Public Address - Hard News (Home)

Real Gone | Oct 17, 2008 10:29

I remember when the Chrises Hart and Priestly opened the little Real Groovy shop at the top of Mt Eden Road in the early 80s. I watched Stefan Morris design the classic Real Groovy Records logo in the Rip It Up office. The movie-house strip along the base of the logo was my idea.

Later, when I came back from London, I'd walk past the social welfare office most weeks to sell a little more of the 12" promo booty I'd hauled back to Kerry Buchanan at the Queen Street store ($12 a pop!). A few years on from that, I unloaded about $600 worth of vinyl when we were pulling together every dollar we could to get into the house we still own. I wrote on and off for Real Groove magazine over the years. And, of course, I've spent thousands of dollars at the shop.

The shop hasn't always done itself justice. Once, when the late John Peel went in during his visit to New Zealand, he was treated dismissively, like a silly old man. Bemused and annoyed, he left the store and went and spent his money up the road at Gary Steel's Beautiful Music shop, where someone was there to talk fan-to-fan to him, and make recommendations (such as the first Ermehn album) for local music that later got played on Peel's famous radio show. Scale isn't always a good thing.

On the other hand, the Queen Street store has long been a must-visit destination for touring musicians. The huge purchase of old vinyl from the US a year or two ago only enhanced its reputation as a place where treasure might be buried. Ironically, it appears that it is a bad currency transaction around that purchase that have helped tip the business into receivership, after fruitless attempts to sell it over the past four months.

But that's surely not the whole of it. In recent years, I've personally gone from visiting the shop (and using my club card) weekly to perhaps once every couple of months: I've become an online purchaser. The Soul Jazz back-catalogue release that costs 40 bucks on import can be legitimately had for a fraction of that in MP3 form on eMusic. The internet is better for discovery than wandering the aisles.

And if I want physical product, well, there's a JB Hi-Fi five minutes from my house now. The staff are helpful and the prices are very good. Real Groovy was never cheap, and it was never in a position to compete on price with JB: it's not going too far to say that the huge catalogue purchases JB made on entry to the New Zealand market helped save a couple the major record companies.

There's also some doubt over whether buying the failing Echo Records stores in the South Island several years ago was a sound move. Hart and his partners might have been better to have sat with their Auckland and Wellington stores and served the nation via Real Groovy's successful and effective website -- although this slide show of uncertain provenance suggested developing the online business and opening more branches. At any rate, Hart seemed happy enough when he talked to the Herald in January.

There's also a good discussion about the closures on the Biggie forums.

So where to now? Things change: Groovy's founders cut their teeth at Record Exchange in St Kevin's Arcade and the world didn't end when that shop ceased trading. It appears that the receivers have potential buyers for at least three of the stores, and Real Groove magazine has already been bought by its management. That huge pile of vinyl isn't going anywhere soon, and it would seem that it'd be smart to keep the brand alive, and perhaps link independently-owned stores via the website.

I'm just not sure that the support is there for the present scale of the business: it's not big enough to take on the listed-on-the-ASX JB Hi-Fi, but too big for a fan store. We'll see. In the meantime, thanks Chris and everyone else. It's been fun.

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Staying with the music theme, Grant McDougall has cooked up the following meditation on "if New Zealand political parties were rock bands" ...

NATIONAL would be THE ROLLING STONES - absolutely unbeatable in their '60s and '70s heyday and blessed with an amazing frontman. They're still wildly popular of course, but they seem content to recycle their greatest hits and haven't came up with anything fresh or inspiring for yonks. As for the frontman, well, these days he seems more interested in finance than what's happening on the street. Think Big is their Dirty Works.

LABOUR would be U2 - superficially exciting, but basically merely bland and efficient. Plus their leader has an annoying tendency to come across as a pompous know-it-all. Also wildly popular, but despised by their detractors.

THE GREENS would be THE FALL - they've been around for ages, but have never been huge and never will be. Everyone knows what they do has loads more merit than everyone else, but it's all a bit too weird for most people. They're a cult act and will always have their followers, but will never gain widespread appeal.

ACT would be CULTURE CLUB - their schtick was huge in the '80s, but completely irrelevant and badly-dated now. Who the hell listens to Culture Club these days? No one, that's who.

NZ FIRST would be BB KING - hugely popular and influential in his day, but basically a cabaret act now that should just retire.

THE MAORI PARTY would be PRIMAL SCREAM - half the members are utter loose cannons, the rest are plodding journeymen. They also always talk total crap in interviews and seem wired up on any number of drugs.

UNITED FUTURE would be COLDPLAY - dreadful, bland, hated and sensible. The frontman is a smug twit that really ought to be smacked hard on the head with a cast-iron frying pan.

JIM ANDERTON would be JULIAN COPE - was moderately important in the same scene as U2 in the early '80s and had an unexpected career revival in the late '80s, early '90s, but obscure and irrelevant ever since; generally regarded as a nut-bar by most and an endearing eccentric by his equally-loopy band of followers.

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And finally, the nice people at Universal Music have offered us five CD copies of the new Lucinda Williams album, Little Honey to give away to Public Address readers. To be in the draw, hit Reply and email me with the answer to this question: "About which person is the song 'Real Live Bleeding Fingers and Broken Guitar Strings' said to be?" Please write your answer in the subject line of your email.

PS: Pete Darlington has kindly kicked off a Last.fm group for Public Address readers. You're warmly invited to join up.

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Through the Looking Glass | Oct 16, 2008 10:05

"In just seven years' time, they'll have enough money to buy every share in every public company in New Zealand. Soon, they could buy all the farms. Indeed, one day the government could wind up owning literally everything. And you know what that's called ... don't you?"

Thus intoned the most famous electoral advertisement in New Zealand political history: the National Party's 1975 "Dancing Cossacks" ad.

Truly, we are right through the looking glass when a National Party led by John Key offers as its own policy the dread spectre that Rob Muldoon's National Party conjured to win power a generation ago -- and the Labour party sounds the alarm.

As David Skilling has noted, there is certainly an appeal in having a large public fund seeking long-term investments within New Zealand: it becomes the provider of the debt-style finance for broadband infrastructure that people like Rod Drury have been talking about.

Indeed, if the Superannuation Fund were commanded by a National government to make 40% of its investments within New Zealand, it would be obliged to seek such projects, or risk its sheer size seriously distorting the share market.

It's not going too far to say that it would save National's big-bang fibre-to-every-home plan, given the telco sector's lack of enthusiasm for an opportunity that doesn't follow strict commercial logic. There are 14 billion big ones in the bank, just waiting to be wooed into a Public-Private Partnership.

But that would be a very major change to the purpose of the fund: which is to fund a future liability as a large number of New Zealanders reach retirement. To this end it has been placed in the control of independent managers tasked with achieving the best possible return for New Zealanders, which will not necessarily lie in New Zealand. A diversified portfolio also spreads the financial risk. Political direction of its decisions undermines both goals.

The fund is not pure as it is. A truly agnostic strategy wouldn't have 23% of the funds investments located in New Zealand as it is, and the fund has rightly responded to pressure to divest from ethically problematic holdings. There is certainly a case for the fund to buy into long-term infrastructure investments. (Michael Cullen himself mused on policy changes that might make such investment more attractive to Superannuation and Kiwisaver fund managers, and he's been talking for years about a shift from physical to financial assets for the Crown.)

But if the managers were to be ordered to do so by a government that has pet policies it would like to fly -- and Key ran quite close to saying that on Morning Report today -- then we're into very different territory.

David Farrar was clearly doing it for the team when he blogged the announcement yesterday (and some of his regulars are clearly horrified), while the classical liberals are up in arms.

The Greens are delighted, but they hated the Super Fund from the beginning (of note: Rod Donald's 2002 speech Cullen Super Fund must be stopped). So these times -- when prospective parties of government are reaching around for policies that offer a bounty without direct fiscal costs -- make for strange bedfellows.

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This week's Media7, focusing on crime and the media and how it steers the debate, is online. The panel is Catriona McLennan and Jock Anderson -- who functioned as yin and yang except when they were agreeing --and Jeremy Rose of Scoop and Radio NZ. Also, Simon Pound asks a psychologist about the stuff people write in Your Views in the Herald.

The TVNZ ondemand version is here. The Windows media clips of the show are here.

The podcast feed is here and it'll turn up some time soon on our YouTube channel.

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And meanwhile, thanks to Christchurch reader Bob Munro for photographic evidence that while the Act Party might have "zero tolerance for crime", it's liberal as all-get-out when it comes to spelling and stuff.

Local candidate Aaron Keown appears to have been running around patching billboards in the past few days, and I feared we'd missed out. But here's one he didn't get to:

And here's a patched one. The correct spelling of the word "emissions" has been stapled on over the original. That must have been a fun job …

NB: This just in! Flat city-dweller and swell guy Ian Dalziel has come up with an un-altered "emmissions" billboard! All your politically incorrect spellings are belong to us!

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And finally, former Clark press secretary David Lewis points out on Pundit that the reviews of this week's TV One leaders' debate were really very similar to those after the 2005 Clark-Brash debate. Personally, it struck me as a contest that told me a bit about where the respective candidates are at personally, but remarkably little about where they're going politically.

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Inimical to the public good | Oct 14, 2008 11:19

At the end of the recent TVNZ 7 Internet debate, I concluded the discussion by thanking all of the MPs present for their support of important initiatives in e-government. We tend to take for granted the transparency of government, the improved access to services and the enhancement of citizenship the public embrace of the internet has brought in the past decade.

It is not going too far to say that the continuing progress of the internet's role in the public sphere goes right to the heart of what is to be a citizen. Want to know if you're registered to vote? Click here.

And that's what's so wrong about Section 92A of the Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Act. It potentially allows that crucial part of citizenship to removed from an individual without anything like the oversight or due process such a step implies.

The section requires ISPs to have a "reasonable" plan to cut off the internet access of customers who repeatedly infringe copyright: in practice that means cutting off a customer who has been the subject of three allegations of using their internet connection to infringe copyright.

[NB: It has been pointed to to me that the "three strikes" benchmark is solely an assumption based on the practice in other jurisdictions, so don't take it to the bank. This does, of course, underline the vagueness of the law as it stands.]

Yes, that's right: infringement need not be proven. And ISPs, who have no competence and don't want the job, are placed in the position of adjudicating over the merits of copyright claims. They'll cave and move on.

And, as Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow pointed out in a commentary on a similar initiative in Britain, the claims don't even have to have merit -- three false allegations, which cost nothing to make, will do nicely. France embarked on a similar course last November, to the applause of the IFPI.

It takes no great effort to see the potential for abuse. America's DMCA law has often been used to chill inconvenient speech -- it's much easier to allege that an online consumer campaign is using your brand without permission and have it taken down than to take action against the speech itself. 92A offers the opportunity to not take down the criticism but the critic himself.

Unintended consequences? Let's say there's a household where a teenager is persistently downloading copyrighted music without permission. The connection gets cut off. Mum can't get to important public health or educational material online, harming the interests of other children in the house.

Or perhaps Johnny Downloader just skips to another ISP. What then? The British government is considering establishing a shared register of people who should be denied internet access. In 2008, is that just, or even sane?

It's absurd to suggest that the Copyright Amendment needs Section 92A. It's been in and out through the course of the bill -- the select committee removed it and it was re-inserted for the final reading of the bill, which was voted for by most of the Parliamentary parties.

Indeed, I'm told that Judith Tizard was prepared to take it out again (or at least discuss doing so) before relations with the geek lobby collapsed. The collapse was covered in Colin Jackson's blog.

It was pointed out to the minister that it is difficult for ISPs to tell what their customers are doing. Mere evidence that file-sharing ports are in use isn't enough. BitTorrent is frequently and legitimately used to distribute Linux and other open-source software. My son's installation of World of Warcraft uses an embedded BitTorrent client to download (and upload) its updates.

Difficult, of course, is not the same as impossible. The minister noted that traffic in child pornography can be tracked. There are two answers to this: one is that handling child pornography and downloading the latest episode of 'Heroes' shouldn't even be mentioned in the same sentence. The other is that a dedicated team at Internal Affairs, with real investigative powers, does little else but track the traffic of such material. And a third is that even kiddy-porn users get to go to court.

I do understand the copyright owners' point of view here. I know that those rights are, literally, their livelihood. I do think some people in the IT community are cavalier about those rights, and prone to making seriously imperfect comparisons between software and artistic works. I know that the cost of civil action in support of claims may be more than those claims are worth. I know that there is strong international lobbying behind what happens locally, and that that lobbying places pressure on governments too.

But as they have done through the progress of this bill, copyright interests have been too willing to place their commercial interests above the public good. Section 92A is inimical to the public good.

To be honest, this frustrates the hell out of me. Thanks to David Cunliffe, the implementation of this troublesome section has been delayed until February 28. The warring parties here need to lower their shields in that time and start talking again. ISPs actually don't want large-scale copyright abuse taking place on their networks. I can't understand why there can't be an accord, without the need of legal force, to take action, especially in the case of New Zealand content. Because to put in place the force of law in such a way is virtually to invite consequences that are not only unintended, but frankly undesirable.

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The odds, and the simply odd | Oct 13, 2008 12:19

I've been telling anyone who asks that National is 75-25 odds on to form a government. I think it's evident that those odds shifted Labour's way on Friday: it's just not clear how much.

And not just because of the polls per se: the 3News report on the poll results was more damning than the numbers themselves, which must be weighed against the thumping lead that messrs Colmar and Brunton gave National two nights later.

It was the look. Key was interviewed sitting down and, as is sometimes case when he's nervous, his diction started to go off the rails ("the issues that matters to New Zealanders"). He looked a bit spooked. Clark, by contrast, was standing, smiling and enunciating every word like she meant it.

It was a similar story in Friday's opening addresses on TV. Clark spoke in a faux interview format, with frequent cuts from a left to right angle (an irritating but quite effective engagement device) and picked up the intensity as she went along, all the while underlining the seriousness of the times we face. The unveiling of the "This One's About Trust" slogan at the end had some real impact, and it's displaying as paid advertising prominently on the Herald website this morning.

National's corporate video meandered and seemed thematically dated, and, for some reason, had Key addressing us over his shoulder from the front passenger seat of a chauffeured car. I heard a commentator on Morning report today say that key came across as "friendlier". If that was the intent, it was, I think, a mistaken one. People don't want "friendly" right now: they want executive authority.

This contrast appears to have extended to the party campaign launches; according, at any rate, to John Armstrong, who notes in his column today that Key's speech "said nothing new on economic policy. In fact, it said nothing new about anything," while a couple of hours later:

Helen Clark trumped Key by delivering the recovery package he had been demanding, including contingency plans to save jobs and the promise of a mini-budget in December.

The upshot was that Labour looked like it was governing; National looked complacent and flat-footed.

Labour is feverishly developing detailed plans in case the economy turns turtle; National has a five-point plan, which apart from its less-than-well-received tax policy, is in desperate need of being fleshed out in far more detail.

Key was right to trust his instincts last week. His mistake was to assume Labour was doing nothing. That mistake may prove costly.

Labour has the obvious advantage of being in government, and thus actually able to take action. But I wonder if there's a theme here, taking in National's muddled campaign advertising and its listless style. Are there a few people in that organisation who'd spent so long reading thundering polls that they'd already started burnishing their CVs?

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Meanwhile, it would seem that the kids-for-the-future theme of the Greens 08 campaign isn't entirely unprecedented. National's much-missed ad-man John Ansell is claiming credit, but spot the similarities with the campaign broadcast from the Irish Green Party.

The New Zealand Greens 08 video material is here.

Friendliest political broadcast of the weekend? The Maori-Party's fronted by Pita Sharples, with Tariana Turia as everyone's auntie. All it lacked was a nice pot of tea and some biscuits.

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The other thing that happened on Friday was, of course, the SFO clearing Winston Peters -- on the charges it was competent to bring, at least -- which seems to have provoked considerable trauma for Matthew Hooton. You'll probably have read that Hooton's clash with Peters on Eye to Eye was interrupted by the lawyers, and had to be re-recorded, and that Hooton called Peters a "fucking cunt", but I'm told that's not the half of it. Hooton was agitated in the green room even before Peters arrived, and lit into him the moment he did. Everyone present was astonished by his behaviour. He seems proud of it.

The three parts of the programme that went to air are here.

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And, finally, the craziness on the McCain-Palin campaign trail isn't even funny any more.

As Josh Marshall reports, the woman reprimanded by McCain for telling him that "Obama is an Arab" (some people still think she said "terrorist" but the mic cut out) is a campaign volunteer. She was interviewed afterwards, and the result was chilling. The transcript makes clear that although the kind of explicitly racist, paranoid material she's working off isn't coming from the campaign itself, campaign offices are being used as a distribution point for it.

PS: This week's Media7 looks at crime in the media and the way it is invoked in politics. The panel lineup is: Catriona McLennan (sometime Herald columnist and Nine to Noon commentator, and a defence lawyer in the Manukau District Court), Truth editor Jock Anderson and Mediawatch contributor Jeremy Rose, who has studied differences in crime reporting between New Zealand and foreign media. Click "reply" and let me know if you'd like to join us at The Classic early tomorrow evening for the recording.

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Rationalisation is at hand! | Oct 10, 2008 11:20

For students of the form, the New Zealand Herald's editorial column has been extraordinary reading this week. It has writhed between denial and acceptance, faith and loss. Metaphorically, it has been conceived in a lonely hotel room under an accusing naked bulb.

On Wednesday, under the grim shadow of the PREFU, the Herald was declaring that "radical steps" would need to be taken on the fiscal front:

The first step should, in fact, be the abandonment of the reductions in personal tax planned by both Labour and National. Given that the Treasury's analysis pre-dated the Wall St financial crisis and the economic situation has already worsened, it is patently apparent the country cannot afford them. The Finance Minister virtually conceded as much when he said he would have taken "a more cautious approach" with Labour's package if he had known the new set of circumstances.

There follows what amounts to a plea for National not to fund its tax cuts at the expense of Kiwisaver, because (unlike free childcare, which John Roughan has convinced himself is the root of all evil), "the incentives that have underpinned KiwiSaver's popularity should not be hostage to the vagaries of the economy."

By yesterday, when it had become clear that National was indeed proposing to take it out on Kiwisaver -- to the extent that anyone, at any income level, who has committed to the scheme will be worse off under National's tax proposal -- the Herald editorial was offering that:

The wisdom of reducing the incentives to save is questionable but the courage is not.

Brave but stupid? This was reaching for a rationalisation the way an alcoholic justifies the next drink. But this morning's editorial is perhaps the best yet. In a wash of honesty-with-self, it tumbles through all the reasons that National's no-parole prison policy is a bad idea. While the government:

…has stopped short of removing prisoners' incentives for rehabilitation …[t]his, effectively, is what the National policy does.

In the case of some murderers, life would mean life. Society would be safer. But for repeat violent offenders, release from prison would merely be delayed. And when freedom was granted, there would be little prospect of such offenders responding in the best manner. With no prospect of parole, there would have been no reason for them to behave well in prison, to change their outlook, or to improve themselves.

Probably, they would simply have become more bitter and more violent. Indeed, the rate of recidivism is higher for those who serve their full sentence in prison than for those who have the benefit of parole.

More fundamentally, National's policy is simply a more extreme version of a policy that has failed this country and others, none more so than the United States. The number of New Zealanders behind bars has risen sharply in the past decade, and four new prisons have had to be built. This, however, has had no impact on the crime rate.

Putting away offenders for much longer terms does not change that rate. Yet a tougher version of just that approach, with the added expense of an increasing number of prisons, is exactly what National proposes.

Oh woe! But fear not! Rationalisation is at hand:

In all likelihood, this is not something that Mr Key will pursue if National wins the election. It is a policy calculated to strike a chord with those who despair of violent crime and particularly horrific murders. As such, it may capture the public's attention. It can then be put quietly to one side as a more cogent, more flexible approach to sentencing and parole is adopted.

Pardon?

Elsewhere, Tim Watkin at Pundit takes a visit to Epsom, where, if a deal has been done with Rodney Hide, National's Richard Worth didn't get the memo, and Labour's candidate can't quite bring herself to say that an electorate vote for Worth is the right thing for Labour supporters to do.

And The Standard has tape from the Helensville candidates' debate, where John Key promised some angry burghers that as Prime Minister he would prevent any state houses being built as part of the Hobsonville development.

He at least has the virtue of consistency, but Key's attitude to Hobsonville reflects very poorly on him. This development, on former air force land, is a rare opportunity to do public housing right. There will be 500 state houses in a mix with 500 "affordable homes" and 2000 private dwellings. For a man who has made so much of growing up in just such an environment in Christchurch, he looks particularly mean-minded here.

Helen Clark, on the other hand, seems to have had a happier week, in so much as a woman 15 points down in the polls can. Winston Peters is over for now, her caucus (present and prospective) haven't dropped her in it, and I think everyone was surprised at the reception she got at the Music Awards. (Conrad Heine, back here on a break from writing for The Economist, told me he was quite struck by that part of the evening.) I gather she was in quite chirpy form all night.

Like the Silver Scrolls last month, the Music Awards ceremony was distinguished by real creative excellence in production. In particular, the video production, by the Darkroom and Mike Hodgson, hit new heights. One thing was missing: monitor screens for people at the back of that very big room, who could barely see the presenters and consequently lost touch a bit.

I could also cheerfully have heard Shihad or the Fast Women (the Straightjackets tribute band led by Julia Deans) play two or three songs rather than just the one, and I suspect the paying punters in the gallery seats would have felt the same. It was a restriction of the televised format, but it's worth bearing in mind that what really unleashed the new generation of awards was the decision to treat it as a live event and bugger the cameras.

Campbell Smith seemed happy enough afterwards that they'd simply pulled off the huge step up to the Vector Arena, and he had a right to be. I also saw the Straitjacket Fits guys after they received the Legacy Award, and they were happy and relaxed. As I walked back into the after-party with Shayne Carter, a big, brown and burly security guard stepped forward to shake Shayne's hand and offer personal congratulations. That was a nice moment.

After-afterwards, the party people streamed into town. I wouldn't want to spend every Wednesday night in inner-city bars in the company of the muntedly enthusiastic (or enthusiastically munted?) but it was certainly amusing at the time. And yesterday, I was tired. I'm grateful to Damian for finding a way around his voice emergency on the radio show, because apart from anything else, I just needed an off-day.

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We nailed a good, serious Media7 show this week on the state of the nation's waterways under dairy farming pressure finally becoming a story -- oen of the better programmes we've done, I think. The background is in the Media7 blog and you can watch the show on TVNZ ondemand, as Windows Media clips, in the podcast and on YouTube.

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And, finally, Paddy Free (aka one half of Pitch Black) has kindly allowed us to offer you a free track from his remarkable new three-years-in-the-making CD with Richard Nunns, Karekare: The Language of the Land -- you can download 'Whai Atu' for a limited time here, as a 9.5MB 320k VBR MP3 file.

But wait! There's more! I also have two copies of the CD to give away -- email me with 'Karekare' in the subject line. And if you like the free track, you can buy the CD from Amplifier here.

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