Posts by Kong

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  • Hard News: Food and drink,

    It's more grandiose than toast. I can make toast. Tomato sauce on it was OK, but if they served Vegemite I'd have been just as happy.

    Since Jul 2009 • 89 posts Report Reply

  • Speaker: Remembering the Chartists,

    Blimey am I the only dimwit who had to look up the b-word.

    You are not alone. I made the mistake of looking it up on Google and clicking the second link, rather than just going to the Wiki. I'll never get that image of Kiwiblog out of my mind.

    Adam Hunt's post is interesting but ... that was then and this is now. A lot has happened in politics since 1838. The radical dreams of the Chartists have been replaced by the reality of mass enfranchisement, both for men and women. Their position seems refreshingly quaint, the visions of people who didn't have 170 years of history to mull over and see exactly how their visions and theories panned out in reality.

    For starters they didn't see anywhere in there the problem of parties, which casts a massive shadow over almost everything they were talking about. It is a naive POV that anyone who feels like it can stand for parliament, and the payment of members will raise every barrier arm in his way. Politics is now a profession, and people who want to get into it must align themselves with a party, which has rules of its own to keep the plumbers out. At the very least, the party machine requires that you must either:

    1. Do the hard yards for a few decades, grinding for the party, or
    2. Be a celebrity, or
    3. Be very rich and generous

    Furthermore, the payment of members only protects members from destitution. Candidates get nothing. So the barrier was always still there - anyone trying to get into Parliament still needed independent support. This is still the case, although the party machine somewhat alleviates this, taking on a number of the costs itself, so long as you satisfy the aforesaid preconditions. Which of course makes the party machine stronger - only rich people could possibly show any hope of challenging a major party, people like Bob Jones. Independents can sometimes be elected, but they tend to be defectors who have already made the jump into political life, and established some wealth, a base of support, and a lot of contacts.

    I find it hard to get excited about English's house every bit as much as all of the minor personal attacks which seems to have come to characterize NZ politics. It's only interesting because you know that English would do the same to anyone else in the same situation, a bit of a sideshow watching politicians go at each other.

    At any level that means anything to public policy, the best we might be able to say is that he's a bit of a hypocrite. Like most people. It's always going to be easy to sting any right wing party with that, because they get public money, but officially stand against the idea of shelling out too much public money. I say officially carefully because in practice, the amount of money spent by either of the major parties varies so little that you have to watch closely to see the difference - it's not usually in the amount, but rather in who gets the money.

    Since Jul 2009 • 89 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Food and drink,

    @Giovanni. I never said I didn't like the "Pizza de Rosso" or whatever the name was (it's been over 15 years), it was a nice little snack and reasonably priced, a refreshing change for something purchased in Eurip. I just felt that the grandiose title of Pizza deserved something with a little bit more effort involved, but given that Italians have the best claim to owning the recipe, I had to just eat it. Much like a McDonalds Hamburger, it was the barest minimum that you could put into something and still call it that.

    Since Jul 2009 • 89 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Food and drink,

    I'm not the first person I've met who thinks the pizzas in Italy weren't all they're cracked up to be.

    My pizza was bought from a number of different vendors. Some served nice pizza, all the standard Italian styles that form a small corner of the menu of any pizzeria in NZ. But quite a lot had a big sign saying pizza, but served some lightly toasted bread with a smear of tomato sauce on it. There were quite a lot of locals eating the stuff so I was pretty sure it wasn't just a tourist trap. It tasted OK, quite nice even. But it was tomato sauce on toast, nothing more or less. I was with a foodie girl at the time who went nuts over the amazing authenticity of the stuff, and I just scratched my head and figured I had discovered proof that authentic could certainly be improved upon.

    Since Jul 2009 • 89 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Food and drink,

    Proposal for entertainment at next PAS gathering: put Giovanni in a room and force him to watch as someone prepares a Genuine Kiwi Pizza c.1980.

    Can't say I was much impressed by what was passed off as pizza in Rome. Perhaps that really is the genuine thing, but how proud can you really get about inventing toast with tomato sauce on it?

    Gimme one with some decent fillings, and yes that can actually include pineapple. If I'm not allowed to call it pizza, my tongue won't feel the loss.

    Since Jul 2009 • 89 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Deja Vu,

    I remember one primo case of where the independent youth benefit worked pretty well. A friend of a girlfriend when I was a kid was both brilliant, and a Jehovah's Witness. She excelled academically and aimed to go to med school. This was despite the huge hours she was required to spend by the family going door to door every night seeking converts. But eventually her parents informed her that at 16 she would be getting married, and there was no chance at all she'd be going to University. At that point she made it clear to them that she didn't really believe in the doctrines of their Church. She was kicked out of the house immediately, and told never to come back. She was given, quite literally, nothing but the clothes she wore, and cut off from all access to her family. The rest of the family were Witnesses and locked ranks. She stayed with us for a while, because she had nowhere else to go. Fortunately she was able to get a benefit (I don't know if it was called the same thing back then), and was able to slowly build a life of her own.

    I'm happy to say she got into med school, and is now practicing her specialization. I wouldn't go as far as saying that government support made it all possible - mostly it was her own hard work - but it sure did help (as did the kindness of friends). It avoided the complete squandering of a talent that a family would have been most happy to have let rot, homemaking in some arranged marriage.

    Since Jul 2009 • 89 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Deja Vu,

    Paul Holmes was a godsend to me, I was struggling to do homework at the time, having taken an interest in evening TV. But that was always a guaranteed half hour in which study seemed like less work than trying to get my head into Holme's space.

    His worst crime, in my eyes, was that he got all the good interviews, all the best subjects, and he muffed them so horribly, asking such lame, pointless questions, or even worse, using it as a grandstand to tell us what he thought. I think Winston Peters owes most of his career to Paul Holmes because he was so easily able to dominate him. I shudder to think what Muldoon would have got away with.

    Since Jul 2009 • 89 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Food and drink,

    I think there can be a deep enjoyment from making something yourself, even if it's much easier, and usually better (at least the first 100 times) to just buy it. But there's only so much time in the day. I make stuff myself all day at work, getting my deep enjoyment from that, doing something I'm both trained at and good at. After hours, I'll often do hobbies too, but making/preparing food just isn't one of them. A few basic recipes done well, a much larger repertoire made by my wife, and the rest from professionals. I don't think it's any less...anything... than for instance, someone who likes to cook a lot, but won't grow their own food (one of my hobbies). Gardening takes time, it's something I like to do, but I don't look down my nose at everyone in the fruit and veg section at the supermarket. In fact, I appreciate supermarket produce all the more because I know just how difficult it is to grow decent food.

    Since Jul 2009 • 89 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Food and drink,

    How do you gesticulate whilst using a keyboard? I know you can do it on the phone, with one hand, and in Italy I saw a guy hold the phone with his shoulder so he could really get into it with both hands, but I can't see it with a keyboard. Hands free kits must be really popular over there now. Not sure about webcams, I imagine that unless you had really high bandwidth Italians would look like they were hiding behind twin propellers.

    Since Jul 2009 • 89 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Food and drink,

    @Islander, you could probably argue that every cooked recipe in the entirety of Christendom was irrevocably mutated beyond recognition when electric and gas stoves and ovens came into fashion. Let alone the horror of microwaves. I even suspect a cup of water when I've boiled it in the microwave is not truly and properly boiled, but only pseudoboiled, and the tea it makes will be inferior.

    Since Jul 2009 • 89 posts Report Reply

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