@mariner4life said in Christmas Gifts:

SHIT! I haven't got my parents anything.

And you know what, i don't even know what they might need or want. I am so far removed from their lives i have no fucking idea. We talk on the phone maybe once a month. Maybe. And i haven't seen them in 14 months. I am a terrible son. I haven't spent christmas with my family in probably 4 years, but it might actually be 5.

I stopped buying for my sisters a couple of decades ago.

I always get my younger brother a decent present. He’s a tradIe who, as he has 5 kids, 3 of whom he’s put through uni with the last 2 due in the next couple of years, never has anything left for himself. He’s a great Dad and never expects much. A couple of Christmases ago I convinced Mrs JC to let me buy him the car he always wanted. It was worth it just to see the look on his face when he drives it. In return I expect him to research and buy me the best bottle of wine he can find for under 30 bucks.

Well for us kids just weren’t an option sadly. We tried everything but when we first got all the tests done they told us it would be extremely unlikely and they were right. The never ending hormone treatments permanently damaged Mrs JC’s health - one of the fertility experts guilt tripped her into some pretty extreme treatments by saying if she had any second thoughts then she just didn’t want kids enough. So now she’s got anxiety attacks, near constant IBS, blinding headaches about 50% of every month, excruciating period pain, everything except the child she desperately wanted and still misses. The kicker is she is a amazing with kids and would have been the most awesome Mum. Sometimes you just have to laugh because the alternative is you’d never stop crying.

@Frank said in US Politics:

@JC Unfortunately, a lot of people do listen to them. Sad.

Stop then. Nobody is making you wind yourself up with this drivel.

Honestly, the degeneration of this thread gives me the shits. I'm very interested in policy and especially economics in the US, but the nonsense on here about personalities, cucks, and the alt-right, the endless pathetic memes and the posting of links to fringe sites populated by feeble minds has made it pretty much unreadable.

@Crucial said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

@JC said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

@Godder said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

@JC it was agreed by our representatives in Parliament giving those powers to the government if an epidemic is declared.

And if the government keeps publishing criteria and revising it regularly, how will that keep public confidence? People don't trust them now, and that would look like flip-flopping.

Oh no. We can’t have them looking like they’re flip-flopping can we? That would be so politically inconvenient.

This is simple. If they know what the exit criteria are they should tell us. If they don’t know they should tell us that instead. The former has a time limit, even if it’s just connected to a condition or event. But if the exit criteria are rational, the abrogation of our human rights is temporary.

However if there aren’t any exit criteria it is entirely possible that there is no exit, ever. I’m not OK with living like that, and I don’t care what representatives decided it.

I’m not impressed by arguments that things are constantly changing when the people making the argument are the ones who are changing things.

It’s a decision based on a situation of many variables, not one the can be locked in and held to.

I get the element of frustration by some but things aren’t as simple as “when this number occurs”.
It isn’t trying to save face either. You know exactly what would happen if they set some targets but didn’t move when the targets were met because of other information that had to hand.

Of course it’s complex. But they chose an extreme course that varies from the original premise. Originally they needed to flatten the curve so that our health services would cope. The compact with the public was that we would temporarily surrender some freedoms so that could happen. I assume that they’ve used the time to upgrade our health systems so that we are prepared for a future wave. But I don’t know, because nobody has told us how that’s going. Instead something changed: we were going to go for elimination, something that nobody is sure will work. That’s a significant movement of the goalposts.

Assuming elimination works, what are the implications? The WHO said overnight that COVID passports shouldn’t be used because there’s no evidence that having the virus confers immunity. Think about that. We may be permanently stuck with this thing. If so, it’s about time someone started to talk with us about what rights and freedoms we are prepared to permanently give up. And the answer might be “none”. So be it.

I’m much more likely to be in the high risk category than most here, and I’d rather not die. But I’m fucked if I want to be the reason people who are at very little risk have their lives and livelihoods ruined just so that I can get a few extra years of living like a hermit. Fuck that. I’d rather take my chances and let people with an actual future have one.

@antipodean said in RWC: All Blacks v Ireland (QF2):

@booboo said in RWC: All Blacks v Ireland (QF2):

@antipodean said in RWC: All Blacks v Ireland (QF2):

@canefan said in RWC: All Blacks v Ireland (QF2):

@antipodean said in RWC: All Blacks v Ireland (QF2):

@Luigi said in RWC: All Blacks v Ireland (QF2):

@MiketheSnow said in RWC: All Blacks v Ireland (QF2):

@sparky said in RWC: All Blacks v Ireland (QF2):

Not really sure what Matt Todd could do there?

Tackle?

Exactly. It ain’t about intent anymore. Or even it being an accident. If you’re in the way, flailing around like a epileptic squid you’re gonna get pinged. Todd got sent off for being a muppet. Can’t even claim cynicism, just rubbishness.

He's directly responsible for both of Ireland's tries. His YC was deserved - you're supposed to tackle.

Please explain to me the rule that Todd broke? He was inside, the vision clearly showed that. He did not make shoulder or arm contact with the irish player's head. It was at best a collision I would have thought? Honest question

I'd go with foul play obstruction. He made no attempt to tackle and simply plopped himself in the way.

Who is he obstructing. Isn't obstruction preventing someone from playing?

The ball carrier, from playing the ball. I suggest you watch a replay. It's obvious and uncontroversial. Ignore that he got flustered in his explanation, the penalty and card are justified.

I had to go and watch again after reading this. He did not prevent the ball carrier from playing the ball. The ball could have been made available to a team mate at any time and Todd didn’t stop him from trying to do that. He was, for the record, behind the try line when the ball carrier picked up the ball and only moved forward after that. He flopped clownishly at the base of the posts but was onside when he did it. If you called it a tackle or a breakdown then he was on the NZ side of it. If you called it open play then he can be wherever the fuck he likes.

Or are you saying that defenders have an obligation to let a player attempt to place the ball and score a try? Because I missed that law change and so has everybody else who tries to hold up the ball and prevent a score, like in every game ever.

As you’ll have gathered, I’m not accepting it’s obvious and uncontroversial just because you say so.

Of course I could be wrong but you’ll need to cite your source.

@Rapido said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

My hunch is 28 days short sharp pain will do less damage to the economy than a drawn out half arsed approach.

28 days which includes school holidays, plus 2 stat holidays. 18 working/trading days for many.

Let a hairdresser or dentist stay open but with desultory turnover but still all the costs? Or shut stuff down , reduce all costs, subsidise wages, defer mortgages. Shift the pain to the commercial landlords who shift it to the banks.

Wont work for all, for some time is money. Can't save everyone, let the 'creative destruction' begin as the textbooks say.

Can’t agree. “Creative destruction” is pretty offensive really. The majority of businesses that go to the wall represent the sweat, dreams and livelihoods of individuals and families all over the country. They will not recover. Many will have guaranteed their debts with their personal assets and they will lose their homes, in many cases their families, and in some cases their lives. They will not be able to borrow any more money to start again. They will fail to pay their debts, often to other small businesses, leading to more of the same. Recession, too, is a virus. What most small and medium sized businesses want is to be in control of their own destiny, not have failure forced on them by someone who has no idea of what is needed to keep a business afloat in good times and bad, or empathy with the sense of helplessness when you see the hurt felt by your family, your employees and their families, and the community who depends on you to deliver your services and pay your debts. And it doesn’t matter how smart you are or how honourable your intentions are, you can’t do anything about it. Because you have been ordered not to.

BTW, shifting the pain to the banks? Like that actually ever happens... The banks will do fine. And if they don’t, the squeeze will go onto their customers, and there’s nothing the government can do to stop them.

@Siam said in US Politics:

@MajorRage genuinely, what's been shocking about the trump reaction? You think his quote is defining?
From the little I've seen his addresses to the nation have been pretty reasonable and met with majority approval.

I fail to get the point of majority approval. That’s for when a politician wants to hedge his bets on re-election. It’s not the same as leadership, which is what’s missing here.

Somehow the US has turned into a gerontocracy, with both parties’ likely candidates stupid old men. Maybe they were both clever once, but they’re not now. Biden acts like he’s suffering from dementia and Trump is a 140 character mind in a longform world.
It’s sad it’s no longer shocking that Trump’s tendency to confuse what he thinks plays well in a tweet is the best response to any real world situation. Autocracy may play well in states where the political framework allows for it, but the US isn’t that place. Everybody in the country knows that ultimately they have the constitutional right to tell him to piss off, yet he continues to act as though ordering around free people will work. It doesn’t. He needs to find another way, and I think he’s too old to change, and too much a believer in his own myth for him to even think he needs to.

And yet, where is the viable alternative? Charlatans, shallow panderers, mass-produced gladhanders who think a generic law degree is the ticket to wisdom that nobody else has, virtue signalling empty heads in bad American suits. How did a great country fall so low, so fast? From an embarrassment of riches to simply an embarrassment?

Many of the smartest people I know are Americans. Trump and Biden aren’t fit to be seen in the same room as them. A pox on both their corrupt houses.

@crucial said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

@hooroo said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

@crucial said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

@hooroo said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

@crucial said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

@hooroo what's the point of planning and budgeting on something that has a slim chance of going to plan? You'd then have everyone bitching and moaning about how they had spent money, arranged functions etc etc and it changed on them.

Giving false hope isn't good leadership either.

I do think that there may be a bit more of a plan soon though hence the modelling being done on vaccination rates etc. There is a need to create a carrot instead of just pointing to the stick.
I wouldn't be making plans on it though. Way too much can happen.

A plan isn't false hope. It's a plan. A plan can have what is deemed as bad outcomes as well as good. That's what planning is.

Has to have a point though. I still don't see what the type of plan we are talking about achieves apart from a waste of time.

There is a roadmap being formulated by the looks of things, based around vaccination rates which is a massive unknown being down to human choice. Anything set out after that is then variable based on something that we can't control short of rounding dips hits up with cattle prods.

Wow you would be awesome in business. Only living in the right now, no planning because future is uncertain, purely reactive.

Fair enough though, it kind of explains a lot.

That's a bit smart arse isn't it? What does it explain exactly?
Funnily enough I am actually a planner by career but also ones that sees no value in setting up measures and goals that experience shows cannot have a certain degree of certainty. I'm sure you are aware of the phases things go through and how plans remain fluid while working toward a goal until they reach levels of known achievability.
One of the biggest business delivery failings is trying to nail stuff down to early. Ever notice why so many projects go over the original investment case. Because everyone wanted a 'roadmap' quantified before planning was complete. I understand that some business cultures (an example I was given was a Japanese one) don't accept overruns because they invest in planning before promises. I digress.
I haven't said that the govt shouldn't plan. Far from it. I think they need to constantly re-plan based on what's happening and have underlying aims that they can be agile in achieving. Planning AND reacting are key.

Well countering that I now manage large scale enterprise projects for a living, and I don't recognise at all your take on planning.

In my world if you are leading people through a complex change you lay out your assumptions, risks, constraints, resources and costs, deliverables and milestones, then set out what your intentions are based on that. Then you adapt as needed. And you do it all openly and honestly. The moment you start obfuscating you lose the trust of your stakeholders. It is the height of arrogance to decide on their behalf that there are things too complex for them to know, or that they don't have the brains to interpret what you are telling them. If someone else is picking up the tab they deserve to know everything you know, especially what options are available to them.

I have no idea why running projects or initiatives is different in the public sector, but if it is it might explain why they are so useless at delivery.

Loving this

So this aged well:

Oh no What's this?

@booboo As infuriating as that Goudie moron is, isn't it interesting how the Murupara kaumatua who say pretty much the same thing as her get treated with respect for their views instead of getting the same derision we see in that article? Maybe if they called these people out - all of them - as out of their depth idiots we might get somewhere.

@mn5 Iggy is no Louis Armstrong, but he plays it straight.

@godder You’re no doubt right but that’s still not a reasonable excuse. This government has had no problem passing law under urgency for any number of things, but they can’t for this?

Let’s be honest back as recently as April this year the Prime Minister - who seems to be running the entire campaign when things are going well but none of it when they aren’t - was telling us that vaccinations weren’t a priority because we didn’t have community tranmission and others needed it more. Now we’ve got some serious revisionism - if not straight out gaslighting - going on, telling us that the vaccination strategy started early.

It’s not much of a logical leap to consider that if they thought they were smart enough to not need vaccinations then they wouldn’t need any additional ICU capacity either, after all we didn’t have any community transmission.

@mn5 Did you check out the rest of the album? It’s called Shaken and Stirred: The David Arnold James Bond Project. John Barry liked it so much that he recommended Arnold as the composer of one of the Bond movies and he ended up doing four of them. The version of Thunderball by Martin Fry is great and Iggy Pop sings a remarkably good version of We Have All The Time In The World.

@crucial "Phil Oakey out of The Human League" star of Top Gear.

Since we touched on early Virgin releases, how about this dark little gem from The Human League before they become poptastic.

@crucial Well I've got it sussed she's got a 40 inch bust and she's just..

Love XTC. Drums and Wires is one of my favourite albums ever