Posts by Tom Semmens
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I hope it was not the police taking the law into their own hands, or any variation on that theme
If you ever find yourself between a grizzly bear and her cubs, I'd hate to think how long it would take you to do the sums.
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Thinking about this overnight, I don't think i am that worked up by the demise of TVNZ 7. hardly anyone watched it anyway. The biggest concern for me is the swamping of our culture by a Sky network that is dominated by Australiana - anyone who watches the history channel is subjected to a constant bombardment of uncritical kitsch Australian history, be it Peter Fitzsimons extolling the virtues of the 1946 Sydney Easter Show or those "Prime Minster's collections fillers. It seems to me that if Sky could get funding to make such popular ten-minute history fillers for a much larger pay-T.V. NZ audience then surely that is better than a station at the end of the dial that no one watched? I think the same observation could be extended right across the Sky channels if they had funding to make the sort of Australian stuff that they often use as fillers.
Of course, Sky TV is the ultimate ugly monopoly and I hate them with a passion - but there is no reason why a future government can't force Sky TV to breakup into competing companies, who would at least then all be using the same technology.
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Only a fool would have expected anything else from this government - it's ministers are made up of Shipley's incompetent hard line neo-liberal left-overs, two-dimensional cardboard dog whistle opportunities and corporate philistines.
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The curious response of Key opens him to serious accusations of being a plutocrat who is not prepared to share the burden of the recovery fairly.
Key (and the rest of the rich?) seemingly think they can cheer our efforts to save the SS Christchurch from a well-appointed super-yacht, and will only carefully clamber back aboard once the rest of us emerge dirty, soaked and exhausted from our damage control efforts and declare the everything ship shape and Bristol fashion.
Or it may just be that Key and English are so wedded to the voodoo economics of trickle down (and Victorian morality) that their administration is an economic one trick pony with no more ideas in it’s intellectual cupboard.
But the Herald’s editorial today makes the point well. We are willing to be taxed a bit extra to save Christchurch and preserve our social safety net. Put a sunset clause in the legislation if you must. But just do it.
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where Michael Cullen was still Finance Minister/Deputy PM
The Craig bot strikes again.
There is a fun-filled drinking game in this.
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If a whole street is uninhabitable, make a new one that embraces a mews for bikes and collective cars.
I am not familiar with the geology of Christchurch, but if whole suburbs have been substantively destroyed by liquifaction I would have thought now would be a good time to re-locate the whole suburb to a greenfield location with more suitable soil type, if such ground exists.
The previous site can revert to agricultural land.
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but what will decide the day is the cheapest and most effective way to recover and get on with business.
Whether it is Royal Crescent in Bath, Napier's CBD or a historic street of untouched state houses in Wellington, over time a preserved set of coherent building can actually come to be perceived as quite attractive.
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Napier picked up the previous decades architecture style.
This is constantly stated, but I don’t think that is actually what happened. Napier was rebuilt all at once in the quickest and cheapest way possible that didn’t use heavy masonry of the type that has proved (again) it’s lethality in Christchurch. No one noticed it was “Art Deco” or even worth preserving until the 1980’s
(/rant/ In fact, Art Deco has become a death sentence for any heritage building in Napier that pre-dates the 1931 earthquake. These building, especially in previously lovely seaside suburbs like Ahuriri and West Shore, have been bowled over and replaced with modern "Art Deco-ish" pastiches in acts of cultural Philistinism that is scarcely credible in a modern city /rant over/)
People argue Napier isn’t even really Art Deco, but whatever it is – and here might perhaps be a lesson for rebuilding Christchurch – is it is a coherent style that when viewed collectively is greater than the sum of it’s parts.
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The only reason Germany and Japan have so fully renounced aggressive war is because they looked around their devastated cities and finally understood the consequences of reckless military adventurism. The two Churches mentioned are warnings, not memorials and therefore are not suitable analogies for Christchurch's Cathedral IMHO.
When I thought about repairing the Christchurch Cathedral my thoughts went immediately to the success of the marriage of modern glass pyramids and an old building at the Louvre. That seems to me to be the sort of thing a good repair should strive towards, neither a reproduction or a replacement but a frank acknowledgment of what has been lost and what has been preserved.
In the meantime, a scaled up version of Napier's Tin Town (which operated for two years as the city was rebuilt) seems a good model for the CBD (Hagley park would seem to be perfect location for a tin town CBD), especially as major aftershocks may go on for some considerable time yet.
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Shorter roymorgan poll this month: Game on.
The latest New Zealand Roy Morgan Poll shows support for John Key’s National-led Government has fallen to 53% (down 6.5%). Support for Prime Minister Key’s National Party is 49% (down 6%), the Maori Party 3% (up 0.5%) and ACT NZ 1% (down 0.5%).
only 6% in it, and when you run the numbers it is virtually a tie 61-57 with the maori party holding the balance of four in a 122 seat house. The polling period was January 17 – 30. Key announced the sell-off on January 26. So that would only have had a small influence on the result.
Only another 2-3% and National will be turfed out - "we love YOU John, but, ummm, no thanks on everything else."