Public Address - Hard News (Home)

Hospo gossip | Oct 07, 2004 12:23

Noelle McCarthy did a couple of great interviews on Tuesday's Wire on 95bFM on the matter of the Restaurant Association's plan to introduce drug-testing for hospitality industry workers. First up was Alistair Duncan of the Union of Food Handlers, who was incredulous at the plan, and then there was the Restaurant Association's Neville Waldren, who just dug himself into a deeper hole every time he opened his mouth.

By the end of the interview he was declaring that the association's new "zero tolerance" policy could and would encompass the hospo worker who had a quiet joint after work. The policy is silly on any number of fronts: it ignores the fact that the major drug of abuse in the industry is still alcohol; that the testing idea is capricious and prone to vexatious dobbing-in; and, not least, that if you're going to ask every waiter and kitchen hand to pee in a bottle you're going to run out of staff pretty quickly.

Yes, kitchens can occasionally be dangerous places, and P - smoked methamphetamine - can represent a special case, but these people aren't airline pilots, they're hospo workers. It's not really the most delicately-behaved industry (read Kitchen Confidential), and its proprietors are hardly likely to make the changes to pay and conditions that will alter that. The other problem, of course, is that P is one of the less likely drugs to actually be picked up in a piss-test. Unlike dear old marijuana, it will probably clear the body in under 48 hours. Unless restaurant and bar owners really plan on conducting their own tests, on premises - and that's a very fraught path - it's not going to do the job it's meant to.

The thing, of course, is that this is all driven by an ESR study which found that 40% of the New Zealand workforce had used illicit drugs in the past 12 months.

But ESR is hardly an honest broker in these matters. Workplace drug-testing equates to revenue for ESR and for years it has, at every opportunity, steadfastly declared a grave problem that can only be solved by - ta da! - workplace drug-testing. Be wary of the hype.

In a similar vein, Simon Pound interviewed Nandor Tanczos about the Greens' interesting new drug policy, and later considered its chances. (He also has a comprehensive post on the Progressive Review's study of Iraq war costs.)

Hey! Just to show that Maxim doesn't have all the money, you can contribute some dollars (and if you wish, your name) to a forthcoming newspaper ad in support of the Civil Union Bill. Donate with credit card at a secure page here.

I had other business and missed most of the vice-presidential debate, but the little I saw was much more interesting than the first presidential debate. Edwards looked lively - but would the voting public take that for cheek? And Cheney, whose performance emphasised the fact the he is clearly a good deal more intelligent than his boss, did seem to tire towards the end.

I did see what might have been a key moment, when Cheney attacked the younger man's voting record in the Senate. Edwards winced for a microsecond, then shot straight back with a list of votes - including a vote against a resolution calling for the release of Nelson Mandela - that Cheney would rather not have talked about. Newsday's Jimmy Breslin analysed that passage.

But another part of Cheney's attack on Edwards may prove more embarrassing. In seeking to depict Edwards as a lazy senator, Cheney (who has oversight of the Senate) claimed never to have met Edwards before that night's debate. Whoops. Apparently they've met three times - and within minutes of the debate concluding, the Dems were circulating this photograph of the two men together, at a prayer breakfast. (America politicians - always with the prayer breakfasts!)

Edwards presumably knew damn well that he'd met Cheney before, and either made a snap decision to let a minor but obvious falsehood lie - or actually had a strategy of letting Cheney's false claims sit there on the record, without being softened by qualification or explanation. As one of Josh Marshall's readers pointed out, this is what trial lawyers sometimes do to witnesses.

Cheney did say a number of things that went beyond the usual fact-massaging in which both sides participate, but perhaps his funniest moment was the invitation to viewers to go and verify what he's said at factcheck.com. Anyone who did go there found themselves at - huh? - a website run by notable Bush opponent George Soros. Kevin Drum has the skinny on exactly what happened. Cheney, of course, should have said factcheck.org, but given the headlines on its homepage, he probably didn't really want people going there either.

Although some of these utterances may well play out to Cheney's disadvantage in the next day or two (on the other hand, it's hard to think of anything Edwards said that could be used in the same way) what I saw of the actual debate looked basically like a draw, which is how the Christian Science Monitor and Time, but the way some people saw it as a slam-dunk either way is fascinating. Conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan declared Cheney to have been road-kill, got a torrent of angry and abusive responses, and explained his view more fully in a column for The New Republic.

The flurry around the debate was as interesting as anything else. The Bush campaign had its civilian footsoldiers primed to declare Cheney the victor before the thing had even begun. Meanwhile, Democratic Underground was directing its readers to vote in every instant online poll it could find. I kept thinking that one day they'd just cut to the chase and make a proper reality TV show out of it. Except that on current showings, the one to be voted off the island would be the President.

Meanwhile, WorldNet Daily eagerly picks up on Drudge's slightly desperate claim that Kerry took an illicit "cheat-sheet" out of his pocket before the presidential debate (frankly, the video doesn't show shit), and a new site, Is Bush Wired? , is devoted to the theory that the president is coached through his earpiece.

PS: This just in: you can chat live with Trevor Mallard at 4pm today - and, according the email, "tell us what your friends and workmates have got to say about some very topical issues - powhiri at school functions, standards in education, and more!" Sign up here. Might be interesting …

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Alternative Reality News | Oct 06, 2004 09:37

Donald Rumsfeld says he has not seen "any strong, hard evidence" linking the old Iraqi regime and al Qaeda. Hardly surprising: no one has. Then he has to rush out a damage-control statement in which he claims to have been "regrettably misunderstood." Heh.

Two years ago, Rumsfeld was, of course, saying that American intelligence had "bulletproof" evidence of links between Al Qaeda and Saddam's government. In the same week, Bush was warning of the danger "that Al Qaeda becomes an extension of Saddam's madness."

Rumsfeld's unfortunate veracity attack comes at an unfortunate time - that is, on the day of the vice-presidential debate, in which Dick Cheney will face John Edwards. A year ago, Cheney was claiming in an interview that "[Iraq is] the geographical base of the terrorists who had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9-11."

But even if Pretty-Boy Edwards, the trial lawyer, uses the Rumsfeld opening to rain blows on Cheney (I'm thinking a Sonny Liston figure here), the judges may already have totted up their scores.

A new USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll has found that 42% of those surveyed thought Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks. And 32% said they thought Saddam had personally planned those attacks. For all that democracy's blessings should be showered without favour, it is hard to suppress the feeling that some of these people are too fucking stupid to be allowed to vote.

In other alternative-reality news, the former US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, has said in a speech that the US government ignored his pleas for more troops on the ground in Iraq ("we never had enough"), and failed to provide adequate security after Saddam was ousted. The White House declined to answer questions on Bremer's claims. Christian Science Monitor has a wrap-up of the day's embarrassments.

Today also happens to be launch day for the DVD version of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 and two new books by Moore: Will They Ever Trust Us Again? and The Official Fahrenheit 9/11 Reader. The former is a collection of letters to Moore from soldiers, veterans and their families in response to Fahrenheit 9/11. The Guardian has excerpted some letters from the book, including this one:

From: Andrew Balthazor
Sent: Friday August 27 2004 1.53pm
Subject: Iraqi war vet - makes me sound so old

Mr Moore, I am an ex-military intelligence officer who served 10 months in Baghdad; I was the senior intelligence officer for the area of Baghdad that included the UN HQ and Sadr City.

Since Bush exposed my person and my friends, peers, and subordinates to unnecessary danger in a war apparently designed to generate income for a select few in the upper echelon of America, I have become wholeheartedly anti-Bush, to the chagrin of much of my pro-Republican family.

As a "foot soldier" in the "war on terror" I can personally testify that Bush's administration has failed to effectively fight terrorists or the root causes of terror. The White House and the DoD failed to plan for reconstruction of Iraq. Contracts weren't tendered until Feb-Mar of 2003, and the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (the original CPA) didn't even come into existence until January 2003. This failure to plan for the "peace" is a direct cause for the insecurity of Iraq today.

Immediately after the "war" portion of the fighting (which really ended around April 9 2003), we should have been prepared to send in a massive reconstruction effort. Right away we needed engineers to diagnose problems, we needed contractors repairing problems, we needed immediate food, water, shelter, and fuel for the Iraqi people, and we needed more security for all of this to work - which we did not have because we did not have enough troops on the ground, and CPA decided to disband the Iraqi army. The former Iraqi police were engaged far too late; a plan should have existed to bring them into the fold right away.

I've left the military. If there is anything I can do to help get Bush out of office, let me know.

Of course, if that's not your thing - perhaps you prefer truly deranged mendacity - there's always Ann Coulter's fourth book, How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must) - and the paperback reprint of her last one, Treason: Liberal Treachery From the Cold War to the War on Terrorism.

Richard Llewellyn pointed me to a nice column by Leonard Pitts in the Miami Sun-Herald which concludes that there must be "two Iraqs".

Jamie noted this analysis of the present attempt by the Republican majority in Congress to legalise "extraordinary rendition" - them's fancy words for torture.

Aaron Hadfield noted by email that German intelligence documents obtained by Newsweek well over a year ago seemed to undercut claims that the Jordanian terrorist Abu Mussab Al Zarqawi, currently merrily shredding bodies in Iraq was in fact an al-Qaeda associate. Aaron says:

Certainly, as an interviewee on 60 Minutes last night stated, Osama seems to have trained al Tawhid operatives and bankrolled some of their operations, but according to the Germans there was later a clear falling out between the two. (To compare a similar relationship, you don't often see the press stating that bin Laden had 'links' to the CIA.)

Al-Zarqawi's actions are certainly repugnant, but it is irresponsible of the press to constantly slap the al Qaeda label on him. Of course, the label almost certainly emanates from US intelligence sources, given that al Zarqawi was the shady al Qaeda operative Bush also 'linked' to 'Iraq' before the war. Golly gee whiz, I guess now that we got Saddam we need someone else 'linked' to al-Qaeda to make the carnage worthwhile.

Anyway, that's enough for now. I've got to prepare for today's Wire show on 95bFM. Our guests are: David Rees of Get Your War On around 12.20pm (cool!), Suzanne Chetwin on the Herald on Sunday's first outing, about 12.40 pm, and new Sunday News editor Chris Baldock at 1.10pm. Should be good. You can listen here.

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Unglamorous | Oct 05, 2004 09:37

I got around to the service station about 7am on Sunday, to pick up some copies of the Herald on Sunday, to discuss a couple of hours later on Mediawatch. And my response on seeing it was is that it?

The "souvenir first edition" of APN's new Sunday paper looked surprisingly drab; it had the whiff of suburban newspaper about it. Indeed, Gordon Dryden reported to me later that the consensus at a luncheon he attended in Howick that day was ""Howick and Pakuranga Times in drag". Ouch.

Reg Birchfield, one of our Mediawatch guests, suspected some printing problems. There were roller-marks on several sections, and the whole thing generally looked under-inked - and not much like the bright, bold dummy pages they've been using in the promotions.

The story choice was underwhelming too. They chose to go with the Act stalker scandal for the lead, because one of their reporters had actually seen the "tearful" Act MP just after she had been "pursued" by Roger Kerr through the grounds of Parliament in June. It was an understandable decision, but the story didn't add enough to the midweek reporting.

The best part of it was the photo from the Act party conference on page 10, in which Kerr beams adoringly at Coddington as she heads up to make a speech (looking like she would much rather be somewhere else) and Rodney Hide grimly eyeballs the camera. It was just about good enough to go on the front page - especially if you were to do something a bit cheeky and superimpose a ring around the beamer's head for readers who don't know what the executive director of the Business Roundtable looks like. (Speaking which, check out Fran O'Sullivan's take-no-prisoners take on the issue: check out that flying Miss Piggy-style drop-kick to a sensitive part of MediaCow! Hiii-ya!!)

They could have run a picture of Peter Jackson's manor much larger on page three (although it might have looked crappy even then, such are the apparent production issues) and replaced Suzanne Chetwin's cheery hello to readers with the Minister for Auckland issues' handbagging of John Banks; perhaps alongside the bizarre story of Banks' claim to be 45 years old. Two stories on the front page wasn't enough.

I think management also has to do Chetwin a favour and give her a few more right-hand pages at the front of the book. There's plenty of time yet to be bollocksing up the flow of the paper with ads; right now you're trying to make a winning impression, aren't you? The ban by New Zealand Herald journalists on working for the new paper would also seem to be hurting, although that predicament is of APN management's own making.

I hope the Herald on Sunday can lift its game: the tabloid format is a winner and parts of it (the View section, for instance) seem quite strong. There are (as ever these days) new columnists on offer. Coddington's column is the sort of hectoring dirge I feared it would be, but Damian Christie was nice and dry and I have a feeling Matt McCarten will evolve into a political commentator of some note. But the best debutante was actually dear-old Wendyl Nissen, whose description of a typical ladies' long lunch ("One of the great tragedies of evolution is that a pissed woman can still send text messages") was funny and convincing. If she can manage to avoid writing the same column every week, she might become a bit of a phenomenon.

Elsewhere on Sunday, Judith Baragwanath continues to embarrass proper journalists by writing better than most of us. I'd never heard of Ginger Gibbs, but I felt like I knew him all too well by the time I'd read Judith's profile in the Star Times' Sunday magazine.

But the best weekend paper was, oddly enough, the Weekend Herald. Its polling on attitudes to civil unions and gay marriage has advanced the issue much in the way that its poll-driven 'What's eating Pakeha?' feature did in the wake of the Orewa speech. At the height of a moral panic about the Civil Union Bill, a clear majority of those polled supported the aim of the legislation, with only 39% opposed. The numbers were roughly reversed on the issue of fully-fledged gay marriage, suggesting the government has read the public mood quite well.

But it wasn't so much the numbers that were cheering as what ordinary folks had to say about love and choice. That was nice. Good personal piece on being committed, in love and not actually married, by Chris Barton.

A story by Ruth Berry suggests the accompanying Relationships (Statutory References) Bill - about which, in its present form, even some strong CUB supporters have a few qualms - could be in for some reworking before it's passed. I'd say it's a certainty. And I wouldn't actually be surprised if the Civil Union Bill was delivered first and the Relationships Bill was held back until it was right. The enabling bill doesn't need to be passed until before the first civil unions are celebrated, and that's not till mid-next year.

Good piece on Faith in the White House in the New York Times. The (ahem) documentary is premised on the idea that Bush is God's personal helmsman. It's brought to the world by these loonies (other great titles: The Evidence for Heaven and Bible Code II: The Future and Beyond, plus exclusive Bible Code decoding software for Windows), with the assistance of people not entirely unconnected with the Bush campaign.

At the same time, there's Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry (bitchin' soundtrack!).

More fire from Riverbend in Baghdad Burning:

A week ago, four men were caught by Iraqi security in the area of A'adhamiya in Baghdad. No one covered this on television or on the internet, as far as I know- we heard it from a friend involved in the whole thing. The four men were caught trying to set up some explosives in a residential area by some of the residents themselves. One of the four men got away, one of them was killed on the spot and two were detained and interrogated. They turned out to be a part of Badir's Brigade (Faylaq Badir), the militia belonging to the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Should the culprits never have been caught, and should the explosives have gone off, would Zarqawi have been blamed? Of course.

I'm very relieved the Italian hostages have been set free... and I hope the other innocent people are also freed. Thousands of Iraqis are being abducted and some are killed, while others are returned... but it is distressing to see so many foreigners being abducted. It's like having a guest attacked in your own home by the neighbour's pit bull- you feel a sense of responsibility even though you know there was no way you could have prevented it.

I wasn't very sympathetic though, when that Islamic group came down from London to negotiate releasing Kenneth Bigley. I do hope he is returned alive, but where are all these Islamic groups while Falluja, Samarra, Sadir City and other places are being bombed? Why are they so concerned with a single British citizen when hundreds of Iraqis are dying by the month? Why is it 'terrorism' when foreigners set off bombs in London or Washington or New York and it's a 'liberation' or 'operation' when foreigners bomb whole cities in Iraq? Are we that much less important?

In the company of other key members of the liberal media elite I watched the US presidential debate on Thursday. Kerry won modestly in the game-show way these things are totted up; but much more so in being able to get himself 90 relatively unmediated minutes in front of American voters.

You realise how much perceptions of the two men are smothered in clichés, spin and talking points. Kerry had reached the point where it was entirely unclear why this vacillating wimp had achieved the Democratic nomination. But in the debate, with just the two men on stage, he looked much more presidential than the President did.

Speaking of which, a new blog called How Bush Did has an uncharitable and highly watchable digest of the worst five minutes of Bush's debate. (Better-connected mirror here.)

Fox News took it badly. So badly that its political correspondent (Republican sycophant Carl Cameron) just made stuff up. An archive of the withdrawn Cameron "story" is here. Also, if the Republican campaign now says that Bush never used the words "mission accomplished", then that's apparently good enough for Cameron. It does puzzle me that these people can actually call themselves journalists.

And finally, Nippert reaches out to Cohen. I cried.

PS: Our new advertiser, Little Brother, has kindly made available a nice (see above right) t-shirt for giveaway. I'll send it to the person who writes me the best email feedback this week.

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