Tom Walker wrote >Perhaps Bill Cochrane was just being sarcastic. I was not. I meant every word of what I wrote, literally. We antipodeans are a simple rural folk devoid of the guile required for irony or sarcasm. I leave such sophistications to inhabitants of the metropolitan areas of North America.(Reliable sources have informed me that the truth and importance of an utterance is inversely proportional to the distance of the utterer from New York city). I agree though that "line up politics" is not a sound basis for deciding the relative merits of a proposition.My comments regarding Ms Waring were not so much directed at her opinions of the SNA framework or the valuation of womens contribution to the nations economic well being but rather to dispell the spurious notion that she was in someway left wing or progressive. Many accounts of Ms Warings activities, frequently autobiographical in nature, portray her as a fiesty heroine battling various assorted evils. This IMHO is complete bollocks as my other posts have made clear. Waring and persons like her are the 'liberal' face of a ensemble of policy positions that have, and continue to, fuck over the people that my political agenda would seek to empower and defend. She and others of her ilk are thus my political enemies and I seek to expose them for what they are at every opportunity. As to how I arrived at my assessment of Ms Waring I would say that I've heard her speak, observed her career, had friends that were colleagues and students of hers, watched her acrimonious departure from her position in the politics department of Waikato University and had occasion to be present at various social events and the odd school visit at which she made her views clear. While it is undoubtably true that unions and other traditional left wing organisations have been less than progressive from time to time most of the reforms such as equal pay, anti-discrimination laws, childcare provison, parental leave, universal francise were fought for and won by these class based organisations and not by the now fashionable New Social Movements. Bill Cochrane Ngaruawahia New Zealand [EMAIL PROTECTED]
