Posts by Kyle Matthews
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It was the leeks that made it.
I can now picture National Party leaders setting policy banning the serving of leeks at Bellamys.
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If we could hack into whatever Stephen Jones uses to watch the rugby, and just pipe in Murry Mexted as his only commentator, sans pictures.
... that would be the bomb. I would definitely read his next column.
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A poor person who spent their money opposing deforestation, and doesn't have money left over to campaign against the illegal detention of his or her family in Australia, cannot leaflet about that detention. A rich person could, and thus has "more freedom of speech." I'm reliably advised that this is "a principle we [should never] follow."
Except, as I've previously pointed out, I don't believe that having limited money (or none) is a restriction of your free speech, it's only a restriction of your ability to advertise.
If spending on such a personal issue limited (why I don't know, but for the point of the discussion...), then I would argue that a rich person and a poor person both still have their freedom of speech. Their ability to convey that speech to the masses has just been leveled at a maximum level. Which makes no sense in a family crisis, but does make sense for an election.
The 'freedom of speech' problem in your example isn't that I don't have a million dollars for my advertising campaign. If that's a freedom of speech problem, then every non-rich person is always restricted in their freedom of speech, just through not having a pile of money lying around.
The freedom of speech problem is that my law-abiding and decent family have been illegally detained in Australia, and the media aren't writing about it. That's where your freedom of speech query needs to be directed. Australian owners of the media? Being heavied by the NZ government who want to preserve a good relationship with Australia? Those would be attacks on freedom of speech.
It annoys me that we demean real freedom of speech issues which take place around the world by bleating about government regulation which doesn't restrict speech, only attempts to make elections fairer by stopping richer people and parties throwing money at them.
After all, the National Party candidate for Auckland Central no doubt had a spending limit for her campaign, and yet managed to exercise her freedom of speech and door knock her way around thousands of homes, reaping the rewards by being elected. I don't believe that her freedom of speech was limited, just her ability to spend money on advertising.
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Equating homosexuality with kiddie-fiddling is so beyond the pale
That's not really what he was doing.
As much as he murdered his point and sounded like a dick, he was trying to say that:
1. Homosexuality used to be thought of as a disease that could be cured.
2. Paedophilia is currently thought of as a disease that could be cured.
3. Neither of them are diseases that can be cured, we think about these things the wrong way.In this basis he was trying to agree with some other members of the panel. He didn't equate the two things, he equated their perception. Whether or not he would equate them in another time/place or with a bit more to drink, who knows.
He really lost it with his points about "since they make up 10% of the population we don't think of homosexuals that way anymore".
Incidentally, if you enter 'Paedophilia' into dictionary.com, the page returned says:
Unauthorized
The page you requested requires proper authorization.
We apologize for any inconvenience.
— Dictionary.com
A thing so bad, we won't even let you know if you're spelling it correctly.
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This was not the case at the lineout where the crowd was drowning out the calls, causing me to wonder why they don't use hand signals.
I'm not sure if having the hooker looking like a baseball coach and fondling himself and adjusting his non-existent hat thrice would improve the game to be honest.
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I did like the penalty against Jimmy Cowan for pushing his opposite number. Cowan looked like he was yelling "Fuck off! Fuck off!" Aren't you filled with pride?
You can take the boy out of Southland...
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Well that story will be funny, given the jobs that my family used to do.
But if I was running for election and my two key platforms were "freeing the Matthews family" and "deforestation is bad", then there should be a limit on how much I'm allowed to spend promoting my electoral campaign.
If I'm not running for election or promoting an issue which relates to the election its not really a relevant argument. I can print a million leaflets to distribute to every home in NZ, no limitation on advertising or speech need apply.
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Getting those views into such a review weighs heavily towards a "stay in Kyoto and react properly" outcome...
Heh. Yeah, good luck with that being integral to the discussion. There's another bullet point a few down which talks about international competitiveness and whatnot.
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But there's another question that persists with me: What kind of producer would let a steaming drunk on air to discuss anything, let alone a subject where the emotional temperature is at boiling point from the beginning?
I watched part of the show, and at least for the couple of minutes I saw him talking, he was making half sense (and half nonsense, but you get that with wingnuts), and not obviously drunk. No doubt the producer reached the same conclusions and decided to go ahead. His behaviour might have been shocking at other times, but on air he was at worst just a waste of the airwaves, which is nothing new on many TV shows.
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I should note, that if the air that you breath is of bad quality, you should feel free to negotiate with another Private-Public-Partnership-on-Air-Usage Provider for higher quality air.
Providers will obviously compete for your business, this will lead to much better results than the ETS.