Posts by Mark Harris
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Not sure if the name badge thing would have worked, but alternatives not coming to mind right now
We could all wear t-shirts ;-)
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But speaking of rampant stupidity, here's the latest "health measure" being adopted in America
It’s hard to believe, but true: under a law Congress passed last year aimed at regulating hazards in children’s products, the federal government has now advised that children’s books published before 1985 should not be considered safe and may in many cases be unlawful to sell or distribute. Merchants, thrift stores, and booksellers may be at risk if they sell older volumes, or even give them away, without first subjecting them to testing—at prohibitive expense. Many used-book sellers, consignment stores, Goodwill outlets, and the like have accordingly begun to refuse new donations of pre-1985 volumes, yank existing ones off their shelves, and in some cases discard them en masse.
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mark, I would hesitate to call "corruption" too quickly. You underestimate, I think, the power of legitimate lobbying. As I've said elsewhere, the big companies and industry groups often have people whose only job is to deal with government at all levels. They spend quite a lot of money making sure their message gets across, they turn up to every meeting and bunfight, they get to know the officials and the elected representatives and they flatter them, possibly some wining and dining, ensure that they're called upon to preside at industry events and general warm, happy, fuzzy stuff. It's no surprise that government turns to these people when they want to know something about the industry and get captured, mentally, by the industry mindset.
Governments have always listened to the voices they hear most often.
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No, rob, that's a possibility, under the law. The other two are sheer fantasy
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Yeh, I was busy clicking all over it till I tried some keys :-)
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Jeez stephen, where do you find this stuff?? That was excellent
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What, Leo Laporte was there as wel???
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What about Arthur Baystings' "80% of music on the Internet is illegal"? I mean, do they actually listen to what they're saying?
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Well, he's Italian, so he's probably a filthy pinko...
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One of the problems New Zealand has is our size - we have the same niches that other nations have and they may be proportionally the same size, but ours are very small in real numbers (and $$) and I don't see a perfect market model operating. That said, I'm no big fan of subsidising everyone to produce work either because that doesn't encourage quality, only quantity.
It is a conundrum that I don't have the answer to. For some things, our market is global, via the internet. For others, such as the ballet, strictly local. This is the sort of thing the old QEII Arts Council used to be quite useful for (IMHO) but we don't have it any more, and the minor bodies that sprang up in its place are competing for the same funding.