Posts by Lilith __
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Up Front: So Farewell Then, UCSA, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Toilets also by the LCR and in the Ballroom. Just none RDU-adjacent.
The foyer toilets also had showers, IIRC.
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Maybe one of the reasons I loved the UCSA building was because University Brutalism was already so familiar...
(Shout-out to Stephen and Isabel and other 80s teens xx)
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I loved the UCSA building. I know, Brutalist and everything. It reminded me of a platform-and-ladders game. But full of exciting, unexpected spaces where the students were in charge.
I remember studying in the Library and coming to retrieve my boyfriend from Time Out when I was done. The first time I was invited into the Women’s Room, and how conspiratorial and revolutionary it felt. Meeting (one of my) BFFs for the first time in the LCR. Campus gossip, and watching who was having lunch with whom. Debating whether or not to go to certain lectures while having a lovely time with friends. The UCR on Friday nights, with Canterbury Draught $3 jugs and lots of laughing and flirting. How the building was smoke-free except when the bars were open. The fug of stale smoke and spilled beer on a Monday morning. Snoozing on the very comfy chairs. Getting Canta hot off the press. Frantically writing replies to the letters column in the 45min or so until the press closed for the following week’s issue. Occasionally being a hipster and meeting friends in the Shelley (where no one ever met, because it was basically a corridor). Lunchtime Exec meetings in the amphitheatre where most of the students weren’t aware they were in a meeting but who could sometimes be persuaded to vote on things. Student Health with it’s poky little rooms and all the secrets they could tell. Counting votes for the Student Exec late at night. Orientation when it was still called that. Headless Chickens, 3Ds, JPS Experience, Jay Clarkson. Not being a part of the Canta set, or the RDU set, or the Musoc set, or the Student Exec, but some of my best friends, etc…
Oh, and sitting at a table in the foyer selling tickets to a Ball, while trying not very successfully to read Foucault’s History of Sexuality. Great times.
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Hard News: About Chris Brown, in reply to Russell Brown,
said it was important Brown was allowed to perform in New Zealand
I'd challenge anyone to explain why it's "important".
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Brilliantly-written post, Barnaby, thank you. You make sense of a mass of detail that most of the country doesn't know.
I'm so sad for Chch and so angry with the government which seems hell-bent on wrecking what remains of the city and sabotaging the opportunity to make it an amazing place.
I'm also angry at the Opposition. You put it so well:
The Opposition is there not just to sit and wait till they get power again,. Its job is to illustrate competence and improve the performance of the government. This is particularly the role in times of crises and emergency. Sometimes this means supporting the government when you’d rather not, and other times this means challenging them strongly to improve. Sometimes the government needs this challenge to push back against forces within their own special interest groups.
I worry that in the difficult task of getting elected our Opposition parties have prioritised popularity over their job as being an effective Opposition. The fallacy of this is twofold. In the first instance they risk spending their precious time and energy chasing false idols instead of getting into the job of Opposition, of making the government perform better through critique and pressure. Secondly, when they have been largely absent from the difficult battles of the previous years between election seasons, it is little wonder that the struggling, stressed, and frustrated populace does not turn to the Opposition at election time.
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Hard News: The positive option of Red Peak, in reply to Shaun Lott,
Just because Red Peak is better than the panel options doesn’t make it a good or even a very well considered choice. That bar was pretty low. None of the options represent New Zealand to me or make a convincing attempt to carry the combination of European (mainly British) and Maori heritage forward. So I guess this makes no difference to me: I’m all for the status quo until such time as we consider this issue properly, and for a better reason than to prop up a third term government that is running out of steam.
This.
And for anyone who hasn’t seen it, Carol Green’s longlist gives a glimpse of some of the brilliant flag options that hit the cutting room floor.
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Thank you, Catherine. Access to education is such a vital part of equality.
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his support for any bill must be matched with a promise to stop criticising him and his process.
Can I just say WTF?
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The TL:DR “this is a weighty matter and a month isn’t that long.”
A very disappointing response. Doesn’t present any reason for the interim ban. I get that they want to make the right choice, but they don’t justify how it would hurt the public to read the book in the meantime. -
Hard News: Not yet standing upright, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
too late for my ‘Five Eyelets flag’ to fly
You might like this one, too.
installed the guerilla-style artwork around the large telephone pole on Takapuna Beach that marks the landing point of the Southern Cross Cable, which carries most of New Zealand’s internet data to and from the United States and Australia.