Posts by Russell Brown
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I’ve had two credit card whoopsies while travelling.
One was when I went to New York for Macworld Expo and the hotel blocked out the cost of my stay (after saying they wouldn’t do that, because I wasn’t the payer) and I suddenly started getting declined. I called Westpac in NZ, who were great (it was a weekday) and after a few questions instantly gave me a couple of thousand temporary credit.
The other one was stupidly leaving my card in an ATM in Saigon and not realising till the morning. After not having much luck on the internet, and there being no Visa service office in Vietnam, I somehow wound up calling Visa’s regional service centre in Australia, who were awesome. They wired through some cash that day (exciting motorbike-taxi ride to get it) and there was a new generic-Visa card waiting for me two days later in Singapore.
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Hard News: Media Take: The Panama Papers, in reply to nzlemming,
Nicky Hager has been part of the investigation
Ah. I totally missed that.
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Hard News: Music: In music's own spaces, in reply to Joanna,
yes
Thanks.
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Peter McLennan's national Record Store day roundup.
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Hard News: Labour's medical cannabis…, in reply to BenWilson,
Seems only fair, since there are drugs for the pathologically flaccid, and they’re not for any other purpose than fun. But since that’s a problem that mostly affects old men, it’s no wonder that’s legal. They’re allowed their fun, at personal risk, and that risk is hardly insubstantial considering the frailty of the people who are often using it.
This has struck me too. It's the only recreational drug prescribed as such by your doctor. Well, actually, now you can just wander into a pharmacy and have a potentially embarrassing conversation with the chemist and get it.
Death is very rare, but the risks are more significant if the, er, patient has atherosclerosis.
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Hard News: Labour's medical cannabis…, in reply to andin,
but anyhoo
That study is very interesting.
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Hard News: Media Take: The Panama Papers, in reply to daleaway,
If Deborah Russell is not New Zealand’s Minister of Finance in waiting, I’ll scoff my chapeau on toast with cheese sauce.
She needs to get elected as an MP first, but yeah, she's got the goods.
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Yeah. Not helping. Thanks for the heads-up Ian.
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Hard News: Labour's medical cannabis…, in reply to BenWilson,
Rate from 1-5 (1 = totally ineffective, 5 = very effective)
"Helped me write that song"
This was my argument when Peter Dunne was still a drug prohibitionist but characterising the gambling industry levy as an "envy tax". How many awesome records did pokies help the Beatles make?
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And yet more, from Newshub:
Owner Maureen Gordon says the support has been "very flattering", but it's all very much ado about nothing.
"You never say never, because some things could change direction and you're put in that position," she told Newshub. "But we're not willingly going out there and trying to sell the Kings Arms -- at all."
In fact she's currently overseeing upgrades to the Kings Arms' sports bar, which wouldn't happen if there were plans to knock the whole thing down.
So how did the site end up being accepted as a special housing area?
Ms Gordon says she recently became aware the deadline for registering addresses was approaching, and wanted to future-proof the location in the event the Kings Arms does shut its doors one day.
"There's always agents knocking on the door, they're always scouting around. The cranes are getting closer all the time. They made me aware of the fact that the council were changing things and I should get my application in."
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