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Call it what you like | Mar 10, 2008 09:15

Call it what you like, no journalist likes being made to print a "clarification" by management; least of all one that seems as unnecessary as that foisted on the Bay Report by its proprietor.

The editor and reporter involved at the little APN paper have "agreed wording" that lets them stand by their original transcript, so we can perhaps conclude that Key did say "wages drop", just as he has on other occasions said things he didn't mean to say. Is it really the newspaper's job to spell that out to its readers two months after the fact?

I think this will be regarded as a tactical error by the National Party -- which spent the latter part of last week putting it about that there would be a "retraction" of the quote -- and as lapse of judgement by APN management. It's less that there was a complaint made than that this curious non-retraction was deemed an appropriate response. You don't need to go as far as The Standard to think it's a poor state of affairs. I suspect there are some APN journalists looking sideways at their proprietor this week.

Mediawatch had a report on the affair yesterday.

Saturday was a beautiful day for Pasifika. I rode my bike down in the morning and walked the Western Springs site before it got too crowded.

Public agencies have a significant presence at the festival: the police and the Army were recruiting, the Ministry of Justice had an outstanding-fines outreach, the Minster of Education seemed to be genuinely enjoying his role as the garlanded "games master" at the stand for the Team Up project, and ACC was everywhere, along with Sparc and Creative New Zealand.

The communities that gather each year at the Springs are, I suspect, not always easy to reach otherwise. The response to an appeal for reviews of the day suggests they are not particularly engaged with their city paper's website, for example.

But mostly, it was about song, dance and food. I got a curry, found some shade and watched some Niuean matrons dance, then moved on and heard a church choir turn out an exuberant version of Bill Withers' 'Lovely Day', with extra bonus Jesus lyrics. They were happy, I was happy.

On the other hand, I was deeply sad yesterday to learn that Finn Higgins' body had been found. I knew Finn through his postings to Public Address System and I greatly admired the clarity of his thinking and writing, and, before he walked out of his home on February 11, I was planning to ask him to do some guest blogging here.

Recently, he sent me some personal emails after we had an upsetting time with our son's education. Those emails meant a lot to me. He told me about his own struggle through the system, and of how much he loved his life now:

If I'm going anywhere with this it's to say that even the virtually complete rejection of formal education that I managed doesn't need to be the end of the world. I had to deal with some serious anxiety and a few years of relatively crappy jobs when I started working, but I'm now 26 and have managed to work my way into a situation where I can go after jobs I care about and enjoy, and where I can apply myself and my skills to do things that have value to me. I'm also comfortable enough socially that I have a wonderful partner who I love dearly, and who can put up with my occasional odd turns very sweetly and effectively. I wouldn't claim that life is perfect or that I'd not have preferred things to have gone differently, but it's all survivable and doesn't have to go bad places.

My experience has been that generally life eases up on people with intellectual/practical skills and social difficulties as an adult Particularly if they're good with computers or play the drums, two areas where being socially inept are practically badges of merit ;)

Finn overcame so much to succeed in his short life, he had such a brilliant attitude and he was so damned clever. It seems so unfair that none of that could save him from his illness. My thoughts go out to his his friends and family, and especially his partner Sophie and his sister Zoe, who came out from Britain to look for him. I feel so sad. I wish I'd known him.

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All this and more | Mar 07, 2008 10:27

Play the audio for this post MP3,

Y'know -- no, really, I was -- I had been wondering what Ian Wishart was up to. Turns out that Mr Litterick is still reading this stuff so we don't have to, and he brings news of an extraordinary story from Investigate magazine: a group of Colombians were given a tour of Heaven and Hell by Jesus himself, and in the latter place, they spied John Lennon, who is there undergoing an eternal -- and frankly irksome -- penance.

Meanwhile, Ian has a book so explosive he'll explode if he doesn't get it out soon.

MSM blog fight! In his blog on Stuff, Colin Espiner ruminates on why APN's Bay Report flipped and retracted the John Key "we'd love to see wages drop" quote, and why APN's New Zealand Herald effectively announced it first. Rubbish, says Audrey Young, it's not even a retraction, it's a clarification.

And, given that no one is saying the transcript is actually wrong, an apparently superfluous one. Personally, I'd love to know exactly who has been saying what to whom …

Tim Selwyn is your media trainer.

David Herkt has a fine diary of his trip to Sydney to shoot for a Mardi Gras documentary. I spoke to someone else who went (and who has spent the week redefining the phrase "recovering homosexual"), and it sounds like it was pretty special. For the first time, Mardi Gras was endorsed by the federal government. For first time, members of the Australian Defence Force joined the parade, out and proud. And there was a "58 in 08" float -- referring to the 58 legislative changes the Rudd government will make to bring the rights of gays and lesbians into line with those of other Australians. There is some doubt over whether it will all actually happen in 2008, but it is still quite remarkable.

New Gallup poll: massive dissatisfaction amongst Americans about the US's place in the world. But they do love Canada.

Cause for cheer: young Americans believe that humans and other living creatures "have evolved over time" by a ratio of two to one.

I've linked before to the remarkable YouTube work of Amanda Baggs, a non-verbal autist, but Wired's story on her is occasion to do so again. Her In My Language video offers a profound truth about difference. If you haven't seen it before, take eight minutes and 35 seconds minutes and watch it. Quite seriously, you will never think the same way about thought again.

And some post-rock-'n'-roll to conclude: if you are in Wellington, you will be going to see the L.E.D.s at Mighty Mighty tonight, won't you? There are people in Auckland who would love to see the L.E.D.s play on a Friday night, but it's only you people in Wellington who can do this. Just go. Don't even think about us.

And another fine combo, New Telepathics, play Happy in Wellington tomorrow night. Stop looking so smug.

Anyway, New Telepathics have kindly allowed me to give away a track from their new EP, You Have Been Warned!. It was hard to choose a representative track -- they're all over the dial, from indie-rock to jazz -- but we settled on 'Remember Fela'. You can collect your tune (an 11MB MP3 file, LAME encoded at a sumptuous 320Kbit/s) here for the next few days.

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Phoning a Friend | Mar 06, 2008 10:18

The irony of the last-minute move to fence off Auckland airport is the when Labour was in its pomp, it would have been seen as awful political management. From Labour on the ropes, it is being greeted, in some quarters at least, as clever politics.

There has already been a good deal of screeching about the move as policy, but as NZSX chief Mark Weldon pointed out, it's not the policy that should raise eyebrows so much as the manner of its introduction:

New Zealand Exchange chief executive Mark Weldon said the Government's move should be viewed in a global context in which governments, such as the United States and Australia, were putting in protections to block foreign control of strategic assets.

"More than half of the ASX top 20, including Qantas, Telstra, the major banks and some of the larger mining companies, are protected as strategic by the Australian Government," he said.

"This is quite a shock to New Zealand simply because we have this open, anyone can buy anything, history. In the global context it [the Government's move] doesn't make us an outlier; it actually brings us into line."

Mr Weldon said there should be more certainty about measures to protect strategic New Zealand assets from being foreign-controlled.
"Global investors don't mind investing into a market that's protected. What they don't like is not knowing it's protected when they make their initial investment."

A surprisingly large group of people who ought to know better seem to think the Canadians plan to bring new capital to the airport business: in fact, the deal, if anything, seems to be structured around extracting -- and expatriating -- greater returns.

But there's already a thriving discussion under Keith's post for you to survey, so enough of that. You might also be amused by reading various arguments in the Herald's Your Views about how the law to protect "our national a**ets" came to be "pa**ed". Does the swearing filter need a kick in the a**?

The sudden decision's political effectiveness was greatly enhanced by the fact that it actually put John Key on the spot, whereupon he looked some way short of decisive in reply. He then contrived to put himself on the spot by insisting to Paul Henry that his party had never put a deadline on Treaty settlements. It was only after he'd had time to ask Bill English what to say that he admitted he had blundered.

This shouldn't be a surprise: it's been coming a while. Key sometimes thinks poorly with a microphone in his gob, and he has trouble giving straightforward answers. Even when he had the answer (see the video here) he struggled ("It's not a … it's not a date as in this particular day, it's a time-frame roughly when we'd like to get there"). Sort of, presumably.

And his performance on Morning Report today, in the face of persistent but hardly hostile questioning was frankly weird. Just come up with an answer and say it, for goodness sake.

These are relatively small fits of indecision, but will have confirmed in Labour's mind that Key is prone to blurting when he can't phone a friend. I've said before that I think the campaign debates this year will see that weakness tested.

Less forgivable, in my view, is National's freakish about-face on support for Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Amendment Bill (No 6) -- whose extension of youth sentences Key declared in his January State of the nation speech to be "long overdue," adding "National supports this extension and in Government we will, as a matter of priority, pass the legislation to make it happen."

Or not. The excuse is that the bill will also redefine "young person" to include 17 year-olds (other measures include better protection of people who report abuse and various enhancements to victims' rights). But this was indisputably known when Key gave his speech describing the bill's speedy passage as a "matter of priority". WTF?

With the depositions hearings not scheduled until September, it's clear that the trials subsequent to last October's "terror raids" won't dominate the political landscape this year: just pop in to throw a bilingual bomb into the election campaign. I think we can expect the police to bring veritable truckloads of evidence to the court. And that the bilingual format and requests for additional legal aid funding will enrage the talkback hordes.

And finally, congratulations are due to Hillary Clinton's people for getting so much momentum for talk of her "comeback" when the fact is she can't win. Not in the conventional sense of picking up more delegates than her opponent anyway. For all the headlines, her net gain on delegates from yesterday's votes (and that weird Texas primary + caucus thing) looks to be about 10. It's not enough.

If she plans to seek the nomination without winning the delegate count, then the floors of the Democratic convention will surely be quick with blood …

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Laying Down the Law | Mar 04, 2008 10:30

The Herald leader column has issued its instructions this morning on the forming of coalitions, in an editorial headed Voters clear on coalition preferences. Look, it says, more than 90% of New Zealand First voters in its latest Digipoll survey want their party to go into coalition with National rather than Labour. That's about 13 of them from the 734 in the sample, then. And the three people each who said they'd vote for Act and United Future were unanimous in the same desire.

But the "greatest change" from December, says the editorial, comes amongst decided Maori Party voters: fully five of the 11 of them want their party to go into coalition with National. That might be a a sea-change in Maori politics. Or it might simply be a reflection of the vagaries of a poll that has had the Green Party polling 3.5%, 9.1% and 4.4% in the last three months.

Perhaps the preferences highlighted by the edtorial do indeed reflect the mood of the electorate: Labour certainly isn't winning many friends lately. But it seems wildly premature to start laying down the law on the basis of a single poll. Still more so to start muttering darkly about the alleged "cost to democracy" of MMP -- under which, remember, the party which has won the most votes has always formed the new government.

It has been correctly observed that the Prime Minister would do well to get over the Herald and get on with her job. It might further be observed that the Herald would do well to get over itself.

Every now and then someone floats a plan for the All Blacks to play in Disneyland or somewhere and I think sorry, I'm not feeling it. But I feel differently about the Hong Kong Bledisloe Cup match announced yesterday. It's the difference between an irrelevant venue where rugby will never really matter and one where there is a rugby tradition, of a sort, and a horde of expats who'll love it.

And not just the expats either: you see a few Hongkies at rugby matches here too. (I have never thought so hard about the national anthem as when three Chinese guys stood behind me at the All Blacks vs Manu Samoa test in 1993 and bawled the bloody thing with all their hearts. It probably helped that Ruby Turner was on the mic.)

The two national unions' coffers will, of course, be quite well filled too. This is important given that the deal that actually pays for rugby in this country -- SANZAR rugby rights -- is over from 2010, now that the SARU has sold its domestic tests and local competition to a local channel from that date. With both TVNZ and TV3 likely to be broadcasting in digital HD by 2010, it's anyone's guess how the rights will split up by then.

It's just a shame they didn't think of it sooner: the fixture adds a fourth match to the 2008 Bledisloe series, which is one too many. Still, it pretty much makes it impossible for Australia to win back the cup this season …

Staying with the rugby, I'm loving the ELVs. Doubtless, my view is influenced by the fact that my team is travelling particularly well, but the game seems to have been enhanced by the rule changes. The five metre rule at scrum time is good, but the best change is the shift from penalties to free kicks for most infringements at the tackled ball. Essentially, the rule change recognises that adjudication of such offences is irreducibly subjective, and lowers the stakes. The potential for games to be won on the strength of a dubious decision at the breakdown has been reduced, and that's a good thing.

If the above has put thoughts in your head, then you might be interested in the The Dropkicks Rugby Wiki. Curiously, it appears there is nothing else like it, and the lads would be tickled if you were to drop by and disgorge some data. Grant Robertson, I'm looking at you …

Also: a word for The Dropkicks' sponsor.

Rain Lamdin emailed me to ask whether I could shed any light onto his unexpected (ie: he didn't do it himself) subscription to Act mailing lists. Act's list policies have been a shambles in the past, but when I tried out their system this morning, it was definitely double opt-in -- you don't get subscribed until you click the link in the follow-up email. So it couldn't have been done as a prank. But it does suggest that there has been some trading in email addresses Anyone know anything about this?

And still with political mailing lists, I got slimed by Murray McCully on Friday:

Helen's Little Helpers at TVNZ

Stung by Prime Ministerial claims that her Government's minor poll setbacks are purely the result of a hostile right wing media, Helen's little helpers at TVNZ have clearly decided on a bold initiative to win her affections. Left wing blogger, Labour Party mouth-piece and Judith Tizard campaign activist Russell Brown has been announced as the host of the new media programme on TVNZ's new Channel 7.

In order to make his intentions clear from the start, Brown thoughtfully posed alongside Labour MPs under a "Join Labour" banner at a recent Hero function. Check it out here: http://www.herodebate.org.nz

Our Prime Minister will be pleased indeed that her lackeys at the state broadcaster are coming to the party in election year.

It's nice that Mr McCully has noticed that I join the fun at the Hero Debate. I've only been doing it for three years. The debate is produced by the Labour Party as part of the Hero Festival, and also benefits the Cartier Bereavement Trust, an excellent HIV-AIDS support organisation whose leader, Karen Ritchie, spoke movingly at the event. I'm not about to be intimidated by Mr McCully into not supporting something like that.

Most of the rest is just babble, but I am not a "Judith Tizard campaign activist". That would have been seriously stretching it 13 years ago when I once helped out with an electorate pamphlet, but now it's either very sloppy politicking or a malicious falsehood. If Mr McCully is to return to Cabinet later this year, I trust wiser heads will move to curb his more feral tendencies. Because frankly, trying to score points off the employment status of a freelance journalist is not a very good look for a servant of the people.

Ben Thomas of NBR was keen for me to note his view that having paid to hear Steven Gray and I be rude to each other (and both of us be rude to sitting MPs), he is apparently therefore a Judith Tizard financial backer. He also notes that he has bought National Party raffle tickets and once bought a Maryland state flag at a Labour Party fundraiser auction "because my favourite band always has that flag in the background on their album art". A likely story …

But let's not end that way. Let's have a MAJOR DAD-ROCK ALERT!!

To wit: the mysterious new Velvet Underground bootie, 'Live at the Gymnasium, NYC'.

It turned up via some guy selling copies on green vinyl on eBay, and the sound quality is so good people were speculating it was a very faithful tribute band. But apparently the version of 'Guess I'm Falling in Love' is the same one as on the 1995 box set, which verifies it.

The previously unreleased song, 'I'm Not a Young Man Any More', is pretty slight (Chris Knox disagrees with me on this) but 'Run Run Run' might be the best version ever. The VU geeks say it's the only 1967 live recording and the last one with Cale. And a 19-min 'Sister Ray' ...

Download here and lots of other places.

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