Posts by Tom Semmens
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
The thing is Judy I don't think the hissers were card carrying church goers - just "mainstream" New Zealanders who been sold a crock - but to be sold something you have to first want to buy it, and the deep arrogance of a lot of our middle class over this issue has been disturbing to see.
-
There is no doubt that the Section 59 rtepeal is widely disliked, and the lies of the likes of Family First have attained the status of received truth. I got hissed at recently by a group of strangers listening in when I questioned a girl gathering signatures for this referendum in the domain about the honesty of the question and the issues raised.
Call me a PC social engineer, but the more I hear the appalling deeply entrenched attitudes towards child violence from large numbers of "decent, middle class" people in this country, and the more I hear people in deep deep denial about the child violence endemic in our society, the more convinced I am that we've made a revolutionary change for the better.
-
When it comes to the listener, I suppose it starts a fire better than North & South, which is what it seems to be trying to be. Despite its pryotechnically superior qualities, I've stopped buying it anyway. You can read Wide Area News from the shelf in Whitcoulls.
I think Metro might be picking up again though.
-
Auckland is indeed far, far more beautifully located than Sydney, Sydney's got a harbour and either you are in it... or you are out of it, bobbing about in the huge swells of the Tasman sea. Sure, Sydney has the Opera house but my suspicion that the Opera House was an abberation in a land of brash philistines have been seemingly confirmed by those ugly ronson-like apartments they've whacked up just behind them. Eating in Auckland is uneven, but - for example - the Kingsland eating strip is very good (I love Bouchon, I love Canton, I adore Mekong Nuea...) and I think the Albert Street food court is smashing. I suppose you do have to know where to go.
Most Auckland businesses in fact close at 6.00pm (not 5.30pm), which means you can get there before they close if you are organised. Personally, I don't mind my fellow New Zealanders being able to get home in time from work to do stuff like, you know, enjoy the magnificent harbour or go for a walk or have a BBQ with friends. I suppose if you doesn't mind having a serving class of second class citizens like (say) Hispanics or if you don't mind having a third world economy where its trade or starve then I suppose it is annoying to think you can't buy a brushed cotton shirt at 6.30pm on a Wednesday. But to me, if early closing is one of the last echoes of our glorious pre-1984 egalitarian society then I don't mind in the slightest.
My friends are all reasonably well adjusted, probably more open-minded and emprical in their approach to their fellow human beings than any other society I've lived in. As for a booze, well you can hardly demand 24x7 access to everything then complain when people start drinking more. At the end of the day New Zealand is still a predominantly Anglo-Saxon culture, and the Anglo-Saxon types are not widley remarked on for their civilised approach to liquor.
Much of what he has to say has some element of truth; But like a lot of ex-pat comments it seems to betray a rose-tinted view of where they are, and a sort of cultural cringe towards their homeland that leads them to complain about it isn't, rather than loving what it is.
-
My parents got a house by cashing up their child benefit as the deposit and getting a State Advances loan at 3% for 30 years. They never looked back from that. I know its a different thing, but a shared equity scheme is trying to achieve a similar outcome. A lot of the "drive up the price" stuff from the Kiwiblog right is a simplistic application of cartoon economics, which is par for the course.
Oh and I hear on the Natrad panel the ever reliable Joanne Black is already wailing about the effect the hoi polloi moving into her street might have on her property values.
-
With the death of Sir Edmund Hillary and all the brouhaha on the best way to honour his memory and now all this talk of youth & education, I have been reminded of one of my huge personal bugbears - its a national disgrace that not one of our major educational institutions is named after C.E. Beeby. What Hillary was to the virile in our national character, C.E. Beeby was to our intellectual.
-
At least none of you had to put up with listening to Ian Wishart blather on on Jim Mora's terrible panel today. Apparently young men are going to positively embrace these boot camps, as the feminazi's have stripped them of an outlet for their nascent manhood. Or something.
Anyway, Graheme Dingle style outdoor "training"? I can just see Garth McVicar firing up his word processor now - "Violent youth criminals are being sent on outdoor holiday camps that decent hard working kiwi's can't afford for their own teens..."
-
I've always thought that if you are going to make anything compulsory for youth, it should be sport while they are at school.
Back in MY day sport WAS practically compulsory, insofar as not playing rugby was an opt-out process rather than an opt in. I was shocked to discover not so long ago that the whole school rugby team competition thing was only a shadow of its former glory - and not just rugger, all sports at school. Appalling.
And compulsory school sport would (literally) reduce some of the obesity problems in kids today as well.
-
Boot Camps for disadvantaged youth? I can see an opening for Tama Iti...
-
After hearing the utterly charming interview with the delightful Saoirse Ronan on NatRad on the occasion of her academy award nomination I got to thinking that the Lovely Bones will be the making or breaking of Jackson's reputation as a director of genius. The observation that a nation of four million at the uttermost end of the earth is a bit insular and provincial is hardly lightning bolt of insight. Anyhow, the number Steve Braunias did on Mr. Fallowell in the Listener ought to be the QED that we are not quite a howling wasteland intellectually.
Oh and if John Key utters the words "voucher" and "education" togetherin the same sentence today it will be mana from heaven for Labour supporters.