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Sniffle | Nov 21, 2002 11:33
I sneezed when I woke up this morning. My nose ran and my eyes itched.
It might have been seasonal pollen. Or - given that the same thing happened after last week's spray run (we were buzz-bombed at 5.45am) - I may be allergic to Foray 48B, the spray being used in the aerial campaign to eradicate the painted apple moth.
I assume that there will be some people who suffer a more acute response than my hayfever-type symptoms, and the money budgeted (up to $10 million if need be) for a public health component to the spray campaign is therefore welcome.
But you will not see me at the Spray Free Coalition march, and, frankly, I wish these people would stop bombing me with leaflets telling me that me and family are going to get cancer. Frankly, I'm sick of bio-panic.
Firstly, there is no evidence that the active ingredient in the spray - the Bt bacterium - has any significant health impact. It is approved for use in organic farming.
It is, of course, less than ideal that we don't know the exact composition of the commercial spray, which is subject to patent. MAF says
the rest of the spray contains "wheat or corn starch, soy or other ingredients; preservatives; sticking agents; acid regulators and water."
The Greens have an unverified - but possibly accurate - list of ingredients that includes the industrial solvent toluene, which is approved for use in makeup and other products - and is a key ingredient for your friendly local speed lab's business of turning pseudoephedrine into crystal methamphetamine.
Frankly, I think you're risking a greater degree of environmental pollution waiting at traffic lights or hanging out in a smoky bar.
Anyway, the Auckland District Health Board's peer-reviewed study of the health effects of Foray 48B is available in PDF form
and as HTML.
Some people won't believe it, of course. That's what I find the most disturbing element of bio-panic - the willingness (no, enthusiasm) to believe that dozens of health professionals, regulators and officials are conspiring to lie to you and poison you and your family.
And yet: it is public safety campaigns that have helped bolster sensible GM regulation, ensured the best possible filtration of Auckland water from the Waikato pipeline (which was always going to be better than anything that's ever come out of a tap in Dunedin - but that's not as glamorous a cause, is it?) and, of course, helped draw out the public health support component of the current spray campaign. I just wish they knew when to stop.
Quite the Party | Nov 20, 2002 22:49
The little driver display in my co-op cab was alerting the drivers to the night's likely fares: "Awards ceremony … Civic Theatre … 700 people …" So far so good.
But the message concluded: "Finish approx 10pm."
"Don't count on it," I warned the driver. "It's never happened before."
No, the APRA Silver Scroll Awards did not - and will never - finish at 10pm. And yes, it's become something more than an awards ceremony. Under APRA boss Mike Chunn, the Silver Scrolls has been worked into a significant gathering of the culture. Every year, I tell myself I'll take it easy, and every year I ignore my own advice, because everywhere you turn there is someone you need to have a yarn with, not to mention another drink that needs attention. And there, amongst the massed muso bums (sorry, valued members of APRA) is the Prime Minister.
She probably has no great personal affinity for the music on the night - or for the musicians, who inevitably behave badly and smoke like buggers - but Helen Clark must find these music industry affairs enormously affirming. This is an industry acutely aware of its unprecedented recognition by the government.
Every year, she gives the same speech (and possibly wears the same pantsuit) and is granted the same delighted ovation. Less well-loved, apparently, is the Leader of the Opposition, Bill English. He was left altogether out of the VIP greetings in James Coleman's introduction, and then APRA board member Arthur Baysting managed to welcome "Bill and Nancy English" in his speech. Sheesh.
The Silver Scrolls format sees each of the five finalist songs performed by someone other than the original artist. Sometimes this can brilliantly illuminate another side of the song (I'm thinking of a folk-acoustic version of Shihad's 'My Mind's Sedate' by Bic Runga one year) and other times it doesn't. The versions this year were nothing special - and giving the Goldenhorse song to Paul Ubana Jones was, frankly, a stretch. (Performer of the night for me was the young fa'afafine Linda E later on in the evening. She should be a star - and not a drag star, a pop star.)
The most interesting aspect of this year's contest was the fact that three of the finalists - including the winner, Che Fu's 'Misty Frequencies' - came not from the strummers of guitars, but Auckland hip-hop acts. I believe a grand new tradition of New Zealand songwriting is on the roll.
It wasn't all beer and skittles and more beer though. Neil Finn's long and impassioned speech in favour of a public youth radio network (addressed as much to the Prime Minister as anybody else in the room) raised a few eyebrows.
But, then, the Wellington culture crew is a bit edgy all round right now. A whole clutch of agencies - Culture and Heritage, Creative New Zealand, the Music Industry Commission, NZ On Air and Industry NZ (which is quite the cool place to work these days - must be the espresso machines) - has a stake in this week's World Series showcases, which are being performed for a group of promoters, pluggers, journalists and record company people from the US, Europe and Australia. The fact that the local acts had been asked to pay either $1500 or $3000 each for their opportunity to impress emerged, rather than being announced, and it will be important now to demonstrate that everybody's investment is worthwhile.
Word so far is that while the majority of the invited foreign guests are taking their duties seriously, there are a couple for whom it is just a junket. That's probably not a bad strike rate. But really, you'd think the senior vice president from Def Jam Records would have managed to spend a bit more of his time at Monday night's hip-hop showcase watching the talent - and not in the bar trying to meet ladies.
The local hip hop crews were certainly turning it on. Funniest moment: DJ Neumonic from the Decepticonz' shout-out to the Prime Minister "who is in the audience right now!" Cue a ripple of applause and a lot of craning of necks to try and catch a glimpse of the leader who was not in fact there at all. Shame, really: she missed a good gig.
The showcase overlapped with a seminar called Music Business Legalities and Realities, a block up Queen Street at the Classic. It came under the wing of World Series week - the local panelists were Malcolm Black (A&R consultant to Sony and owner of the Heart Music label) and Campbell Smith (manager of Bic Runga, Garageland & Stellar) - but it was really more of an Aussie roadshow.
Industry commentator Phil Tripp, founder of Immedia, and New Zealand-born music business lawyer Shane Simpson, author of the large and quite useful book Music Business
and Madonna's legal representative in Australia, stage these events together across the Tasman.
The three-hour Auckland event wasn't entirely devoid of merit, but at times (especially when Tripp had the floor) the full house of aspiring rockstars got something more like an infomercial than a serious seminar.
Among the failings was a failure to acknowledge or discuss the changing environment for the music industry both in New Zealand and worldwide. Here, a new generation has entered senior management at the major labels. The new faces have often themselves played in bands (Black at Sony, Adam Holt at Universal Music) or come through student radio (Mark Ashbridge at Festival Mushroom). They're keen to work with indies and do pressing and distribution deals - and they're more likely after business partners than indentured serfs.
All of the commentary on the sudden international success of The Datsuns has mentioned their deal with the Virgin Records offshoot V2. What hasn't been covered is exactly what kind of a deal The Datsuns did - and it's anything but the traditional major-label contract. The band recorded their debut album for their own Hellsquad label (thus, they own it) and then licensed the finished product to V2 for the UK and Europe - even managing to get an advance for the recording costs.
These deals not only suit the artists - who keep both copyright and creative control - they cut the cost and the risk to the record labels at a time when the music business is tight, and likely to remain so. It's not your dad's industry any more …
Quote of the night: Smith on Internet file-sharing: "As a manager, I don't really object to it. It gets our music heard. Frankly, in some territories it's the only marketing we have."
Opportunity Knockers | Nov 14, 2002 19:49
Wow, the brawl between Russell Crowe and the weirdly thin Kiwi millionaire Eric Watson is going to be somebody's big break, isn't it?
Surely, Nicky Watson's agent is on the phone to The Sun right now:
"Look, the millionaire bloke who slapped around Russell Crowe? I've got his wife - well, ex-wife really - and she's got blonde hair and big knockers. She's a flaming lingerie model! What am I bid?"
And Francesca Guise, the aspiring Kiwi actress in London, won't be done any harm at all by photographs of her giving the Gladiator some serious verbals. Having appeared on Shortland Street for five seconds, she will doubtless be referred to in the tabloids as a "Kiwi soap star."
But hey, check out my appearance on a Russell Crowe fan site. I don't recall talking to the Australian Women's Weekly either.
Extreme Pragmatism | Nov 14, 2002 16:05
So, are we in on Iraq or not? Opposition parties have been united this week in seeing the decision to send a New Zealand frigate to help with anti-terrorist surveillance in the Mediterranean as joining the war on Iraq by the back door. For the Greens this is a bad thing, for Act and National it's a good thing.
But there is another - more likely - explanation for this week's announcement by the Prime Minister, one which involves neither wholehearted support for the Orwellian push on Iraq, or a principled rejection. The problem here, surely, is that it would be unwise for a New Zealand government to provoke either side in the War on Terror.
After all, this is as amoral a White House as there has ever been. These people are currently implementing a defence strategy that posits the US as, in the words of Colin Powell to the US House Armed Services Committee, "the bully on the block".
This plan (dubbed, naturally enough, The Plan) has provoked horror among America's allies - let alone its enemies - since it was first drawn up in the last days of Bush I.
Now, of course, to say so would be to aid the terrorists. As defence specialist John Ruck pointed out in the New Zealand Herald, enthusiastic support for the US strategy has bought no particular favours for Australia - but to be seen to reject it would surely be to risk being bullied.
And yet standing too close to America is now quite clearly the way to make your country the target of the religious fascists from Al Qaeda. The Clark government is - as it has in so many spheres - practising pragmatism.
Swiftly offer modest aid in Afghanistan - but try not to talk about it. Steer well clear of Iraq - but send a frigate to help with the established programme of anti-terrorist surveillance in the Mediterranean. Reject unilateral America action in Iraq, but take a softer line now that the UN Security Council has been hectored into a new resolution. It might not satisfy the high moral stances of either the Greens or Act, but it is probably the best way of keeping our little country out of trouble.
In the meantime just be glad you're not an American liberal. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - does anybody else find him a lot scarier than Saddam? - has created his own personal intelligence agency. The CIA's crime, it appears was an inability to advise that Iraq was a terrorist hotbed and presented an imminent danger to the US.
And the President who seems indecently keen for a war in which thousands will die? Amazingly enough, he's a military deserter.
Normally, conspiracy theories about rigged elections and political assassinations wouldn't get much play round here. But the people currently in the White House are so evil and unpleasant you couldn't entirely rule it out.
Somewhat less evil and unpleasant is former TVNZ chair Ross Armstrong. Sure, he was in all probability a malign influence-peddler - but how does a story about a mistaken expenses claim of $360 - which was paid back - make front page lead in the Herald?
And while it may have been sloppy for KPMG to miss an invoice for $7500 relating to a trip he took to Paris, activities like hiring an interpreter do not appear to smack of corruption. At the least, I'd expect a newspaper to tell me whether he was in Paris on official business and with the approval of his board - but, curiously, neither the Herald or the Dominion managed to fit that (one would think) fairly crucial piece of information into their front-page stories.
And most of all, I am in no mood to be lectured about this kind of thing by National's sleazemonger Murray McCully. Some of us have memories that stretch back to his extraordinary and unacceptable conduct as Minister of Tourism.
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