Posts by stephen clover
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As soon as the name Boag flicks up, so do my antennae
As it should, for anyone who endured the previous National govt.
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The photo spread on the front of the sports section in today's SST was closer to snuff imagery than I was prepared for [...] final, terrifying moments leading to anybody's death
The sports section, you say? What story was that?
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Scott nails it
LOL:
I know first-hand the terrible damage to irrational policymaking an addiction to evidence can cause
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I suddenly had a thought.
.. and it's a good one. It's a strategy that has been identified with the Nat'l govt for a while now; I think I first read it being proposed by Bomber@Tumeke. In general it goes something like:
1. Make a public pronouncement that you're planning to do something that will generally outrage masses of people, but which you really have NO INTENTION of doing.
2. Wait a while.
3. Announce that you've listened to what the people want, and you've modified the plan to suit.
4. While the people are slapping each other on the back and cheering about their newly-reenergised democratic power, rush through something that is still generally unpleasant/unwanted.
5. Repeat ad nauseum.See.. ACC levy charges for motorcycle riders.
Bomber actually touched on it in his post today Gerry and his Magic Beans, albeit in his customary hyperbolic manner:
The spin line National will use is the following. The survey will "find" a precious mineral under a national treasure they have no intention of mining and have John Key move against it immediately to declare our environment is precious, blah blah and demand that the national treasure is preserved and with much fan fare and photo ops will open the "John Key Memorial National Park" all the while the fine print enables them to throw the rest of the conservation lands to the baying jackals of the multinational mining corporates.
Whoever is spinning National deserve their bonus this year.
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Hahaha, in keeping with the spirit of the site ;)
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a classic false binary distortion - all better than 'adequate' are elevated to excellent, while 'adequate' and the ?10% worse than that are all implicitly condemned, and the message taken, as intended, is that 30% of teachers are useless.
.. and that's frankly fucking evil of them to distort the statistics to do that. Now every halfwit Kiwiblog reader slash talkback-radioer is all "Well, a third of teachers are useless" and if you ask them, "how do you figure that, then" the reply: "I know cos my friend John Key told me". And do you think they can be swayed by logic, reason, ration, or just plain good maths? Not on your life. It's like they WANT to believe that.
GAH.
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which highlights why our decision-makers are so out of touch
In using the term "out of touch", I feel that you're being quite.. umm.. what is it? Polite? Kind? Generous? Strategic?
C'mon. No one actually believes that it is some kind of omission, or accident, that they're throwing around terms like "big personal tax cuts for middle-income earners", do they? We're being bent over something unpleasant* and fucked here, and utterances like those are the sound of the govt and the complicit media cooing soothingly at us while they gleefully high-five and snigger at us out of sight behind their hands like fuckwitted teenage boys, or out-of-control rugby league players, or something.
They're not "out of touch", they're lying to us and using those words and their magic made-up numbers to try to keep us in the dark.
* I dunno, possibly the rotting corpse of the welfare state, etc.
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quite a few of us out there.
Helloooooooooooooooo, Echelon :))
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Talk about two of my major obsessions crashing into each other at high speed!
Which two?
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Y'know, Simon Power could have chosen any number of ways of responding to the questions from journalists on this today. The "from my cold, dead hands"-style yapping that I just heard on the radio made him sound like a smug, arrogant, reactionary pillock.