Posts by Kyle Matthews
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Which is why the parties with "principles" remain small. They can afford principles , some of which are considered extreme,
Actually I think the reverse is true. Green isn't exactly a scary brand these days, if the Green party was willing to adopt a few less principles, they'd be pushing a lot more popular support. A green party positioned near the centre would probably do pretty well.
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LOL, I never realized his gold was all nicked. But if it came to asking him for my gold back I guess I'd probably just take a pass too.
It's the hour every morning to put it on, and then more time in the evening to clean it all that was bizarre. He must have been _really_ slow at putting jewelery on.
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Also, occasionally Craig's posts sink into the gutter in a very creative (almost poetic) way.
Now we know why. It's not Craig, his plumber is just running his broadband and his sewage through the same pipe.
So Craig is about to post some angelic, clean-as-a-whistle, G-rated post, but as he clicks 'post reply', his partner flushes away his number twos, and we get the result.
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And... when Burma flared up Goff was on the radio saying that economic sanctions against Burma would be a waste of time because we hardly trade with Burma at all.
Which is a third option: "if it has no practical impact upon them, what's the point of having principles?" Surely that's the easiest time.
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I agree there's some moral ambiguity involved but I wouldn't go so far as to claim this is sending a message to the rest of the world that NZ is not concerned with human rights issues or that the FTA should mean other countries should turn a blind eye.
Oh I'm sure the rest of the world would largely, and happily, do what NZ is doing, and fully understand why NZ is doing what it is doing. No doubt many are jealous that we got there first.
I just think we should be honest with ourselves, and say we're not taking a principled stand with China, because it would have no affect on China, and hurt us. We will take a 'principled' stand on Fiji, because it has practical effect on them, but not much on us at all.
It's principles all the way until it starts to hurt us, and then it's practical only.
For no other reason than if we're going to stand by and benefit from interaction with a country that does some pretty crappy things to some of its citizens, then we should be honest with those 'oppressed' people. It's the least they deserve.
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I shouldn't mock - getting the broadband hooked up was enough drama, so we're probably going to do the same. And I hope we're not going to have better luck than the last go round with the plumber who came to come around to fix the hash the last one made.
If you're getting your plumber to install your broadband then I'm surprised you made it online. You're probably surfing by some sort of complicated water reticulation system.
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China isn't quite the same.
Nothing is ever quite the same, a point I conceded when I made the post.
But pointing to the UN isn't exactly a strong argument. Sanctions in the UN go through the UN Security Council, of which China is a permanent member, with a veto. No one is going to waste the photocopy paper it would take to bring a 'sanctions against China' motion there.
I don't know how you rank 'horrible governments' in the world, in order of how crap they are. But if 'civilians killed by their government' is a standard, then Communist China is well up the table.
But like Ben says, the FTA is practical rather than principled, and probably the main reason that this is so is that China is a massive economic power, and an important source of imports, and destination of exports, for NZ.
I just wish the government would front up and admit it. I heard Phil Goff on radio the other day bringing out the line 'if we didn't trade with bad governments, we couldn't trade with anyone'. And yet he's managed to apply sanctions to Fiji, so there must be some sort of rankings going on.
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For reasons that aren't clear to me, the name of the bill was also changed, from the windier Copyright (New Technologies and Performers' Rights) Amendment Bill.
Ironic that the bit that came out was performers rights, the bit that public support is more on. What's left in is new technologies, which is more the corporate rights bit, which people care less about.
Short version: you have the right to format-shift music you have purchased to another device for personal use -- but if a music company has borked the CD so you can't rip it, you can take the CD to a librarian or a teacher who, providing she has been authorised by an Order in Council from the Governor General, will use a TPM circumvention device to rip it for you. But only after you have written to the copyright owner and received either a refusal to help or no reply within a reasonable time. But the copyright owner can still contract out of format-shifting on a basis that remains untested and hazy. Got that?
Wait. The governor-general is going to rip our CDs for us? That's going to keep him busy.
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but i don't have any togs.
OK, I'm withdrawing my vote for PAS for that best blog thinger. TMI.
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Actually stats have indicated that graduates of an arts degree, are more likely to be working or in postgraduate study than graduates of some other degrees (commerce I think was noticeable) a couple of years after graduation.
The belief that an arts degree won't get you a job is largely urban legend.