Posts by daleaway

  • Access: Don’t tell me stories about the…,

    Pleased to hear you will take up the MWA invitation, and only wish I could join you, Wendi WaterDragon. Best of luck.
    Maybe other government departments could be in attendance? Or even organise their own sessions?

    Since Jul 2007 • 198 posts Report Reply

  • Access: Don’t tell me stories about the…,

    The problem lies with the organisers. Having been involved in past years with this type of event, I'm well aware of a brand of organiser who wants to use such occasions as a networking opportunity for their personal growth. And it's not just a Wellington thing.

    I'm the mardy cow that questions marking an event with a fancy $100 a plate dinner and a paid speaker. What about those women who can't afford $100, but were nontheless part of the women's movement or event that we are commemorating, I ask, and the answer is a shrug and a change of subject.

    Frankly, it makes them uncomfortable to mix with women who are not conspicuously successful. So ask yourself, what can a woman without power, influence or cash do to further the careers of the organisers? Or an old woman in a wheelchair (like me), who is unlikely to have the friends in high places the organisers want to be introduced to? (But they might be surprised.)
    This is their unspoken reasoning, and I get it.

    All that can be done in the absence of co-operation is to shriek, publicise and name and shame. Before the event if possible, but any time will do. Anything less than full shriek doesn't seem to get through. Hullabaloo is your friend.

    So take up that invitation from the MWA, go with some allies of similar views, and lay it on whatever junior poli-ana they front up with. Be prepared with a few stats and examples, to make it real. Leave something (a planning checklist? a timetable for action?) they can base planning on, and ask to be notified of follow up.

    Since Jul 2007 • 198 posts Report Reply

  • Access: GTFO of Our Accessible Bathrooms,

    Very well put, Chelle.
    I'm a wheelchair user when out and about and I notice this issue all the time - as well as parents with small children using the disabled loo (and not clearing up after their messy little munchkins).

    One of the reasons, I believe, is that building owners encourage architects to devote as little space as possible to loos, even though most people would like more space in cubicles. It's a penny-pinching, meanness thing.

    If I go into ordinary cubicles, using crutches, there is nowhere to put the crutches as well as my bag. I could not even use the loos at my last GPs, because it was literally impossible to get in while on crutches, and there was no disabled loo. And as for the high polish on the marble floors, bloody lethal and I suspect aimed at drumming up more business for the GPs.

    Putting the odd assistance grip bar in an ordinary cubicle wouldn't go amiss from time to time either.

    Good luck with your studies.

    Since Jul 2007 • 198 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Media Take: The Future,

    Well, that's annoying. I enjoyed that programme, and you were very solid, Russell.

    Let's hope someone has the nous to revive Media7/3. With the new government, there's the possibility of a new horizon on the media landscape.Fingers crossed.

    Since Jul 2007 • 198 posts Report Reply

  • Access: Stroppy parents and battling…,

    Really interesting, Hilary. Thank you.

    I also had to research an early female social reformer for the DNZB and can confirm it is a task made much harder than it might be by the attitude of contemporary press that reporting what women wore to social functions was much more relevant than reporting on anything they did.

    Times have changed. But not enough.

    Since Jul 2007 • 198 posts Report Reply

  • Speaker: No, there isn’t a popular…,

    My friend in Los Angeles, a well-educated professional woman, is a Democrat to the core. Yet she told me she was pals with two other Democrats, both men, who told her their vote was going to Trump as there was no way they wanted a woman running the White House.

    Men have a hard job believing the extent of the prejudice-based barriers to success experienced by women on a routine basis. Women, on the other hand, find the attitude all too familiar (if usually unspoken and well hidden).

    Since Jul 2007 • 198 posts Report Reply

  • Speaker: Sprawled out,

    All we can take from your response is
    [shrug] Whatareyagunnado?

    Suck it up, hicks.

    Since Jul 2007 • 198 posts Report Reply

  • Speaker: Sprawled out,

    The crisis is only mainly about housing if you live in Auckland, though.

    For the majority of New Zealanders, it is about a lack of job opportunities in their region, and a complete absence of regional development. You looked, Orchid, and there were no jobs for you. There's also naff all for the locals, who are also looking for work, meaning they have to move to, guess where?

    Twenty years ago or more I made a radio broadcast about the lack of foresight in running this country as a farm for Auckland's benefit. Things have only got worse since then. Now that state of affairs is actually impinging on Aucklanders' lifestyles, of course, we are hearing a sustained long moan about it.

    Maybe we'll one day vote in a government that looks at New Zealand as a whole and considers some holistic healing. Healing the regions by putting the jobs (and many of the immigrants) there will also heal Auckland's woes, but few are even suggesting looking in this direction for an answer. Yet it's such an obvious starting point.

    It would, naturally, require a government that chose to take real action, and had a plan. Good luck with that.

    Since Jul 2007 • 198 posts Report Reply

  • Speaker: A Disorderly Brexit,

    Every disgruntled voter with a grievance saw the Brexit referendum as a harmless chance to stick two fingers up at the government. Protest with no danger of comeback.

    For some/most, it was all about immigration, and turning back the clock to the more British Britain of their youth. For others, it was an economic or class issue about the lack of jobs, affordable homes, prospects, and general trickledown being delivered by the UK government. For yet others, it was a sort of teenage "you're-not-the-boss-of-me" sulky fit about the spread of EU regulations generally, an argument expressed as "sovereignty concerns".

    Reminds one uncomfortably of the slogan on the side of Winston Peter's campaign bus : Send them a message. Well, the message was sent, and now the Brits have learned to be careful what they wish for.

    German-born Oliver Imhof, working in England, summed it up shrewdly:
    "Britons voted against their political establishment by saying no to the only thing that is protecting them from it."

    Since Jul 2007 • 198 posts Report Reply

  • Southerly: Høstens Vemod,

    I spent a brilliant summer once hunting down stave churches all over Norway. Came in from the North, from Finland over the so-called Arctic Highway and camped everywhere, in the wild raspberry and bilberry and lingonberry and cloudberry season. Lush. There's warmth in that midnight sun. No time for moods, melancholic or otherwise.

    Now why didn't New Zealand's early settlers adopt the stave church model instead of the severe shearing sheds so many of our little old churches resemble? We already had the fjords, the mountains and the tall timber. We even had the wood carvers. All we needed was the imagination. Our scenery would have looked AWESOMER with some stave churches dotted about.

    I mean, I like Old St Paul's, but it doesn't hold a candle to a saucy stavkirke.

    Since Jul 2007 • 198 posts Report Reply

Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 20 Older→ First