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→ No CommentsTags: · Tony Veitch · Winston First
→ No CommentsTags: · Tony Veitch · Winston First
This doesn’t really deserve to be a post, but I feel like writing - it’s been a long day and I need to exhale.
The truly wonderful Steve Abel is off to France for at least a while. I had the opportunity to work with Steve a few years ago on the Green campaign in Mangere and then at Greenpeace, and he is, like so many beautiful people, as humble and sincere as anyone you’ll meet. He’s also a brilliant musician (see below).
My french housemate is also off this weekend, and we’ll miss her. She’s off to her second post-doc at NYU, so I can only be happy for her.
I thought feminism was about fighting for the right not to be the slaves of the male gaze, and the right to be judged on who you are, rather than how you conform to standards of beauty? This deserves a post of its own, so suffice to say that I have thoughts on the matter.
I love how Winston Peters is being brought down. It makes me happy. Watching Helen Clark’s farcical defence of him is somewhat surreal. Peters is only dead once there’s a stake through the heart, so I’m not celebrating just yet.
I saw someone get run down by a car today. It wasn’t pretty. Ban cars. I mean, let’s reconfigure society, so that this extraordinarily wasteful and dangerous technolgy only forms only a small part of our movement.
I’ve taken up running again, and it’s keeping me sane. I feel in control of my day, and by extension my life, when I get up at 6 or so, and run. Even a deep white frost, and temperatures well below zero don’t seem to matter, such is the pleasure I get from it. I’ve also started climbing again, and swimming, all within the last month. I just need to remember to eat with all of this, otherwise the exhaustion sets in!
Oh, and I’m tutoring a politics paper, and enjoying teaching and indoctrinating the young 
→ No CommentsTags: · Cars · Helen Clark · Music · Steve Abel · Transport · Winston Peters · feminism · life · running · tutoring · video
Stef asked for food pron, and who am I to refuse? The Misses Six recently became the Misses Seven, and we celebrated with a party at home for about 12 very excited six, seven and eight year olds. Miss Nine, and one of her friends, bless them, ran games - Pass the Parcel, Musical Statues, a treasure hunt, all the usual party palaver, but with one or two extras thrown in, such as chalk drawing on the pavers outside - while I got the food organised.
The first course was the usual - sausage rolls, cocktail sausages, chippies (crisps), fairy bread, and to assuage my food pyramid guilt, small ham and egg club sandwiches, made with wholemeal bread. The children, as usual, devoured the sausage rolls, cocktail sausages, chippies and fairy bread, all with lashings of tomato sauce (ketchup), and ignored the healthy sammies, except for one lad who thought they were wonderful and ate about six.
For dessert, I made tiny meringues, traffic light jellies, and my favourite fruit and lolly kebabs, marshmallows and mini chocolate fish in between chunks of fruit. Sadly, I can’t get chocolate fish here in Adelaide, so I had to make do with fruit jubes. However they were very well received all the same, by the children, and by Mr Strange Land, when he got the left-overs that evening.
And the cakes, which I think of as the cakes that taste forgot. But the girls liked them, and in reality, they tasted delicious. They both wanted chocolate cakes, again, so I used my utterly reliable yoghurt chocolate cake recipe.
People who have been reading my blog since the start may have recognised the food. It’s virtually the same as the food I served this time last year, at the girls’ request. It seems to be a very successful formula - the children go away happy, and on not too much of a sugar high. As long as the girls keep asking for it, I will keep on making the same food for their parties every year.
→ No CommentsTags: · Food
The Wall Street Journal, no less, sets up artist Jacob Collins as the 'next big thing' -- his 'classical' realism opposing all the 'novelty art' that has heretofore succoured the empty souls of the big-money New York art buyers.
The new school Collins represents finds its artistic home in the Florence Academy of Art, a school "founded in 2002, offering rigorous training in modelling, one-point perspective, cast drawing, and all the other technical aspects of art that one used to assume would be part of an artist's training." Says the Wall Street Journal,
Is technical mastery sufficient by itself to guarantee high artistic accomplishment? The art world has been shouting "No" for decades. That judgment is correct -- ultimately -- but it leaves out the important codicil that an artist who lacks technical command also lacks competence.
Hallelujah! That point has been either lost, evaded or mislaid for more than half a century!
If an artist's 'inner voice' lacks the technique to communicate except by the visual equivalent of Tourette's, there's no reason to give them the status of artist. If Collins and artists like him can rehabilitate the importance of technique, they will have done an immense job in moving art back to what it had once achieved when both technique and expression -- and having something to say -- were valued.
NB: Collins's painting above is very much a study. Just 4 1/4" x 11", studies like this form the basis for works like this.
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From Wednesday:
John Key: Is the Prime Minister aware, and can she confirm, that Section 2.79 of the Cabinet Manual requires Ministers to obtain her express permission to keep gifts valued at more than $500; and will she not accept that Mr Peters, by his own admission, has now admitted that he received a gift of $100,000 from Mr Glenn, and, whether or not she likes it, has to determine whether he will be allowed to keep that gift?
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK: I say again that whether the sum is a gift is a matter for the registrar of pecuniary interests. But can I further make the point that immediately Mr Peters was told of the source of that particular donation to a legal fund, he declared it to me. The Cabinet Office advised me that the court case, of course, was one of particular public interest—considerable public interest—and in such circumstances, if, and I underline that word, such a sum of money were deemed to be a gift, there would be no reason to require a Minister to relinquish it.
Now consider the weasel words here. First of all we have the declaring the court case was somehow in the public interest - as oppossed to the very private interest of Winston Peters who was trying to overturn the acual election result.
But secondly she is suggesting that Owen Glenn paying $100,000 of Winston’s debts is in the public interest and okay. Now maybe you could argue this if the donation was made before the court case - in order to allow it to proceed. But the timing is that Peters took the case and lost, and then Glenn helped him pay the costs.
And remember that the PM knows that Owen Glenn was lobbying Peters to lobby her to be appointed Consul - and she has said it is okay for him to keep the $100,000 gift. She has now succesfully approved American style funding for NZ.
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK: As I told the House yesterday, I would be absolutely delighted to see corporate and large private donations banned, on the basis that there would need to be State funding.
Helen wants to ban companies from being able to donate, but not unions. This shows her true agenda.
Sue Bradford: Does the Prime Minister have confidence that the Minister for Racing acts at all times with the interests of the whole racing sector at heart, or does she have any sense, as some in the racing industry do, that his actions tend to favour those at the high end of the industry, which, incidentally, is the same end from which New Zealand First has received substantial donations?
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK: Obviously, I do not have any independent information about where donations come from, but I can say to the member that I have had absolutely no advice or, indeed, even any suggestion of the issue of preference that she has raised.
Clark needs to look at the last Budget.
John Key: Did Winston Peters ask for the racing portfolio when the Prime Minister allocated the portfolios in 2005?
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK: Yes.
Clark was ready with that answer.
Metiria Turei: Does the Prime Minister think that the Government’s failure to get the numbers to progress sustainability measures like the Marine Reserves Bill and the Fisheries Amendment Bill may have anything to do with the large financial contribution to the party of her Minister of Foreign Affairs from Vela Fishing
NZ First did not like this question.
Dr Russel Norman: Do any of the Prime Minister’s Ministers receive donations from industries they are meant to be regulating and taxing; and does she expect any Minister, including her Minister of Racing, who finds himself or herself negotiating tax breaks for party donors to bring that to her attention?
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK: I do think there was in that question exactly the implication that Mr Mark objected to before. I can say, in respect of Ministers, that they are not expected to receive donations from industry, at all.
The Greens may have been as silent as a mute on the Owen Glenn donation, but they are being zealous with the Vela donations.
Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I contacted the registrar of pecuniary interests and sought advice as to what disclosure requirements I was to make. The registrar was clear that what I needed to declare was a pecuniary interest in a trust. I have done just that. I seek leave to table the pecuniary interest declaration that I made on that advice, which clearly states there was a trust that provided support for that legal action.
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK: It therefore follows from Mr Smith’s point of order that if that were the appropriate course for him to follow and that he does not have to declare either debts or gifts, then nor does Mr Peters.
Clark is being stupid or misleading here. Nick Smith has an actual legal trust established which has trustees and he has declared he is a beneficiary of this. That is different to Winston who has no such legal trust but instead donors just pay off bills on his behalf. The Standing Orders make it very clear how each situation is treated.
And in another question:
Rodney Hide: Has the Prime Minister asked Winston Peters whether he knew that Mr Brian Henry was soliciting and receiving funds on Mr Peters’ behalf, as Brian Henry has said he was doing, and has she asked also on what date Mr Peters learnt that his legal bill had been reduced by $100,000; if not, why has she not asked Mr Peters those questions—is she concerned about the answers?
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK: No, I have not asked those questions. The matter is clear to me. Mr Peters has advised me that he was advised late on Friday of the source of the money going to his lawyer. He had not known the source of that money before then. I believe that Mr Peters, like other sensible party leaders, keeps a great distance from the issue of soliciting funds.
Clark here ignores the salient point of the question. Rodney did not ask anything about the identity of the $100,000 - just why she did not ask Peters when he knew he had had his legal bill reduced by $100,000. For you see that is when he should have notified her.
Rodney Hide: Let us have something to look forward to here in the House. I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. The Prime Minister is consistently and wilfully dodging the questions that Mr Copeland and I have been asking, by saying that Mr Peters did not know about the source of the donations. My question specifically asked whether Mr Peters knew that money was being solicited—not the source of the donations, but the fact that the money was being solicited.
Madam SPEAKER: I have listened very carefully. The Prime Minister, like all Ministers, is required to address the question. However, Ministers are not required to give the answer that members want to hear. The Prime Minister addressed the question.
Rodney caught on that Clark keeps refusing to answer that question. That is because she knows Peters should ahve declared the $100,000 the moment he knew his legal bill had been reduced by that amount.
Tags: anonymous donations, Cabinet Manual, Greens, Helen Clark, John Key, MPs Register of Pecuniary Interests, Owen Glenn, Vela Family→ No CommentsTags: · Cabinet Manual · Greens · Helen Clark · John Key · MPs Register of Pecuniary Interests · NZ politics · Owen Glenn · Vela Family · anonymous donations
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