Posts by WH
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Even in a courtroom, the Herald calls attention to everything that is frivolous. It's like the Herald is somehow attending a funeral, loudly intruding on the grief with comments about all the pretty flowers. When my amorous neighbours are asleep, what keeps me awake at night is the sound of the Herald ruining our national culture. There is also a family of magpies that is very loud. I've taken my concerns to Leveson - I've had no response so far, but I'm cautiously optimistic.
I've always warmed to people who wear sequins and beads, but if the Herald was person I would punch it in the face. I imagine Kirsty Cameron to be like the horrible ladies in Pretty Woman who refused to serve Julia Roberts. (Do you know who did a star turn in that movie: Hector Elizondo.) I'll bet good money that the fuckers who fixed LIBOR "established their credibility" and "acknowledged" the seriousness of the environment with Hermes. Which brings me onto my next point: Richard Nixon.
In one of the Superman movies, Superman dropped some bad Kryptonite and was forced to fight an evil version of itself. That's how I feel reading the Herald. It's not quite in the same category as the Sun, but I wonder how many readers go about their day - eating, drinking, voting, and so forth - wrongly assuming that they have been informed.
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A recent Gallup poll found that 50% of US voters support the full legalisation of cannabis. A younger generation apparently sees the issue in different terms, Republicans, conservatives and the elderly are opposed.
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I know what he would drive
Somewhere a cucumber is looking for its Sunbeam.
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Roger makes his case by asking what individual parents would like to know about their local schools. If you're fortunate enough to be able to choose, Roger implies, you would want to send your children to the school with the highest ranking. Maybe it confuses league table ranking with educational quality, but when he puts it like that, you can understand his point of view. He's a parent too, you know, in a way he's somewhat like the rest of us.
But we fund public schools so that all children can get an education, not just Roger's. Our education system, unlike the Herald, focuses on the standard of teaching in all schools, whatever their ranking. What does it mean to have one school ranked higher than another if we still have kids attending the lower ranked school? It tells us that some of our children are not being as well educated as the others. And that's before you consider the way in which league tables warp the way in which kids are taught.
You might be surprised to learn that some people send their kids to private schools.
Roger Partridge was a intelligent and capable solicitor, one smart enough to make a case in terms you and I would find attractive. While Roger was defending a high profile insider trading case, one of his acolytes asked me whether insider trading really needed to be illegal. I'm disappointed, but somehow not surprised, that Roger now represents an organisation that champions policies that somehow only benefit people like Roger. I guess I wonder, five years into the largest international economic crisis in eighty years, does he really believe this stuff?
Ask yourself Roger, what would Jesus do.
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I was going to write something here but changed my mind. Sorry.
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Personally, I'm trying my best to work out how such a gradual convergence could be avoided, and how countries like the US, which have a long history of productive industry, could get that back sooner rather than later.
Yeah. You've got hope it works out. Things haven't been looking too good for the average US worker though. In some ways Apple is a good example of what a high technology society can achieve. There must be more Teslas and Jobs out there, which is quite exciting really.
I find it impossible to believe that there is no solution by which people perfectly capable of work and willing to do it, can't organize to do it, and prosper.
In some ways unemployment is a strange thing, but I suppose it's one of the features of a distributed production allocation system. You've got to hope that we can find better ways to do and make the things we want. I've come to suspect that a lot of our problems come from the fact that we are so competitive - it's not how much we have that counts, its where we stand in the hierarchy that matters.
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Hard News: Getting to the bottom of…, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
But it also feeds into a strong American narrative that seeks to frame the current unemployment rates in the US as something done to the US by China - witness the frequent references to a "trade war" - without considering the internal decisions that have contributed to it. For instance, a very significant number of jobs lost in this latest recession have been lost in the name of government austerity. I believe it's about half a percentage point worth of unemployment. That's huge
Paul Krugman has written a lot about the effect of balanced budget requirements at the local level. Even though the Obama Administration is running a US$1 trillion budget deficit in an attempt to revive the economy, the states are having to cut spending and lay off workers, which heavily offsets the effect. It seems perverse, but the Republicans are using the language of austerity to turn Obama's attempt to fix the problem against him.
Obviously the question of manufacturing practices in China is important - that's why it's getting attention. But it's not okay for it to get attention at the expense of internal American problems, and it's very easy for that to happen.
Although America seems to have it's hands full right now, I'm not sure that the New York Times has handled this badly. Apple is the one of the world's biggest companies, and it has at times benefitted from rose tinted coverage I'm sure that many US progressives (many of whom love the NYT) are concerned about the behaviour of US corporates abroad, and rightly so. I agree that we can really only wish people in the developing world happiness and prosperity. Noone wins a race to the bottom. Hopefully the next few decades bring a gradual convergence.
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I suppose I just think you're being a bit uncharitable. The first point is that the business practices of American companies is a legitimate American priority.
The second is that the American concern about China is drawn at least in part from its own fear of decline. You've alluded to the substantial inequality in the US, and pointed out that some people there live hard lives. The US/China story feeds into a broader narrative of economic insecurity and I think you should acknowledge that. Some Americans who have lost jobs to Chinese outsourcing will never work again.
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And yet, according to Human Rights Watch, nothing has changed. Isn’t that a story?
That doesn't mean US journalism ignores domestic human rights issues. Fast Food Nation spent two years on the The New York Times bestsellers list. The New York Times is one of the good guys. I don't what I would do if I had to read the New Zealand Herald every day.
Having thought about it, though, I agree that it's hard not to notice the tendency of the American media to portray Chinese industry in an unflattering light. I know your heart is in the right place, Brown.
Still, every country has it's problems. I remember one Holmes poll that found 85% support for Howard's treatment of the Tampa refugees. Mr Holmes was disgusted with the result. Some people are just suspicious of undocumented workers I suppose.
I haven’t been to the US for a while, but I’ve avoided eating chicken there since I read a Harper’s story (predating Schlosser’s book) on the plane over one time.
Yeah. I feel badly about this. I have always thought of myself as an enthusiastic carnivore but the idea that something had to live in suffering, and then die, for my meal weighs on me more and more. I've cut down, and am considering quitting entirely.
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It’s six years since Human Rights Watch published its report Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Workers’ Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants, and it seems precious little has changed since then. Hundreds of thousands of largely immigrant workers face both repetitive strain and acute injury, and are commonly sacked when that happens. Some factories keep workers in line with armed private cops. There are none of the onsite hospitals or recreational facilities you might find at a Foxconn plant. And the US government underwrites the brutality. Under a 2002 Supreme Court ruling, undocumented workers who are illegally fired for union organising are not entitled to back pay for lost wages.
It is not to diminish at all the case for Apple and other tech companies to raise their game to say that it will be a welcome day when the New York Times sees fit to give over its front page to an investigation of the human hells being created on American soil.
It's been ten years since US journalist Eric Schlosser wrote Fast Food Nation, the book that moved the plight of US meat packers into the public's consciousness.
This aspect of your piece is simply fatuous. What are you saying here? Are you suggesting that the New York Times, the paper of New York Times v Sullivan, is institutionally racist? I'm a shareholder in Apple and a reader of the NYT, and I'm quite comfortable having the NYT run articles of this sort.
I'm sure there is something happening in New Zealand that you could write about.