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Waitak

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Everything posted by Waitak

  1. Korean war, Hungarian uprising, Cuban missile crisis, invasion of Czechoslovakia, construction of the Berlin wall, Malaya, Greece, Vietnam - just a few more examples of conflicts that could have escalated into something even more serious. The threat of World War 3 has been with us since the end of World War 2.
  2. This winds me up too. I wanted a drainage job done, and found a local company advertising their services. The owner came over, had a look at the job, then sent me a written quote a few days later. I accepted the quote by return and asked when they could start the job. This was about three months ago, and since then, it's been complete silence. If you don't want the job, just say so. If you've got too much work on, just say so. Why even bother advertising ?
  3. Same here. I thought Dave had discovered Chat GPT !
  4. Billing has "Philip" on his shirt. Apparently at the start of the season he announced that he wanted to be known only as "Philip" from then on. The match commentators have responded by relentlessly referring to him as "Billing" ever since.
  5. Sorry mate, I only just saw your question. Yes, we are in New Zealand now, but when we first left England we went to live in Taiwan. We stayed there six years, went back to the UK briefly, then moved to Hong Kong and lived there another eight years. We moved to NZ in 1997. We have no wish to live anywhere but NZ now, but I personally loved living and working in the Far East and still get back there occasionally.
  6. I think I speak for most Kiwis when I say we are extremely grateful we didn't have Boris Johnson or Bolsanaro in charge of New Zealand's handling of the pandemic. However, those guys set a low bar, and it doesn't mean that the Ardern Government's response was particularly good either.
  7. We emigrated in 1981 and have never looked back. I worked in the manufacturing industry, and after the carnage of the 1970s (and two redundancies) I'd had enough. Fortunately, my wife was fully on board with the decision, which was a major factor. It wasn't all plain sailing, but we have never regretted making the move.
  8. Either way, Razor will be building a new team. So many of the core players in this current team are nearing the end of their careers, or are heading overseas after this tournament. Of greater concern is what our mates across the ditch are going to do ? They're hosting the next World Cup, but will clearly need a major upgrade if they want to compete, and I don't think Eddie Jones is the answer.
  9. I think Ian Foster is the Gerard Houllier of AB's coaches. I'm hoping that Scott Robertson proves to be the Jurgen Klopp.
  10. Where do you live, Brazil ? To your second point, it will be a major achievement, given the AB's ranking and patchy form going into the tournament. What's your view ?
  11. There's nothing "revisionist" in what I've posted. I've attempted to describe what many Kiwis living in New Zealand felt at the time about the Government's handling of the pandemic from 2021. Of course, the perception from overseas may have been different, which might explain why Jacinda Ardern now has more credibility abroad than she does domestically. Anyway, don't take my word for it, here is an excerpt from an article posted just a couple of days ago:- Listener writer Danyl Mclauchlan also cites Covid and failure to deliver on promises: "Hipkins was indirectly responsible for much of his party's decline. He was minister for Covid, and the early phase was a triumph that voters rewarded in 2020. But 2021 saw one of the slowest vaccine rollouts in the OECD after the government failed to negotiate purchase agreements with pharmaceutical companies. The lack of vaccine coverage led to the sustained Auckland lockdown of late 2021, a policy failure that the nation's largest city has punished them for by delivering a number of Labour's safest seats to National. Mt Roskill and New Lynn have fallen, Mt Albert and Te Atatū look set to fall. Hipkins was also minister for health, education, police and public service: all areas in which his government's legacy is questionable at best." The full article can be found here if you're interested, but it only echoes much of what was said in the Bryce Edwards article I referenced earlier in the week. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/election-2023/500390/the-left-s-postmortem-on-labour-s-defeat
  12. Sorry mate, my earlier response was brief to the point of rudeness. I'm very sorry to hear about your loss, and I can't imagine how frustrating it must have been to deal with your Dad's death in the face of the restrictions the Government had put in place. It will be interesting to see the response from expatriate Kiwis when the special votes (for last week's election) are counted. In recent elections, the special votes have generally favoured the left, but there are suggestions that this year will be different as a result of the Government's ham-fisted handling of the pandemic. We should have the answer within the next two weeks, and the result will certainly have an impact on the structure of the new Government.
  13. There was a lot of support for the Government's initial response, and there is no question that their approach kept the death toll down during the first wave. Resentment started to build when the Government failed to follow up with efficient handling of MIQ, supplies of vaccines, supplies of PPE & RAT tests, and the drawn-out lockdowns. Of course we are all happy that the death toll was no higher, but the general feeling is that this could have been achieved with much less disruption to people's lives (and less long term damage to the economy) had the response been better organised.
  14. That may be the case in the UK, but it certainly is not the case in New Zealand. The media here, with a few notable exceptions, is generally left-leaning, and Jacinda Ardern's election to her first term as PM in 2017 was greeted with widespread enthusiasm in the mainstream media. Ardern fed this by promising the most open and transparent Government in New Zealand's history. What we actually got was quite different. The media was carefully managed by the Government. Favoured journalists were treated with special privilege, while dissenting voices were isolated and excluded. This approach culminated in a grant of 55 million dollars of taxpayers money from the Government to fund "public interest" journalism in 2021, which was seen by many at the time as a bribe to keep the media on side. One unpleasant outcome of this was that Ardern was subjected to a barrage of hateful personal attacks on social media, which may have been partially a consequence of the Government's suppression of criticism via the normal channels.
  15. Here you go:- https://democracyproject.nz/2023/10/03/bryce-edwards-ten-reasons-labours-support-has-halved/
  16. A New Zealand political commentator recently summed up 10 reasons why the Labour Government's support halved in the period leading up to the election, and he correctly predicted Labour's defeat. There is a lot of detail in his article, but the headings are:- 1. Labour's handling of Covid 2. Failure to deliver the promised transformation or even the basics 3. Poor management of the economy 4. Public dissatisfaction with deteriorating public services 5. Failure on tax reform 6. Perception that Labour is arrogant and out of touch 7. Lack of clarity about what Labour believe in 8. Labour's focus on "woke" politics instead of working class politics 9. Labour's radical reinterpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi 10. Labour Minister's integrity scandals Labour won an outright majority in the 2020 election (a rarity under MMP) and thus had a historic opportunity to achieve many of the things you would expect a Labour government to implement, but they clearly failed to do so. Their left wing support has defected to the Greens, and their support in the centre has swung right.
  17. To HL's point:- Genevieve Zulu The Great Escape Every Christmas, without fail.
  18. Totally agree. He was virtually invisible, as a good ref should be, yet was always in control of the game.
  19. This may have been mentioned elsewhere, but Diaz deserves huge respect for the way he handled being subbed after Virgil was sent off. Diaz must have been massively disappointed and frustrated, but he kept his feelings to himself and congratulated Darwin at the end of the game.
  20. Surprised to see Robbo's name in the list of "non home grown" players there.
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