Public Address - Hard News (Home)

A bit tacky, no? | Aug 15, 2008 10:53

TV3 has an election website. Well and good. But what made them think it was an appropriate idea to charge candidates to have a profile page on the site? Yep: it's set up like one of those creepy Zoominfo-style sites where you're expected to come along and claim the profile created for you -- and, in this case, pay $299 for the privilege:

Buying a Candidate Page means you can edit the page we've made for you. You will receive your private individual login to decision08.co.nz so you can communicate your message to Voters via this nationally promoted website.

Edit your page using the themes we've already made for you (see below) or delete them and create your own.

Yeah, right. Because no one's ever heard of WordPress or YouTube. Honestly, I can't understand why 3 would pursue such a tawdry approach. You're either an editorial site or you're not. And if you are, best stick to that.

Meanwhile, Winston Peters' new blog is, like, random:

The Internet is a wonderful thing. It has allowed the creation of that phenomenon known as "blogging".

In Wellington teams of people spend their spare time filling cyberspace with their opinions.

Now we can't be too critical because we have set up an election blog site called www.winstonpeters.com – and there is no doubt some useful social function is being served.

But it really is like some kind of version of talkback radio. They would probably benefit more from going to cooking classes!

Even the newspapers have their blog sites and their opinion sites.

It's getting hard to take them seriously these days because half the journalists are bloggers and many of the bloggers are journalists.

So let me give one a piece of advice that has served me well for a long time now – never believe what you see in the media.

Most of these people have an aversion to the truth unless it fits their agenda.

It is sad really, because so many people rely on them for information.

Most media a trying to play a game of join the dots but without any dots, and they wonder why they get the picture all wrong.

You see we in New Zealand have a recycled merry go round when it comes to those in the media.

Look at your Sunday newspapers – all the commentators are failed TVNZ managers, political aspirants or journalists who had been moved on from other organisations.

This is why you can never take them seriously.

I LOLd.

This week's Media7 focused on the media dimension of the Olympics, and whether the right stories are being covered. The panel is the eternally dissident Nick Wang, Auckland University's Dr Jian Yang, and Scoop's Selwyn Manning. It's available from TVNZ ondemand, as Windows Media clips, the podcast and on our YouTube channel

At GayNZ, Craig Young advises on "what curious gay male Olympic spectators and tourists might see if they want to visit alternative Beijing"; while Kitten Power picks her Girls of the Games (#1 is fully-out US footballer Natasha Kai -- " we defy any lesbian not to fall for that stomach!") and Matt Akersten stuffs his Boys of Beijing with swimmers and divers.

The local iTunes Store now sells ($24.99 for recent releases, $12.99 or $9.99 for catalogue titles) or rents ($6.99) movies. The sales chart is presently topped by the witless 2007 action flick Shooter. It will have the so-easy-to-spend-your-money iTunes smoothness, but I'm not yet moved to go and buy the cable that lets me plug my iPod into the TV. Apart from anything else, I already have a very good device for playing digital video into my television: the Playstation 3.

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Having squeezed into a very crowded King's Arms last night, I can tell you that Ladyhawke, pop sensation of the moment, is very much a work in progress. If the sheer buzz made it worth going out -- lots of excitable young women and more than a couple of Pip Brown look-alikes -- I'm not sure if the band itself was the stuff of a $40 cover charge. Brown has a bunch of catchy pop-rock choruses, but the whole thing is only barely realised. You feel like it could be huge, but it needs time and money spent on it.

Meanwhile, on the real revival tip, you might want to book the babysitter for the last weekend of November, for that is when the Headless Chickens will be playing in Auckland.

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This has been a sad week for a few of us, with the passing of my friend Michael Scott. I was more messed up than I thought I'd be by his funeral on Tuesday, and going off and making a TV show wasn't the easiest thing to do afterwards.

There's a sort of homecoming story about Michael's last few months that it's not really my place to tell, but it ended with love and family. My admiration for Maxine, Ella and Syd for seeing him through is boundless. I am also minded to think about being sure to see plenty of your friends while you have them around.

I recall quite well the first time I met him: he was full of morphine and chalk, and happy as you like, in the London Hospital for Tropical Diseases, having come off the plane from India almost immobilised with giardia. We'd trudged through sleet and taken multiple buses to see him.

That was 1988, and Michael was delighted to arrive in London to find that disco was back, in the form of house music. If there was anything Michael Scott taught me it's that it's okay for a man to let his love show for big girly disco (or, as he called it "botty music"). One of the tunes he liked most that year wasn't strictly disco, but it does make me think of him: it's Electribe 101's dark, slinky classic, 'Talking With Myself'.

I'll leave this MP3 file of the original 12" mix of that song up on the site for a day or two in Michael's memory. If your legitimate affection for it moves you to a purchase, there's a whole compilation of remixes available on eMusic. If not, well, just play this one and think of Mykl.

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The newest neocon catastrophe | Aug 13, 2008 09:37

Something you might not know about the short, sickening conflict in Georgia: John McCain, who yesterday declared "we are all Georgians", is being advised by Randy Scheunemann, a neocon who, until March was registered with the US justice Department as "a foreign agent working on behalf of the government of Georgia."

That's hardly Scheunemann's only claim to fame: he was also in on the ground floor of the Iraq project. And he's not just as terribly, stinkingly wrong about foreign policy as your average neocon. As Lionel Beehmer wrote in a prescient column two weeks ago, "he is the worst kind of Washington insider, a guy who works on the hill, kisses every ass he can to further his career, and then cashes in on his Capitol Hill connections by -- what else? -- working as a lobbyist for dubious foreign governments. If North Korea were to hand him a briefcase of cash, he probably would buy a condo in Pyongyang."

It appears that Scheunemann and his buddies have played a significant role in pushing Georgia's brilliant but flawed leader Mikheil Saakashvili into what The Daily Telegraph characterised yesterday in a useful profile as his "catastrophic blunder" in invading South Ossetia.

Josh Marshall has been tracking this story quite well. In this post, he quotes a Wall Street Journal column noting Scheunemann's ties to Georgia and speculating that having "a leading expert" on the former Soviet Republic on the team will help the McCain campaign:

It's genuinely hard to know where to start with this sort of nonsense. To say that Randy has a conflict of interest misses the point …

Scheunemann's 'policy' was to get the Georgians ginned up on the idea that we were their close military allies and that we'd come to their rescue if their brinksmanship with the Russians went bad. Well, that didn't work out very well. Any situation where you start the shooting and then find yourself begging for a ceasefire within 48 hours is a major blunder. He's not an 'expert' on Georgia; he's the lead guy on the policy that got us into this situation. And the fact that John McCain would make him his chief policy advisor after he's been the conductor on so many trainwrecks should tell us all we need to know about Sen. McCain's foreign policy judgment.

This withering analysis from Belgravia Dispatch notes McCain's previous campaigning to bring Georgia into NATO, in part on the frankly lunatic basis that Georgia is "one of the world's first nations to adopt Christianity as an official religion".

This is hardly to say that Russia is a good guy in this conflict: it seems fair to say that there aren't any good guys here. But the fact that a prospective US president's campaign is being guided by the same old malign peddlers of influence, and that it is already linked to yet another neocon foreign policy catastrophe (and anyone who thinks that Medvedev/Putin haven't emerged from this debacle with their position greatly enhanced just isn't paying attention) should scare the crap out of the rest of the world.

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Just marketing to the base | Aug 12, 2008 09:18

As David Farrar noted with an air of relief on The Panel yesterday, National's new social welfare policy is not simply an endorsement of the existing Labour policy. Indeed, I suspect that is the whole point: because it is difficult to justify the policy on grounds of its compelling benefit to the nation.

These policies meet a moral belief more than they meet a demonstrated need. Radio New Zealand didn't have to look far yesterday for approving vox-pops from National Party members. And in a sense, they're right: in general, if people can find sustainable work, they are better in that

But these people probably believe that recipients of the unemployment and domestic purposes benefits are left to their own devices. Hardly. Labour has developed the fine art of beneficiary nagging quite well over the past nine years. If you're on the DPB long-term with school-age children, you will have been "helped" towards working or training more than once.

And, in general, the helping approach has worked very well. The number of people relying on benefits and the cost of those benefits to the state has plummeted since 2000. Yes, as Judith Collins pointed out, the number on the sickness benefit is the highest it's every been, but so is the population -- and that population is, demographically, only going to become more infirm over the next few years.

National proposes a new element of compulsion, backed up with a wider and more varied set of sanctions. It also sets a 15-hour work or training benchmark for DPB recipients -- unless there really isn't any work or training to be had.

There is one very good thing in National's policy: for the first time in 12 years, the threshold before additional income begins to abate benefit levels would be raised from $80 per week to $100. I think this was necessary to avoid the rest of the policy looking unduly punitive. Otherwise more than half of the $180 per week a solo mum might earn from 15 hours at the minimum wage would be subject to abatement. I'm not sure what the abatement rates presently are (feel free to enlighten me), but it's a solid bet that, as ever, the highest marginal tax rates in the land will be faced by those trying to get off the bottom rung.

Like the now-abandoned work-for-the-dole, the policy doesn't come cheap or free. The state may be obliged to devote additional resources to ginning up both work and training, and it would be committed to providing new resources for the budgeting advice to be compelled upon people who repeatedly apply for emergency payments. The sharply increased monitoring of sickness benefit eligibility will mean more paper-shufflers, and the whole package will need to be guided by -- horrors! -- some decent policy analysis. The real-world absence of tidy little 15-hour jobs would see the pressure come on the government to provide more childcare. A shocking newspaper story would eventually attribute a tragedy to a mother leaving a child un-minded at the compulsion of the state.

The fundamental tension between wishing the state to wade in and start running other people's lives and demanding it stay out of yours often goes blithely unacknowledged. By the time I switched off The Panel yesterday, Bob Harvey was on the phone proposing a far lower threshold for the taking of children into state care (a defensible policy in itself, but precisely what, as practised by the Swedes, became an emblem of nanny-state wickedness during the poo-flinging over the child discipline bill). Julia Hartley Moore was proposing forcible sterilisation and Jim Mora was wittering on about compulsory parenting licences. You can see why I was obliged to stop listening.

As John Armstrong notes, there are elements in National's policy that Labour would cheerfully have (notably, the formal commitment to indexing benefits). Some of the other parts will entail new resources, and new risks, in pursuit of a problem that, as even the Herald's editorial says, does not compellingly present itself:

Single mothers with good earning capacity are normally anxious to return to paid work as soon as child care allows. National's efforts will be felt mainly by those with few skills and poor earning capacity and, frankly, Mr Key ought to have more important things to do. This policy does more to stroke the shibboleths of party supporters than meet any pressing social need. He should return to topics that count.

The editorial is headed 'Inflicting pain for little gain'. Donna Wynd of the Child Poverty Action Group was on the radio this morning openly musing about what secret agenda might lie behind an initiative that implied a hell of a lot of policy work for quite little bang. I don't actually think there is a secret agenda here. It's just marketing to the base, is all.

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A few days away | Aug 11, 2008 09:25

They don't serve anything for free on Pacific Blue. Except, that is, for the jokes. Clearly, part of what Richard Branson's airline is selling -- apart from the basic airline functionality of getting you from A to distant B in a safe and timely fashion -- is its hard-case cabin culture.

So before we took off for Christchurch, our cabin chief introduced herself and her "twins", the other, somewhat lookalike, hostesses. The steward on the way out of Christchurch, turned the safety demonstration into a whole comedy routine. The lifejackets had a whistle "for attracting sharks". Parents were advised that "if you're travelling with a child, do make sure you fit your own mask first. If you have more than one child -- pick a favourite." And "remember that the closest exit may be behind you -- like a stalker."

Yes, really. Still, they do fly on time.

I was in the Garden City for my annual talk to students at the CPIT Broadcasting School. As usual, I was still finishing my presentation on the flight down; and, as usual, I enjoyed the experience. The kids on that course seem not only bright, but engaged.

From there, David Haywood picked me up and conveyed me to Whisky Galore, where Michael Fraser Milne poured me a dram or three while I decided what I should buy (the Balbalir 89 and the Duncan Taylor bottling of the Clynelish -- one fruity and full, the other long and peppery).

We then picked up Emma Hart -- who I can reveal now will be joining the Public Address stable full-time, as soon as we get her 'Upfront' masthead done.( Ditto for Hadyn Green, whose new sports blog, Field Theory, will be appearing here any moment now too.)

Jen duly came home with the real star of the show, Bob the Baby. He was a little stern with me until I made farting noises with my hands. Kids love that.

From there, it was to Wellington and a day-long NZ On Screen trust board meeting. After two-thirds of a day discussing detail and going through reports, I was reminded what the project is really about when I brought up one of our archive gems from the test website on my laptop. We all just gathered around and looked at it. The content is the thing. We're getting there.

From there, it was over to Cuba Street, where I realised I'd booked the wrong hotel in the right building: the Comfort rather than the Quality. My room at the comfort was a shoebox with no broadband. Reception offered to shift me to the Quality for an extra 60 bucks. I agreed, and the room turned out to be a tasty corner suite with 90-degree views and a verandah.

I lay around feeling like P Diddy until it was time to join The Dropkicks for the recording of their podcast (Episode 30), which traditionally consists of the team drinking heavily and cracking wise. I was a washout in the quiz segment (because I am a high-level strategic guy, not a nerdy systematising guy) but my Sarah Ulmer haiku slayed

Sweet Sarah Ulmer
The nation; the siren calls
Oh truly, she's cute

From there it was on to eat and drink with friends, and we ended up back at the P Diddy suite to talk into the night. At one point in the evening, my friend, who has been reeling from the sudden death of his father, stood up and sang a traditional song in the memory of his departed dad. It was special and moving.

Saturday morning, as planned I set out down Cuba St for the Rita Angus exhibition at Te Papa. As I stepped out of the hotel, I saw a few flakes of snow cavorting on the southerly. It was that cold.

I ran into Grant Robertson, occasional PA sports blogger and Labour candidate for Wellington Central, on his way down to a new migrants' fair at the town hall with a fistful of party brochures in hand. It's the kind of thing you have to do with your Saturday morning when you offer yourself for office. He seems pretty happy with his campaign so far.

(I'd picked up a Capital Times, in which the Wellington Central candidates had been asked some question as to whether there was a culture of bureaucratic waste that needed dealing to. It's a dangerous question to answer in Wellington Central, and Stephen Franks, as National's candidate, basically bent over backwards to equivocate. I suspect having to strike such poses is coming at the cost of degree of cognitive dissonance for Franks.)

The Angus exhibition was worth the walk. It is a life's work of strong, serious painting. I stopped in front of the famous portrait of Betty Curnow. I've seen the painting before in books, but something caught me about it in person: I know Betty's great-granddaughter (whose father is an old and dear friend): she strikingly like Betty does in the picture.

There's a quote from Angus on the wall of the exhibition to the effect that all her paintings are "alive". And they are, despite (or, for all I know, because of) the meticulous preparation and prodigious technical skill that has gone into their production. You can imagine any of them living on the wall of your house, holding its space like a member of the family, which isn't always the case with things you see in a gallery.

The show is a reminder that Cass, the painting everyone knows and loves, was the start, not the pinnacle, of the Angus style; and I was surprised by the watercolours, particularly the one of Waipara Gorge, where the paint seems to hang in space on the canvas. If you're in Wellington, make the time.

And then, soon enough, it was back to Auckland to be warm and to watch the Olympics in HD. I'm in a position to make a comparison here. There have been some standouts (the Tour de France), but much of the content on Sky's two "HD" sports channels has been a disappointment: either not true HD (the Sydney Tri-Nations test), HD but in 4:3 aspect ratio (the ATP tennis tour); or just not really stunning (the Auckland Tri-Nations test).

The Olympic coverage being broadcast on TV One via Freeview UHF is something else. It is frequently transfixing, and some shots -- the camera strung across the rowing course, manoeuvred over the leaders as they pass, and any number of angles on the swimming -- provide an almost documentary insight into the physics of particular sports.

In such circumstances, you might think that commentators would simply shut up and let the luminous pictures speak for themselves. Apparently not. Could someone hit Pete Montgomery with a tranquilliser dart? His hysterical commentaries may have added momentum to the effectively inert sport of sailing, but they are unbelievably irritating when applied to a sport in which something visibly happens.

It appears the director at the rowing felt the same way. Arousal was getting the better of inspiration as Montgomery called the end of the coxless pairs: twice in 10 seconds, he shouted that the New Zealanders were really "laying into" their work (it must have been about the tenth time he'd used the phrase that day). And then, as he was about to utter it a third time, you heard a "la …" and then a second or three of merciful silence. They muted their own commentator! I, for one, was deeply grateful.

Still, I gather we are not the only nation to feel this way. As this New York Times blog points out, most of its readers are complaining about the "incessant chatter" of NBC's hosts. The author suggests people might be a bit happier with the more oblique style of the BBC's promo for its own Olympic coverage, a diverting animation work created by the Gorillaz and Jamie Hewlett. It's based on the classical Chinese novel Journey to the West, which a generation of the rest of us knows better as Monkey. Cool.

PS: This week's Media7 looks at the Beijing Olympics and the stories that are and aren't being told. The panel features the Wellington dissident journalist Nick Wang and Dr Jian Yang of Auckland university, with one more to come. If you'd like to join us early tomorrow evening for the recording, drop me a line asap.

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