The Blog Scene

Reading about blogs makes me want to write a blog entry. I've been "working" for 6 hours today. I put "working" in quotation marks because to everyone but me it doesn't really seem like a real job.

Why, you ask?:

• Although I get paid most of my time is spent in front of a PC screen
  
• Although there is work to be done in front of the PC screen I am allowed to go on MSN, check emails and surf the web.
  
• Although we're supposed to drop what we're doing and dance around in a wild panic whenever a customer comes in, there is a low customer walk-in rate and so such dancing doesn't happen much.

All three factors combine to make this the perfect opportunity to surf the web and get paid for it. Such surfing inevitably means that I come across about a dozen articles on the rise and rise of blogging.

I'm the opposite of an early adopter. In 80s terms I'd be the kid with the pink suspenders. In other words, I'd be the kid who hadn't even caught onto the fact that if you're going to wear suspenders you shouldn't wear pink ones.. let alone the fact that suspenders were uncool.

I'm playing catchup with this whole bloggin' thing and have been trying to find a way in. Lucky for me David Farrar has provided it in the form of the most visited political blogs in NZ.

A pretty interesting way to waste time, I've come across some interesting links. My mum rarely talks about politics but I do remember one outburst. There I was getting ready to eat dinner and Mugabe pops onto the screen. I was about to continue chomping but all of a sudden mum blurted out "Why can't they do something about him?!". I'm not sure what she meant by THEY, but NZers certainly can do something. They can encourage the Black Caps to take the fine from the ICC and not tour Zimbabwe.

It was bound to happen sometime: some random has started a petition against the Black Caps touring Zimbabwe. If you're wondering whether sports and politics mix, wonder no more: They DO mix. Like it or not, a sports team that represents a country also drags along a fair amount of that country's politics along with it. That's why the US boycotted the Moscow Olympics during the Cold War. Politics and Sport mix even more so in Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe is the patron of cricket. It's not about whether the postponement of a tour will stop the regime, it's about whether or not we're doing everything we can to show our distaste for them.

Also came across some stories about $1m dollar state houses being rented for (predictably) low rates. Such a scheme is opposable on the ground of equity. But equally, there are larger considerations. I have to agree with government on this one, it is important that we don't have large sections of cities set aside as low-income ghetto areas. Even though this would be the more efficient solution.

Ghettoes increase the separation between the middle and lower income classes and thus leave middle & upper classes uneducated about their plight. Equally for lower income classes, there are positive psychological factors. When there are a mixture of family's in the area intuitively it is more likely that there will be positive family role models within the area.

However, in order for such houses to be justified there needs to be more than just a couple of them. It needs to be a relatively widespread phenomenom and not simply some people getting ultra-cheap housing at the expense of others. I have yet to read anything about this aspect of the scheme.