Posts by Hilary Stace
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Hard News: So long, and thanks for all…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Wellington Central is one of the wealthiest electorates in NZ and is not a natural Labour seat. Grant (like Marian Hobbs before him) keeps it with a mixture of extremely hard work, good organisation and an open and inclusive personal style. Also helps to be a nice person.
I am bemused in this current leadership selection by the numbers of people setting themselves up as the arbitters of what is left wing and dictating to the rest of us which candidate is left wing enough. It is OK for people to self-identify on some sort of left right continuum or spectrum but more problematic when applying your own personal opinions as universal criteria. Chris Trotter seems fond of doing this - yet from my perspective I find him very conservative and religious and not much of a champion of diversity or equity.
For me left wing means in favour of affirmative action to ensure equitable representation in parliament and equity in society generally (gender, disability, age etc), staunch on urgently addressing climate change, as well in much fairer distribution of economic resources. Someone happy to call themselves a socialist, and open to critiquing their own privilege and how it could be used for the betterment of humanity.
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Hard News: Fluency, ease of manner - and…, in reply to Joe Wylie,
I thought it might have been satirical but the item following this one is serious.
But he is a very strange man (Abbott) -
Meanwhile Tony Abbott says these sexist, racist and homophobic comments to a journalist from the Sydney Morning Herald and it's all just fine with the voters - because this election is apparently all about winning western Sydney and Queensland?
(Maybe we could have a thread for the Australian election because there are some bizarre things going on there)
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Campbell and Key also had different motivations. Campbell's was about information, logic, implications, honesty and the law while Key's was only about keeping power. What came through in the travels around the country was that people didn't trust the government. I don't think Key has done much to change that. Slickness has nothing to do with trustworthiness.
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And we should be ashamed that we can be taken in by a slick media 'performance' when the issue is so fundamentally about power and control by an elite - surveillance not vigilance.
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It really annoys me all the discussion about winners and losers in the debate. How superficial. Surely it is about the ethics and morality of the issue itself.
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I recommend the little NZ movie Kiwi Flyer. It's about kids in Nelson and their trolley derby. Lots of innovative technologies, dangerous risk taking, bullies (adult and children), and beautiful scenes of Nelson sometimes from the perspective of going downhill at speed.
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Robison also of course literarily threw his son around a lot when he was little. One of the early chapters relates the various types and names of propulsion. The mildest was making the roundabout in the local park go as fast as it could. Of course this made Robison senior very popular with all the other kids in the park, as their parents were much more risk averse.
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Southerly: My Life As a Palm Tree, in reply to David Haywood,
The action tales in Raising Cubby are too numerous to mention. John Elder Robison's special interest that developed into a business is restoring old British and European cars eg Land Rovers, Rolls Royces and Jags (he has a wonderful story of taking Chairman Mao's BMW with its blacked out windows to a car show and winning the major prize). In his restored white Rolls Royce he and his son drove to all the major railway hubs, nuclear plants etc (he is in Massachusetts) and were shown around and got to use the equipment, drive the trains etc, on the assumption they were VIPs. They bought a few shares in the businesses they wanted to visit and told the managers (honestly) they were the owners of the company.. He taught his son to drive very young and Cubby went on off road Land Rover competitions when he was about 10.
For them running wild is a very good thing to be encouraged.
I heard him speak at the recent autism conference in Australia. He said how his own expertise in electronics only developed because he destroyed stuff for many years in order to learn. That is a necessary preparation and one that many parents don't understand. He also said his son's interest in chemistry could have led either of two ways - drugs or explosives - so he was pleased it was the latter.
By the way his brother is the writer Augusten Burroughs (so he can write well too).
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I'm just reading one of the best memoirs about child rearing ever - it is by 'Aspergian' John Elder Robison and is his story of raising his own son. The title is: Raising Cubby: a father and son's adventures with Asperger's, trains, tractors and high explosives.
As a teenager the author provided the technology behind Kiss's flaming guitars. Their family life is not a quiet one. His now adult son is into chemistry in a big way and the chapter I am now reading is how Cubby made his own fireworks when he was a child.
(My copy is signed as I met the author last week - I am a fan!)