Posts by Tom Semmens
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Thomas Beagle notes “…Firstly, everyone agrees that section 8C of the Bill will allow the GCSB to spy on New Zealanders on behalf of the SIS, Police or NZ Defense Force…”
The defense force? This raises a whole range of disturbing issues that need to be thrashed out. Who decided, and when was it decided, that the military is henceforth going to have such an active role in internal security that it needed sweeping powers to spy on whoever it liked? We all know who they will to spying on – subversives like Hager and Jon Stephenson. The casual addition of the army to the agencies of internal surveillance means how long until the next “crack down” on beneficiaries by Paula Bennett sees section 8C expanded to include the SIS, Police, NZ Defense Force, or WINZ..?”
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All council facilities seem to be run by evangelist Christians on meth. The end.
Not quite the end. What is with the absurd "land levy"? Is for the hole they have to dig to put all the contraband in?
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Hard News: A different kind of country, in reply to boonman,
I just did a search to see if the Kiwiblog webpage had been chached somewhere – no luck. We’ll just have to remember back to the good old days…
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John Key, Steven Joyce, Bill English. Corporate technocrats with the values of neo-liberalism imprinted in their DNA, with the first two bringing a heavy dose of impatient plutocracy to their job as well. Judith Collins shows every sign of being a not-so-secret Fascist. Gerry Brownlee is arrogant to the point of dysfunction. They are all compulsive authoritarians, a disease that to be fair has now has spread across the entire spectrum of our senior supra-bureaucrats, professional politicians and media elites that presume to rule us. John Key has from day one treated the job of PM as a joke and he regards the processes, checks and balances of democracy with barely concealed contempt. This is a profoundly ideological government of revanchist capitalism, and it is only the permanent state of historical amnesia that neo-liberalism wears as a badge of revolutionary pride that prevents them from seeing themselves in these terms. The only legitimate values to this government are the values of the corporate world, with all its feudal patronage, ruthless sociopathy and fetishised secrecy.
But should all of this really surprise us? David Farrar’s elite liberalism may blanche at the Tea party, but he is an extremist who openly associates with the right wing of the US Republican Party, yet his and Cameron Slaters websites are now readily used as a source of news for much of our hollowed out established media. We’ve actively taken the values of business and raised them to cult status across every sphere of our lives and our society, from education to welfare to health. Why are we surprised when, finally, they manifest themselves in our governing elites? We live in the society we quite deliberately set out to create thirty years ago. We’ve only got what thirty years of gutless complacency deserve.
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Hard News: Who else forgot to get married?, in reply to B Jones,
The concept of marriage has changed radically in the last hundred and fifty years and is still changing.
All about anecdotal sample groups, I suppose. But the stats seem to support my view that people are reverting to more traditional aspects of the marriage ceremony. Double-barrelling is regarded as rather out of fashion right now, so that could something as simple as the vagaries of fashion.
I find it hilarious when people complain that it is to easy to get divorced. No one gets married planning on getting divorced, everyone wants to think they will live happily ever after with their handsome prince or beautiful princess. If you want less divorce, it seems to me that you should make it harder to get married.
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Hmmm, a funny old one this taking your husbands name business.
Most of the women I know seem to regard keeping their own name as a bit naff and all together more trouble than it is worth, a remarkable turnaround in views from just twenty years ago. It is now completely shorn of any socio-political relevance as astatement. Taking your husband’s name is nowadays seen as a straightforward very romantic statement of commitment.
Having said that, I know at least three married woman who have a bob each way, using whatever is most convenient in the circumstances. Thus, married name when booking a hotel, maiden name when in their professional context.
I think the clue is in language.
From most weddings I have been to:
“…With this Ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow…” – the Book of Common Prayer, 1662And from most funerals:
“Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return” (Genesis 3:19),
And
“I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee” (Ezekiel 28:18). –Both the Bible, specifically the King James version of 1611.
We all know nobody talks like that anymore in their day to day lives.
But besides the power of the sheer beauty of English prose at its “verie heighte” in the mid sixteenth to late seventeenth centuries at the moments of the most important religious ceremonies in our lives we are, on the whole, deeply conservative. People revert to the language of their ancestors for comfort and affirmation.
And so it is the same for taking your husband’s name. It is a deeply held tradition in a ceremony that has proven to be largely resistant to change for five hundred years. It will, I predict, outlast feminism by a handsome margin.
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Get high and go to MOTAT!
How will the BDO get on for noise I wonder? I hear that angry NIMBYs have already served the lions at the zoo with 23,987 abatement notices.
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I am not sure what the whole fuss about Lorde is all about. She is a talented teen, no more. There are tons like her out there, there is nothing in her music yet that screams superstar to me. Time will tell, I guess. Mind you the whole Lolita Lana Del Rey meme that seems to be going on right now isn't really to my taste, it is a bit tortured and a little bit pedobear creepy for me.
Anyway, I prefer my fun to be primary colours and blingin' trashy so I reckon if you want actual youth talent that doesn't appeal to Nabakov afficiandoes you'd be better off checking out Becky G...
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Hmmm, goat – which is usually much cheaper – makes an excellent substitute for lamb in casseroles and especially curries. And while I am thinking about slow cooking casseroles, the ultimate hack has to be my crock pot. Biff everything into it you need the night before and take it out of the fridge and put it on in the morning. I make stews, casseroles, chilli con carne, curries, soup (especially soup!) all that sort of thing in mine.
Oh and you can use your crock pot for porridge to – put tit on low the night before and when you get up you have lovely, soft oats.
The other two devices I can’t live without are my yogurt maker ($19 from K-Mart) and my egg cooker, which makes perfect boiled eggs every time first thing in the morning with just the flick of a switch.
And if you have access to a handy cow, nab some of her fresh milk and make your own cheese next time you make a cheese cake. You won't ever go back once you do.
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Hard News: Kitchen Hacks, in reply to Chris Waugh,
I was at a BBQ in Chile the other month where my Chilean friends used a charcoal BBQ like I’ve not seen here before. Basically, this monster was what looked like a 44 gallon drum split in half vertically and with four legs welded on. So far, so normal. But it had this chain arrangement where the grill rack holding the enormous bits of beast could be raised or lowered over the glowering coals by mans of a wheel on the side. I was enormously clever and efficient way of controlling the cooking time of a charcoal BBQ. It also looked robust enough to lift the V8 engine out of a Valiant, so dual use is a possibilty. I took lots of pictures, and I am assembling the raw materials (drum, chains, etc) to replicate this devilish piece of South American cleverness in my shed for the summer.