Posts by Tom Semmens
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"...just saw tv one quote that bigot quote ("New Zealand will regret this decision be letting this parasite into our country...") in today's post.
During the report, the quote which was onscreen. Next to that they had a graphic of the website it was from. Since they had found the quote from your blog, they had a nice graphic of your webblog associated with that lovely quote mentioned above..."
I think TVNZ were being spiteful bitches!! -
"...One thing that bothers me about the Herald commentators more generally is their inability to distinguish between the Parliament, the Government, and the Labour Party..."
It always astonishes me that people who are unable to grasp such simple concepts as the separation of government or how MMP actually works seem able to white whole essays explaining the (to me, cos I very very seldom gamble) complexities of lotto.
Actually I never regarded lotto as complex, I've looked at the odds and thats I need to know about it. -
The issue for me with the whole sorry Zaoui affair was never about his innocence or guilt, it was about the process used to determine that innocence or guilt. At base, l am afraid I have zero faith in the decision making of our "meat pie and penthouse" SIS. Their apparent reliance on google and whatever foreign intelligence services choose to tell them deepened my suspicions that the SIS is basically an incompetent organisation in lockstep with people who I don't really like alot, and they use secrecy mainly as a screen for their incompetence. The bottom line is I don't trust the SIS to exercise their authority competently.
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I find 6pm is the ideal time to cook dinner...
I grew up with dinner served 5pm sharp. I still secretly really like to eat at 5pm, all this 7-8pm high falutin' city sophistication eating times is fun and all, but my Mum taught me you eat your breakfast at 7am, lunch at 12pm and dinner at 5pm sharp with a cup of tea and a piece of fruit cake at 8.30pm.
Anything else is louche decadence.
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"Possibly, but I still think that it's possible for us to get carried away with the idea that our own little bubble of tech-savvy early adopters is representative."
Or more to the point, we are already on one side of the digital divide, regular readers of the Guardian online whilst far to many of our fellow citizens are stuck with free to air, which is increasingly the equivalent of a community newspaper in a world of subscription magazines. I
Actually I play a variety of sports and numerous extra-curricular interests that keep me out of the house five nights out of any given seven; Thats why I want my content to be there when I am enjoying the luxury of a night in. As a person who actually does get out of the house and who likes to think of himself as tech savvy I suppose I am double disqualified to be regarded as representative, but dammit us inner city dwellers with fabulous lifestyles deserve to be catered to as much as any 'burbite!
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First of all, anything half decent on free to air is now so riddled with ads that it is unwatchable, or on at a ludicrous time when I am far better employed doing something else like sleeping or carousing.
Now I have to choice of buying the DVD or downloading the torrent I watch what I want when I want to and ad free.
Under Ralston's watch TVNZ threw away their priceless advantage of "mini-BBC" gravitas and authority and deliberately decided their news was just another vehicle for delivering viewers to advertisers and to market their "reality" shows.
Once they threw away their decades of authority as the "station of record" it became a level playing field with TV3 as both slugged it out to deliver Woman's Day at 6pm.
I've been horrified by news coverage of APEC. Guyon Espiner's school boy trick of trying to trap Winston peters into contradicting Phil Goff was cheap and insulting to the audience, and it was even cheaper to show it, and it was my last straw in relying on TVNZ for any sensible coverage of that major event. The most interesting news story in the past week was the part of TV3's RWC coverage where they visited that slum suburb.
Since the news & current affairs divisions of both channels have now so completely lost their credibility I've shifted a lot of my news gathering to my (expensive) subscription to Atlantic Monthly (its my new Listener, can't someone launch a syndicated "Pacific Monthly??), radio & the internet. I listen to more radio whilst browsing the web than I do watching TV. Its a pity the free to air stations have gone so down market, because the boom in independent documentary making for cinema seems to show they public still has a thirst for good news & current affairs.
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Well its only round one, but given the way the All Blacks, Wallabies and Springboks all slaughtered their second (is Italy second tier or first tier these days?) and third tier opponents and looking at how the European teams struggled to subdue lively largely amateur opponents it is looking very ominous for the Northern hemisphere.
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"...Nuclear energy won't become publicly acceptable until nuclear fusion becomes viable, and that's a long way off. Fusion solves most of the issues with current fission-based plants, especially nuke waste..."
U.S. Spening on fusion research in 2007: about 320 million. Cost of Iraq war so far? Around half a trillion, and expected to be around two trillion by the time all the dust has settled. Imagine if the United States had embarked on a two decade, two trillion dollar, program to transform their economy with sub critical reactors, green renewables, and the infrastructure swop out required to switch from a fossil fuel to hydrogen fuelled economy.
What a waste of money Iraq is, and what a wasted opportunity for the United States.
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When I am sitting in my world cup Fuhrer bunker (AKA my lounge) I have one dark cloud of paranoia flitting across the otherwise azure sky of my complacency at an assured All Black win.
1/ Laporte has powerful friends in the French government.
2/ Our innocent Anglo-Saxon heritage means we can only begin to guess at what sort of base perfidies those Gallic snail munchers are capable of stooping to.
3/ Laporte is making a BIG deal about drug testing.
SO I suspect (but only in my paranoid moments, understand) the Frogs will be on the juice, with the dastardly swine of the DGSE ensuring not only is this not detected, but the suspect samples are re-labelled with All Black names.
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I'm of a view that anyone who tries as hard as people like Zoui and this dude to stay here they must really want to. For God's sake, its not like we are so special that we want to be sealing ourselves off from the world a la the USA or Australia, so we can fearfully peer through the venetian blinds at the border looking for Al Qaeda's football on the lawn all the bloody time.
Surely the easiest solution is to have a mechanism where people who really want to stay but don't qualify are made to sign a seven year agreement to a) stay out of all trouble with the law and b) are not allowed access to welfare like the dole for the seven years, at the end of which they get automatic residency. To me people with that sort of energy and persistence are the exactly the "huddled masses" we need in N.Z. At least Ali Panah seems to appreciate the place, which is more than can be said for many of the born-here emigrants who have left the country to become little more than economic mercenaries.
And besides, after a 53 day hunger strike Mr. Panah would have no difficulty finding work with any number of modelling agencies as a nutritional advisor.