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Friday night road warrior | May 28, 2007 09:55

As the designated driver for some beautiful party people, I wound up covering a few miles on Friday night - and I almost feel cheated that I wasn't one of the 40,000 New Zealanders stopped at police alcohol checkpoints. I didn't even see a police car.

I certainly read about it in the papers though. The Herald leads this morning with the story of a frighteningly drunk young woman being relieved of her keys by a decisive member of the public, and in the Herald on Sunday David Fisher filed a story headlined Our drink-driving shame.

And, don't get me wrong, but I can't help but feel as if we're being played a little bit. Fisher's story says "a staggering 304 people out of 40,000 motorists tested yesterday were charged with drink-driving offences."

But it's not that staggering. It's one in every 131 drivers tested. Still too many obviously, but two weeks ago another big blitz found one in 60 drivers over the limit, and Auckland's City's road policing manager lamented that "We are not seeing a big change [in driver behaviour], it's out there, and people just seem to be very blase about it." That weekend, the patrols even had a Herald reporter out with them.

In March, a similar swoop in Auckland netted 94 drunk drivers from just under 8000 vehicles checked, or about one in 84. A separate operation in Waitakere nabbed one in 170. In November 2005 it was one in 150. In September 2006 it was one in 64. In December 2005, it was about one in 100.

More detailed figures are given in a table in a May 25 Herald story relaying the news of an "alarming" surge in drink-driving.

The table does show an increase in drivers charged between 2005 and 2006 in all but two regions, but gives no indication of how many drivers were actually stopped in either year. And on the raw numbers (to May 21 this year) the number of drivers nabbed in 2007 seems to be running behind that in 2006. At the end of 2006, the Auckland, Waitakere and Counties Manukau police districts released statements declaring a "slight" increase in drink-driving apprehensions. That has now become "an alarming surge". I'm confused.

The most useful trend over time - the proportion of all drivers stopped who are subsequently charged with drink-driving offences - could presumably be hauled out of the numbers with an hour or two's work, but it never appears in the police press releases from which the journalists write their reports.

Don't get me wrong. I'm very happy indeed for the police to be out there stopping and testing drivers. My safety as a road user depends on it. But I'd prefer alarming claims to be backed up by the alarming facts.

Anyway, enough of that. First stop on Friday night was the 95bFM 'Fancy New Bands' showcase at the King's Arms, which, as it apparently did on Thursday night, filled the place. It was really good fun: I saw three young bands I thought were really pretty good (the Bonnie Scarlets, Fighting the Shakes and Coshercot Honeys) and caught some of what was widely deemed a cracking live performance by Collapsing Cities on the radio simulcast. I'm not really involved with bFM these days, but I'm really pleased for the station. The b is always healthier when it has a healthy live music scene to engage with, and that seems to be the case at the moment.

From there, our crew popped in at Shanghai Lil's, which was mostly peopled with amiably munted Ponsonby types, then went up the hill to Totos for a look in at The Turnaround. Lest it be thought I only went to The Turnaround because it was written up in Metro (and there were a few: "blonde women dancing twice as fast as everyone else," according to Stinky Jim), allow me to point out that I have been to two of its previous locations - y'know, back in the old days.

Mere, my old friend from Planet days, appeared at the desk and let me in for free, and inside it was truly a t'ing gwan off. I had a little dance (unless I'm mistaken, that was Mu troubling the decks), then a yarn with a few people and then it was Dad's bedtime. Everyone else had clearly drunk a lot of coffee earlier in the evening.

Elsewhere: in light of the weekend's thunderous polling, Juha wonders if Telecom is stalling until National's in government, but really, I think even Maurice is on board with regulation these days.

And the $27 million Creation Museum opens in Kentucky tomorrow, placing Boblical peoples alongside animatronic dinosaurs and greatly advancing the cause of stupidity. The enthusiastic report from CBN News is on YouTube.

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A Taito Spot | May 25, 2007 12:31

Could the Taito Phillip Field thing just be over, sometime? I say that not out of any partisan desire for damage limitation - Mr Field has not been high in my estimation since I spent time in his company years ago - but because I'm tired of listening to the blather from all sides.

The Prime Minister seems to be having trouble remembering what she actually said after the release of the Ingram report on Field's activities. Which was this:

"While the report does not find wrongdoing by Mr Field, it does imply errors of judgment. The Labour Party leadership and parliamentary whips will be working with Mr Field on the issues raised, in particular on the need for a Member of Parliament to keep personal and professional distance from those being advocated for and on the adverse perception which may attach to the practice of lafo when gifts are received," Helen Clark said.

But yesterday, commenting on the extraordinary news that the police are to charge the Mangere MP with 14 counts of bribery, she said:

"It was clear when the Ingram report came out that it was a damning report. The remaining issue was whether the behaviour was in the realm of the unethical, immoral and wrong, or whether it had gone over a line to illegality."

Um, right.

It's not just her, of course. John Armstrong seems to have bought another narrative in his Herald column today, when he says:

In Parliament yesterday, it conducted an early rehearsal of what will be a campaign focus on prime ministerial judgment by asking how Helen Clark's assertion after the Ingram report that Mr Field had only been guilty of "trying to be helpful to someone" squared with the news the MP was facing bribery charges under the Crimes Act.

But as the Herald itself reported last year, it went more like this:

In Parliament yesterday, National MP Lockwood Smith asked if Helen Clark's "maintenance of regular contact with Taito Phillip Field led her to stand by her statement of 14 September last year: "I think the only thing he is probably guilty of is trying to be helpful to someone; if not, why not?"

She replied: "Indeed I think he was, but I am awaiting a full report."

So she didn't really "assert" it, and it wasn't after the Ingram report (and although she probably had a reasonable idea of what was going to be in the report, she'd have been castigated if she'd been seen to pre-empt it in Parliament). This was her original statement, back in September 2005, when TVNZ broke the Thai-tiler story shortly before the election, as report, again, by the Herald:

Helen Clark said her initial reading of the situation when she saw what Mr Field had to say last week was that he was "trying to be helpful" to someone who came to him for assistance.

Meanwhile, Bill English was demanding in the House to know why she hadn't referred information she held to the police immediately before the election. This assumes that she actually had at that time information that demanded a referral to the police, and I frankly don't think she did. For God's sake, it's taken the police a year to decide on a prosecution and we don't yet know what they learned in that time.

As the Herald editorial noted at the time, what she would have done had she not been a few days away from an election is suspend him forthwith from Cabinet until the facts could be determined. But that would have been political madness.

As it happened, Field wasn't reappointed to Cabinet after the election, and the Ingram inquiry (which was decreed by Clark a week after the story broke) took its endless time to find a great many unflattering facts about his conduct (as helpfully detailed by David Farrar). Was the Ingram inquiry inadequate and hampered by its terms of reference? With hindsight, yes. But not even National was saying so when the inquiry was announced.

So now the police - having taken even longer to determine the facts - have seen fit to charge Field, and it now seems that the matter will wind up in court in time for the next election.

Just to add to the general atmosphere of derangement, at the same time as National is bagging Clark for not rushing to the police the day after the story broke, Act's two MPs are alleging a conspiracy to influence the police in favour of prosecuting the MP because Clark wanted to see him dealt to. Sigh …

Anyway, I'm a little late today because I spent most of the morning being filmed for a Families Commission TV 'Action on Family Violence' ad campaign emphasising our collective responsibility for reinforcing social norms against family violence. Others involved include Ruben Wiki, Sir Paul Reeves, Phil Gifford and Alison Mau.

Apparently, I was impressively stern; no mean feat when you've done the same line 20 different ways (and then the light changed, or someone walked out of the lift …) until you're in danger of it turning to gobbledegook in your head. Still everyone was very nice (it does stagger me how many people it takes to film an ad) and I look forward to the campaign launching in late July.

So I've only got a shitload of work to get done before I can head off to bFM's Fancy New Bands showcase at the King's Arms tonight (it starts suitably early for old buggers like myself and my homie Andy Mo'). And on that note, ladies and gentlemen, the original video for The Saints 'Know Your Product'. Because it is simply great and always will be.

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I'm marking Youth Week by being down with the kids | May 24, 2007 09:00

The incorporation of music download sales into the national singles chart isn't so much a good thing as a complete and utter no-brainer. The not-so-secret secret of the singles charts for years has been that the sales of physical singles are so low - and cover such a limited range of music - that it has been possible to "top" the charts with a record that isn't even for sale.

That's because the single chart has largely been driven not by sales, because there aren't any - but by radioplay. So the decisions of a handful of programmers have helped determine the charts, which have in turn vindicated the decisions of a handful of programmers.

But something different has happened in the past year or so. People are downloading singles - across a range of services, but most of all on Vodafone Music - to the tune of 40,000 a week.

Now, each album track purchased separately counts as a "single", so that's not quite the same as 40,000 hot new digital platters. It is more than likely that the chart will be clogged with a few old favourites. But it is the difference between a number one single selling, at best, 400 physical copies in a week, and 1600 paid downloads.

Under RIANZ' new chart rules, a song can chart if it registers no physical sales, but it cannot now chart on radioplay alone (I'm still not clear about exactly how much influence radio now has on the charts). To make it up to the programmers, a new radioplay chart is being launched, to the interest, I suspect, of no one outside the music and media industries.

One thing I like about this is that it brings us into the game. If I like a tune and want to get behind it - and the download services make it nice and easy to extend the linkylove - then there's an actual, published result out the other end. I look forward to wallowing in payola from craven and unscrupulous independent artists.

One problem - at least in terms of the way the singles market used to work - is that it's kind of hard for kids to shop online. They can't have credit cards, and even on the phone company services, they have calling plans to keep to. This is one significant reason that kids pirate music.

Anyway, I'll be discussing this and related issues with RIANZ president Adam Holt and Chris Hocquard of Amplifier (which is now a full-fledged iTunes aggregator) on Public Address Radio, 2pm Saturday on Radio Live. (Speaking of which, apologies for the interruption in podcast supply - I'll post heaps of them real soon now.)

Meanwhile, Mauricio at Geekzone ponders what happens to DRM-protected music from CokeTunes after CokeTunes shuts down. Sure, it'll play - but what say you want to move your tunes to your new PC?

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There are all sorts of implications to Google's "Universal Search" revamp - which ropes the various dedicated search engines there into a single set of results - even greater world domination, the first step on the way to a future of multimedia intent-driven marketing, or just way more copyright suits, but the coolest thing is definitely the ability to actually play videos inline from the results page. Problem: the video search only finds clips from YouTube and Google Video - there's a advanced search option that lets you target videos on any other site, but it doesn't work. People putting up loads of video every day only to have it be non-discoverable will presumably have thoughts about that.

I also like the vertical searching. Narrowing down searches by category is smooth and easy. But this from a Slashdot thread is interesting:

Exactly - and now I have to enable JavaScript for the whole of Google.com, or the entire menu bar vanishes! Not hard to do with Firefox's NoScript extension, but Google needs to have a sensible fallback when JavaScript is disabled.

I won't write any more, because I've already written a Listener column, but feel free to share your opinion. Note that Universal Search hasn't been propagated to google.co.nz yet, so you'll need to choose google.com.

PS: Not many people seem to have noticed the item I posted to OurTube yesterday: you can watch the pilot of Flight of the Conchords' HBO series in full, online.

PPS: How about someone at TV3 news gets down with the geeks and puts the clip of Tuesday night's item on the blogger-solidarity initiative with Fiji (featuring our own David Haywood) on teh internets? And then send me the link? Meanwile, Chris at NZBC surveys events.

Update: It's here

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No end of mileage | May 22, 2007 10:16

The country's mayors come out of their special emergency meeting in Christchurch yesterday fairly brimming with advice for parents and quite willing to conflate the Edgeware Road vehicle homicide and last weekend's drag racing accident, which killed a 20 year-old in Tauranga.

There is no indication that alcohol was a factor in the Tauranga accident: indeed, boy racers tend not to drink and drive because that's the easiest way to get your car impounded by the cops. And 80% of cars in fatal crashes involving people between the ages of 15 - 19 are less than two litres in capacity, suggesting that a law limiting engine capacity for young drivers won't really have any effect.

And you had to read to the very bottom of this story this morning to find a Canterbury police spokesman saying that "the emphasis on boy racers had pushed the issue out of proportion to other traffic problems."

But people were on a roll. Celia Lashlie declared that "our boys are choosing alcohol, violence and fast cars to show they are grown up," then intoned further on modern road safety on Morning Report today, claiming that cars were more powerful and the roads more dangerous than when she was young.

Actually, cars were more powerful and less safe in the 1960s, the driver licensing test was a joke until 1965, and there was not even a defined blood alcohol limit until 1969 (when the permitted breath alcohol level for drivers under 20 was more than three times what it is now). The road toll was 843 in 1973. Last year it was 374, the lowest in 46 years. The per capita rate of road deaths is less than half what it was in 1990.

Christchurch mayor Garry Moore said "this is a society not braying for blood" and Norm Hewitt said it was "about caring now", and advised parents to go home and give their children a hug. Nelson mayor Paul Matheson, speaking on Checkpoint, wanted to know "who's going to grab hold of this broad issue and try and bring this village of four million people back online again?"

Buller mayor Martin Sawyer, who featured in a reprise of the same issue an hour later on Checkpoint condemned "a society that's big on rights and not too big on responsibilities". (This was a popular line. Moore said New Zealand was a society strong on rights, but weak on responsibility; Lashie lamented that "the kids know their rights"; and according to TVNZ, Matheson told the taskforce that "local councils, and mayors in particular, should empower and affirm positive parenting, and the need for society to balance rights and responsibilities.")

Sawyer continued to dispense huge dollops of free-associating moral philosophy to a perplexed Mary Wilson:

It comes back to what I said though Mary - it's a collective issue. We're big on rights in New Zealand, but we're actually not that big on teaching our young people responsibilities also. Now maybe it involves some teaching of civics and stuff at schools as well, but a lot of it just comes back to the individuals and comes back to parents. And it also comes back to the messages that we're giving our young people as adults. For instance, the taskforce today talked about alcohol. Y'know as a society we have to look at the messages we're sending young people. It's not just young people, it's adults also. Binge drinking. After all, it's us adults that have allowed the alcopops to come in. It's adults that have allowed the drinking age to go back up to 20 [sic] and it's us adults that have allowed wide-ranging liquor advertising that basically glamorises that partying lifestyle …

… it's about starting somewhere. Some of it starts with parents. Some of it starts with parents modelling good behaviour. Some of it starts with parents talking with the younger people more. So as a country we've got some issues, including regarding the way in which we bring up our young people. And unless we start facing those, the problem's not going to improve …

There's about 18 minutes of that.

Meanwhile, Clayton Cosgrove and Bob Clarkson were competing to see who could bellow the loudest: Cosgrove demanding a "zero-tolerance approach" and declaring "We have to crack down and try to save these people from themselves," and Clarkson demanding a tougher line on boy racers, because "these idiots should be ripped into".

Clarkson also declared that boy racers' licences and cars should be taken off them. Well, they already are, aren't they?

This is not to dismiss the problem of young people dying on the roads. But young people have been dying on the roads for a long time: the number of 15-19 year-old drivers involved in accidents has always been disproportionate. (you might also note that three times the number of fatal crashes involving young drivers occur in rural, rather than urban, settings).

But the number of 15-19 year-old drivers involved in fatal crashes in 2005 was half what it was in 1984. The proportion of fatal crashes involving young drivers in 1984 was 19.3%; in 2005 it was 15.5%. Over the same period, there has been a 60% reduction in the number of 20-24 year-old car drivers involved in fatal crashes and a 96% reduction in fatal motorcycle crashes for the same age group.

It's all here.

Concerns remain. The reduction of the drinking age may have interrupted the long decline in the accident rate. The youngest drivers - and their passengers - are far more likely to be at fault in fatal accidents than other victims. On a purely subjective level, the waste of young life always seems so much worse. Boy racers do represent a public nuisance in many places.

But I'm not sure if that justifies a bunch of regional mayors emerging from their meeting all fizzed-up with the idea of a national moral crisis and making pronouncements about parental responsibility; or their insistence on combining two completely different incidents and declaring it a trend. And frankly, any teenager hearing the outpourings of the last 24 hours would be amply justified in saying: it wasn't too flash in your day either, Dad …

PS: No Right Turn comes up with the graph that the government should have -- relative financial benefits of National's proposed tax cuts and KiwiSaver -- finding that "Kiwi Saver consistently delivers more to people than National's programme of tax cuts would have, and (thanks to government contributions) substantially more to those on lower incomes."

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