Posts by Paul Campbell
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Seems every authoritarian self enlightenment group has schismed from scientology either directly or indirectly from some other (I'm thinking of EST and it's various descendants)
Basically scientology sucks people in by teaching them to be a bit selfish and to stand up for themselves - to everyone else it looks like they've become assholes - having lost their friends there's this new bunch of people down at the church who are just so nice to them . and so it goes .... the various self empowerment cults have mostly stolen this bit from scientology (but not the space alien and past lives stuff) which leaves them in competition for members and scientology pissed off with them
(disclaimer: I've never been part of scientology or any of these cults - but I was involved in the early Scientology vs The Net wars - on the net side and have talked to a bunch of people damaged by them)
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Oh dear Mr Lhaws is going to be a bit upset .....
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I suspect 'dull' here means 'has not enough riots' - what can you do? you're damned if you do and damned if you don't
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Of those fleets .... you know there are some Tangata Whenua who did the whole fleet thing too .... way earlier .... and without the convict stain
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which first four fleets?
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Yes and just imagine the cries of agony if Otago's students and lecturers packed up and moved elsewhere ....
Dunedin does well by it's University (and vice versa) - in many cases it's a matter of "you don't know how lucky you are mate ...."
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As I understand it those first two fines were for people who weren't actually at Castle St - they'd just breached the liquor ban ..... they probably pleaded out to get the whole thing out of the way - kids who want to get diversion etc are going to take a different tack, hire lawyers etc etc which will take months and months
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really most of them are first time offenders and they ought to be treated as other first time offenders - no special perks either way ....
The problem isn't "they never learn" ... because they're probably bright smart people, when they sober up .... it's that they don;t teach the next generation (in this case a generation is a year or two) what not to do ....
A lot of life's lessons are learned by screwing up and suffering the consequences ... especially as a teenager - they have to make mistakes and bang up against the world a bit to figure out where the rough bits are - the trick is to let them do this without getting arrested (or shot, or pregnant or with a habit, ....)
As a parent of teenagers I know it's hard - they wont listen to you (they actually mostly do, it just takes a shock or two sometimes for that message to stick).
We moved back to NZ (Dunedin even) because we felt it IS a safer place to be a teenager and screw up a little - no one's going to shoot you in a street brawl, you can run away etc etc. We wanted somewhere we could feel comfortable giving them more independence - and mostly we're very happy we did.
Probably the one thing we didn't count on was the lower drinking age (my son has been legal most of his 7th form year) and I think it does factor into this a lot - the only let kids under 20 buy booze to consume in pubs idea would go a long way to quell this sort of issue and give the kids a set of 'training wheels' to get them started - it would also make alcohol a lot less available thigh school kids
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yeah what Kyle said ... sure there are some kids with more money than sense ... if they had sense to go with the money they wouldn't be living in a cold flat on Castle St.
Most students are living financially on the edge, they've just left home and high school and are learning financial coping skills the hard way.
Throwing bottles at the police is just plain stupid .... then again learning to not be around, or in the way, when a riot occurs is probably a life skill worth learning.
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Leopold: actually there's probably more money to be made hitting the council up for protection money "for every $100 you give me I'll ship a couch to Chch and sell it to students there"