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We've got a PVR | Dec 15, 2005 10:33

Our My Sky PVR was installed yesterday. And, no, yours wasn't, and if you haven't signed up for one already (or possibly even if you have) you won't be seeing it until March next year. Perks of working for the evil MSM, you see.

I'm quite impressed with it. Given that it's basically the same system that's been in use by Sky's British and Australian siblings, you'd expect it to be a doddle to use, and it is. The remote is large, but it has dedicated buttons for all the major functions and the UI is fairly intuitive.

The only quirk I've noticed so far is that the "series link" option doesn't seem to be available for most series, when you'd think it would. Sure, I'd like to be able to connect it to a network and be able to take files off it, but a pay-TV broadcaster isn't going to let you do that.

Two other observations:

(a) TV is still largely a load of arse. It's nice to be able to set My Sky to record ABC Nightline in the wee small hours, but there are still a lot of shows I want to see that aren't available here. I can't see BitTorrent operations being suspended any time soon.

(b) Part of the installation (which was carried out by two very nice, competent chaps who said it was the first one they'd done) was the replacement of the LNB on the Sky dish. And, of course, the My Sky box is a new decoder; which made me realise how bad our old decoder was. The picture and sound are at least 50% better, and we finally actually get widescreen as broadcast. If I'd known, I'd have demanded a new decoder ages ago.

The introduction of Sky's PVR service is yet another problem for TVNZ, which, after Ian Fraser's startling select committee appearance yesterday, hardly needs any more problems. I'm writing about that for money, so I won't comment too much here, but Scoop's Kevin List has a report on it all, as does The Thorndon Bubble.

In the meantime, feel free to read my Listener column this week, which looks back at another pivotal time for television in New Zealand, and speculates on what might have happened had the Kirk government not cancelled the private warrant for a second channel and instead let Gordon Dryden have his TV station. Things would have been different. And better.

Anyway, what with all the recent discussions about people using other people's words - or not - Gareth Robinson catches National MP Richard Worth plagiarising (yes, I know, the irony, the irony …) The Maxim Institute. It's a straight-up copy-and-paste job. I thought my taxes would have been sufficient to pay for someone to write Mr Worth's newsletters, but apparently not. James Guthrie blogs it too.

NZBC's Rob O'Neill, a Sydney resident, has a thoughtful post on ethnic gang wars past and present.

I think the events at Cronulla and since have tended to lure New Zealanders into a certain smugness. Which is something I'm wary of, not least because my sister is officially Australian now, and her husband is one of the nicest blokes I've had the pleasure of knowing. Intriguingly, my niece's New Zealand heritage appears to add a sort of ethnic colour in Newcastle. She was lined up to deliver the "Meri Kirihimete" in class.

That notwithstanding, a couple of comments from the email:

Was born in Australia and live in Godzone on my Oz passport. I have (again) requested the papers to apply for NZ citizenship. Last time was when the Tampa thing was going on.

When I lived in Sydney I was torn between the fundamental nice-ness of your typical strine, and the raving red-neck that lurked beneath.

It was surreal, like some Sci-Fi thing where they land on this perfectly ordinary paradise planet, and then get served boiled-alien-baby for dinner or something. You'd be chatting to a perfectly sane Strine about tax avoidance (a most popular Bar-B topic) and all of a sudden some bizarre Nazi statement about "Abo's" would pop out.

The whole ethos was centred on assimilation (aka integration, to use the PC right-wing term). You _will_ become dinky-di Aussies. Resistance is futile. Spooky. Too spooky for me.

During the Tampa thing I came as close as I ever have to smacking someone in their ( extremely large and obnoxious) gob. He was repeating the Howard Govt bullshit lines about refugees. No rational argument, just keep repeating "throw babies in ocean".

Recently I noted the Federal government are running TV ad's saying "beware... we're under attack... they're all out to get you". All this crap serves to feed an underlying feeling that the Australian way of life is under threat by people who wear different clothes. The Howard government has validated the ravings of the right wing nutters by it's brown-nosing with Bush.

Howard has consistently made me ashamed of the passport, and the Australian people for succumbing to such blatant FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) tactics.

I just need to find the $$ for the citizenship application now!

And Ben Wilson:

I spent 5 years in Melbourne, working firstly for an NZ software house selling software to a huge ozzie milk company, and then in the most reputable stockbroker as IT support and eventually as a support manager.

Not once in all those years did I see one aboriginal in employment anywhere. In fact I scarcely saw any aboriginals at all, except hanging around the train station sinking piss. I met more maoris and PIs there. Which was odd since Victoria was reputedly the most densely populated part of Australia prior to european colonization.

When I asked people about aboriginals, I was shocked to find moderate educated people telling me things like 'they're a fucken useless race', or 'we're not sure they're actually the same species'. 'Rock apes' was not an uncommon phrase.

The papers persist to this day in calling aboriginals 'Blacks', without the slightest hint of embarrassment. When I asked one 'leftie' guy about that, he said 'well, they are black'. I warned him not to do it in NZ if he liked having his original teeth.

It kind of sickened me, to see how low a people could be driven. You begin to wonder to what extent the aboriginals brought it on themselves. Then you do a bit of research and find that systematic slaughter and relocation happened on a scale that make the maori land confiscations look like acts of altruism. The first employment ever given on an official basis to aboriginals was the job of tracking down and killing other aboriginals for rustling sheep. I believe in Tasmania you could buy a license to shoot any aboriginal you wanted from the post office.

So that's just the attitudes to aboriginals, to set the scene. Immigrants fared better - barely. The PIs and Maoris that I met were never in the corporate environment, they were entirely in jobs of manual labour or semiskilled trades. But not unhappy with that lot, it would seem - at least they earned good money. Statistically they were an insignificant group - one in a thousand, it seemed like.

The real tension in Melb was between 'skippies' ('Anglos' in Sydney?) and mediterranean folks, particularly Greeks and Italians. They fared quite well, the Italians better than the Greeks. Italians were represented right up to upper middle management. But in the stockbroker they were completely absent from the board of directors. Similarly for the Greeks.

Attitudes towards them ranged from mild annoyance to open contempt, in the skippy crowd. The same didn't seem to go in reverse. But I think Melbournites don't realize quite how much the fiery latin temperament has rubbed off on them. Italians were always blamed for gang activity, although I think they were not responsible for any more than their fair share of the hits, protection rackets, pimping, drug selling and standover tactics which seemed to be so widely accepted there and so foreign to me. It is a strange experience to see a cop come into a restaurant, abuse the owner, get a free meal, then help himself out of the till before leaving.

Asians were totally underrepresented in business. None in any management role I ever saw. I saw violence towards them several times, and constant niggling.

Kiwis were the most tolerated bunch, generally, however much australians complain about us. There is so much cultural similarity that the oppression I felt was about as lame as what I'd feel being an Aucklander in Wellington. Generally, we're hired as expendable attack dogs. Many people are genuinely fond of kiwis, seeing us as their little brothers. Until we assert ourselves, of course, then every silly stereotype comes flooding out. I kept thinking of Wellington when it happened.

My perspective, not scientific, but it's what I've got. I'll never forget in my life the vitriol I received when I resigned from my management role and suggested my second in command, a Greek lady, be my replacement. You find out who your friends are and who are merely sycophants.

To be fair, I met many non racist ozzies. But they were mostly what would be considered 'extreme lefties' here.

On the other hand, thanks to Sam Scott for drawing my attention to this rather good satirical Cronulla news report from The Chaser. Nice to see that a sharp sense of humour is alive and well.

John at AmericaBlog has collected up some of the prize publications of the American Family Association, the religious conservative group that turned Ford Motors all anti-gay. They're variously anti-semitic (a Jewish upbringing predisposes to a life of crime, apparently), racist and, of course, crazily homophobic. Ford should have told these fascists to get lost. Why didn't it? Because the AFA has 200 radio stations and its own "news" agency and Ford got scared.

And Synthetic Thoughts notes the BBC's release of video clips of 50 "iconic events" under a Creative Commons licence. They're available in the first instance to UK residents only, but presumably there's nothing to prevent them being file-shared. Any information on that would be welcome.

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Left Wing Liberal Evil | Dec 14, 2005 11:12

As some readers will doubtless be aware, I have a status amongst many members of the local right-wing blogosphere as the very symbol of Left Wing Liberal Evil.

Given that I'm a director of two small companies and have an interest in another, I write for two business magazines (and am in fact the Magazine Publishers Association's - ahem - business columnist of the year); that I deal with commercial sponsors and advertisers; and that I'm really quite keen on selling stuff for money, I find it quite amusing when they refer to me (and they do) as a "fundamentalist leftie" (and thus "more dangerous" than an Islamic fundamentalist) and a member of the "extreme left".

Well, I guess that if they're obsessing about me they're not drooling on anyone else, so whatever …

But it gets even sillier. There's a "non partisan" blog called NZ Media Bias where some of them gather to hold the "MSM" (and more particularly the likes of me) to account. Well, that's the plan, anyway. The site actually seems to have become a place for them to gather and mightily embarrass themselves.

This Kiwiblog thread sees some of the sillier utterances unravelled, but I think the latest post there warrants highlighting in its own right. Take it away, Jason:

New Zealanders have been done a huge dis-service. You could be excused for arriving at the conclusion that without provocation, Australian louts set about to violently beat anyone that had an Arab appearance. The Main Stream Media certainly implied, even stated this was the case.

But the truth of the matter was radically different, in fact so different that it is surprising this could have been overlooked.

If the MSM of New Zealand had it's way, you wouldn't remember in February of this year when an Australian woman was violently gang-raped by Lebanese-Australian youth, one of them reportedly said to her that she was about to be "f----- Leb-style" and that this was happening because she was "an Australian pig".

Gangs of Middle Eastern men have been committing crimes, motivated first by racial issues, against other Australians, reportedly this crime wave is at epidemic levels, with seemingly random acts of violence targeted at any non-Muslim Australian.

These were the things we weren't told, at best these issues were glanced over, at worst we were deliberately misled, you decide.

He's right, you know: the dirty "MSM" didn't report that crime in February of this year. BUT THAT WOULD BE BECAUSE THE CRIME TOOK PLACE IN 2000. The quotes emerged in the 2002 trial of the Lebanese gangsters responsible for a series of vicious rapes in Sydney in 2000 and 2001.

The case - which culminated in an unprecedented 55-year sentence for the ringleader - was reported by the "MSM" in 2002. Indeed, as anyone with even a passing familiarity with the case would know, it was reported more extensively than any comparable case before or since.

Should we be charitable and assume that he just got the date wrong by five years but was contending that the gang rapes have been ignored in the current reporting? That's completely wrong too, as a simple Google News search shows. And, yes the evil New Zealand evil "MSM" mentioned it. Here's the New Zealand Herald story from Monday.

But it's easy to see how Jason could have become confused: if you Google those phrases, you will find page after page after page of sweaty right-wing blogs (and the occasional Mark Steyn column) using virtually identical language to make the equation Muslim = Rapist.

I've actually been trying to find some data that might illuminate the persistent "Muslim rape" meme, but all I've come up with is one other case, from 2002, involving a 27 year-old Pakistan-born Australian resident who committed rapes of young girls in June and July of that year. He subsequently said that he committed at least one rape because the girl was not wearing traditional Muslim dress (and was thus of low morals), but I wonder if that was some sort of defence tactic: his lawyer described him as "a cultural time-bomb". Meaning that the poor chap couldn't help it, presumably …

That was a very nasty crime, but hardly an isolated one in Australia in the intervening years (the overall rate of sexual offending in Australia has been much higher than New Zealand's for quite a long time now). That it can still be used to smear an entire ethnic and religious community - and to justify racist attacks on that community - says something about the people saying it.

I actually think the author of the post isn't a bad guy, and he faces some personal challenges. But as a demonstration of the rank idiocy generated in the right-wing echo chamber, this takes some beating. He needs to find some new friends.

The SMH continues to run good, extensive coverage of the violence in Cronulla and elsewhere, including this digest from online discussion forums in which both "Anglos" and Australian Muslims lament the actions of thugs on both sides. Unfortunately, racial attacks appear to have spread to Perth and Adelaide. And more racist text messages calling for vigilante action against " grease ball monkeys" are circulating. A Cronulla man beaten in retaliatory violence by Lebanese gangsters on Monday night has, however, pleaded for everyone to calm down.

Those of you who find Leighton Smith annoying might care to peruse this story about the racist rabble-rousing conducted by ugly - but hugely popular - Australian talkback host Alan Jones in the days leading up to the riot. It's fair to say that anyone who said what Jones said on New Zealand radio would not have been on air the next day. "Cheeky darkie" it ain't.

Janet Albrechtensen in The Australian makes the point that there has been a problem with ethnic Middle Eastern gangs harassing women at the same beach, but that does not justify lynch-mob violence. (And when a group of white thugs chases an innocent brown man chanting "String him up!", yes I think it's fair to use the phrase "lynch-mob violence".)

Anyway, there's a story on Philip Anchutz, the owner of Walden Media, Disney's joint production partner in Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which I think makes too much of the religious conservative angle. Frankly, if I was launching a fantasy film a week out from Kong, I'd be looking to for every niche I could get.

The family went to see the film on Sunday, and it's … tidy. Everything is in basically the right place, the film looks good and the story gets told. It's actually hard to believe this is Andrew Adamson's debut live-action feature. And just think how bad it could have been if, say, Tim Burton had got hold of it.

Cosmic Variance looks at American public hostility towards atheists.

Jon Stewart looks back on this year's papal election and Stephen Colbert on Bush in 2005.

File system on the Xbox 360 cracked - before most people have even been able to buy one.

Chris Bell of NZBC interviews Christian of the Datsuns.

And, finally, Jessie from The Backyard blogs Monday night's New Zealand Music Industry Commission pub quiz, into which I was drafted when Damian Christie suffered a hamstring injury during warm-ups. I saved their asses, really I did. Although we only came third. I also had the unexpected privilege of introducing Jessie to her boss. Not, you understand, that her boss didn't know her - he just didn't know that she was Jessie from The Backyard.

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Scary | Dec 12, 2005 11:42

In the last couple of years, the slightly foggy concept of "race relations" has ridden high in surveys of issues of concern to New Zealanders. That might be put in context by what happened in Sydney yesterday.

The spectacle of ordinary-looking white Australians marching the streets of Cronulla, chanting racist slogans, singing 'Waltzing Matilda', waving Australian flags, beating random non-whites (and kicking and punching a young woman on the ground), attacking an ambulance crew, pursuing a man into a hotel chanting "string him up" and waving guns is not exactly an encouraging one.

It is apparent that the racist riot was sparked by the previous weekend's beating of several lifeguards by a gang of "Middle Eastern youths", after an exchange involving "strong coarse language" from both sides, which provoked understandable anger from local residents. But what happened yesterday bodes ill for Australian society. Mob violence turned out to be pretty close to the surface. Now there are the revenge attacks.

On the other hand, the subsequent outbreak of poisonous racism ("Good to see the Australians have some balls") amongst the delightful correspondents to David Farrar's Kiwiblog this morning suggests that we have our own fucktards to worry about.

Tim Blair has a roundup (with plenty more unpleasant racist spewing in the accompanying comments), the ABC has video and Fight Dem Back notes the participation in the riot of neo-Nazi groups, but observes that: "Based on reports fed back to us from the gathering in Cronulla, the vast overwhelming majority of people who rocked up were apolitical locals just on for a blue and maybe a BBQ. Despite the outbreaks of racist chanting, the majority of those involved more would most certainly not come under the rubric of being active racists."

There's an immediate backdrop to this - local residents understandably upset by the actions of gangs of Middle Eastern thugs - and a longer-term one, as evidenced by both this ominous essay on a right-wing website about "the rise of extremely violent and ruthless Lebanese criminal gangs" and this thoughtful piece, which covers everyday racial abuse and the so-called "Bra Boys", the white gang behind yesterday's mob violence:

Maroubra's "Bra Boys" gang is led by a young man described by one of his peers as a rapist, murderer, drug dealer and "maggot". This gang and other Maroubra gangs are notorious for their senseless violence - including attacks on police officers and rapes.
In December 2002, the Bra Boys injured at least 30 off-duty police officers, including female officers. At the time of this incident, Commissioner Dick Adams denied the Bra Boys were a sinister gang, merely a collection of board riders with a drunken hooligan element. Lexington Place in Maroubra South has experienced ongoing assaults of Asian shopkeepers, the bashing and robbery of a family of three, racial abuse and other offences, including a murder and a malicious wounding.
Kai Abberton, a Bra Boys founder, was charged in August 2003 with the shooting murder of another local, Anthony Hines. Significantly, the ethnicity of gang members is never mentioned in media reports of their infamous exploits.

Fortunately, and unsurprisingly, it appears that decent Australians are as horrified about this as anyone else. There would seem to be a serious problem there.

On a happier note, and in the relatively harmless domain of international sporting contests, the Black Caps made an all-time-record 332 runs to beat Australia in the cricket on Saturday. It's been a hell of a series. Sure, the Aussies were without McGrath for the whole time, but we lost Bond to injury, and Fleming for all but nine balls - and but for the want of three runs in another staggering match on Wednesday, we'd have won the damn thing. Amazing.

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One for the road ... | Dec 09, 2005 10:47

Righto. This is it: no more coffee posts after today's 4000-odd words. Apart from anything else, editing up your celebrations and laments keeps taking me over my two-cups-a-day limit. But damn, it's been a thing, hasn't it? So, once more to the big shiny machine …

When Paul Litterick came here from Britain in the 1990s, he was, he says, surprised by "how much New Zealanders care about coffee: not just how discerning they are about taste and variety, but also how much the cafe matters. It is an experience, not just a drink."

He likes that, and further observes that it is "becoming increasingly apparent from the discussion of coffee that New Zealand is the only place in the English-speaking world where you can get a decent cup. I don't think New Zealanders generally realise this, so you have done a service to the nation."

And yet, still we can learn, as this wonderful story from Louise Gardiner shows:

The best coffee experiences I've had is at my friend's council flat in Wellington.

I learnt that if an Ethiopian invites you to pop round for coffee you should allow a couple of hours!

First she sets up a low stool and a small metal brazier. Then she heats up some charcoal and places it in the brazier. Green coffee beans are then very skillfully roasted over the coals until she is satisfied they're just right. Everyone present gets to smell the wonderful aroma before she grinds the beans.

When I first met her she ground the beans by hand with an improvised mortar and pestle, but the neighbours complained about the banging so she got an electric grinder from Briscoes!

Once ground she puts the coffee in the palm of her hand and deftly swirls her fingers as though making a spell and the coffee disappears down the tiny opening of the spout on the earthenware coffee pot. Water is added and the pot placed on the hot coals. Little ceramic cups with pretty floral decorations are washed and lined up and sugar added according to the taste of each guest.

Once the coffee is ready it is poured carefully into the little cups, more water added to the pot and then returned to the coals. The coffee is delicious - not at all bitter, but very hot and strong. It was usually accompanied by copious amounts of unseasoned popcorn.

My friend has teflon fingers and will pick up offending pieces of charcoal from the brazier and throw them in the sink. Towards the end of the coffee session she puts a couple of small pieces of charcoal in a wee bowl with some eucalyptus leaves and it smells great. If you're lucky you get three or so little cups of coffee.

After a very enjoyable couple of hours sitting in a room full of people where the conversation is mostly in Amharic and everyone is friendly, courteous and charming you go home contended and with a huge coffee buzz. I haven't had my friend's coffee for over three years (having lived in London recently) but her daughter lives down the road from me in Auckland and she makes a pretty choice brew too.

Faaaantastic. As is this contribution from Vibeke:

When in Maputo, Mozambique (since someone was asking about Africa), there was fine strong, good espresso to be had at the local Nando's for us every morning, without milk better than with. Why Nando's you may ask, well we lived upstairs from them. The BICA coffeecups were a 1960's classic. Costa do Sol, Wimbi's and not to forget Estoril on
Avenida Mao Tse Tung are good places to sit, order a coffee and take in the streetlife. Waiters are pretty fast and wear classic black and white, Estoril is a good one for listening in to dodgy dealings of the more affluent but not too upright few. The quality of the coffee, wel eh, trust me, if you've come this far, Kiwi coffee is long forgotten and would seem achingly out of place between the men repairing watches on the pavement and amputees (war/lepra) asking for some coins. Milk? Milk is for babies.

but then, if you ever

ever

ever

make it to Cuba.... you'll find (again) that capitalism isn't a prerequisite for good coffee (it's a prerequisite for good service maybe).

There's a tiny, roadside, beachside shack on the south east end of Cuba, in the province of Guantanamo, yes THE Guantanamo, it must have been close to Punto Imias if I remember it right. Me and Francisco stopped for a quick coffee as we had been driving all day and wanted to make it back to Baracoa. He ran in and came back with two tiny cups of sweet espresso, not unlike what we'd been drinking at our breakfast table all over Cuba.

We drank it in the hot mugginess of a Cuban August afternoon looking at a wild sea. But somehow, I don't know what it was ... there must have been a secret ingredient. I still don't know WHAT WE WERE TASTING IN THAT COFFEE that day, but we had FOUR more of these espressos EACH within the space of an hour, because they were just so damn good. Syrupy strong, brewed with the sugar in it from the start and well... voodoo, what can i say. Victory in the battle against de IMPERIALISTS! take that ya Starbucks blegh. and americans get out of Guantanamo.

Aidan, on the other hand, leads us away from the sublime:

Two of the worst cups of coffee I have EVER had were obtained on the west coast of the South Island. Sure this was 10 years ago, but don't be too sure that places like this don't still exist.

First one was at a cafe on the State Highway, nearish to Fox Glacier IIRC. The lass making the coffee was super quick, partly because she didn't have to fiddle with any coffee. They just filled the wee chamber with coffee once in a while and just kept pushing the button. I was amazed it came out brown at all. I don't need to tell you how awful it was. We were there for 20 minutes and I didn't see her put "fresh" coffee in once. Ugh!

On the same trip I had an expresso (sic) at a cafe in Greymouth. After the Fox experience I made sure to ask for it to be strong. The bloke making it gave me a conspiratorial wink and put in *two* heaped teaspoons of coffee. Hard to say which was worse, as more bitter oils came out of the small amount of relatively fresh coffee.

Could be worse I guess. A mate of mine once asked for a cappuccino in Tasmania. After a lengthy pause the lass behind the counter said that she could make one. It involved useing a microwave, a milkshake machine a couple of teaspoons of Nescafe instant. My mate was quite impressed with the ingenuity.

Simon Bidwell also has regional reports:

I agree that across most of Europe and N.America the coffee is not up to the standard set in NZ, particularly in the main NZ centres. I've also spent quite a bit of time in S.America and, despite being a major coffee-exporting zone, things aren't much good there either.

In Peru and Chile you only find espresso in a few places in the bigger cities, and it's often sans crema. In even moderately expensive restaurants, "coffee" means a cup of hot water served with a tube-like packet of nescafe. Or it's a strong liquid concentrate in a little jug, which you pour into the water.

Colombia is better-brewed: coffee there is called "tinto" and is de rigeur with most meals As in (fellow coffee-producing) Guatemala, it's also quite fresh tasting. Most small bars have espresso.

Again, though, you just want to order the basic espresso--no one really knows how to make coffee with milk.

Only in Italy or places with direct Italian influence do you find the full range of espresso styles. In Italy itself, while coffee is the fuel of life, there's somewhat less preciousness about it than there is in NZ.

Cappucinos are normally made with lukewarm milk because people don't piss about drinking them--they go into a stand-up breakfast bar and toss one down on the way to work. Also, they understand even better than NZers not to add too much water to an espresso--in your standard short black there's usually not much more than a tablespoon of liquid.

There's one coffee experience, however, you won't find in Italy or NZ. This is "cafe cubano", which I discovered in Sth Florida a few years ago.

Cuban-stye coffee is made by expressing a quadruple-shot coffee directly into a cup containing several spoonfuls of raw sugar. It's served in a "colada", a (usually polystyrene) cup about the size of a small takeaway coffee cup, and you also get several thimble-sized little cups. You then drink it in "shots', sharing with two or three people.

They call cafe cubano "liquid cocaine", and if you try it you will see why. Nex time you're in Miami, find a little neigbourhood Cuban place, order yourself a colada, and prepare to have your socks knocked directly off.

WRT Starbucks--when In Peru, I lived in Arequipa, and on a trip to Lima my Arequipan girlfriend insisted on going to Starbucks, as she was nostalgic for when she spent time in the US. Not only was the milky coffee I ordered the most execrable, burnt, soapy thing I have ever tasted, but it cost more than it would have in NZ (in Peru, most consumables are two or even three times cheaper). My girlfriend didn't care -- for her simply being in Starbucks was fulfilling her aspirations.

I recall a similar experience in Istanbul when I was kicking around with a couple of Americans and came upon the McDonald's I swear, they just about kissed the ground at the front door.

Sebastian stuck up for the big guys though. Sort of:

Well, look, in Berlin we only got Starbucks as a smoke-free place where you can sit down and have a coffee. So whatever is being said about Starbucks, I must note this. All other places are so smoky that you can hardly enjoy your coffee and you will smell like fresh out of the smokehouse.

Apart from this, Starbucks coffee really is much better than what you get in the majority of coffee places in Berlin. Whatever all the Part-Time- and New-Berliners wrote here before.

And a final smack around the chop for the 'bucks: this from Heather Gaye:

While we're still on the subject of coffee then ... my ex-husband was forced into a Starbucks job when they bought out his (quite good) cafe on Piccadilly. He lasted a month, had nothing good to say about the place except for the other staff members united in their misery. He showed me the first page of his orientation booklet. The first two bullet points on their mission statement are:

# Provide a great work environment and treat each other with respect and dignity.
# Embrace diversity as an essential component in the way we do business.

Seriously! This is a company whose branding just about eclipses its products, and they put push-button coffee machines in their cafes so they don't have to rely on (or train) their staff to make a consistent(ly shit) coffee. Diversity and dignity my eye.

...but on the flipside, when exactly is it that NZ became a coffee culture? Welly already had it when I moved there in '95, long blacks were en vogue and lattes had just become what men in suits that didn't drink coffee drank, but I thought that was just Wellington. I got back from the UK in 2002 to discover even my wee home town had a (seriously) top-notch coffee roastery. That's The Bean in Whakatane. They've since moved to bigger premises; I assume because of the demand.

As below, in my response to Matt Andrews' email from the UK, I'm calling early 90s, with a nod to the 80s pioneers. Matt seems to be suffering a bit of a cringe:

And really this coffee fetishism is interesting, it seemed to come out of the US in the early nineties, passed through Aust in the late 90s and then hit NZ, where, as usual, it may have been behind the times but was taken up with more zeal (or zealotry) than elsewhere.

Not really. I think it has its roots in the early 80s, with DKD and a couple of other places, and really took off in the early 90s, independently of the Seattle/Starbucks thing in the US. I came back to New Zealand in 1991, just before a place called Urbi et Orbi opened in K Road, and that was really all about the coffee (one of the founders now co-owns Brazil on the same street). I remember being surprised even then how crazy people I knew were about espresso - my mates at Incubator Studios seemed to devote as much love and care to their coffee as to their recordings.

Matt further reckons:

NZ coffee is particularly strong compared to Aust and European coffee, and I think that sometimes NZers mistake weaker coffee for bad coffee (the guy saying cafe con leche was good is spot on, even cafe cortado in Spain is really nice and consistently so - also people need to remember the UK is not really a coffee drinking nation).

The espresso blends here tend to contain few or no robusta beans and aren't so darkly roasted, so the coffee does taste more complex and intense, with more sweetness. I agree, coffee doesn't have to be strong to be good - I've occasionally had really nice plunger coffee from beans blended for the purpose - but the thing is that all those places in Britain actually are serving espresso. Really, really bad espresso.

Something I've also noted with friends returning from the UK is that they take a while to adjust to the idea that it's not clever to buy vacuum-packed imported Italian coffee on the assumption that it's better: buy beans roasted here and grind it fresh - it'll taste 10 times better.

Is this all too obsessive, too trivial? Robyn Gallagher doesn't think so:

On the subject of coffee versus those serious, grown-up issues (Iraq, Rumsfeld, etc), if I buy a daily latte, that's about $900 a year. If I'm paying that much for something, I don't think it's at all extravagant to discuss with others the quality of what I'm buying. If I was going to buy a washing machine, I wouldn't blindly buy the first one I came across because of some belief that I should be thinking about Iraq instead.

Gemma Gracewood dropped in after being busy last week:

Sorry for the late addition to your coffee rave, but I've just come off our mad, wonderful, week-long shoot for "Dead Letters", the short film version of a story by Busytown's Jolisa, during which the kind folk of top Welly coffee house Havana Coffee Works donated a huge coffee machine that travelled with us everywhere, and Deluxe threw in the beans. Nothing like decent crema to get a crew working hard for you!.

Aaanyway, for those in search of decent coffee in NYC (and Tracey Henton, I hope you'll be there soon) I actually had a decent Flat White there once!!! In fact, our happy trio - me, Cath from the NZ Music Industry Commission and Calum from Dirty Records - downed three in a row once we made the divine discovery ...

Here's our secret:
Delectica, 564 Third Ave at 38th Street.

Not sure if it's still run by a NZer called Julia but back then it was and she showed her staff how to make a flat white while we practically drooled in front of her (you have to ask for one, it's not on the menu). Throw in other NZ goodies like salmon and sauvignon blanc and it's a Big Apple must-visit.

Unfortunately, it looks like things are now going critical in Montreal. Kirsten files from the frontline:

Could somebody PLEASE come over to Montreal and introduce the population to a decent cup of coffee?

I've been in a state of shock over the coffee situation since I arrived (over two and a half years' ago now). Montreal's a fantastic city -- I'm told it's the most cosmopolitan city in North America (I haven't taken enough of a look around to judge for myself). The live music scene here is amazing, there's plenty of fantastic food to be had, but good lord -- Montrealers wouldn't know a good cup of coffee if it walked up and kicked them in the gnads.

To wit -- Montrealers consistently vote Tim Hortons the best coffee the city has to offer. Tim Hortons is a chain -- the Canadian version of Starbucks -- but with even worse coffee. It's watered down. It takes like dirt. It tastes like burnt dirt. In fact, cafes here give me an unsettling sense of d?j? vu, as if I'd stepped in a vortex and and been whisked back in time and place, to be left standing in a coffee shop in Eketahuna mid 1970s. It's filter coffee all the way, baby. I'm not kidding. You remember? The kind in the glass carafe that sits on a hot plate all day long...? The kind that smells bad, tastes bad, costs a buck twenty and is an intenstinal corrosive?

That's the state of the coffee nation in Montreal right now. C'est dommage. There are bakeries galore here (the French influence) and patisseries to die for. And there is good coffee to be had if you know where to look (Java U, L'avenue, Les copains d'abord) but this is by far the exception, rather than the rule.

So: Help! There's a market and a killing to be made, I'm sure. And you know, winter only lasts for about 5 months of the year here...

Christian writes that your recent kind words are not going unnoticed:

I used to work at Tinderbox in Angel, North London, which was pretty good. But the chick who made the best coffee there was my Polish buddy the lovely Agata, who is now a duty manager at the Monmouth Borough everyone's banging on about. I'll pass on the good wishes from across the globe. She's the vertically-challenged one with the black hair, in case this gets broadcast, by the way :)

Tim Harding has further intelligence on Berwick Street's Flat White:

Wholeheartedly agree that Monmouth beans are the best in London but they use them better at Flat White on Berwick St. and they've been hitting up the Edmond's cook book, afgans and ANZAC ... mmm.... tastes like home. Ginger slice too.

Mmmmmmm …

And Bart Janssen throws a lifeline to Tracey Henton:

There is good coffee in the US and it's sold by Peets. They do have stores in LA and they also sell beans etc online - heck, you can even set up a regular delivery of beans.

I also recall getting a half-decent coffee at the café by the Virgin store on Sunset Boulevard …

Anyway, back home and Peter Methven has further recommendations:

Note that Chris Dillon's Coffee Supreme comes in three Fair Trade varieties (Ethiopian's very mellow). It can be ordered by mail - sorry, you'll have to get the address from the Web. And yes, in the UK we always drink tea, when our suitcase supplies of Supreme run out.

Rosanne Simpson revisits the grim-oop-north theme:

You think London is bad. Try getting a coffee in Liverpool. It's ridiculous.

This is the town where the chip shop woman will pinch a few of your chips as she is wrapping them up and then eat them with her gob open in front of you.

Ben Wilson had memories:

My own little plug, on this week's controversy. I think Auckland coffee's generally pretty good, but it's also not bad over in Melbourne too. And the service there is better.

The barista that sticks most in my memory was an italian looking guy in X. This shop served coffee to pretty much everyone in the skyscraper of 10,000 people I worked in. Yet this guy always knew exactly what you wanted without asking, from the merest disdainful glance. He had a knack of throwing a handful of cups down in a sweeping motion that somehow got them all in their saucers. You'd have to wait exactly the amount of time it takes to make a cup of whatever you wanted before you had it in your hand, no matter how many people were being served. And it was always good. Once he overcharged me. Next time I went, he undercharged me the same amount and added a marshmallow as an apology, without a word ever being said.

Robert Harvey takes it back to the 'hood:

Felt I should mention Il Forno in Mackelvie St Grey Lynn. The coffee is quite palatable, thanks very much, and the cakes, filled rolls and breads are bloody fantastic.

Sam offered this:

I think it important to note that often the barista is the most important ingredient. for example, in London my favourite haunt was Hammersmith's Cafe Nero. Not only was the (Italian) barista drop-dead gorgeous, but she made a damn fine brew - and Cafe Nero is a chain.

Best coffee however was ina delightful 'Italian' cafe in Barcelona's old town.

Here in Wellington you should check out any of the Deluxe Cafes, with Fidel's being my favourite.

But honestly, no-one beats my own French-style breakfast latte, carefully assembled every morning on my stove-top, using the finest organic/fair trade beans (Havana). I make a pretty mean triple shot espresso too - with crema!

John Hutton had this very sad story to relate:

Take pity on me. Five years ago I worked out that coffee, combined with stress, triggered migraines. I couldn't give up stress, so I had to give up the bean. Now I am forced to sit with other coffee drinkers, smelling the brew, which I love, but enjoying a "refreshing tea" to get a soft caffeine hit and to maintain the illusion of coffee sociability. At this rate I am likely to end up as an anorak wearing freak, forever standing outside roasting joints, tears in my eyes. Every so often, I take a sip of coffee ... and the bright lights start to shine in my peripheral vision, sure sign that the head-ache is on its way. Groan.

Java Joe has been thinking big since this all got rolling:

Here's a 'Modest Proposal'... Given that New Zealand is the nirvana of great coffee, at least in the minds of all those expat Kiwis, and given that we've just been harangued to increase our export performance, why not create a world-wide fast food brand called Give Em a Cup of Kiwi (or some such inanity). We can run it out of our international headquarters on a Ponsonby sidewalk, buy coffee cheap from everywhere in the Third World, pass it through NZ and do a 1000% markup, then bundle it off to all those deprived parts of the world so well described by your many correspondents. And why not go whole hog, since the government is trying desperately to attract expats back to Godzone. They can all go to work for the Firm, continue to enjoy their OE, and show everyone just how good they are at steaming milk and tamping a handpiece at the sorts of low wages they pay cafe staff in places like the US and the UK. Gee, I wish all our problems were so easy to fix!

Dude, I like the fact that you're thinking outside the square … but it needs work.

And, finally, there's always one. And that one is Duncan:

Without a doubt the best coffee served in the UK (or Europe for that matter) is at Pete's Eats in Llanberis, North Wales. It is most certainly instant, boiling hot, and comes in a nice, half litre, metal mug. Best drunk with a large fried breakfast. That, my latte friends, is culture.

Personally, I've always found mugs of highly stewed black tea to be a good little grease-cutter when it's fry-up time, but that's just me.

Did I say "finally"? Rod Snowdon chimed in from Germany to try and take this thing to a whole other place:

May one mention beer and culture in the same sentence in a New Zealand sense? It occurred to me while enjoying the coffee thread that more or less the same arguments could be had about beer.

Of course instead of "Coffee snobs" you'd have to say "Beer connoisseurs", but the parallels are striking: Inter- and intra-national differences in the products, the local tastes, the strengths, the production techniques, the presence or absence of additives, major differences in quality, and regarding the latter an emerging "culture" in New Zealand of small breweries with excellent products that just weren't there fifteen or twenty years ago when the country thought that - depending on what camp you were in or what rugby team you supported - a particular mass-produced DB or Lion product (the "instant coffees" of the NZ beer landscape) was God's gift to the palate!

Many will point us to their favourite Kiwi microbrewer, and of course everyone (?) will agree that on the whole American beer is crap! Germany of course would be the beer equivalent of coffee's Italy, one might argue where one can get a good beer in Paris for less than $10 (fat chance!), some may attempt to argue the merits of a warm flat British ale or a sickly strong Belgian Trappiste. A few tea-drinkers may even dare to mention cider...

On the other hand maybe it's best to stick to coffee after all?

Heh. I hear you, Rod, on the German beer - although I have to say that my most memorable fine beer experience was at this place in Amsterdam. But let's not get into that …
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This blog post by Dan Savage about Ford and the religious lunatics who have spooked it is bracingly frank. This is the best bit:

So what can you do? Gay or straight, you should at least pick up the phone and let local Ford dealers know that you won't even consider buying a Ford after this. Why should straight people care? Because the same AFA fucks that have successfully intimidated Ford on the gay issue are also attacking straight rights - they're the same assholes who have successfully intimidated retailers like Target into denying women access to morning-after pills. They're the same assholes trying to convince the Feds not to release a vaccine for two strains of HPV, the virus that can cause cervical cancer in women. The HPV vaccine - already tested and 100% effective! - could save thousands of women's lives every year. The AFA is fighting it.

And Richard Naylor has posted video of The Great Blend in Wellington. It's a Windows Media .asx stream, and the best I can get from it on a Mac is the 56k version, but it came through nicely at 755k on the household PC. We'll have the video of the Auckland event up soon, honest we will …

And really finally, before you go and read those crazy stories in Damian's blog, some priceless stuff from The Daily Show and the Colbert Report. There's a clip on the White House's bewildering incompetence on the Homeland Security job (it shouldn't be funny but it's ROTFL). And also Stewart and Colbert on the alleged "War on Christmas".

Hahahahaha …

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