
I would say get rid of the straight boring turncoat boomers and bring back the alternate boomers.
The Herald has been listening - an article about boomers defining cultural trends (and where to draw the membership age if you don't feel like part of the pack).
For a while, of course - and stop me if you've heard this one before, kids - punk rode to our rescue, seemingly freeing us from the sixties' grimy clutches. In the blink of an eye we went from listening to the same Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin as the guy in the candy-stripes to speaking Mockney and railing against boring old hippies.
Heady days, but sadly a mere blip in the boomers' relentless march of world domination. The sheer weight of their numbers continues to shape the world we all have to share. That's why Leonard Cohen seems to have some kind of residency at the Vector Arena, why faded stars sell out concerts in vineyards and why old men are falling off Harley Davidsons in unprecedented numbers.
Following in the boomers' wake means inheriting an unstoppable tide of pre-used culture, built or adapted specifically to meet every desire of that famous population bulge.
And it means hearing people of a certain age banging on compulsively about certain popular activities and topics. People took cycling holidays before the boomers arrived - but they didn't saturate the atmosphere with accounts of their thrilling adventures.
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Hard News: Holiday Open Thread 1: Beach…, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
that's the plan
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Hard News: Holiday Open Thread 1: Beach…, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
a piece I wrote on What We Did In the Holidays has just been posted on kiwiboomers.com
you *are* allowed to link to it :)
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to Islander,
It is v. interesting to look at who owns resthomes in ANZ
And why. Property returns over time are a motivation for the larger corporations at least. Fixing our distorted capital investment landscape will also help shift the balance to more support services delivered in people's own homes rather than expensive bricks and mortar on prime real estate.
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to Islander,
If these Filipinas et al use this as a step towards citizenship - why, we've all gained
Not if it suppresses the standard of care, we haven't. As an example, language barriers already attract many complaints. That industry has poor development partly because the workforce has little to aspire to, though there have been some moves to establish a career structure.
But there's no sign that paying decent wages will be happening anytime soon despite surging demand. and the industry has been largely propped up by the generosity of older workers - who, you guessed it, are retiring in large numbers.
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to Jimmy Southgate,
Here's a few suggestions for repositioning the country for impending demographic changes without slashing and burning. You're dead right it's a conversation we need to be having - so where's the leadership?
We must improve productivity to increase business and personal incomes with fewer workers. Research tells us that NZ's management and governance skills need boosting. Business cheerleaders need to get over themselves and accept that rather than whining about red tape (newsflash: NZ once again 4th most economically "free" country, prominent libertarian investor Peter Thiel sees our potential).
More flexible and supported arrangements for part-time work will tap the efforts of larger numbers of semi-retired older people, disabled people and parents with school-age children. Well-organised volunteering will also be crucial.
There is scope for changing the tax system so that the wealth in personal assets and investments makes up a higher share of the tax base. We need to encourage investment in export-earning and import-substituting businesses instead. Exports make up far too small a proportion of our economy compared with other developed nations.
Economic development should focus on strengthening sectors that return high revenues for their input costs (where those costs properly include carbon in a modern global economy) - like software, fashion, screen production, science, education and professional services. Hands-off is simply not good enough and we need to put silly laissez-faire notions back where they belong in the dustbin of history. They're one big reason Australia has streaked ahead of us over the last few decades.
Sadly, current political timidity and unambitious 'leaders' suggest a preference for 1950s industries like farming and mining, privatising existing state assets rather than investing in new enterprises, and a continued reliance on importing migrants and screwing down employment costs like wages and ACC levies rather than smarter management and investment.
We don't even have the balls to implement a capital gains tax to make crystal clear to everyone that speculative property gambling and bigger and flasher houses are not productive investments for this country's future.
The national conversation about this needs to help everyone think about our grandparents and our grandchildren; about the sustainable wellbeing and wealth of this country's future residents and environment, not just what's easy or comfortably familiar for us right now.
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Rush Limbaugh billboard in Tucson
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The implications of the measurably shrinking sound bite in (US) political coverage over the years.
But have these changes been a bad thing? There are plenty of reasons to distrust sound bites and the kind of journalism that produces them. First, and most obviously, we miss out on the variety and authenticity of hearing people speak at length, and in their own words. Short snippets seem to encourage coverage that focuses on candidates’ gaffes and catch phrases. Sometimes, it feels like we get more of the journalists than of the politicians.
But none of this is necessarily the sound bite’s fault. Another trend Hallin noticed was that as networks shortened their sound bites, they also changed the substance of their political coverage. They started using more in-house experts, pundits who looked less at what people said than at how they said it. TV news became more about strategy and the parsing of strategy — about buzzwords like “expectations” and “momentum” — than about the issues that presumably lie at the heart of politics. Journalists wanted to turn campaigns into larger narratives, and there was no easier narrative than covering politics as though it were a sport.