Posts by Sacha
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Hard News: The digital switch-off, in reply to Matthew Poole,
I'm curious what MW's interest rate would be if it'd borrowed from commercial funders.
Up to their eyeballs with all that leveraged equity bizzo so no one will lend them any more money at viable rates if at all, I'd guess.
These licence payments were a long-forecast core cost of doing business that a prudent company would have set money aside for. They're a regulatory obligation, not a discretionary expense.
The analogy is more like the Ministry of Transport giving you more time to pay your van registration and lending you the money to pay them with. Or you owing rates and the Council deciding to let you take longer to pay them because you're a particular kind of ratepayer, say a retailer.
It's still a credit facility for private business that would not normally be provided by government.
I'd like to see someone ask which other industries have had similar government assistance to help them through difficult times (except finance companies that we already know about). What's special about commercial broadcasters?
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Hard News: About Arie, in reply to Peter grower,
I have posted up what was in todays Dompost newspaper, they had no other story
Fair enough. The Stuff website doesn't always label which Fairfax newspaper the stories are from - in this case, neither of them.
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Hard News: About Arie, in reply to Peter grower,
I’ve often thought the Dompost was a nasty rag, and their reporting of this case is very revealing, firstly in the headline they chose and then what they have edited out of the story
Peter, you did read their other story, right - the one headlined "Police face beating allegation"?
Given that the matter is under investigation and lawyers are involved, what more did you expect them to write?
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Hard News: About Arie, in reply to Che Tibby,
Now you're touching on weaknesses in identity politics..
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Hard News: About Arie, in reply to Christopher Dempsey,
differently-abled
I do like the term, but there are problems getting it taken up.
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Hard News: About Arie, in reply to Christopher Dempsey,
dis-abled (meaning something less than 100% able)
*Everyone* is less than 100% in some way - it's what I like about autism being seen as a spectrum.
And athletes are differently-abled, which doesn't explain the lack of social stigma directed their way. There's a layer of (sterotyped, historic) social valuing in what counts as impairment.
Sadly must dash to a meeting now. Carry on.
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Hard News: About Arie, in reply to Peter grower,
This was no “striking out” by police or a simple black eye, that’s just apologist bullshit.
Peter, it also seems possible to me that there was a scuffle and he fell or was pushed onto something solid like a concrete kerb. Nothing apologist about that and I'm still demanding that the authorities who were responsible for his wellbeing at the time provide explanations.
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Hard News: About Arie, in reply to Russell Brown,
David Cohen uses the noun “autist”, which I quite like, but it sounds way better when he says it than when I do.
I can't escape thinking of Houdini when I hear that, for some reason
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Hard News: About Arie, in reply to Russell Brown,
I’ve always preferred say say people are autistic or Aspergers, rather than that they have it, which sounds too much like an affliction, rather than a core element of identity.
Ooh, one of my favourite specialist topics (not that I'm obsessed).
There's a risk of "Aspie" being seen as the *whole* of someone's identity but let me explain why on balance I prefer it.
I see parallels with the American-derived 'people-first' labelling which (driven largely by concerned parents, from what I've read) was a reaction against disabled people being labelled as "the spastic" or "the deaf" or "the arthritic". So much more human to say "people with cerabral palsy" or "people with autism" or "people with disabilities" (though still preserving medicalised labels and a deficit model).
But it didn't go as far as the UK-derived "disabled people" wording did. That's where the NZ government's Disability Strategy and the UN Convention draw their conceptual base from, if not all of their language or implementation focus - the understanding that disability is an interaction between personal impairments and wider social, physical, service and other environments.
Thus, people are disabled by environments that don't met their needs; by others not designing and delivering things properly for a large chunk of the population (about one in five or 800,000 New Zealanders for instance).
Appropriate supports and remedial action can help people play their part in our society and economy despite those environmental defects. Disabled people are some of the most resourceful I've ever met but there are limits to our ability to fix barriers made by others.
To me, "people with disabilities" locates the matter far too much as a characteristic of each person rather than a broader social/practical process that we all have a stake in.
It influences where we think attention and investment should go, reinforcing sterotypes that disability is an individualised health/welfare problem in need of a 'cure' or some charity (or another media story about a lone plucky battler).
We look for the fault in the person, not in what surrounds them. So we fund the expensive medical operation rather than the improved customer service or larger print or smooth footpaths that would actually benefit more people (including most who don't think of themselves as disabled).
Or we just carry on thinking that way, even where a medical 'cure' is miles away from reality despite massive investment. Easy to tap the stereotypes to rally support for that perspective and label it as "hope" - see Catwalk Trust's harmful advertisements about walking again being the highest aspiration for wheelchair users with spinal cord injuries. Most disabled people can list many other funding priorities that would allow them to get on with their lives productively.
The Christchurch quake gave us several examples of survivors pulled from the rubble and pointing out that amputation wasn't the worst thing that could have happened to them. We don't hear that very often, do we?
It's not about being 'PC'. Most policymakers and publicly-funded agencies just don't pay enough attention to the implications of their choices of language. They also don't *act* smartly enough. And vocal elements who lack much insight behind their preferences cloud the picture.
It's crying out for smarter investment, coherent strategic focus and far stronger leadership all round.
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Hard News: About Arie, in reply to giovanni tiso,
In any case, the alternative to calling somebody an Aspie is calling them "people who have Asperger's disorder"
I believe people with aspergers chose the term "aspie" (though I still have a lot to learn about the history). Plus I like the way it sounds.