Posts by Riddley Walker
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Phew, thanks Russell for a nice post topic.
Sendak sure did some great stuff.
The first novel to have a big impact on me was Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - though now even Gareth Morgan's done that trip it nolonger holds quite the same mystique.
Then I remember being quite moved by Kundera and Ishiguro as a
callow youth, and um Hoban (you too eh Chris?). Fowles' The Magus, Crowley and Castaneda's crazy crazy exciting stuff.And Frame's The Carpathians (I never understood why that wasn't better received).
And there was a time when everyone had to read and live The Diceman, then I read American Psycho and decided books weren't always the best life guides after all.
But my all time favs would have to be John Bath's Giles Goatboy, and Joris-Karl Huysman's Against Nature,
they're the best books I've never heard of since. -
Paul, there was a great story on this on mediawatch RNZ a few weeks back talking in particular about the story the Dompost ran following one of their bogus online polls that had been alledgedly hijacked by 'someone in the beehive', who'd apparently voted 17,000 times (yeah, exactly). very funny when they even try to make a story out of how shit their polls are what?
anyway the mediawatch item asked the question 'would they have still printed the result (and disavowel thereof) had they expected or wanted the result they got to their push-poll. it had clark as preferred pm you see. -
<shakes head and looks at the ground>
-
"turn the other cheek... while wearing a short skirt gazing at ladyboys" or something. It's not easy all this intarweb debating.
Debating? I thought this was internet dating?
no wonder some of the come-ons have been so oblique. -
85% of the public that supports this bill
i presume Weston, you actually meant oppose the bill right?
the poll i heard 85% agreed with was worded something like
"Is it acceptable to smack a child when they are naughty?"
Which was then mysteriously confabulated to "85% of NZers disagree with the bill". other similar figures are likely to be similar appalling examples of push polling, or at best the reflection of merely an horrendously misinformed public. so you really can't keep clinging to that if you're expecting to ride it to safety.i suggest you try reading for some of the other answers to your questions. but in short this bill has nothing to do with smacking
(not sure if you may have read that anywhere else else), to say so it to misapprehend the bill and what it means, and instead to suck up the shite that its opponents have been desperately peddling from the start. its about removing a legal defence for serious assualts against children. not smacking. i'm tired of that one weston, try being more creative with your straw men.as for religious US fundamentalist churches supporting the opposition to this bill, you are quite right. but there are plenty of ordinary middle NZers who oppose it too, mostly because some people keep trying to pretend its about smacking, which is never was. unless of course you believe everything you read in Fairfax and APN products, or hear of Talkback of course.
-
Craig, thanks for your loving words of advice.
I think if you read the comments throughout this site you will indeed see that the bill has nothing to do with smacking.it's been more than a hundred years since smacking your kid was made illegal in nz. but oddly enough parents haven't been dragged off to our lesbian communist gulags for smacking their kids.
that's because police only act on a complaint or when they consider a case serious enough to justify further investigation, charges and letting the courts decide. note nobody has been put away for smacking timmy on the wrist when he chucked a dart at his sister's head. nobody has been put away for giving sally time out in her room or on the naughty step either, much as your party has been desperate to try and suggest.
so it is now, and so it will be after the bill passes. that's because s59 has nothing to do with the charging aspect of the crimes act. nothing.
it really is a sad disgrace that so many people who actually do know better, who know this bill has no effect of sentencing, are willing to let sadistic out of control people continue to get away with brutalising children - just for the sake of appeasing the redneck and fundamentalist constituencies (because as is starting to dawn Craig, when middle NZ really understands what's been going on with this issue your party won't have won many friends there).
so for the umpteenth time, s59 is a legal defence that only comes into effect after a parent/caregiver has come before the courts on charges for allegations serious enough for the police to decide to proceed with prosecution. this does not apply, never has, never will, to the kind of smacking some parents administer for correctional purposes (although as you know that too is explicitly sanctioned by the bill).
so carry on with the sophistry. you might as well, it's about all you have left now. i really hope the right enjoys the friends its made with opposing s59.
-
and we do all understand by now that this bill has nothing to do with smacking, right?
-
boy they sure are clinging to that 85% figure for dear life.
irrespective of the numerous methodological difficulties with commercial phone polling, the poll i heard 85% agreed with was worded something like"Is it acceptable to smack a child when they are naughty?"
Which was then mysteriously confabulated to
"85% of NZers disagree with the bill"
other similar figures are likely to be similar appalling examples of push polling, or at best the reflection of merely an horrendously misinformed public.
regardless of bogus polls, having talked to a lot of people about this i haven't found one that opposed it, no matter how ardently opposed to it they thought they were (thinking the msm account of it was real), when they understood what the bill actually does and what the current law is in terms of s59 and the current already illegal status of smacking.
-
good points Craig. and i'd agree with the previous comment that you write some good arguments.
on the power of framing though, anybody willing to suggest that coining it the 'Anti-Smacking' bill has had no effect on the discussion and people's understanding of the issues? really?
-
big ups 3410. i guess it's not free speech if nasty politically correct lefties question your assertions?
this politically correct world we live in today
i love that one, that's the world where good old boys can't even honestly call a human being a nigger or faggot or chink or retard. by politically correct, are you sure you don't mean 'world where people are expected to accord at least some courtesey and respect to one another'?
oh of course you don't! you mean 'a world where that nasty nanny state keeps interfering with our lives', a world like the one being cast by George W's neocons - where his wonderful libertarian non-interfering state just sends its underclass off to kill and be killed in wars to make rich people richer. oh, and passes the most draconian laws to spy on and detain its own people that modern world has ever seen. now that's politically incorrect.