tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post4582763371277401246..comments2024-03-29T03:41:12.499+13:00Comments on Bowalley Road: In A Wizard's Garden.Chris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-12223285022905868472022-08-10T19:14:09.595+12:002022-08-10T19:14:09.595+12:00greywarbler
If you go back to the papers between t...greywarbler<br />If you go back to the papers between the two Christchurch earthquakes, you will see there were lots of protests about the buildings being demolished because of damage in the first one. No doubt that played on the minds of those making the assessments. Invariably, the major factor leading to systems and practices failures are human error. That has to be addressed. With regards to the first lots of buildings demolished, I would wager none of those protesters want to be reminded of their actions - more human error.<br />CTV was a very badly designed building but the reason for it being there and occcupied on the day of the 2nd earthquake is from a whole series of bad decisions - not just one mistake. It is very likely that problems still exist in a lot of other infrastructure - main streets of most NZ provincial towns is a good example. NZ can't afford to replace it all. Maybe we just have to live with riskChris Morrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10557217407223228656noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-47746411826852118322022-08-08T13:59:37.327+12:002022-08-08T13:59:37.327+12:00A point from Shane McDowall about us planning to b...A point from Shane McDowall about us planning to be the Switzerland of the south. That is a very interesting country, very practical in their behaviour, and not easy-peasy as we seem to be at core, and not a great sense of humour. And they are concentrated and committed to doing the right thing for them. We seem more wild west, rip-snort-and bust. <br /><br />So our 'Switzerland-style' was based around getting rich people to park their money with us on the quiet, but also another thing, to raise our GST to wealthy Swiss levels of 15% (when I was there in 70's) but at the same time set in place reduction in wages, brought competition for low-paid jobs from poorer countries, and got rid of unions in the main. Finished off I think by disgust at the contretemp over the Bank of NZ building left as a skeleton for about 3 years by the unionised workers in metal construction. <br /><br />Chris Morris mentions the Cooks and Stewards Union and the too frequent strikes often at school holidays which cast the whole union system in a bad light. Because they had good pay and long holidays where they could work in their own business or farm at home; and got free transport to work from anywhere in NZ.<br />Also they were anti democratic and became a closed shop so that they were a protected elite.<br /><br />And that second quake damage to CTV had slipped my mind thanks. But underlines the fact that our so-called good, modern systems and practices, so precise we are told, are not reliable at all. We are not advancing in any way I think. There's got to be change, better if it is thought out, rather than forced on us with hurried, make-do responses that become the new paradigm. greywarblernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-82155089284514538882022-08-07T18:37:58.333+12:002022-08-07T18:37:58.333+12:00Chris
I also remember the Christcurch to Wellingt...Chris <br />I also remember the Christcurch to Wellington Ferry. I think we did 4 trips on it. It was the Cooks and Stewards union that killed it. I also remember a trip on the shopping train that came into town. Full of mothers and young children - to give them several hours in town in the middle of the day. There was also the electric passenger trains from Christchurch to the port. Those lasted until the mid-70s from memory. But then there were also the West Coast railcars and the Southerner using the station as well. That closing of the railways was a big change to the centre of town. All those shops down the south side between the station and the square rapidly got dilapidated. The earthquake did allow that redevelopment that would never have happened otherwise.<br />Greywarbler - CTV survived the first quake. I should never have been reopened as the damage was known about. The reason for that has never been satisfactorily explained. That previous damage was the problem. Go back and read the actual engineers' analyses. The public's commentary about CTV was written by people that didn't understand what they were writing about. <br /><br />Is there any particular reason why you spelt Lyttelton the way you did, or was your spellchecker at fault? I notice mine gets it wrong.Chris Morrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10557217407223228656noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-83447941744909642782022-08-07T16:16:40.036+12:002022-08-07T16:16:40.036+12:00Examples of amazing design that are the opposite t...Examples of amazing design that are the opposite to the prison-type chicken coops being built in NZ now by the financial Dr Frankensteins here.<br />keywords for google: hundertwasser designs in building<br />Here are 12 - https://www.touropia.com/hundertwasser-architecture/<br />greywarblernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-17897946985614679272022-08-07T12:01:06.958+12:002022-08-07T12:01:06.958+12:00New Zealand was going to become the "Switzerl...New Zealand was going to become the "Switzerland of the South Pacific" thanks to the brilliance of Milton Friedman.<br /><br />Farming was a "sunset industry". I note that farming, in particular dairying, is all that props up our economy. Dairy is to New Zealand what mining is to Australia.<br /><br />We sold off state assets for a handful of free market magic beans. I note that the beanstalk leading us to Switzerland status has manifestly failed to materialise.<br /><br />The Act Party and a chunk of National remind me of the Japanese soldiers still fighting the Second World War in the 1970s.<br /><br />Nothing like a bloody minded refusal to face up to the reality that Friedmanism has been a disaster for all but the wealthiest decile.Shane McDowallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09354384369518580573noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-69052153701889642642022-08-06T18:14:49.497+12:002022-08-06T18:14:49.497+12:00Reading Terry Pratchett it occurs to me that it is...Reading Terry Pratchett it occurs to me that it is really zany but written so that there are threads of joined-up thinking in it that bind it to reality here and there, and the rest of Discworld life is able to move fairly fluidly around, like a helium balloon that is still tied to the earth and can be hauled in for inspection. <br /><br />Compared to the reality (supposed)that I read or hear about, no tv, every day it actually seems very similar. I think we need to stop pretending that we think logically and rationally in straight lines or nearly. Time to admit that we make up our history regularly after we have rationalised the latest permutations. That could add a much-needed prismatic view of the politics we should aim for for the latter part of the 21st century.<br /><br />'Imagination is funny, it makes a cloudy day sunny' is a truism. Pratchett on the dimensions of the Unseen University is similar to the Tardis of Dr Who. <br />'Unseen University was much bigger on the inside. Thousands of years as the leading establishment of practical magic in a world where dimensions were largely a matter of chance in any case had left it bulging in places where it shouldn't have places. There were rooms containing rooms which, if you entered them, turned out to contain the room you'd started with, which can be a problem if you are in a conga line.' <br /><br />Perhaps Canterbury's earthquake disaster of the CTV collapsing is an example of our present dysfunctional system. Perhaps if it had been built like a <br />Hundertwasser building it would have lasted through as others did.greywarblernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-58510223020524300122022-08-06T13:41:16.519+12:002022-08-06T13:41:16.519+12:00Thinking about Jack's magic beans and the stor...Thinking about Jack's magic beans and the story behind. Jack and his mother were poor and they had to sell their cow perhaps to pay the rent. Jack is naive and not adept at thinking hard about problems, actions and consequences. So he is a doozy for some smart con artist selling what he claims are magic beans. The mother recognises that they are inadequate to deal with her immediate problem which has worsened because of Jack's action. The beans are thrown on the ground where they might come to something, though they are unsure of exactly what. <br /><br />Then wonders! - a thick and fast-growing green monster of a stalk reaches up into the dim reaches of the sky and Jack, full of beans or something, hares off up it and finds a great house with good things in it and proceeds to steal them. He is nearly caught by the owner, a giant, but it goes against the morality of the housekeeper to see the young feller harmed and she hides him from the owner. So he doesn't have to face up to his thefts and be punished. <br /><br />End of story the mother and son live comfortably, respected by the community, on the income from stolen goods, so they are immoral. Their owner is deprived of his possessions which he enjoyed, the housekeeper who behaved morally in protecting Jack from harm probably suffered for helping Jack, who chopped the beanstalk so was unable to go back and offer her recompense. She lost her job as a result of Jack killing the Giant who fell with the severed beanstalk. This story is not a triumphant one of good over evil when unpicked eh. <br /><br />And it is the story of the NZ Labour Party, living their comfortable lives, enjoying their ill-gotten gains, very sly having twocked* the Party from the originators, the lower income wage workers and strugglers.<br /><br />* <i>Over the last decade or so, twoc, an acronym of Taken Without Owner's Consent, has been used as an alternative way of describing the concept of joyriding, stealing a car and driving it for pleasure, usually in a dangerous way. Twoc is an informal transitive verb which has found official recognition in, among others, the Compact Oxford...<br />https://www.macmillandictionary.com/buzzword/entries/twoc.html</i><br />greywarblernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-26976085226074074432022-08-06T11:56:43.324+12:002022-08-06T11:56:43.324+12:00It is indeed a wonderful painting and its sense of...It is indeed a wonderful painting and its sense of foreboding is entirely appropriate for our present times. Many things have changed around us both since the mid 70s and not always for the better. The high-points perhaps have been the advances in medical science and lifespans, as well as mega events such as the collapse of Soviet communism. But now everything seems under threat again, particularly from the so-called "progressives", the modern brownshirts. One can only take one's bearings from what is within. As the Oracle at Delphi says, "Know Thyself", "Nothing to Excess", and the clincher, "Certainty Brings Insanity". I don't know what she was smoking but the Pythia rocks.Odysseushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04745489060434244478noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-11972239587066711332022-08-06T08:16:15.295+12:002022-08-06T08:16:15.295+12:00Thought provoking essay. No wonder the pensive exp...Thought provoking essay. No wonder the pensive expression - that's Waititi coming through the gate with God knows what mad plans for your future.<br /><br />Chris: "discover who, and where, we really are"<br /><br />"people don’t tend to talk much about their ‘identity’ unless it is under threat. The louder you have to talk about it, the more you have lost. Once an entire country is talking about nothing else, that’s a pretty good sign that the Machine has sprayed the roots of its people with Roundup and ploughed the remains into the field.<br /><br />‘Our age is so poisoned by lies’, wrote Weil, ‘that it converts everything it touches into a lie.’ Everything deeper, older and truer than the workings and values of the Machine has been, or is in the process of being, scoured away from us. We turned away from a mythic, rooted understanding of the world, and turned away from the divine, in order to look at ourselves reflected in the little black mirrors in our hands. Some people are quite happy with this, and have no time for Romantic Luddites like myself when we lament it. Even we Romantic Luddites are here on the Internet, lamenting. But some day soon we will all have to look up and begin to turn back again. I have a feeling that this process has already begun."<br />https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/the-great-unsettlingDavid Georgehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04883628159193125307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-54476445520553962462022-08-05T23:35:01.113+12:002022-08-05T23:35:01.113+12:00I don't look to the Wizard for magic, I look t...I don't look to the Wizard for magic, I look to Terry Pratchett. He had magic grow in his brain and it bloomed for decades and many Discworld and other novels before his style of dementia took over. Even when it was beginning to debilitate him he found a way to bring forward his latest through friends. As he dealt with his advancing illness he galvanised others to do something definite for alzheimers sufferers, previously neglected. Magic, can be built out of imagination, and outcomes can be directed from possibilities with a feeling of accomplishment working with good-minded others committed to the same results. That would be satisfying at least. <br /><br />In this country it might be that we need to develop an idea that can be managed as if we were building a polity for Ankh-Morpork. Our past seems to have been irretrievably lost. We need to start a Movement to Re-Imagine NZ/Aotearoa from the tattered thing it has become.greywarblernoreply@blogger.com