Sunday 31 December 2017

The Panel grapples with the problem of evil (Dec. 10, 2014)

10 December 2014 at 8:21 pm
“What sort of people could even DO torture? They’re psychopaths!”
The Panel grapples with the problem of evil
Radio NZ National, Wednesday 10 December 2014
Jim Mora, Michelle Acourt, Gordon McLauchlan, Zoe Ferguson
No Nevil Breivik Gibson or John Barnett or Barry Corbett or Jordan Williams on the programme to defend torture today. Nobody like Chris Trotter to deliver a windy admonition against those who would be so foolish as to utter any word of condemnation of the torture and murder of helpless captives. Instead, there are two comparatively decent guests today for the inevitable discussion on the Senate Intelligence Committee report....
GORDON McLAUCHLAN: They’re seriously BAD DUDES!….What sort of people could even DO torture? They’re psychopaths. That’s what they are!                            
MICHELLE ACOURT: Mmmmm. 
JIM MORA: Hmmmm….
What sort of people would do torture? Well, here’s a tentative answer: People with an empathy deficit, i.e., people who laugh at the plight of political dissidents being hounded into exile, then make fun of them when they fall sick. People who guffaw at the death of an officially designated enemy. People like…. well, Michelle Acourt was too polite and discrete to say anything, but perhaps she was casting her mind back a little bit…..

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More laughing and sneering at dissidents: inanity rules, as usual, on The Panel (June 26, 2013)

26 June 2013 at 5:09 pm
More laughing and sneering at dissidents
Inanity rules, as usual, on The Panel
Radio NZ National, Wednesday 26 June 2013
Jim Mora, Dita De Boni, Chris Wikaira
JIM MORA: All right, it’s Susan Baldacci with what the woooooorld’s talking about! What have you got for us today?
SUSAN BALDACCI: Someone who’s name is on the lips of virtually EVERYBODY is Edward Snowden.
DITA DE BONI: Oh yes? He he he he he!
MORA: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
SUSAN BALDACCI: Yeeeeeessss, well this guy is the new JETSET TRAVELLER!
MORA: Hur hur hur hur hur!
SUSAN BALDACCI: Well, people have been asking how the heck he DOES it!
DITA DE BONI: Yes! I’ve been asking that!
MORA: He’s like a ghost!
DITA DE BONI: Apparently he didn’t even need a passport to get into Russia!
SUSAN BALDACCI: No, well that’s just it, you see. You only need a passport if the country you are entering DEMANDS one. That’s how so many refugees manage to get into countries after they have destroyed their documents.
DITA DE BONI: What is the advantage for Ecuador in taking this guy?
MORA: Arrrgghh, they’re just thumbing their nose at the world.
SUSAN BALDACCI: Yeah. Otherwise why would they take Julian Assange?
DITA DE BONI: Exactly.
MORA: They’re staking out a position in South America.
DITA DE BONI: Exactly!
MORA: Okay, moving on. You’ve got something about Stephen Fry?
SUSAN BALDACCI: Yes, he has written about how extremely depressed he gets sometimes.
MORA: He always seems, to me, to live a gilded life. He’s erudite, he’s witty, he’s clever, he’s just so admired.
DITA DE BONI: [slowly, to indicate great seriousness] I think he struggles with being gay.
SUSAN BALDACCI: I think he’s a tortured soul.
DITA DE BONI: When he came out, it wasn’t so cool you know? It wasn’t so hip, you know?
….[Awkward silence]….
MORA: Mmmmmkayyy… Okay, Susan Baldacci, what else have you got?
SUSAN BALDACCI: Well, there’s a new survey has found the best places for a tertiary education. They are, number one: CANADA.
MORA: Canada! Hmmmmm.
SUSAN BALDACCI: Number two is ISRAEL.
MORA: Israel, yes.
SUSAN BALDACCI: Japan was third.
MORA: Japan was third?
SUSAN BALDACCI: [clearly irritated] Y-y-y-y-yes. The United States was fourth. And fifth was… NEW ZEALAND! Sixth was South Korea, seventh the U.K., eighth was Australia, and Ireland was next.
….[Stunned silence for several seconds]…..
DITA DE BONI: I am really shocked by that. New Zealand at number FIVE?!!??!?!?
MORA: The Australians are annoyed, aren’t they….
et cetera, et cetera, ad absurdum, ad nauseam….
  • Rogue Trooper22.1
    26 June 2013 at 5:45 pm
    now, that is very funny Morrissey, but wait, a song hearkens…
    Oh my word, what does it mean 
    won’t you please read my signs, be a Gypsy.
    Love To All On The Left.
  • logie9722.2
    26 June 2013 at 8:11 pm
    Morrissey. We are so fortunate that we do not have to listen to Newstalkzb, Radio Live, the National Programme from dawn to dusk. We have you. (transcripts and all). Keep up the good work, especially the ever growing listings of liars and deceivers. However, I hope you were able to appreciate that there was fog, drizzle, and occasional sunshine over Auckland today.
    • Te Reo Putake22.2.1
      26 June 2013 at 9:18 pm
      I hate to have to keep repeating this, but Moz’s efforts are not transcripts. They are his half remembered impressions of what was said. Other than the names, most of what he claims above bears little resemblance to what was actually said, or the tone in which it was said.
      VOR: clearly irritated!
      • Morrissey22.2.1.1
        27 June 2013 at 6:20 am
        I hate to have to keep repeating this, but Moz’s efforts are not transcripts.
        I did not haul out the old BASF tape and insert it into the tape-recorder, no. And no, that was not a sexual metaphor.
        They are his half remembered impressions of what was said.
        Anyone who listened to that horrible fifteen minutes of inanity yesterday knows that what I wrote is way, way more than “half remembered.”
        Other than the names, most of what he claims above bears little resemblance to what was actually said, or the tone in which it was said.
        I challenge anyone to dispute seriously that the characters in my little horror script are not simulacra of the principals involved in yesterday’s Panel pre-show segment. Any listener who persevered with listening to them will attest that Dita De Boni really was that shallow, that Susan Baldacci really was that disgusting, and that Jim Mora really was, as always, that special mix of avuncular, cowardly, frivolous, insincere and superficial.
    • Morrissey22.2.2
      27 June 2013 at 6:11 am
      Keep up the good work, especially the ever growing listings of liars and deceivers.
      Sadly, Liars of Our Time is a series which seems to have no prospect of ending any time soon. Watch out also for: Dum Quote of the Week, Hall of Hogwash, Humbug Corner, Luvvies on the Loose, The Ouch! File, The Subservience Index, Weasel Watch, Wimp Walloping andYeah Right.
      However, I hope you were able to appreciate that there was fog, drizzle, and occasional sunshine over Auckland today.
      That transcript—or, as our friend Te Reo Putake reminds us, that “impression”—was done quickly, by hand, then typed up in a fever. That was the only time I listened to the radio all afternoon. Similarly, I don’t watch much TV, although it might seem like it sometimes.

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Humbug Corner

Humbug Corner
No. 22: BARACK OBAMA

“WE HAVE LOST ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL, 
COURAGEOUS, AND PROFOUNDLY GOOD HUMAN 
BEINGS THAT ANY OF US WILL SHARE TIME WITH ON
THIS EARTH. HE NO LONGER BELONGS TO US – HE 
BELONGS TO THE AGES.”

—Barack Obama, New Zealand Herald, Saturday 7 December 2013, page one.
“L’hypocrisie est un hommage que le vice rend à la vertu.”

—François de La Rochefoucauld
More humbugs, mostly half-witted….
No. 21 Chris Laidlaw: “I asked him if, with the recent birth of the British royal baby, there was just the slightest tinge of regret that they had got rid of the French monarchy?”

No. 20 Nevil Gibson: “Well, everybody’s getting richer.”

No. 19 Byron Bentley: “He is a great guy, a good man … very caring…”


No. 18 Rachel Smalley: “…heartbreak all over NSW as Queensland wins the deciding State of Origin!”

No. 17 Jay Carney: “He is not a human rights activist, he is not a dissident.”

No. 16 Barack Obama: “I wish Muslims across America & around the world a month blessed with the joys of family, peace & understanding.”

http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-11072013/#comment-661330

No. 15 John Key: “They know this is an issue of national security…”

No. 14 Charles Saatchi: “I abhor violence of any kind against women…”


No. 13 Toyota New Zealand: “The more Kiwis that lean, the more motivated our ETNZ crew will be to win.”


No. 12 Pem Bird: “We’re there to do the business of advancing our people.”


No. 11 Whenua Patuwai: “They’re my brothers and to see one of them goes [sic]—it’s tough.”


No. 10 [REMOVED]



No. 9 [REMOVED]




No. 8 Barack Obama: “…people standing up for what’s right…yearning for justice and dignity…”



No. 7 Barack Obama: “Nelson Mandela is my personal hero…”



No. 6 John Key: “Yeah well the Greens’ answer to everything is rail, isn’t it.”

No. 5 Dr. Rodney Syme: “If you want good, open, honest practice, you have to make it transparent.”




No. 4 Mike Bush: “Bruce Hutton’s… integrity beyond reproach…such great character…”




No. 3 Dean Lonergan: “Y’ know what? The only people who will mock them are people who are dwarfists.”




No. 2 Peter Dunne: “What a load of drivel and sanctimonious humbug…”






No. 1 Dominic Bowden: “It’s okay to be speechless.”


Humbug Corner gathers, and highlights, the most striking examples of faux solicitude, insincere apologies, and particularly stupid recycling of official canards. It is produced by the Insincerity Project®, a division of Daisycutter Sports Inc.

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Saturday 30 December 2017

Thatcher’s Henchmen

Thatcher’s Henchmen

No. 3: NIGEL LAWSON

Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1983 to 1989, Nigel Lawson was in charge of deregulating the London financial markets in 1986, providing a template for the Clinton regime’s decision a decade later to remove the protections of the Glass-Steagall Act. As a radical Friedmanite, Lawson is a stern advocate of chopping welfare for the poor—but in 2008 it was revealed that he had “pulled a Bill English”, claiming £16,000 in overnight allowances by registering his farmhouse in Gascony as his main residence.
Lawson was and is a loud supporter of the disastrous, irresponsible decision to break away from Europe.
He’s also a strident anti-science agitator, serving as chairman of the crazed “Global Warming Policy Foundation”, which was found by the Royal Society to be guilty of “spreading errors” and making “demonstrably inaccurate” statements. The GWPF was deregistered as a charity in 2014 for breaching rules of impartiality.
“People such as Lord Lawson are not sceptical, for if one major peer-reviewed piece of scientific research were ever to be published casting doubt on climate change theory, you just know they’d have it up in neon at Piccadilly Circus. They are only sceptical about what they don’t want to be true.”
—-David Aaronovitch, “Strip away the figleaf and reveal naysayers”, The Times, November 24, 2009.
Perhaps the best summary of Nigel Lawson is that provided a couple of months ago by Will Hutton in the Guardian:

“In any league table of national figures who have been consistently wrong on almost every major judgment Nigel Lawson must rank close to number one.”                            https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/21/enough-of-nigel-lawson-and-his-band-of-80s-ultras-brexit
No. 2: LORD HESELTINE

Usually described as "leonine", this guy just gets worse with age. Unfortunately for him, he made the mistake a few years ago of allowing himself to appear on television with the brilliant Ken Loach, who wasted no time in reducing him to a never to be forgotten display of gibbering, incoherent fury….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2nvaTLVQKk



No. 1: MICHAEL PORTALOO
Margaret Thatcher’s former Transport minister, and John Major’s Defence minister Michael Portaloo was, and is, infamous for bringing nothing to the table other than a deep tan, a deep voice, a fine head of hair and an IQ hovering at about room temperature. Watch him in this clip dismiss the massive protests of 2003 opposing the aggression against Iraq as “a million people strolling in the park”….
“Thatcher’s Henchmen” is compiled and presented by Morrissey Breen for Daisycutter Sports, Inc.


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A critique of "Sumo" Stevenson's pretentious but stupid analysis of RWC quarter-final, 2015

esoteric pineapples9
22 October 2015 at 9:32 am
The Spinoff has a very good analysis of the All Black – France match. So different to the usual hack rugby journalism.
  • Aaron9.1
    22 October 2015 at 11:38 am
    That is a problem in New Zealand the sports journalism is very poor. Only Andrew Alderson who writes about cricket for the Herald is any good and it’s no coincidence that he’s the only one I’ve seen who gets published internationally.
Morrissey

22 October 2015 at 5:01 pm
Actually, this is not very impressive at all. Yes, it’s certainly a lot cleverer than the crap which constitutes “the usual hack rugby journalism”, but it’s no more informed or accurate.
It won’t surprise anyone who’s heard his radio and television commentaries that Stevenson takes a delight in crafting grandiose and clever-sounding phrases: “a re-imagining of rugby’s geometric boundaries”, …. “They are the game’s great professors of size and shape”, …”a seminal geometry lecture in the possibilities of a rugby field’s dimensions”, …”impelled by the false logic of proximity to take the shortest possible route”, et cetera, et cetera.
I enjoyed his unwitting imitation of William McGonagall as he rhapsodised clumsily about the All Blacks’ “fervour for the five metre line”. My favourite comes right at the end, when he tries to ascend into full Bart Giamatti mode: the All Blacks were, he avers, “the very definition of geometry: a study in the relative position of figures, and the properties of space.”
The trouble is, Stevenson has ignored the most important element of this farcical mis-match. It’s something even more important than the undeniable brilliance and absolute commitment of the All Blacks. That element is: the Tricolors did not try. They were completely terrible, a disgrace, a shame and a scandal. They didn’t just give up, they had given up before the game had started. They hardly won a lineout, they lost every single kickoff, they did not bother with such plebeian concerns as cover-defence. They were a leaderless, dispirited rabble, and their non-performance was an insult to the spirit of rugby, indeed to the spirit of all sport.
Stevenson, however, ignores that point. He could see as well as anybody else how abject the French failure was. It was so abject that a Rugby World Cup quarter-final was reduced to not much more than a moderately opposed training run. Yet he chose not to mention it. And that refusal to put the All Blacks’ performance into perspective renders worthless all of his vaporing about “re-imagining rugby’s geometric boundaries” and “professors of size and shape.”
He then compounds all of this by making the remarkable claim that this was “the greatest shellacking ever handed out in the Rugby World Cup finals”. Of course, that’s not true, because the French did not turn up to play. The game therefore lacked any tension, and other than the most blindly partisan All Black supporter, spectators felt depressed and cheated by the French failure to compete.
So what WAS “the greatest shellacking ever handed out in the Rugby World Cup finals”? That’s easy to answer of course, but someone like Scott Stevenson would never have the courage or the integrity to admit it: the 1999 semifinal, when the Tricolors dominated the All Blacks from the opening kickoff and went on to win 43-31. And, unlike France on Sunday morning, the All Blacks gave it their all….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqjdriQRHHo
Stevenson is not the first and won’t be the last sports writer to over-reach his own ability to express himself. If he wants to write about football like some giddy oenophile burbling about the qualities he perceives in a Cabernet Sauvignon, good on him. But when he writes demonstrably untrue things, he must be corrected.
I note, by the way, that nobody has bothered to comment on his masterpiece.

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