Posts by Christopher Dempsey
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A guideline, rule if you please: A picture of a sunrise can only be followed by a picture of a sunset, NOT a picture of a sunrise.
Multiple sunrises / sets just confuse the hell out of pagans like me.
AND, autumn colours to be followed by winter, thence progress to spring before glorious summer.
Am editing at the moment so structure is top of mind
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to Russell Brown,
Aw, c’mon. The Greens have done a lot to reshape their own image and that started when they chose Metiria as co-leader. Their election broadcasts were, as I noted at the time, Obama-esque in their language. They’ve played down cannabis reform and consciously made themselves appear less radical and less left-wing.
None of which I have a problem with, but the shift in perception didn’t just happen.
Fair enough. I should have gone on to explain Foucault's omnipresent power i.e. a power that is not simply transcendental (a public saying the Greens are this or that), but omnipresent in that it flows two ways - from the public to the Greens and from the Greens to the public.
This suggests that political parties are co-created - between a public at large and political parties. As they should be, after all, we need political parties for specific social functions.
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to Emma Hart,
Yeah, I should have said “perceived as”. I’m sort of boggled by how much the general perception of the Greens has changed over the years, while they’ve basically, in terms of essentials if not presentation, stayed exactly the same.
Foucault noted the same phenomena regarding other groups in society, for example, mentally ill people. They stayed the same but perceptions changed from criminals, to circus freaks to patients. Discourse is all.
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Can a good policy just be a good policy no matter where it comes from?
Absolutely, if every politician fully acknowledges the source of the policy.
John Banks had one massive fault - he made the sun rise and set. Among many local body politicians, he was notorious for never acknowledging the source of the ideas or project, leading me to suspect that he would even claim to make the sun rise and set.
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to Russell Brown,
And the Greens' small-business tax policy was both good policy (it's essentially what the Society of Chartered Accountants recommended) and good politics. It promised to make it easier for small businesspeople to pay their taxes. That's actually quite a compelling thing to say to those people. And it's something they're not presently prepared to believe of Labour.
This got my head nodding at the Epsom candidates meeting at the Jubliee Building in Parnell just before the election. As a small business owner I would gladly welcome any move to make compliance easier and the Green's proposal was sensible and ticked the box.
Although I noted that other small business owners in the audience did not nod their head (they were too tribal to do that), I suspect that quite a few would have gone home and looked up the policy.
Like many Green policies, this one will be 'stolen' by National at some point (probably he of the improbable hair).
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Capture: Christchurch: Last One Standing, in reply to Sacha,
To be honest, I don't think Labour would necessarily be any better at understanding that a society needs to have remains of the old weaved into the new.
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These photos (and others) of Chch is great, but it did make me wonder.
Is there someone or an organisation that is pushing to ensure that the 'old' is not completely swept away - I mean in terms of the small things - doors, shop frontage fittings, old signs, etc. All these things incorporated into any new development will act as a memory 'sink' around which people will remember, and more importanly, these physical reminders of what was previous will act as a slient warning to the future generations - something else stood here once.
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Capture: Colour is the new black, in reply to Islander,
I Love Flags! I have – quite a few. I’d be interested in getting that flag-maker’s contact details, if she so consents?
She has a website, so contact her through here.
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Capture: Colour is the new black, in reply to JacksonP,
The woman who makes these fabulous flags is standing in your picture, in the bottom of the picture, in the centre, with a blue headband.
We bought one of these flags (not the big ones on the hill behind - they are commission only and are around $400 each), but one the size of a cape, if a cape were a flag, as a Christmas present for my parents. They loved it and flew it all summer... Carnival flags are fun.
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Saw When a City Falls this afternoon. Powerful film, well crafted. Shed a tear for the woman filmed being helped from the Feb rubble in a city street - she turned back to the rubble in desperation. We knew from news reports later why.
The striking line was at the end: We live on a planet. This is what the planet does. We just live here.
Highly recommended.