Posts by WH
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There's a guy called Robert Tchenguiz who was once reported to own 1% of the entire UK housing stock. I think that is fucking ridiculous, but who knows - maybe he just has a spiritual connection to the land.
Let's be honest with ourselves about this. Residential property investment is based on the transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich and from the young to the old, to say nothing of the transaction costs captured by banks and real estate agents.
These urbane discussions of LAQCs and CGT somehow always end up as a prelude to sweet fuck all. You people are nothing if not Wonga in disguise.
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It's important to separate the question of whether a particular piece of legislation has an unfairly discriminatory effect from the constitutional issues arising from the manner in which such legislation is enacted.
Parliamentary sovereignty will generally apply to the former, in that the government may lawfully pass legislation that has the effect of reversing a judicial finding that a particular policy is unfairly discriminatory. The theory goes that the government should not necessarily be taken to be legalising unfair discrimination in doing this (although you might personally think that it is), rather it is that Parliament has the final say on what constitutes unfair discrimination.
The balance of our unwritten constitution applies to the latter, such that any particular method of reversing a judicial decision might well be improper. The use of urgency, for instance, would be a rather transparent attempt to avoid full democratic oversight.
This power structure means that a lot the real work in changing society falls to what someone once called "community organisers".
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That TVNZ backgrounder is fantastic. The woman who mowed her own lawns and did her own plumbing glowed, even in black and white. What a beautiful image of New Zealand. The broader perspective of the interviews with the political journalists really contrasts with the artificial intensity of the 45 seconds they get on the nightly news. Sometimes history feels like a trip to the top of Mount Eden with a particularly yummy salmon and cream cheese bagel and a good coffee, it reminds you of the importance and the breadth of the goals of the progressive project.
Although I never really heard much about Norman Kirk growing up - maybe it was the upheaval of the twenty years that followed - he was always spoken about with respect in my parent's household. I only recently learned that Kirk sent the Canterbury and the Otago to Mururoa to protest nuclear testing. It seems so in keeping with the better version of the national character, a slightly oblivious but over-ridingly decent thing to do. I can't help a wee chuckle when I think what the French and Americans must have made of it. I suppose they made their position clear when they bombed ships in our ports and broke up ANZUS.
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Moa is exploiting a perception of gender polarisation that I am not sure really exists. Men may share the occasional joke at women's expense, but I remember reading the Mere Male section of your "New Idea" magazine. And we have to put up with those ads where the idiot man can't wash his car/use the internet/tie his shoes. I try not to take them personally.*
*Actually don't really give a shit.
On the other hand. If some arsehole used my sister as an ashtray he'd be buying a ticket to a world of hurt. And he tried it with my daughter or my mother there might be not be anywhere safe for him to hide. I am not entirely kidding.
I think that would go for a lot of men.
There's an increasing awareness of the injustice of inequality, even if the endless arguments about the appropriate retirement age of female broadcastera don't make it something many people want to talk about very often.
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Great column Russell. When I was in New Zealand, I tended to watch Close Up if I was lucky enough to be home by seven. I always liked Mark Sainsbury's style - he's somehow the Grant Nisbett of current affairs - but increasingly my memories of John Campbell are of a very decent bloke fighting the good fight. After the details of the night's stories fade maybe that is what really reaches people. Maaarvelous.
And yet giving people a voice, allowing their opinions and feelings to be heard, is absolutely and unequivocally a key role of the fourth estate and an important part of strong journalism.
Good stuff John. I wouldn't have suggested that we subsidise coal either.
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There's a tension between our generous myths of equality and the fact that we spend our lives competing with each other for wealth and status.
At their best, satire and parody are levelling forces, reminders of essential truths behind economic and social hierarchies. They can be directed towards politics, at power imbalances in the workplace, or pretensions of highmindedness.
But they can also be used to put someone in their place, to re-assert that some of us are more important than others. There's an extent to which we satirise ourselves, willingly blind to the incongruencies of our own lives and all too willing to highlight the shortcomings of others. It's a pattern you see played out from schoolyard bullying to awkward chats around the water cooler. The truth is that we don't have an equal society because most of us don't actually want one.
Least endearing of all is the appropriation of personal and cultural virtue by naked social ambition. So much of what was once considered high culture has been tarnished by its association with the grasping and upwardly mobile; the art collections amassed by speculators, David Koch's patronage of the theatre and the opera. The sense that these things are not mere pasttimes but a way of communicating status, serving the same function as a 10 year old's sneer about the poor kid's hand me down jeans.
Okay. No more time for editing - going to watch the rugby at the Walkie with the Saffas.
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Hard News: Irony Deficient, in reply to Hilary Stace,
I think you have to distinguish observations about society as it is from cruelty that intentionally reinforces social hierarchy. Your definition would rule out everyone from Eddie Murphy to Frankie Boyle.
De gustibus.
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I recently finished Arrested Development. It's beautiful, original and completely brilliant, and because it is such a big part of the best-comedy-ever? conversation they are releasing new episodes in 2013. You should watch it.
Now I am watching season one of Breaking Bad and something called Winnebago Man.
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I enjoyed reading this. I was thinking about how your writing has evolved since I first started reading Hard News a decade ago.
There’s something insidious about the way John Hartevelt uses language. He writes without irony of his “balanced approach”, of usefulness and fairness, he hints at his striving to do battle with the complexity of the issues. His words writhe in the light as they lurch incoherently towards the shadows of rhetorical safety,
It may well hurt a school to be judged solely on its National Standards results, but we doubt parents who care about their child’s education would be that naive.
this man is a charlatan and a sophist and his writing is beneath contempt.
You once called Michael Laws a c**t, and maybe that is true, but we should prefer the vagina that speaks its mind to the superficially charming snake that positions its ambition behind soothing tones and false moderation. I merely disapprove of Hartevelt’s shitty compromise with Mammon, but his pretence of public spirit is truly repulsive.
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The US is running a deficit because it is spending more than it earns.
Jon Stewart argued that preferential tax rates on investment income are a form of cross-subsidy as against wage and salary earners. I think that basically holds up.
We could just as easily claim that the failure to raise taxes on poor people is causing it. There is no reason to look at the status quo ante as against any other taxing system.
I think we can tell meaningful causal stories about the path of the US deficit. It's important to separate the fiscal effect of actual policies (such as Bush's tax cuts) from choices that could have been made but were not.
It's actually quite hard not to compare policies against the status quo when you're faced with the choice of what to vote for.