Posts by Russell Brown
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Feed: My Life in Curry, in reply to Zach Bagnall,
Indeed. Golden Curry looks like the kind of joint I avoid.. shiny black, chrome and blue neon. Two tables occupied at 9:30 this evening.
Oh well. There are always memories.
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Feed: My Life in Curry, in reply to chris esther,
Gutted.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Electric Dreams, in reply to Moz,
the Verlaines “Cheat Yourself” is still one of my fav tracks.
Mine too. I think it's the standout from the whole record.
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Feed: My Life in Curry, in reply to Bart Janssen,
And because I’m a geek I have to say something about the chilli. All the heat in a curry comes from chilli and all chillies come from South America. So hot curries never existed until the Portuguese and Spanish brought back chillies.
Ahem. Pepper. Which comes from the subcontinent. Including long pepper, which the Romans knew about. It was largely displaced by the more effective South American chilli pepper, but it's not true that the Indians didn't have a way to make a hot dish.
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Hard News: Crowdfunding Time, in reply to Sue,
this works for one offs as well yes?
Yes! Most welcome.
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Feed: My Life in Curry, in reply to Rebecca Williams,
Ok I’m going to do it. I can’t believe no one else knows about it, but I can’t let this thread go by without mentioning Shubh in sandringham road. It’s a curry kitchen. Sell punnets and trays of the best vegetarian Indian curry for the tiniest amount of money. Also amazing chapati and other breads.
Yes. Owned by the same people as the excellent Khyber Spice a few doors along, I think.
Excellent value, but I don't shop there as often as I used to. We started to find the curries a bit too salty and sometimes oily.
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A commentary from someone who'd prefer not to be named on the Internet party's Constitution:
1. There is a special role called 'party visionary.' This is defined as Kim Dotcom, or a person selected by Kim Dotcom. THis visionary has the automatic right to sit and vote on the party's executive and policy committee and cannot be kicked out by the membership.
2. To stand for election to the party's executive, in addition to being nominated by current members of the party you've got to be nominated by a current member of the National Executive. This locks in the incumbents.
3. The party's executive has nearly unfettered control over the list: they put together an initial list, send it out to the membership to vote on, and then they ultimately decide what the final list should be having regard to the member's choices.
4. The national executive chooses who stands in what electorate. No local member input at all.
5. The party secretary has a very important role (eg they get to solely arbitrate over disputes; they set out the process for amending the constitution, they decide the process for electing office holders; they're a voting member of the National Executive). The only problem is they're legally an employee of the party's shell company, meaning that it is very hard for the members to exercise democratic control over the secretary (you can't just fire an employee).
6. On a related note: the way the Internet Party is structured is so all its assets are kept in a shell company (Internet Party Assets Inc), away from the party itself. I don't know what the purpose of this one was TBH. (the rules of this company were meant to be attached to the constitution in a schedule, but as far as I can see they're not there)
7. They're using the old 'vote in Parliamentary caucus' decides leader method. To be fair, most parties use this though. There is a bit of a quirk though that until we know their list we don't know who their party leader is, because if they're outside of Parliament their party leader is just whoever is at number 1 of the list. (I also note there's no way to remove a leader if they don't have representation in Parliament)." -
Muse: Guilt By Association Copy, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
Okay, the exaggeration was over the top, but the point was that something can be an investment – a good one! – and that doesn’t make it not distasteful. A better comparison might be banks that made subprime mortgages, or BP after the Gulf spill.
But huge material harm flowed from each of those. What material harm comes of Dotcom owning a rare, if clearly controversial, book? My thought when Brook Sabin asked Dotcom whether owning the book was an “ethical investment” was “no, that’s not what ethical investment means”.
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Muse: Guilt By Association Copy, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
Well, sure, but probably so are investments in companies that make land mines.
I don't think that's a valid comparison.
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Muse: Guilt By Association Copy, in reply to richard,
Someone’s showing you round their house, and they open a door and say “Here’s where I keep my copy of Mein Kampf that Hitler personally signed, along with my other Nazi memorabilia” – yeah, I’d judge them.
Do we know that he has “other Nazi memorabilia” apart from the book, though? (Also, Dotcom doesn't keep the book around the house. It's in storage in Europe.)
The one thing that did occur to me is that the video game connection is plausible. My younger son got very interested in Chernobyl and the USSR through playing the Stalker games. I bought him a Chernobyl staff ID badge from an army surplus store for his birthday and he was stoked. We’ve also watched a couple of documentaries about Stalin and the USSR in WW2 together.
So I’m not scandalised by the book. But if some of the other allegations turn out to be true, hmmm …