Posts by Tom Semmens
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Maybe it will now be possible to watch the evening news again (only just, though) without having to walk away for 10 minutes while the latest updates from this sad trial are shown.
First it was the Bain retrial. Then the Weatherson trial. Don't worry - the cameras are already being set up in some new courtroom as we speak, to bring the unspeakable details of some degenerate crime into your living room at 6pm as we speak. Again and again.
Talk about the Orwellian jackboot stamping on your face forever.
The media are as complicit in the smearing of Sophie Elliot's name as Clayton Weatherston. they didn't have to report in pornographic detail the horrors inflicted on her. no one made TVNZ or TV3 shows hours of her killer denouncing his victim on primetime TV. The TV coverage has been a disgrace, and TV News in this country has completely lost it's moral compass.
"The people need to see justice being done" said the media.
"We will exercise this new privilege responsibly" said the media.
"We will show restraint and only show what is in the public interest" promised the media.
Well, the jury is in on the media as well. They lack the maturity, ethics and sense of responibility they were entrusted with when they were granted this privilege.
Sian Elias, for God's sake order those cameras out of our courtrooms, and save the people from the tender ministrations of the immoral ghouls of "news" programming in this country.
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Sacha - I suspect Treasuries woeful record on forcating anything is a direct result of their being little more than the last outpost of the Chicago School.
Idiot/Savant - you CAN'T increase productivity in the health sector by getting to work harder or longer. I have seen with my own eyes the perpetual motion machines that are the modern health workers in our hospitals. There is no more they can give in terms of labour. All they can do is do whaat they do for less money, which seems to be Bill English's plan.
But I think if Mr. English thinks he can impose his ideas of productivity by diktat onto our nurses on doctors, he is in for a very rude surprise. The very global market he is a slavish believer in will see them flocking offshore. Those that are left will simply go on strike. And I personally wouldn't want to be in a government that took on the Mother and apple pie sector that is nursing.
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Anyone who has spent time in a public hospital as I have recently and observed the workloads on nurses and doctors would find the sort of comments we've heard recently from Bill English on public sector productivity risable, comical and insulting all at once.
That a man who himself is a public servant of such long experience can be so willfully ignorant of the facts on the ground is an indictment of him, personally.
There is a close correlation between high industrial technology and productivity/competitiveness. The top five countries for robot density - as measured by the number of industrial robots per 10,000 manufacturing workers - are:
1. Japan
2. Singapore
3. South Korea
4. Germany
5. SwedenI doubt though that Dr Brash will suggest anything to improve our robot density, since his concept of increased productivity is the "flexibility" to work longer for less.
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The death blow to the British industry - once the workshop of the world - occured when they returned to the gold standard and created an over-valued currency that destroyed what competitiveness was left in the British economy.
Quite why this lesson seems to elude New Zealand, where our economy has suffered a two decade long de-industrialisation to satisfy the whims of what is now a discredited and fraudelent financial - sector escapes me.
In anther thread here on PA everyone ra-ra'd on about how we need fresh ideas and fresh thinking. But all the fresh enthusiasm and all the entrepreneurs with optimism and fresh thinking will simply be crushed - or bugger off to Aussie - if we continue with the moneterist policies of Don Brash.
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I don't think the Springboks are all that. Anyone of the Southern Hemisphere teams would have easily beaten the Lions. British rugby is poor and looking good against even the Lions isn't that hard.
The Bok's worked their "A" team to a frenzied peak for the first two tests and the Lion's series showed that the Springboks have got zero depth on the bench. De Villiers is not a good coach, and he is up against to two REALLY good coaches in Henry and Deans. Remember also that the Bull's players peaked when won the Super 14. A lot of them will be carrying injuries/running on empty by the tri-series. I suspect we'll see a lot of form drop off and then their lack of depth will see them embarassed.
Despite all the cocky Aussie hype, they are not as good as they - or us - think they are. They are only strong in a few positions and their stars are all getting old. They've got a lot of "pick and hope" still going on in selection. One or two injuries and/or a bit of pressure and they fall apart. Saturday showed us that. We've allowed our worship of Deans to blind us to the glaring deficiencies in Australian rugby. Henry has now out thought & out coached Deans for at least the start of a second season - in particular, Deans poor use of the bench compared to the AB's coaches was striking.
The All Blacks themselves are not a vintage unit, but at last some new talent seems to be emerging. Owen Franks and Issac Ross look real prospects and if Aaron Cruden comes on in the Air NZ Cup he'll go the Europe at the end of the year, and by the look of things he is the best prospect for ages.
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Water ferries are incredibly Green compared to buses or even trains, because they use the sea as a road and can use diesel-electric drive really efficiently as they don't have to stop and start like land vehicles, they just throttle up and slow down to and from the wharf.
Heck, I even had a look at the weather patterns and the prevailing west south-west winds in New Zealand means you'd almost never suffer weather cancellations on the East Coast services.
Gondolas around the city bays would rock!!
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Arrrgh... One of my soap box rants when I've had a few is my vast plan for a far, far cheaper public transport system based on the Waitemata and Manakau harbours... If we built the canal along PORTAGE ROAD and through the CANAL RESERVE then you could in theory travel from Hatfield's Beach all the way to Papkura (via the airport!) in a ferry. Look at a map! With a bit of dredging, where wouldn't be within range of a scenic and convenient Vaporetto?
lets face, building a wharf and using the free road nature has provided with the sea is way way cheaper per mile than the squillions road cost to build in Auckland...
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I think we need to have an honest discussion around that issue Sacha.
We've never had an honest discussion around numbers or preferred origin of migrants. I suspect that if you asked most New Zealanders are more than happy with migration from the white Anglosphere. If that is the case, we need to discuss that. Because if that is what the majority want, then so be it.
We've never talked about if we want a melting pot, diversity or all out assimilation. Far to much of the debate is driven by the chattering classes who are largley shielded from the consequences of their actions.
For example, i think it is prudent to discuss how much - if any - Muslim migration we want here BEFORE we have a huge Muslim minority, not after. We need to have a national discussion about what values and assumptions we want to shape out immigration policy. And just because some people might find that debate uncomfortable or distateful doesn't mean we don't need to have it.
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I would dispute, however, that NZers didn't travel until recently.
I am not sure about this, I wonder if anyone has done any real research. I have a suspicion that the "traditional" Kiwi OE is a product of the air travel revolution from the seventies on and relates more to baby boomers than their parents who if they did go ovcerseas it would have been only so they could say a not so friendly hello to the minions of Herr Hitler.
Certainly, when I think of my parents and their extended network of friends I can' think of any of them that travelled internationally purely for recreation in their youth in the 1950s.
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Canada has the highest per capita net immigration rate in the world and still manages to be quite admirable.
Except of course for that fact that Canada is much of a country at all anymore. it isn't much of anything really, it is more an historic accident that sort of exists because political inertia is easier than falling apart.
I specifically quoted the Scandinavian countries because those are the nations who comprehensive social security structures we most admire. Immigration to Norway might not be causing problems but they have also got stupid amounts of petro-dollars as well. When there is plenty of money to go around no one minds anything to much. We'll have to see how things pan out when money gets tight for our Viking friends.
One of the things I liked most about the years I lived in London was the diversity of faces and voices (I don't think that's unconnected to Britain's continued cultural vitality). It was actually a relief to return to New Zealand and find our cultural homgenity breaking up.
Except that a lot of the English loath the mass immigration, particularly the working class. You often here that they now feel strangers in their own land. I don't think we should repeat the mistakes of the Anglo-Canadians and the English and allow excessive immigration to wrest control of our destiny from ourselves. If you want to know how that is going to feel if we let it happen, just ask a Maori.