there are a bunch of things people said they loved about NZ...what do you all dislike about new zealand?
ummmmmmmmm, *the Act party, *the fact that we have rednecks who truly believe that the murrys are trying to steal their land, *the fact that Shrek the Sheep was such a media darlin' (and that her HC visted a sheep instead of showing ANY repect to the Hikoi, * the fact that there is no history here (this is hard to explain, i mean no history in comparison to places like britain, ireland, greece - with the temples and the way stones and stuff - they're a lot more rich in heritage than we are) but yesee.
The Western World really shares the greek history, same with rome..but yeah, neither of our countries has the parthenon or the colosseum in our backyards. Whats the act party? right wing group i assume?
well very much a follower of bushology (infact before bush LOL). truly idiotic, disrespectfull, logic and politics. Alltaken
Living in Illinois made me realise that NZ may have a loony right, but middle America has that as its norm! I would say, the lack of jobs. NZ trains up lots of great academics but then can't hire us -- hence I am in Scotland... pining.
Maori, rendered in a hilariously accurate accent -- as said by foilk who haven't really come to terms with whose lands it 'tis. Why has the foreshore become such a big issue? I was back in godzone in Feb and it was all people were talking about. It's an issue, sure, but not like world trade or Iraq , or the increase in smoking rates amongst teenagers is an issue.
yeah, your average american is far more conservative than most other westerners. A lot of liberal legislation in america is just removing standards though, i.e. high school exit exam standards, and then people wonder why our schools suck when we lower our standards. I guess our middle is most countries right wing, but we all laugh at the religious whackos. But thats neither here nor there
I personally appreciate everything about the grand nation of New Zealand. The people, creatures and accents are beautiful to my eyes and ears. Would never in a million years believe there is a single thing dislikeable about it. In fact, i would go so far as to say it is the best place in the world! please love me.....................
funny. yeah Act is like what people said - the stand for freedom of the individual (in other words poor people are lazy buggers who 'choose not work?) They have ideas for NZ growth, such as 0% tax for business etc...(of course, that will mean a few cutbacks in providing health care and education, but that'll be fine, right?) As for the foreshore - it was one of those things that people just got behind, I guess. I think it's kind of ironic that the governemnt might own the beaches now - and as such they can do all the stuff that people were afarid the Maori would do - such as charge admission, sell it off to investors to make it private and such. Whereas if Maori had more than a customary title, they could have that control, and would be less likely (i think) than a labour/national led government to use & abuse the land because of tapu...but that's just me. Oooh, i thought of another reason to dislike NZ - Don fucking Brash and his "'let's just make the legally nuclear free policy into a 'nuclearness is simply frowned upon' policy" idea and the fact that the Nats are doing well in the polls - so I have to vote Labour just to keep National out, when I reallky want to vote the Greens) and the greens have had to abandon GE Free policies in order to form a governemnt with Labour so National will not get power. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Out of curiosity, whats the problem with nuclear power? Sure it can be dangerous if it leaks, but, there have been far more ecological problems from other sources of energy than nuclear. GE? the food? I dont understand whats the big problem with GE food. No one has ever found anything wrong with GE food, in fact, it lacks all the natural bacteria(so i've read) that normal food contains. I really dont understand everyones gripes with GE food. Millions of people starve around the world when we have all this food that goes to waste because of the EU(and other countries).
well....as far as what the deal with nuclear power....it's not a ban on nuclear power that is what Don Brash is talking about. It's about letting foreign visiting ships into nz water when they may (or may not-but have refused to disclose) have nuclear weaponry aboard. NZ has always stood up against nuclear weapons, and nuclear testing in the south pacific. We took France to the World Court and WON!!, and we stood up against the americans, to make an important and YES symbolic stand against nuclear weapons. And as a result there has always been this feeling that nz has missed out on free trade deals with the U.S as a reslut. But to be fair I don't think thats the whole truth. The U.S is never going to scrap beef tariffs to let us into their market, nuclear ban or not. The nuclear power lobby has never really had much of a go here, because a)it's not safe!! No matter how much safety legislation is in place, accidents can happen and HAVE HAPPENED (chernobyl anyone) b) it brings up a whole other matter of waste and what to do with it, or where to send it. We pride ourselves on being clean and green, wouldn't be the best look would it? c) we don't need it (what other better reason could there be) In fact I don't think I've ever heard nuclear energy being seriously offered as a solution to power shortages here...
like most countries, we play games with imports and put up tarrifs to protect our industries. The canadians are pissy with us over soft lumber tarrifs too. Although, i dont know why we or the french ever needed to stop in NZ with nuclear ships.
me too. i have been thinking about it a bit over the last few months, and despite my first choice being the greens for a vote, i have decided that labour is the only way to stop national to get in. i think i am going to send a letter to the greens party and appolygise to them for doing so, and say why. they will understand and they will send me some marijuana in the mail to try soften me up ha ha ha (just kidding on the drugs part BTW, i except somthing way better than dope) Doug
lol no i was joking. pot is not legal (yet) but prostitution is. anyway i wouldn't smoke pot even if it was legal. as for nuclear the problem here is, if somthign wen't wrong we nolonger have a country. the chernobyl incident was rather interesting, i have done a good amount of research on it and know a number of facts. it is a very scary story. sparing the details of the actual reason and issue of the accident. when it happened the local fire department needed to do somthing about it. they sent hundreds of crew from everywhere instantly, they had heavy lead shirts and such on (to try to protect them LOL) despite this within hours people were dropping like flys. all of the people ended up avoiding 4 reactors exploding and kept the fire to only one of them. a fire crews wife was talking about how her husband went to hospital and she went to see him, she put her hand on his arm, and his arm feel off at the shoulder, the bone and flesh just ripped away, he was coughing up parts of his lungs and died very soon. 16,000 military personal were sent in from the USSR (or old USSR group, don't know if it was still around at the time) they ad helicopters running constantly dropping lead filled sand on the reactor and had personal on the ground building a large concrete tome over the whole thing, of these 16,000 people there are no records kept on how many people died. most are estimated to have died within days or weeks. the incident wasn't known of by the public for three days, the only reason it was ever noticed by people was that chernobyls closest nuclear power plant (which was a good distance away) hada bunch of technitians come to work one day and all off their gigometers were going off the scale, they instantly knew what had happened and most of them shit their pants. (well dunno if they really did or not LOL) hydro dams are considered to be ecologically unfriendly because of the river systems they destroy (fish and such) but if a hydro dam collapses, you are likely to maybe have a flooded town and/or lose a few hundred to a thousand lives. infact if a hydro dam collapses you are more likely to have a return to a better/more natural state in the environment. nuclear power during production is less ecologically friendly, but as soon as the waste comes out, you are stuck with it for millions of years. and in the US alone there are huge areas that are perminently contaminated from impropper storage. hence the US government monitors radiation levels in the ecosystem by testing livestock such as cows, looking in tissues in their tounge, uterous, certain organs etc... not an area that i want to go. the netherlands is a huge nuclear country and one of the smallest countries in the world (well population vs area). they are actually trying to get rid of their entire nuclear power grid, as are france i beleive. decomissioning powerplants all over, and slowly replacing them with more traditionally ecological systems, the reason is, if one power plant goes then the entire country is un-inhabitable for longer than humans are going to be on earth. sad IMO. i don't want nuclear anything anywhere near me, the average world raditation level increased by a large amount from chernobyl, 3% of our life radiation exposure is because of it. 1/2 of our exposure is from the sun, and 1/3 of our exposure is from x-rays and medical radiation. other sources are radiowaves, cellphones, satelietes... noticed any increase in cancer at all? New Zealand goes down the nuclear route, and there is no return/ it takes hundreds of years to turn it around and undo a decision that could take 1 year to make. in my life i try to live with no regrets and part of that is working out how perminant a decision is. Doug
And, as much as we can say that nuclear freeness is about health and whatnot - imo it also has to do with fear. beacuse, when the cold war was on, ANZUS was still alive - US ships wanted to dock here, with nuclear weapons (maybe). I think that poeple thought it was a possibilty these nuclear ships might be bombed by an opposing force and little NZ would be thus obliterated. So it was eaisier to ban nuclear ships rather than live in fear. but clean and greeness is a great reason too. People are proud of our nuclear free staus. with france and the world court - was that to do with the Rainbow Warrior? finally, GE - I think it's ok as long as it is kept in the lab and kept to vegies. (but personally I think NZ would be better off going fully organic - to promote the clean green image for tourism, to keep out the big eveil Monsanto companies and to find a niche market in exports, as the masses don't seem to like GE and pretty much everywhere else has fucked themselves up)
ah that makes sense for the US, and i'm sure there was still some resentment for us making you com to vietnam with us. Just pray nothing goes wrong in australia or the wind comes right to you, hehe edit: oh as for chernobyl, yeah the more i learn about it the more freaky it gets. I hear its going to be a big problem again in the near future. Thankfully our leak at three mile island wasnt anything like that.... Someone needs to develop a low risk, clean form of energy. I dont think there is any real safe/efficient forms of energy except for my hydro or wind, but i dont think they produce near energy to run a nation the size of the US, let alone the needs of every other country. Then again, hoover dam gives enough energy to light Las vegas, so maybe if we cut down on the lights there we could lightup the rest of the world, hehe.
The main problem with nuclear power is it produces enormous amounts of nmuclear waste that must be stored somewhere -- not a good idea in a country on a massive fault-line.
kinda the Issue IMO. cities like las vegas use millions of times more power than needed, i think the solution is not more power stations or alternate energy, but rather optimisation of the resources that we are currently using. think about a tv for example, uses 10W of power wether it is turned on or off. 10W of power is the equivalent power used by a human brain. it is the same power used by a energy saving light bulb. yet nobody cares if a tv uses 10W of power. they all care how big it is. its only dryers that people care if they use power. Energy star compliant devices should recieve GST cuts, so that people are more likely to buy the better technologys and hence save the world from needing more resources. we are looking at the symptoms rather than the problems, and untill humanity can sort its shit out we are all on the way down hill. Alltaken
