Public Address - Hard News (Home)

In the Music | Jul 20, 2007 12:26

I was having a yarn to Don McGlashan after last night's SJD show, and he reckons that Auckland's music scene is becoming more like Wellington's: meaning it has become more fluid and collegial.

The topic arose when I observed that everyone in the SJD band is a personally gifted individual, and wondered at the fact that there don't seem to be any ego clashes at play. Don pointed out that nearly everyone in the band has something else going on: James Duncan alone also does Dimmer, his own solo work and another duo, SJD's new drummer is the drummer in Don's band. Just to make it really complicated, Don will be stepping in for Paul McLaney on the SJD tour starting next week.

Anyway, it was a great gig with a big crowd, if one with a few gaps where the lovely Sandy Mill would normally be. She had been extremely keen to perform, but at the time was off, like, totally having a baby and everything. (She had her baby boy around the time of the encore.)

As someone pointed out to me, SJD uses Sandy's voice less as a backing vocal than as an extra keyboard. It's the rich, warm tone you hear in the likes of 'Beautiful Haze'.

You can still get the free Karajoz coffee with the new SJD album.

Elsewhere in the wonderful world of music: new Kylie! Apparently deliberately leaked tracks turn up on MP3 blogs. The remix is the one.

Much weirder: Prince gives away his new album: attached to the front of the Mail on Sunday.

Bob Lefsetz says the most beautiful song ever written is not in fact the Kinks' 'Waterloo Sunset', but Split Enz' 'Message to My Girl', and declares that the Finn "magic is back" with the new Crowded House Record.

Peter M notes Simon Grigg's fine job of work in compiling a discography for Trevor Reekie's Pagan and Antenna labels.

My interview with the justifiably legendary Bill Direen is in the podcast today.

And, finally, where might a chap get a deal on a couple of lights to make his lounge look more like a discotheque for an evening?

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Death Spiral! | Jul 19, 2007 11:19

Amid the hue and cry at Michael Cullen's very pointed musing about over-riding the Reserve Bank's inflation targets, and Cato Institute economist Steve Henke declaring New Zealand to be in a "death spiral" of interest rates rises and an over-valued dollar, it might be worth re-visiting this October 2005 NBR column by Gareth Morgan.

Back then, it was de rigeur to bag Cullen for running the most conservative fiscal policy in the Western world. Whatever it might like to say now, National headed into the 2005 election with an air of insouciance about inflation. It planned to spend barely less than Labour, and it would be flushing money into the economy via tax cuts, making up the difference by raising government debt. The rubric went: what was Cullen thinking by insisting on funding capital investment out of revenue?

Morgan began his column thus:

During the heat of the election campaign when both parties had released their tax and spending goodies, I criticised each for the impact on interest rates, coming as it does on top of rising inflation and an economy close to full capacity. Clearly neither aspirant for Minister of Finance was happy with that reminder but John Key had the audacity to say several times publicly "Gareth Morgan is in a group of one and interest rates will be falling".

Now that the Governor of the Reserve Bank is free to speak, the group is at least two and yet Key is strangely silent in condemning Alan Bollard for his view. In fact Key's probably quietly cheering the Governor on hoping that Labour's post-election party will be spoiled. Funny what difference a few weeks in politics makes.

And concluded with this:

In conclusion its odds-on that exporters have a lot more pain in front of them (I see very little sign of the global savings glut not providing us our share, nor is our debt servicing capacity stretched yet, and nor are our consumers surrendering on their borrowing-fuelled spending).

If exporters don't like this they might think of taking John Key out the back and giving him a good talking to. His pre-election nonchalance about the impact of expansionary fiscal policy on interest rates, was at best misleading and more accurately irresponsible. That due its political hue, the Business Roundtable chose to cheer him on with correct but irrelevant claims that lower taxes ultimately aren't inflationary, didn't boost Key's credibility. Roger Kerr has never cared about the transition cost of journeying to the small-government nirvana he preaches. But for businesses – exporters in particular – the journey matters. Timing of any tax cuts is all important therefore. No wonder the Hard Right has been marginalised.

Hmmm.

If Cullen's jawboning was to spook the currency markets, that would seem to be a good result, because I'm buggered if I know what else is going to drag down the dollar and spare the exporters in the current climate. Henke recommended de-floating: pegging the NZ dollar to the US dollar. Uh-huh. And that worked really well for Argentina …

In terms of blame, well, yes, Labour has lifted spending off the back off increased revenue, and, to that extent has pursued an expansionary policy. But I don't think anyone can claim that Cullen hasn't had inflation (and associated factors like our fanatical borrowing and reluctance to save) uppermost in his mind for several years now. He has spent his own political capital on being the Grinch.

Alan Bollard's rate rises have had an impact hereabouts: they've pushed our plan to borrow money for a fairly necessary house extension just that little bit further into the future. But damn, those new iMacs and flat-screen TVs look cheap …

Meanwhile, spare a thought for Ron Mark. For all his bluster on Morning Report today, he must be hurting inside, after his bill to reduce the age of criminal responsibility to 12 was described as "abysmally drafted" by the chief Youth Court judge, and "incompetently written" by the Children's Commissioner. Ouch.

The former said this:

Judge Andrew Becroft told a parliamentary committee yesterday that NZ First MP Ron Mark's Young Offenders (Serious Crimes) Bill would abolish the Youth Court and end family group conferences.

"It would effectively end our current youth justice system ... Whatever have been the intentions, it is clear that this bill is profoundly poorly drafted ... One could even say it is abysmally drafted."

He said youth offending rates had remained relatively steady and, for 10 to 13-year-olds, were reducing or stable.

"Where is the statistical evidence to suggest offending by 10 to 13-year-olds is spiralling out of control?"

Double ouch. Still, this is form for New Zealand First. As Holden Republic and others pointed out last year, Barbara Stewart's failed bill to reduce the number of MPs in Parliament didn't make much sense either. They may want to raise their game, in case people start muttering about their party really being more of personality cult.

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Leo TV | Jul 18, 2007 09:44

Dad's too busy to blog properly today, so he asked Leo to recommend some YouTube for Public Address readers. This is how your TV might look if it was programmed by an unusual 12 year-old who can't go to school.

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No Bills | Jul 17, 2007 10:06

When Tony Ryall and Sue Kedgley have finished gloating about the shelving of the Therapeutic Products and Medicines Bill perhaps they might care to think about how they will now approach the issues the bill set out to address.

Kedgley, at least, genuinely opposed the bill on its content. Ryall's wish appears solely to have been to inflict a defeat on the government. The bill, after all, is based on work done by the last National government. (It's also somewhat disarming to see National spurning cooperation with the federal government of Australia.)

And then there's Gordon Copeland. According to Annette King on Morning Report today, Copeland proposed a change that would have addressed what seems to be the major problem with the legislation: the regulatory burden on small manufacturers of natural products who only wanted to sell locally. A two-tier system would have allowed your friendly Coromandel hippy to carry on making her lavender oil in much the same way as before, without the need to meet trans-Tasman standards.

But Copeland, as part of his mission of pretending to be a National MP, went and asked National for permission to vote in favour of an amended bill, and had it denied. Denied, that is, by a party of which he is not a member and which appears to have offered little indication that it really welcomes him. What a dick.

And this isn't trivial. Dr Pippa Mackay explained on Morning Report what this means for the approval of all new medicines: longer delays as Medsafe, which had been anticipating the joint trans-Tasman regulator, struggles to keep up, higher costs, and fewer new medicines approved.

So, via hysteria on the one hand (and yes I do think that's a fair description of some of Kedgley's rhetoric) and naked political calculation on the other, New Zealanders will suffer.

Meanwhile, the Maori Party didn't get its bill either (well, actually it was Tariana Turia's private member's bill, but it was very much one for the party). Apparently, John Key ruled out National's support for the bill repealing the Foreshore and Seabed Act way back in January, but someone unaccountably forgot to tell the Maori Party.

The agreement was always a bit of a nonsense anyway: National and the Maori Party disliked the act for perpendicularly opposite reasons, and it was only Tariana Turia's revenge crush on National that gave it legs.

National supporters will be relieved because, well, it was going to be a bit weird. And Labour will be relieved not only because it needed this issue back in the news like a hole in the head - but also because it's now back in the game and may well back itself to provide a better deal, should post-election bargaining with the Maori Party become necessary late next year. Audrey Young wrote on Saturday that Labour will use the bill's failure to bash the Maori Party and highlight its shortcomings. That may well be. But I wouldn't be surprised if there was also some outreach going on in the corners.

PS: SJD's lovely Songs from a Dictaphone is now out, and Public Address readers can order it from Real Groovy, which will slip a free bag of Karajoz No.1 blend coffee in the package. Because we're all like that.

PPS: I've just added to the podcast our interview with James Griffin about the third season of Outrageous Fortune, which begins tonight. Swipe some of the boss's bandwidth and have a listen ...

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Can somebody hook a brother up with some Twiglets? | Jul 16, 2007 09:20

I've had Michael Moore's Sicko (friends in America version) for nearly two weeks and hadn't found the right time to watch it -- it's not exactly Saturday night fare -- but I put it on yesterday.

He still doesn't do nuance. His loving depiction of the French social system ignores the social and economic slough the system has helped produce there. He doesn't acknowledge that, although it is plainly and unforgivably awful at safeguarding the welfare of many citizens in most need, the US system does provide incentives for the development of novel treatments that help the rest of us.

But I think it's the best film Moore has made, partly because he keeps his manipulative urges in check. Or, rather, he manipulates us not through editing tricks, but by obliging us to confront a series of human tragedies - many of which would provoke full-scale public scandals if they happened in a health system like ours. And right at the end of the film, where desperately ill and disgracefully abandoned 9/11 volunteers meet Cuban firemen, he procures a moment that I found genuinely moving.

I'm also quite clear now on why Moore went off at Wolf Blitzer about the preposterous "reality check" by Sanjay Gupta that preceded their CNN interview.

Gupta's package looked every bit like the sop to Big Medicine advertisers that Moore said it was. Gupta's killer point - these other systems aren't really "free" because people pay for them though their taxes - is explicitly made in the film. And his claim that Moore got Cuba's per capita health costs wrong by a factor of 10 is simply wrong. It barely warrants the description of journalism.

I also watched the long scroll of "pre-existing conditions" for which health insurance companies deny their customers cover, to see if autism was there. It is. And families suffer. But Dr Mrs Instapundit thinks that's how it should be, because -- wait for it --- "there is no free lunch".

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Friday was busy. I was in Wellington with our new producer Glynis, grabbing as many stories as we could fit in for Public Address Radio and, thereafter, our podcast. In the end, we got five done, which was a reasonable haul.

The first one we did - and the first one you'll hear - was a visit to look at the new Parliamentary camera system, which will deliver full coverage of proceedings in the House from tomorrow. I really felt that this was the other side of the "satire and denigration" story that was either being dismissed or going unmentioned.

The coverage will be available to broadcasters, and as a webcast, here, from tomorrow. I think it's quite important, not least because there is no copyright on the proceedings of Parliament, which means that sites like ours -- and our readers -- can capture and excerpt interesting parts of those proceedings. The streams will go out in both Windows Media and QuickTime formats.

The control room, at No.1 The Terrace, is quite impressive. The purpose-built system includes a touch-screen with a diagram of the House's seating plan: just touch a seat and the appropriate robotic camera will swivel around to focus on the member speaking. The system uses Radio New Zealand's existing microphone system, and Hansard staff will do the onscreen captioning.

Other things from the weekend:

- The cover of the SST's Sunday magazine, featuring Marcus Lush, is superb.

- Tracey Nelson's All Black stats from Saturday are online. I'm not panicking yet, but I would hope to see a significant step up against the Aussies on Saturday (which, by the way, is our annual mailing list get-together). I really want to see them smashed out of the way.

- We've already eaten all three bags of Twiglets I bought at Cool Britannia in Taranaki Street. Why this is excellent baked savoury snack so hard to obtain? Can somebody hook a brother up?

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