Posts by Sacha
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Result :)
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Hard News: The Ladi is a champ, in reply to Bruce Wurr,
Bruce, you just paste the whole link including the http into what you are typing and the site handles the rest. Don't need to do what you normally do with other links here - no square brackets. Give it a go.
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Muse: Monday Linky Love (With Added Geekery), in reply to Kumara Republic,
if it can even be classified as fiction these days
I understood it was thinly-disguised satire and that the title was originally 1948 but it was thought a bit too close to home.
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Hard News: The file-sharing bill, in reply to giovanni tiso,
You'd be thinking of Wendy Neilson of the Disabled Persons Assembly. This morning, Radio NZ featured a few stories (here's the main one, 5 minutes streaming) about the long-running case of parents of disabled people fighting the Misery of Health for the right to be paid like any other suitable person to provide round the clock support. ACC have managed to do this for years but the Ministry seems to believe they're special and fundamentally that their clients are not to be trusted.
I've met several of the families involved in the lawsuit and they're not the type to complain unless they're backed into a corner. This has dragged on so long that one of the mothers has literally died waiting. After nearly a decade of legal wrangling where every stage has found against the government, they still refuse to get on with improving their policy and practices. Instead they have spent over $1.2m of your tax money to keep on saying NO. The Human Rights Commission has been consistently supportive and is appalled by that course of action.
The current Minister, Tony Ryall, has proclaimed that any change would set a broader precedent than the context of the case and cost a huge amount across all government services. You may recognise this argument from the parallel case about sleepover shifts, along with the same exaggerated numbers and scaremongering. It is probably all too similar to hand-wringing about the 'unreasonable' cost of ending slavery back in the day.
This government have been all too keen of course to reach into the public purse to subsidise big polluters via the ETS, investors in dodgy finance companies, corporate farmers and wealthy yachties.
It is a classic example of the contrast between what governments - of all persuasions - have said they believe and what they actually do for disabled New Zealanders and our families.
How hard is it for someone to stand up and say forcefully and clearly that this is wrong and we will fix it?
Quizzed by Geoff Robinson on the fact that there is an unfortunate bipartisan agreement
His FPP line of questioning pissed me off, actually. Like several other matters, the Greens have provided the most effective party political opposition about this lately, spearheaded by Catherine Delahunty in this case. Robinson had interviewed her about the case no more than an hour earlier. And yet couldn't resist asking Wendy Neilson about what the "two parties" were doing about it.
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Hard News: A Work of Advocacy, in reply to Russell Brown,
Loved your falafel, innovatively
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Hard News: A Work of Advocacy, in reply to HORansome,
I can confirm that I have drunk his whisky
true, that
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Hard News: A Work of Advocacy, in reply to HORansome,
The conspiracy must run very deep indeed.
We're expecting a chapter in your thesis - if Brown hasn't paid you off already.
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Hard News: The file-sharing bill, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Which might've been a credible response to the file-sharing bill, but is actually very much not a credible response to CERA when it's full of draconian powers that will be available for use immediately because "it's an emergency".
Fair point.
Plus, in Labour's current situation it would be a hard sell to the public to justify things on "We'll change this really bad law in November."
What, harder than "we don't like it but we voted for it anyway but we can't really say why"?
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Hard News: A Work of Advocacy, in reply to Russell Brown,
Sorry, I'm not clear how that response was "unnecessary" in the circumstances, but it's your place and I'd hate to give anyone reasons for ducking off rather than responding substantively.
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Hard News: The file-sharing bill, in reply to 3410,
If Labour is against something then they should vote against it, and when the shit hits the fan they can say "National did that, and that's why you should vote for us, not them".
They need to communicate well before that. You do not need to wait to do stuff. That's where Pagani's message of hopelessness seems way wrong to me.