You may not notice how cheap stand alone cameras are these days. Parallel imported has a 10 megapixel camera with 4x optical zoom on sale for a meagre $150. The Warehouse sells photography hi-res cameras at $500-$900. Not something many people would take too much notice over now, considering a frightening death march towards the smartphone cult is taking more and more people with it.
With these clunky pieces of metal now containing built in cameras, which can send photos to an email address, upload them to Facebook and Twitter, as well as sharing them with out smartphone holders, life has never been so easy or convenient.
Has it?
People seldom realise something bad has happened until its too late. These smartphones are evil and there is a very good reason to see past the pathetic advertising Apple and co put forth. At hindsight, it makes life easier. The contrary to that is simple. We begin to worship small pieces of metal. Its power to do so many amazing things mesmerizes people. Slowly, our banking is done on them, all our photos are taken with them, thousands of ridiculous applications are smacked on to alleviate boredom. Before one realises it, a lot of their life exists on the smartphone. If it fails, we fail. If it gets lost, so does much of our life.
If everyone wants to continue towards total dependency on a smartphone, they are more than welcome to do so. For those who have seen this is all one big money making gimmick and mere materialism which advocates anti-social behaviour, you can hopefully avert this cult for just a little bit longer.
Welcome to Australia. Better pay, better weather, better value for money
How Mr. Shearer can stand in front of all New Zealanders and proclaim that he is able to fix New Zealand's mass exodus to Australia is rather surprising. For those who cannot remember, the immigration problem had been a cornerstone rally cry by Mr. Slippery during his election campaign during 2008.
Since 2008, net migration has seen a sharp increase towards the lucky country. 54,000 people bought a one way ticket to Australia, citing a better overall lifestyle as their reason for moving. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/economy/news/article.cfm?c_id=34&objectid=10852505 The fact that Australia has a better climate cannot be argued about, or changed by any rabble which comes from National or Labour. You won't see Mr. Key lobbying either for companies to pay their employees a bit more fairly. Salaries in Australia have been recognised, on average to be 36.41% higher than in New Zealand. Until the fat corporate piglets at the top stop worshiping money (and themselves), expect to see the mass brain drain continue. http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_result.jsp?country1=Australia&country2=New+Zealand
As for those who want my recommendations towards fixing the problem, simple. Pay your workers more, offer them competitive work packages which are reasonable enough to keep them in New Zealand and keep their morale up. It seems to be your best chance at keeping skilled workers.
Even the most loyal followers know now
Anybody who still thinks Lance Armstrong did not dope need only watch his interview with Oprah Winfrey. Spanning a healthy 90 minutes, it seems clear as day Armstrong has finally lifted the lid on his use of performance enhancing drugs. Among them were EPO, testosterone, blood transfusions, cortisone and steroids.
Perhaps now, those who idolise Armstrong can understand that you could not win a Tour De France in his era without doping. Former US Postal teammates Tyler Hamilton and Frankie Andreu made that clear during an interview on 60 Minutes. "If you weren't taking EPO, you weren't going to win."
To give a comparison, Bradley Wiggins, the most recent winner of the famous French race, rode at an average speed of 39.9 km/h, a far cry from Armstrong's 41.016 km/h in 2004.
***Is it really a big ask to get Police to fight Petty crime more. Surely, patrolling the streets on foot would go a lot further in reducing crime statistics, than loafing around on motorways with radar guns. Although National pretends to be tough on crime, many criminals have little regard for new governments. Crime seems to happen more often, reading about murderers in the news is more frequent and so called petty crime appears to happen more and more. Whizzing by in cars will not make any difference. Being immediately available to prevent a crime from happening does.***
4 comments:
Firstly, the benefits of smartphones far outweigh the downsides. Being able to have information and productivity at our fingertips on the go is important for some people, in their line of work. As far as reliance goes, we as humans are reliant on many things; we rely on our fridges keep our food fresh so we can preserve meals. The same way our smartphones keep our emails up-to-date so we never miss a vital memo.
Secondly, I believe as far as Australia's climate goes, it is definitely a debatable topic. Have you seen the temperatures lately? I am glad I live in NZ and would definitely consider the harsher Australian summer as a downside should I ever have the opportunity to emigrate there.
Thirdly, the NZ Police highway patrol unit is separate from the regular police. "loafing around on motorways with radar guns" is most certainly not wasted time, it deters people from speeding and reduces the severity of crashes. To say that stopping this would improve the ability of Police to catch "petty" criminals is just laughable. The highway patrol Police do a wonderful job keeping our roads safer, and cutter their numbers would not do anything to keep NZ safer as a whole.
Anonymous writes "the benefits far outweight the downsides." What is not mentioned is that this information is already available at our fingertips in the form of computers. Is there really such a desperate need to constantly play around on a piece of metal to get this information? I won't bother with the fridge argument for reliance except to say we survived thousands of years without fridges. You might be surprised that some people still don't use fridges.
As for the Australia topic, you don't mention the other 9 months of the year? That is the time of year you constantly hear people moaning about. "It's too wet, it's too cold" etc. Australia, as a whole, enjoys better weather, pay, lifestyle, and variety in lifestyle. Just ask the 54,000 who left last year to give live there why they went. They'll likely give you one of those reasons.
You're right to say it deters people from speeding. Of course it will. Just like having harsher prison sentences will deter drink drivers. But no, the highway patrol unit is not separate from the police. They are a unit within the police which was formed in 2000. If they are really that intent on catching people speeding, they would do what Australia has already done and installed more speed cameras, in order to allocate physical man power more efficiently. You say "To say that stopping this would improve the ability of Police to catch "petty" criminals is just laughable." Would you care you add some rational reason towards that sentiment?
Play around? Why do you keep using the word "play"? For many people it's work. When they do not have a computer available but need to deal with their business then I believe a smartphone is a reasonable tool. Not a "piece of metal."
Mate, "lifestyle" and "variety of lifestyle" are highly ambiguous phrases. Would you please expand on what you mean by this? Of course there is better pay but was that my point? No. I, for one, am content with our climate all year round.
OK, separate was not the best choice of word, but would the NZ Police have formed the unit if they didn't think it would serve a purpose? Speed cameras are all well and good but all they do is issue people a monetary penalty for breaking the law at a certain point. If people are stopped by Police and the officer can educate a person and show them what they are doing is wrong, it will go further in changing their habit. It also allows for some leniency if the circumstances call for it. Replacing man with machine is something that I don't always agree with, if the police felt they need more people fighting "petty crime", would they not just recruit more people?
Anonymous writes "why do you keep using the word "play." If you desire a new coin-in-the-slot phrase, how about we use the word "use". Many people who do business on them often say "where would I be without my smartphone." To my great alarm, many small business owners tell me this. Many of these "work" phones are stuffed full of applications which are not work related like facebook, twitter and angry birds. Very seldom is business so urgent that you need to "use" a smartphone to do business. Most of the beloved users are not presidents or kings. Is a 20 minute drive to a computer going to destroy a business? Almost completely unlikely.
Lifestyle is the way in which a community lives. There are more kinds of lifestyles which you can live in Australia which New Zealand either doesn't offer, or has in very small amounts. An upper class lifestyle (where you live in a flash house, go golfing and have pool parties) to name one. It's not as ambiguous as you make it out to be.
There's a chance of that happening. If you look in Britain, New Labour built many prisons to supposedly get tougher on crime and yet crime continued to rise. The purpose the Police put forth is to show that people care, which I remain dubious about. A lot of ticket writing seems to be a revenue spinner. As for the "talk," why do many people need it? Most of them aren't doing anything stupid or harmful? Having harsher fines for speeding would be a far greater deterrent for many than watching out for the "Reno 911" highway patrol. Most people are often pulled over for going 1km over the limit, often during the holiday season.
Having more people would make no difference if you kept doing what the current police force has implemented? Having a million constables would make no difference if they continued to remain remote from the public? Police are no good if they just wait for a crime to be committed and then rush noisily to the scene to late to do any good.
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