Posts by Susannah Shepherd
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WWWOoooooo!!! yeah!!!!
Fuck you Germany*!!!!!
* Actually Germany, you're cool, I'm just kidding around
Go you good things! Bloody hell, that wasn't good for the heart. I am impressed with how fast the German women got their smiles back afterwards. I'm not sure I'd have been so sanguine when I'd just lost by the *skin* of a bow-ball.
Watching Mahe Drysdale was heartbreaking, it was clear with about 300m to go that bravery was the only thing holding him together.
Was I the only one who had a sneaking hope that he'd throw up on those smarmy IOC hangers-on they always seem to find to present the medals?
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Emma said:
Wet Girl Drumming? I approve.
That's not generally the way my tastes run, but even I thought that was worth a good perv. I want a go, it looked like fun. I see an opportunity for the next hot trend in gym classes :-)
Like Kerry, my personal perv list has the rowers near the top (I think it's the overall body workout effect) but one of the shot-putters was quite cute in a 6'5" of solid muscle kind of way. I also like to marvel at the gymnasts, in a 5'3" of compact muscle kind of way. I don't know why but most of the swimmers don't do it for me. John McBeth made me laugh this afternoon though with his paean to the effects of the new togs on the female figure.
The Olympics, as always, make me wonder what the hell my parents were thinking when they packed my now 5'9" tall, 6-foot armspan self off to 5 years of gymnastic purgatory (the bars were a particularly tortuous form of hell), but pulled me out of the school swimming team. I suspect it was something along the lines of a dislike of early mornings and a desperate urge for a more ladylike daughter...
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Suze said:
The DPB is not more than the dole, it's the same amount.
Unless you're on the women alone/widows DPB - $191.83 after tax per week, compared to unemployed/sickness benefit of $184.17 for a single adult over 25.
Sorry, I'm really not meaning to pick on the widows, older divorcees, and women who have been looking after aged relatives, but does anyone know why the (small) discrepancy?
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Well, it's definitely good - and long overdue - to see the abatement levels increased, but unfortunately it was the exclusion of the widow's benefit from the work test that makes me think there's more in the way of dog-whistle than policy under this.
I can't see that a woman born in, say, 1955 is any less able to look for work than someone who is ill or a long-term unemployed man of the same age (and, incidentally, receiving less in benefit $) - after a decent grieving period, of course. I bet we all know women in the 50-64 age bracket who went back to work in middle age despite having been out of the workforce for a long time and/or not having a lot in the way of 'recognised' skills. It might be a shock to the system for some, sure, but no more than for many others who find themselves unwillingly at the mercy of the state due to circumstances beyond their control...
P.S. Someone earlier was sceptical that the ageing population had anything to do with the increase in sickness beneficiaries. I don't have the figures to hand but I have seen some recently which showed that the growth in numbers is overwhelmingly in the 50-64 bracket. Bloody work-shy baby boomers :-)
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Thanks Eddie and Graeme for clarifying the situation with regard to perverting the course of justice - I can see how a financial deal in the nature of 'compensation' is legitimately a private matter, but the thought that it's legal to strike a financial deal over whether or not a complaint will be laid (or evidence given) seems incredibly repugnant to me. I guess it would be very hard to prove the latter if good lawyers have drafted the arrangements for the former.
And I'm not sure how people saw Veitch as some sort of good Kiwi bloke. The few times I saw him on Game of Two Halves interacting with those other paragons of civilised and non-misogynist male behaviour (Marc Ellis, I'm looking at you) I formed the distinct impression that the man was a complete dick.
And just to get my final vent off my chest, is it *really* an excuse to claim he was tired and stressed from working two jobs with a combined income of $400,000? Who really *needs* that sort of money? And medication for exhaustion? WTF? It's called *sleep*.
Okay, one final final vent - Tui are well out of order. I thought it was just me too until I read the thread.
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I have a sneaking suspicion that Prime is now trimming Top Gear to fit in the astonishing number of ad breaks they have.
And the swine have started to do it to Terry Jones too. There were a couple of complete non-sequiturs in Barbarians the other night where bits seem to have been just hacked out with the modern equivalent of a blunt bronze axe.
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I peel potatoes with my right hand and carrots with my left hand. We wear through those cheap peelers pretty quickly. Like Raymond I've been told that I don't have a dominant brain hemisphere (apparently my eyes track off in unusual directions when I'm thinking, which fortunately makes it harder for others to tell if I'm lying!)
Until I was in my early teens I could bat at cricket with pretty much the same (minimal) skill with either hand - quite a useful ability that I lost later on, although not completely. I tried to change my bowling arm once, which was a complete disaster - my hands picked up the new action fine but my feet sure as hell didn't.
And wallets are the thing that annoys me when I'm in a lefty mood. All the fiddly little card slots require me to turn the wallet upside down and risk spraying its contents over the floor, or twist my wrist around at a funny angle.
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I can think of another example of bypassing the GG in our history, although I am dredging my memory here and may get some of the details wrong.
There is some evidence that the invasion of Parihaka was deferred because government had some doubts as to whether the Governor would sign the required paperwork, as he was known to by sympathetic to Maori over raupatu. Cabinet waited until the Governor had headed off to the Pacific Islands and the (in)famous Chief Justice Prendergast was acting as Administrator. Cabinet was pretty sure of their man there, and got his signature on the Proclamations as expected.
Somehow I doubt that would work on Sian Elias...