Public Address - Hard News (Home)

And on into a whole new year | Feb 01, 2008 08:25

It's Foo time! Kiwi Foo Camp is on this weekend, and I expect to emerge intellectually enriched, much the wiser and only a teeny bit hungover.

The event is billed as being the work of Nat Torkington and myself, but my credit considerably overstates the case. My major contribution is really as the purveyor of beverages, in which spirit may I thank Monteith's and my new friends at Eden Coffee and EspressoWorkz.

Meanwhile, perhaps you could make a difference by signing the Independent's petition relating to this case:

A young man, a student of journalism, is sentenced to death by an Islamic court for downloading a report from the internet. The sentence is then upheld by the country's rulers. This is Afghanistan – not in Taliban times but six years after "liberation" and under the democratic rule of the West's ally Hamid Karzai.

The fate of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh has led to domestic and international protests, and deepening concern about erosion of civil liberties in Afghanistan. He was accused of blasphemy after he downloaded a report from a Farsi website which stated that Muslim fundamentalists who claimed the Koran justified the oppression of women had misrepresented the views of the prophet Mohamed.

I'm not aware of a comparable petition to our own government.

What the graffiti artists say abut the death of Pihema Cameron.

Going about its work: Aucklandista --- sister site of well, you know. We needed y'all …

The Wellingtonists themselves have a guide to surviving the Sevens if you're not actually going, and a little word on Yahoo!Xtra not working with one of its more valuable Flickr communities.

An excellent remix of the infamous Tom Cruise Scientology video.

If you missed The Daily Show's wonderful interview with US presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, it's here. She is what we refer to in broadcasting as "good talent".

Not the pilot you need when you're 30,000 feet over the Atlantic.

Coolest thing on Public Address System you may not have seen: reader Amy Gale digests Titus Andronicus in lolcat. Genius.

Most interesting and energised thing: Kracklite lets rip:

Funding has shifted more towards 'Performance Based research Funding', which puts pressure on academics to follow the 'publish or perish' mode. I have no problem with that in principle, as that is what universities should be for - centres of research, not graduate factories. Unfortunately, it's been clumsily executed and often academics are trying to both teach in bulk and produce recognised 'outputs'. Things at XXXXXX got very Dilbert.

What appears to be pissing Tim Shadbolt off is simply that times and polices have changed and SIT benefited from bums on seats and would not adapt to the new model of research-based funding. That institution is a dinosaur, a poor university expecting university funding when it should be a polytechnic, even though 'polytechnic' is considered infradig nowadays. Shadbolt, in my opinion, is an idiot, with his idiocy compounded by the institution's short-sighted management and ham-fisted government policy.

What's been presented by both Key and Clark is piecemeal, lacking strategic context and relevance. I don't see either of the main parties having a coherent and practical long-range plan to deal with post-secondary education, be it trade, professional or academic. They have separate needs and none should compromise their quality by pretending to be another - and let the students have their wanderjahr before they decide on what they should do.

It's been a good January here, but my year really starts now. I'll be speaking at Webstock (where ticketed entry is still available for some workshops, along with general conference entry). I like that the Webstock crew have done this.

On return, I'll be ramping up the use of the 'Speaker' slot here, inviting some more people to step up; and starting work on my Big New Thing.

Meanwhile, we have a meeting this morning that will have a major bearing on our son's future. Thanks to everyone who was so nice and supportive after my post on humans.org.nz last week. We're moving forward.

And, finally, a shopping tip. The Goldmine in Ponsonby (opposite the Women's Bookshop and Magazzino) has a huge swag of stock from the now-defunct Petra Ceramics factory. I picked up a nice baking dish and some pretty little bowls …

(94 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!

Herself's Turn | Jan 30, 2008 11:02

Labour's policy speeches in government are oddly like its policy speeches in Opposition in the 1990s: dense, detailed, not entirely lyrical. The difference, of course, is that the Prime Minister gets to talk about things her government is doing, rather than what it would do if it got the chance.

Unlike some others, I'm not particularly inclined to rage over John Key's state of the nation speech yesterday; I think there was some genuine intent there. The question of what to do about the small groups whose failure harms and indicts us all is pervasive: not only in education, but in New Zealand society as a whole.

But I'm inclined to the view that it is less than what it seemed. Perhaps John Armstrong had been waiting so long for any policy that he erred in the other direction. I really don't think the speech was " overflowing with policy initiatives," and it took only a few hours to show up one fairly serious glitch.

The military officer in charge of the Limited Service Volunteer programme -- invoked by Key as a plank of his Fresh Start proposal -- made it clear this morning that LSV is a scheme for willing participants, not for young offenders. However good it might sound to the talkback hordes, the Army does not wish to take on the role of correction.

The train-or-lose-your-benefit idea has some problems too. "If you're on a welfare benefit we expect some obligation," Key intoned on Morning Report today. And yet there are young people on the invalid's benefit precisely because we, through government, have failed to fulfil our obligations. They may not technically be "too sick to work", but they are faced with schools and workplaces that have nothing to offer them, or simply cannot cope with them. Short version: I don't see a disability strategy in there.

Nor, it must be said, in the Prime Minister's speech. The extension of the Gateway programme, extending the right to structured education or training to the age of 18, is real, but, like Key's slate, it's largely more of the same only -- trust us -- better.

Clark also said she'd be promoting "the role of our creative people in expressing what is unique and special about New Zealand". Does that mean a revamp of policies around the creative and cultural sector, which Labour is in danger of taking for granted?

Ironically, the most impressive figure has been the politician who didn't make a speech. Phil Goff emerged from the Fortress of Solitude and appeared relaxed, well-briefed and convincing in the course of his media appointments. Key, on the other hand, contrived to fritter away my remaining personal sympathy as he whined through his talking points on Morning Report.

I'm somewhat relieved that at least one news organisation has a memory that stretches back more than three weeks. Yes, the cluster of killings this January has been disturbing. But that's the case nearly every January. Annually, we kill each other in the height of summer and, in the absence of other news, we dominate the headlines by doing so. Basically, murder in January should never be taken as evidence of a trend.

Family Integrity, like all the pro-smackers, has faithfully, even romantically, relayed the account of Jimmy Mason over how he was accosted by police over "flicking" his son on the ear in public. You hardly need to read it: good, loving father, malicious bystanders, evil law, etc.

Unfortunately, the police have interviewed witnesses and found sufficient discrepancy between Mr Mason's widely-reported tale of woe that they have now charged him with two counts of assault on a child. The police inspector responsible spoke to the media this morning:

Police hope people will see there are two sides to every story as a Christchurch man is charged with two counts of assault on a child ...

Mason will appear in court next month and Inspector Garry Knowles says he probably would have been charged even before the anti-smacking legislation was passed. He says the new legislation has not influenced the decision to lay charges.

"We've taken a pretty realistic approach to the new legislation. In each of the cases that come across my desk, we look at it based on its merits. We look at the severity of the assault, the circumstances surrounding it and then a decision is made."

The more sensible end of the smacking brigade might now see fit to STFU until we hear evidence in court.

And finally, a local blog posted an obscene photoshopped image of a political figure yesterday that went beyond the usual petty misogyny of the wingnutosphere. A handful of the usual suspects gathered to snicker. Would they be proud to show that image to their mothers, wives and daughters? Or to the parishioners of the conservative church where one of them holds a position of responsibility?

I guess Rodney Hide is still too busy with his taxpayer-funded journey of personal discovery, but it might behove Heather Roy to ponder the behaviour of the rabble that remains of her tragi-comic party. Of one thing you can be sure: if the "other side" had done a tenth of this you wouldn't be able to hear yourself think for the screaming from Kiwiblog. But that, of course, would be different.

(182 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!

Tidbits ahoy | Jan 29, 2008 08:56

The reports on John Key's big policy tidbit seem confused. According to Colin Espiner, Key is "expected to announce that those not in work or further education and training and aged under 18 will no longer be eligible for any benefits from the taxpayer unless they are genuinely sick."

In return, there will be educational and training entitlements, in addition to those already offered.

Most people will think of the Unemployment Benefit, but that's not available to anyone under 18, unless they are in a relationship and supporting children.

Some of the few thousand 16 and 17 year-olds on benefits receive the DPB, with the remainder on the sickness and invalid's benefits and a few on the Independent Youth Benefit.

I suspect Espiner has it a bit wrong. Audrey Young's version makes more sense:

National Party leader John Key will unveil fresh policies today in his biggest speech of the year, including a voucher entitling 16- and 17-year-old school-leavers to a limited period of free educational training at polytechs and other tertiary providers.

The policy will come with a quid pro quo: any young person who fails to take up his or her entitlement (except for reasons of sickness) will be ineligible for a benefit.

So the benefits won't be abolished, just made contingent on taking up the training entitlement.

The chief innovation seems to be the offer to fund training for school-level qualifications in non-school environments. Exactly how else the proposal differs from the present arrangements, and what degree of support National plans to offer young beneficiaries with children to care for will -- one would hope -- be made clear in today's speech.

---

There is an important tradition of books by visitors to New Zealand that provide an unflinching perspective on our country and its people -- whether we immediately appreciate that critique or not. David Goldblatt's Democracy at Ease and David Ausubel's The Fern and the Tiki come to mind.

I doubt that Duncan Fallowell's As Far as I Can Go is such a book (it may indeed be more about the author getting his end away in Timaru), but the publishers certainly seem to have decided that his unflattering commentary on New Zealand, the location of his book via a three-month visit in 2003, is their best bet for publicity.

Fallowell is a greying bisexual rake who picked up his personal style in the 60s counter-cuture. His journalism is serviceable, if campy in the high English style, but I can't pronounce on his novels, because I haven't read them and because all the people who do write about him and his work seem to be his personal friends.

He and Camile Paglia exchange regular literary hand-jobs, and a blogger called Madame Arcati (""Madame Arcati is great fun, sort of the News of the World getting off with the TLS at a drag ball," Fallowell wrote) breathlessly announced last April the sale to a publisher of Fallowell's "next travel book about looking for sex in New Zealand". She is again helping with the hype this week.

And, of course, The Spectator's Roger Lewis named the yet-unpublished ("long awaited") book one of the best of 2007, promising "there is no nonsense about scaling glaciers or being polite about Maoris here". (Lewis also indicates that Fallowell develops outrage at the sidelining of proper European art "as it is deemed politically incorrect to upstage Polynesian tat". Perhaps he could consider it revenge for every time I had to walk past a J.M.W. Turner at the Tate.)

The premise seems banal. Fallowell, having come into a small inheritance, decides to see if he can sate his wanderlust by travelling as far away from home as possible. If he really wanted to get far out, he'd go to one of those no-reason-to-exist ex-Soviet regional capitals where everyone's a drug addict, not hit the comfy New Zealand tourist trail.

I wonder if it will be a bit like Julie Burchill's long-awaited first trip out of Britain, when she informed her readers that -- gasp! -- New York is big, romantic and cosmopolitan; that is, a travelogue by a sharp prose stylist with nothing new to say on the topic.

Because, frankly, we know that the Auckland CBD is a picture of architectural vandalism. And perhaps it is true that "New Zealand comes across as a philistine hellhole," but there's not much new about saying that either. Or about the amazing observation that we invest a little too much emotional energy in the All Blacks.

I played host to another of Fallowell's luvvie-friends, the brilliant interviewer Lynn Barber, several years ago. She was perfectly pleasant, if rather high-maintenance, but after our event she took up a holiday to Rotorua and Queenstown. And then she went home and wrote a feature dismissing New Zealand as a cultureless wasteland of tourist tat and adventure tourism. I doubt she even picked up a listings guide. She could have written it without bothering to come here.

But what sort of dork comes to New Zealand looking for "the perfect rose" then scorns New Zealand wine on encountering an example of the kind of wine that is a budget-range afterthought here? Perhaps he should secure a zinfandel from California, or even try a grown-up variety.

"Genius wit or libertine bore? I don't know," wrote Steve Braunias in his Sunday column, about his failure to meet Fallowell four years ago (the author pestered Braunias for a meeting, got the brush-off, loudly complained to the Listener's editor about this slight, then copped a telephonic ear-bashing from a drunken Steve). Me neither. Perhaps Mr Fallowell will surprise us.

(147 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!

Panic | Jan 28, 2008 10:44

On Saturday, The Press reported that "demands are growing for tough measures to combat 'toxic' content on social networking websites after a Bebo site was linked to a string of suicides.

"New Zealand authorities have been contacted over seven suicides in Bridgend, South Wales, that have been linked to a Bebo website called Suicide Girls."

The story is almost 100% nonsense.

It's a lift from one in that bastion of journalistic standards, The Sun, which breathlessly reported thus:

TODAY we can reveal the shocking way suicide among teens is glamourised on social networking sites like Bebo.

The sad news that seven young people from Bridgend in South Wales killed themselves in an apparent "chain" of copycat suicides has led police to fear some hoped to gain "web fame".

Some of the dead - who all hanged themselves - had profile pages on Bebo, a popular site with school kids.

A quick internet search reveals one profile under the name Suicide Girls.

It carries a disturbing cartoon picture of a pink teddy bear hanging from a rope.

A line on the page says the site is, "For people who don't give a f*** and want a suicide lifestyle," adding it is "For Girls and Boys Who Love Tattoos, Piercings and Crazy Stuff."

In a discussion forum, user Amy Addiction posts, "For the people who keep asking what a suicide lifestyle is - well this is all to do with suicide girls, like the models, so yeah lifestyle like them ... glamorous, pretty etc."

While the Bebo page does not in any way encourage suicide among its users, fears have been raised about its possible influence on vulnerable youths.

So … Some of the young people involved had Bebo profiles. Among several million other Bebo profiles is one which references Suicide Girls. Both stories invite youth suicide experts to express shock and horror.

There is no cause to believe that any of the young people had ever seen the profile in question. There is, similarly, no evidence to suggest that any the young people to have taken their lives over the past year had seen any website that glamorised or facilitated suicide.

The only victims known to be Bebo users were the last three to die, and the only direct involvement of the site was that the last to take her life (and the only young woman), Natasha Randall, posted a message on a memorial site to her friend, Liam Clarke (as did many others), before killing herself. Two of Natasha Randall's friends tried to take their lives after hearing of her death.

Until last week, the British news media regularly reported such rushes to pay tribute on Bebo memorial sites or on gonetoosoon.co.uk as good news. Now, The Telegraph feels able to say "A recent spate of teenage suicides has been linked to social networking sites, which detectives fear have been used to glorify the deaths." (Actually, the police appear to have been at pains to deny they believe anything of the sort.) And The Independent, always keen to be the most panic-stricken of the "quality" papers, resorts to simply making up its story: "A small town in south Wales has unwittingly found itself at the epicentre of what police fear could be an internet suicide cult."

Naturally, the British government is rushing to be seen to do something about the dread threat of Bebo, and parenting gurus are darkly intoning.

There has been the odd voice of restraint, with Kathy Brewis's observation in The Times that suicide clusters amongst young people are not new. Perhaps the memorial sites, with their intimations of posthumous fame, create a copycat risk. But that means they are also an avenue for support, and that the news media should report on them carefully.

But the newspapers there write what they will, and our own papers pick up stories from The Sun, call a local "expert" or two, and no one really bothers too much with the facts.

Anyway, for the record: Suicide Girls has nothing to do with suicide. The name (and the teddy bear) is just a gesture of gothic transgression. Suicide Girls (Wikipedia entry here) is a tits-'n'-tatts alt-erotica website and online community on which the contracted models take pride in managing their own affairs and fostering their personal brands via MySpace and Bebo. The verse on another Bebo profile may be illuminating.

Their queen is Posh (NSFW), a professional graphic designer who digs Battlestar Galactica and the Arcade Fire, goes out with Kevin Rose from Digg.com and not only plays World of Warcraft ("+6 vs. trolls"), but has appeared in it. She writes for the Geek section of the Suicide Girls website and is, objectively speaking, totally hot, but regards her brain as her major asset.

She is possibly not where most parents want to see their teenage daughters, but she is not urging them to harm themselves -- unless you count pierced nipples.

(85 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!