Posts by Caleb D'Anvers
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The McCarthy piece on dementia is out-and-out plagiarism, surely. Or at least it would be in academia. But I guess in journalism there's always been that culture of 'reusing' content from other sources (often without attribution), cannibalizing wire articles, manufacturing quotes, and so on. The question for me, though, is why anyone tolerates that culture, because it's just slack.
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I've been totally obsessed with the word Obamacon for about six months now. Try slipping it into normal conversation: it freaks people out.
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I particularly liked Hide's suggestion that leaky building syndrome was caused by building standards and regulations, rather than the systematic failure to enforce them.
People need to wake up to the fact that a hard libertarian party -- one of the most extreme in the world -- has just been given a mandate to review a broad range of regulatory regimes across the public sector. And the RMA. And the civil service. And consumer law. The sharks are now officially in charge of the swimming pool.
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It's nice that there are at least some local journalists willing to critique ACT, but, God, I feel like they're getting a free ride from a lot of quarters. I had the misfortune to catch Close Up on Tuesday night, and Rodney had Mark Sainsbury eating out of his hand as he promised to 'get stuck into' the RMA and radically restructure local government. It didn't help that Hide kept swaying like a particularly odious and sweaty boxing opponent, but I had trouble not punching the screen.
If Key doesn't start trying to neutralize ACT, his careful re-branding of National is going to get utterly trashed by association, and quickly. They are complete, barking loons. I'd feel more comfortable right now if the Nats were in formal coalition with the Church of Scientology.
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Were Eye TV the HD version of The Nixons?
Yeah. Before it was just basement static.
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Feel at ease with our latest product, 24/7 Bodyguard Hire! As endorsed by students of Auckland Grammar!
LOL. When I was an AGS student, we didn't get any of this namby-pamby 24/7 bodyguard protection business. Back then, it was just mud, rugby, and the constant, low-frequency whine of bored masters telling caning anecdotes. Kids today have it way too easy.
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I'm a bit of a n00b when it comes to understanding the nuances of party policy, but can somebody explain how an MP from the anti-regulation, pro-business Act party be MP for Consumer Affairs?
Whaddaya, some kind of anti-formaldehyde-in-children's-pyjamas extremist? Surely everyone in New Zealand has the right to be poisoned by the industrial contaminant of his or her choice, without Nanny State intervening.
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Isn't it just great that Gordon Campbell's been shunted off to Scoop, while the front cover of this week's Listener is a big promotional shot of the PM with the headline "Kiwi Key"?
The fact that such an extremist revenue policy is even being considered totally belies the Nats' attempts to paint themselves as Holyoake-style pragmatists.
Since being shackled with TABOR, Colorado has fallen to 47th of of 50 in per capita state funding for higher education. 73 percent of its roads are now in a poor state of repair, because there isn't the money available to maintain them. It's third from last on access to pre-natal care, and dead last in the US for immunization uptake. (All of these figures represent considerable decreases on their pre-TABOR equivalents.) See Dianne Stewart, "Primroses and Politics: The Deceptive Allure of Colorado’s Taxpayers Bill of Rights", National Civic Review 94, no. 3 (2005): 55-58.
If this gets anywhere near being passed into law here, we need to be out on the streets trying to bring this lot down. Seriously.
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One thing for good lefties (which I understand to be the bulk of the scribes here) to consider - the majority of NZers that bothered to vote, voted for National.
Um, Rik, 45.45% is not a majority.
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This is fairly depressing considering the huge impact that local government makes upon most peoples' lives.
Uh, yeah. I was a little shocked when I heard that ACT had been handed that Ministry. There's an awful lot of damage that they can do there, and unfortunately simmering resentment over rates increases may give them a leg-up with public opinion, at least initially.
That list of bullet points really does bring home what a dangerously self-entitled bunch of cultists ACT really are, doesn't it? God, people, put that copy of Atlas Shrugged down before you hurt someone with it, OK?