Posts by Paul Williams
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Astle's batting explosion 3-4 years ago against England in Chch when we were hopelessly behind their total is probably the greatest forlorn chase I've ever seen.
Or Southee's nine sixes earlier this year.
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I missed the haka but I figured that it wouldn't be that interesting. Boy was I wrong. Following the showdown in Australia, the Welsh decided they weren't going to be stared down in their own stadium and in front of their fans. I fucking loved it!
That was brilliant. At last a non-Pacific nation works out a way to accept, respect and return the challenge. Sooo much better than singing Waltzing-bloody-Matilda.
Thought as much, but let's not dwell on rubbing it in but celebrating the historic win.
Oh I don't know, it depends on the code. They're still banging on at Punter about losing the Ashes in '05... despite him winning them back. Not that I mind however, he's an obnoxious git.
And then, after a superb game of rugby in which Dan Carter had played possibly the best match ever by an All Black first-five, Dave Dobbyn's 'Welcome Home' struck up over the PA as the stadium emptied. It was a really lovely movement.
I'd be a blubbering mess - that song gets me every time!
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We've rapidly become a surveillance nation in Sydney too though not to the same extent as the UK. The link you've provided is far from inaccurate, the legislative invasions into ordinary life are many, but they still seem well short of the catalogue you've provided.
That said, in Sydney earlier this year there was a push to have all the privately owned and operated CCTV cams registered and protocols agreed for their use by Police. The argument was naturally about increasing safety and there was surprisingly little push-back. But you can still buy a phone with next to no ID (pre-paid) and although Medicare cards are near universal, they don't come close to being a national ID. Incidentally, a while back I was involved in some initial work on developing a national unique student ID to track students progress between schools and various post-compulsory pathways as well as across state borders. One of the strongest objections was that it would result in effectively a Youth ID.
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The process may increase my typos...
I wonder what response I'll get it I explain my typos at work with detailed and salacious explanations of kink...?
The curious thing about the terrible balance of trade is that the very worst offender for this kind of the thing is also the richest nation on the planet. Which kind of suggests that maybe it's not the end of the world.
I might be misinterpreting this but, if you mean the US, their domestic economy is huge... therefore a much more effective buffer against a downturn in offshore demand. They also have a much more diverse trade profile, less dependent on commodities etc.
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Quick! Somebody chain that woman to her computer (but not in a kinky way).
What he said... perhaps if it gets kinky but, Ms Hart will at least write about it?
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I'm equally unqualified to offer too many views about what to do next, but I will ask why the PMs focus is on tourism? Tourism's high impact and low yield by comparison with other strategies for boosting GDP. It is, however, easier than improving exports. NZ has the low trade-intensity, soon to get lower in regional economies soften as they're predicted to do.
The focus on stimulating domestic demand makes sense in the short-term, but the domestic economy is small. Longer-term NZ has too boost trade... thankfully McCully's just the man right?
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I'm not sure why it's so. I think the Club-ness lends itself to fanaticism far more than regionally based teams can. Because a club really doesn't represent anything, it's much easier to become irrationally attached to it.
I'm not sure either and the play/movie The Club could be about almost any code really. Still, the fierce sense of local identity is another thing I like about Melbourne.
Having moved to Sydney in 2002 and being a Union fan, I initially followed the Waratahs. This was unsustainable. Firstly, I could never support them against an NZ team. Secondly, their supporters are a bunch of northern and eastern suburbs plutocrats who, to use the local parlance, gave me the shits.
I switched to AFL and the Swans in 2004 - we/they won the flag in 2005 and were narrowly beaten in '06. It's actually a damn good game to watch, particularly if you see it live. Plus, and this is particularly important now, it's a good family environment with far fewer boof-head supporters or mysogynist players than other codes (there are exceptions).
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I don't know the story DeepRed and perhaps there's no Melburnians in the PAS community, however it seems likely. If you were talented at a rugby code and living in Victoria, you'd almost certainly take up League not Union.
You may know that Victoria's the heartland of AFL and Victorian's are as passionate about their footy clubs as NZers are of their rugby teams; perhaps more so as footy teams have probably been more stable over the years.
As an aside I once met a cabbie in Melbourne who'd stopped watching footy in 1996 because his team, Fitzroy, moved to Brisbane to become the Lions - the fact that went on to win three flags in a row only further enraged him.
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and doing a job which more or less required me to operate on a default setting where I had to look for faults, and be pessimistic not pragmatic.
Rachel, having not practiced law I can't entirely relate but this gives some insight. I think any work can become boring if its repetitive enough.
I find the benefit of a legal training in my work, policy, in the analytical frameworks that help identify the various forces, legitimate and otherwise, at play. Possibly the best outcome of my legal training is knowing when I need legal advice - all too often policy presumes the historical authority - and when strict legal authority won't be nearly enough.
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like it was the best thing that ever happened to them. I always saw a major point of higher education was to challenge established value systems in your own mind.
I'd not have said it taught you one approach per se, in fact, it teaches different approaches and this, IMO, is the real benefit. This is particularly the case with jurisprudence which, as a student of philosophy, you'll probably be familiar.
Consistent with Mr Slack's list, I'd add it challenged some pretty fundamental assumptions about civil society; though it may seem a banal example, when taught Land Law, I (and I'm sure everyone else) was struck by the benefits a colonial power realised by implementing a Torrens system for land management.