Posts by Alfie
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Are you trying to butter me up Ian?
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Good grief. Now Jordan Williams is suing Colin Craig and three other members of the Conservative Party for defamation. Williams is quoted as saying...
Ongoing public smears left unchallenged can gain currency even if they have low credibility.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't ongoing public smears the main identifying feature of the Dirty Politics brigade in the first place?
Rearrange these words into a logical order:
black pot kettleSomewhere in Auckland, groups of lawyers must be rubbing their hands in glee.
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Dumb US overreaction of the week.
The US is warning its citizens to stay away from the anti-TTPA march being held in Auckland tomorrow.
In an email, the US Consulate General in Auckland urged any US citizens to avoid the march as "even demonstrations intended to be peaceful can turn confrontational."
Green Party national intelligence and security spokesman Russel Norman said US consular staff needed to "relax".
"This is democracy in action and it's not Ferguson. The police won't be shooting people, it's not scary.
"They should just come along and they might learn something."
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Envirologue: Too Big to Fail – Why…, in reply to Robert Urquhart,
Solar panels are appearing on my garage roof here in Christchurch as I type
You'll never look back Robert. Of course your life will change a little as you keep checking to see how much power you've generated today. Or you might even become anal (like me) and keep track of it all on an Excel spreadsheet which tells you how much money you've saved since day one.
It's a whole new green world.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Criminal Life, in reply to Russell Brown,
Did you see Jess McAllen's gutsy story for the Sunday Star Times?
I didn't and thanks for the link. That's a good piece!
My abiding memory of Chris is from a fancy dress party in Dunedin in the late 70s. He came dressed as a hunchback and his one-liner for the night was, "I backed a hunch and it didn't come off."
Chris was always a good bastard and I wish him well.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Criminal Life, in reply to Joe Wylie,
that's the real Knox deal.
Hey!!! I had the impression Chris was a bit buggered after his stroke so it's great to see him performing again. A small group of us 'borrowed' TVNZ film gear back in the day to make the first Enemy clips which played on Radio with Pix. Damn we were proud of those!
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Polity: Saudi sheep: Misappropriating…, in reply to Joe Wylie,
Tom Scott obliges.
I'm old enough to remember when Tom Scott was still funny.
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Dita De Boni has written an excellent piece in the Herald summarising Brownlee's mishandling of the ChCh rebuild and his "systematic disempowering of those who live there."
It's a master class in paternalism, yet hardly without precedent in Canterbury. In 2010, then-Environment Minister Amy Adams oversaw the sacking of democratically elected Canterbury Regional Council members, with the side effect that farms such as her family's were able to access a contentious water scheme.
After the quakes, the Government decided behind closed doors to restore the horizontal infrastructure of the city to the state it was before the quake - rather than the better, future-proofed versions city folk had been promised.
This year there's been a closed-shop granting of Fletcher Residential the right to develop prime commercial and residential land - about 20 per cent of the central city - by compulsorily acquiring much of the land for the building of expensive apartments.
Let's also not forget the Christchurch Convention Centre, which the Government seems hell-bent on building at a cost of $400 million to the taxpayer, despite hardly any locals being behind it (other than Christchurch Canterbury Tourism and the Chamber of Commerce - and Minister Nicky Wagner).
A number of people are getting very rich from the ChCh rebuild while shoddy repairs signed off by Fletchers and ECQ appear to have been the norm.
Christchurch deserves better.
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Tremain... of course.
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Polity: Saudi sheep: Misappropriating…, in reply to Rob Stowell,
I'm not sure - I fear to a lot of people he sounded like someone patient but wearied at the tedious journalist who wouldn't let him explain things fully and frankly :(
And that's one of Key's main tricks. Because there will always be 40% of the population who believe what he says, no matter how odious or obvious the lies.
Hey look over there... there's a flag!
