Posts by Kyle Matthews
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My impression is that Sri Lanka isnt' a good team for us to play either. Our batsmen haven't figured out Malinga or Muralitharan. And their batsmen seem to have hit pretty good form: 231/0. I give us about 25% either way the toss goes. Though both McCullum and Guptill feel due, if we get off to a good start...
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It was her that finally got the USA into action and if it turns out well I would be very unsurprised to see her using it as her “hard-ass international street-cred” in 2012 if Obama’s other problems persist as they seem they will.
Cred in 2012 for what? Her endorsement speech at the formality convention? The Secretary of State can't run against a standing president in the primaries.
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Furthermore, the request is not for an invasion. It is for an evening of the odds. This gives the rebels a chance to show their numbers, and it gives hope to people there that might be sympathetic, but are terrified that they can’t win.
It really leads to the obvious question, what happens when you've "evened the odds", and then the massacres etc still continue. Do you take another step in and keep on evening? If "no", what was the point of the first step? Surely if you're going to intervene and save people, you have to intervene and save people.
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But what about the $4m for fixing the grass of Lancaster Park,..er.. Jade Stadium.. er.. AMI Stadium? And it won’t even be played on until next year. That should keep a bit of cash in the NZRFU accounts unti the RWC handout turns up.
NZRU doesn't own AMI stadium. It's owned by by the government through a body called Victory Park Board.
So the government is basically spending its own money on fixing up its own asset. Don't let that get in your way though.
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Gio: M’kay… I’m pretty sure that those black people living in Montgomery, Alabama in 1956 who boycotted their city’s public transit system (and incidentally financially crippled it – who’d have thunk all those po’ blacks who wouldn’t sit at the back of the bus also make up the majority of its paying custom) would have a grim smile or two for that characterisation. And, yes, I make precisely no apologies for declining to patronise companies that engage in racist, homophobic or sexist practices, explaining why to anyone who cares to listen, and encouraging others to do the same.
I think the point is, you have to be a purchaser of the good or service to have actual power via boycott. If you don't, you have what can at best be described as moral power. Giovanni's point that people who have lots of money to spend have a lot more actual power over the advertisers in the SST isn't invalidated by the Montgomery bus boycott.
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Out of interest: is there anywhere in Wellington where one can get the Christchurch Press or the Otago Daily Times?
There used to be a newsagent on Lambton Quay that sold papers from around the country, including both of those, but that was in the 1990s when I last lived there.
I can't recommend the ODT though. It's really a local paper with standard Reuters news from elsewhere. Pretty good regional coverage but national and international stuff is pretty weak. Independence hasn't really made it better than anywhere else. The Press seems to have some good reporters maybe?
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Plus it's the propriety of where the money has gone. As a friend observed on FB, there are bodies being pulled out of collapsed buildings, tens-of-thousands are without sewage facilities, many are sleeping in tents or on sofas, and the first big monetary commitment from the government goes to a sports facility.
But again the assumption that it's a zero sum game. The turf at AMI was probably a nice easily uninsured thing that the government could target to politically soften the blow of the RWC games being taken away. Sure it's no use to people struggling for sewage and water etc, but are they worse off? Did the government spending half an hour deciding to do this prevent other things being done? Given that the money probably won't actually be spent for months is anyone's vital services going to be delayed as a result?
As compared to the government response to all the buildings that have been knocked over, people that have been killed etc, which is a lot more complex and is going to require a lot more information about damage, need, insurance coverage, land stability, building codes, and negotiation with city council, ECAN, construction companies etc.
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I still consider one of the best individual tries I ever saw to have been scored by a Japanese player (can’t remember his name it was so long ago) playing as a Barbarian. A massive bomb sent up, he dashed nearly half the length of the field, leapt and caught it mid-air, and skidded between the posts, about 6 metres ahead of the closest All Black. I had my fist in the air until I realized “hey, that’s the other team”.
That was the All Black centennary matches in 1992. One of the few series of games that weren't between two national teams recognised as test matches for statistic purposes.
Lynagh put the ball up (closer to the 22 I think), and the Japanese left winger dived right under the posts and caught it and scored untouched. Can't find his name anywhere on the web, there don't seem to be any good stats or team lists for the World XV.
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Dunedin has accommodation issues for any big match where there would be lots of internationals attending. I think Dunedin's capacity for accommodation is 3000 or so I think. Even if you stretched that out to everything that you could fit a bed into and all the camp grounds and anywhere within 100 km of Dunedin, you might get up to 5000.
But there might be 10,000 tourists attending some of those quarterfinals all of which need a place to sleep. I'd imagine any England pool game would be impossible here, and any quarter final would be the same. I'm picking we'll get one of the lesser pool games and one or two others will go to Timaru/Nelson. The north island will get the rest.
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Ok then. Now that the really important stuff is sorted out, how about some houses for people to live in, you know, when you can get round to it, no hurry.
I think you're assuming there's a zero sum game there. The people that work on reconstructing sports stadium turf probably otherwise wouldn't be working on building houses or essential services so they're not slowing those things down at all.