Posts by Tim Darlington
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...saying “You can’t play here because your *Nazi* band sucks,” is discrimination on grounds of political opinion, which is a breach of the Act. Of course, on the face of it, that’s what every other venue in Auckland had already done.
I don’t expect it to end up in court on those grounds.
Nor do I, and it's a shame it won't end up in court. It's nice that NZ is hostile to far-right opinion-peddlers, but we just set a very unfortunate precedent for successful, consequence-free discrimination on the grounds of political opinion. The people celebrating could usefully reflect on what that precedent might mean for their own ability to see their political views represented in future.
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It remains to be seen whether Twyford has the nerve to walk away from the whole of the “meth contamination” boondoggle that ministers in the last government were happy to underwrite...
I find that quite worrying. It's not clear whether the "meth contamination" panic is a scam for the benefit of testing and rectification companies, or part of National's war on state housing, or both. Whatever, it's something that Labour should be squashing like a cockroach now it's in charge, but Twyford isn't exactly filling me with confidence that will happen.
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Hard News: Meth Perception, in reply to william blake,
The problem is that isn't in everyone's interest to have a meaningful standard. It's not in the interests of the testing companies, or the clean-up companies, or the companies taking a cut of the proceedings (Ray White Real Estate, for example).
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Simon Bridges is on the record as saying that “a number of locals” talked to (Mr Korako) about the issue.
Well, zero is a number...
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Speaker: Talking past each other:…, in reply to Howard Edwards,
Well here are a couple of potential jumps over some of those hurdles.
And I'm sure those things are factors in increasing obesity levels (although it's worth pointing out that milk also contains significant amounts of sugar). The thing is, no genetic component is required for that explanation, because lipogenesis is largely a matter of blood glucose levels and insulin response. so a significant increase in consumption of desserts and sugary drinks could be expected to cause an increase in obesity regardless of genetics. As could an increase in the consumption of carbohydrates in general, which is the elephant in the room Robyn Toomath would prefer to pretend isn't there, given that she'll have spent most of her career telling people to reduce fat consumption, thereby increasing carbs consumption. Better to posit a highly unlikely genetic explanation for obesity than to admit you spent decades making things worse, I guess.
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Speaker: Talking past each other:…, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Genetics does work like that. You have a base frequency of a specific genotype, in this case tendency towards obesity.
You then change environmental conditions, in this case availability of calories. What happens then is the frequency of obesity goes up...
So, we're just looking at a situation in which an astonishing number of people are genetically predisposed to obesity, but the environment didn't offer them enough calories to become obese until the end of the 1970s, since when the availability of calories has been skyrocketing? Toomath's got some serious evidential hurdles to clear with that one.
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...Dr Toomath comes to the conclusion that a lot of the factors leading to obesity are genetic.
This despite obesity rates skyrocketing since the end of the 1970s? I'm not an endocrinologist, but I don't have to be one to know genetic factors don't work like that. Toomath declares food companies and their marketing strategies to blame for increasing obesity, without pausing to consider whether the decades she's spent encouraging people to adopt low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets might have something to do with their inability to lose weight. Before removing the mote from the food industry's eye she might usefully address her attention to the beam in her own.
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Friend of ours reported there's a regular requirement for her to arrange confirmation for W&I that yes, her daughter does still have Down Syndrome. Maybe they're thinking there might be a "cure" for it, or it might just go away via some miraculous re-arrangement of the genome.
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“After a 12-box of Billy Mavericks, those sort of things aren’t being processed properly through my head,” explained one of them.
More accurately, after a 12-box of Billy Mavericks, this man gives himself full uninhibited permission to be himself, and himself is really not a very nice person. If there were a certainty of genuine, serious consequences for such actions, we'd see an astonishing reduction in the ability of 12 Billy Mavericks to make people like him behave badly.
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Getting rid of the Union Jack is the most important thing, and we could argue until the cows come home about what should replace it.
This is arse-about-face. Getting rid of the Union Jack becomes important at the point where you've made the Union Jack no longer appropriate to appear on the nation's flag, ie when HRH is no longer the head of state. Until then, wanting rid of the Union Jack is just wanting to pretend something is true when it isn't. Let's do stuff in the proper order.