Public Address - Hard News (Home)

Aspie On | Mar 16, 2010 10:32

This week's Media7 is close to home for me. We're looking at the new North & South magazine's cover story on Asperger's Syndrome, with the writer, Joanna Wane. Also on the panel, very much "out" Aspie Helen Baxter, and a third person to be confirmed.

The magazine should be in shops tomorrow is in the shops and the story itself is very good (although I'd perhaps not have given vaccine and biomed theories quite the daylight they get) and does an admirable job of explaining the condition and setting it in both an educational and cultural context.

If you'd like to join us at tomorrow's recording, hit Reply and let me know. We'll need you at TVNZ at about 5pm.

The show also ties in with Brain Week, run by the Neurological Foundation, and I'm also chairing a free seminar at Auckland Museum on Thursday evening, 6.30pm to 8pm, featuring lectures by people from Auckland University's Centre for Brain Research. You'll need to book by calling the Museum on 306 7031.

Feel free to discuss.

PS: This seems a good place to note that I'm looking for someone to teach my 15 year-old Aspie son Leo (very bright, school doesn't work for him) a suitable programming or scripting language (perhaps Ruby, using the Why the Lucky Stiff guide, or Lua) and/or some game development basics. Ideally, it'd be at our place during the day, but we can be flexible. Naturally, we'll pay. If you know anyone who can help us, click Reply to let me know.

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The Auckland Council as leaky building | Mar 15, 2010 10:39

Rob O'Neill at Computerworld has used the Local Government Official Information Act (which looks like being a crucial tool for discovering what's actually going on in the new Auckland) to retrieve some interesting documents relating to the consolidation of existing councils' IT services.

The nub of the story is that because the Super City process is being pushed through in such haste, only a "veneer" (and that's the word that's actually being used) of unified services will be put in place. This means that the money spent on the process will not achieve the ostensible aim of the whole exercise – cost savings.

My understanding is that the quick-and-dirty approach will have another unpleasant effect, one reaching across much more than IT consolidation: it will delay the real spending until after the Auckland Council is formed.

This might suit the government, which can declare that the delayed spending -- of the order of $200 to $300 million -- is being done at the discretion of the newly-elected council. But it will leave us Auckland ratepayers with huge obligations from day one.

It's been described to me as "the Auckland Council as a leaky building": it looks fine on the outside, but is rotten underneath. The word "veneer" would seem to have been well chosen.

Update: Rob has an editorial comment on his lead story, noting the layers of official obstruction in the way of it and the ATA's decree that it would only speak to Computerworld off the record. Who the hell do these people think they are?
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Meanwhile – and, hey, if David Farrar can string together a bunch of editorial blockquotes and call it a blog post, so can I – the front-page banner headline on Friday's Auckland City Harbour News was 'Public have no say'. Its opening sentence was "Everyone in Auckland is about to be done over." And its closing lines are: "Do you trust them? We certainly do not."

The target of the polemic by David Kemeys, editor-in-chief of Fairfax's Suburban Newspapers Ltd, is, if you hadn't guessed, the Auckland Super City transition and, in particular, the seven CCOs that will run almost all the merged city's services.

It's strong stuff for a Fairfax suburban freebie, but Kemeys isn't alone. The Weekend Herald's editorial doesn't hold back:

Every Aucklander has an interest in this decision-making and needs to be a part of it. It is vapid to say the CCOs will be subject to the Official Information Act. That will merely enable people to learn of the decision-making after the event.

Not only the public will be neutered. There is also no guarantee that Super City mayors will be able to deliver the platforms on which they were elected. The Auckland Council will also find its hands tied.

Under the third and final Super City bill, the transport CCO can, for example, prohibit the council from exercising any transport functions unless it delegates them. The directors wielding this power will, in the first instance, be largely appointed by Mr Hide and Mr Joyce. Thereafter, the council will appoint but not directly control them.

In essence, the CCO boards will run more than 75 per cent of services in the Super City at arm's length from its elected representatives. The councillors will be restricted to writing spatial plans and statements of intents with the CCOs. Even the most worthy of these will be a pallid expression of democracy when every level of the decision-making is in the hands of unelected directors.

And the Herald on Sunday was just as stern yesterday:

The Prime Minister has hinted that there will be changes to make the CCOs more accountable but has ruled out anything major. That is not good enough. By their very nature, CCOs are designed to take control away from politicians and the public in the interests of greater speed and efficiency.

Either the council-controlled organisations are organisations controlled by the council or they are not. If they are not, the PM and Hide should say so - and should say why. As matters stand, the CCO model is anathema to the idea of democracy and is not what anyone in the region signed up for. Wellington must think again.

Thinking again appears to have been ruled out by the Prime Minister. I wonder if the heat going on his Auckland MPs might change his mind. Because it appears that something will have to give in this benighted project.

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The Exploding Banana Scandal | Mar 14, 2010 12:29

In a shocking revelation, I can reveal today that I recently took a banana to a cricket match. And not only a banana. An apple too. Neither of these fruits – which could easily be replaced with powerful plastic explosives – was sighted by the security guard who "searched" my bag. They were concealed in a raincoat. Imagine, if you will, that the worst happened. Yes, imagine if I wrote a feeble Sunday newspaper expose about it.

As expected, the Sunday Star Times has filled its front page with the wheeze exposed during the week. Headlines blare "Special Investigation" and "EXPOSED: Major flaws in stadium security."

A front-page editorial goes on to accuse Police Minister Judith Collins of a "beat-up" for describing the paper's stunts as "stupid and irresponsible".

Yes, they really accused someone else of a "beat-up". Clearly, they're not afraid of embracing irony at the Star Times these days.

The most farcical of these stunts involved reporters Tony Wall and Jonathan Marshall dressing as construction workers and gaining admission to Eden Park during a one-day international cricket match. It's not particularly surprising that such a stunt might be pulled off at the moment – two thirds of the ground is a construction site.

"But," shrieks the Star Times in bold front-page type, "18 months out from [the Rugby World Cup], with sporting events around the world being threatened by terrorist groups, how ready are we?"

The point, surely, is that in 18 months' time, Eden Park will not be a construction site. So what proof of our terrible unpreparedness can this feeble jape possibly be?

On page A5, the intrepid duo reveal that they got "within arms length of Australian Doug Bollinger while he was fielding" at the same match. So, more or less, did quite a few people in the crowd. You get that in cricket. Players field on the boundary. Is the Sunday Star Times proposing barbed wire around the perimeter?

At Waikato Stadium, Marshall took in an exploding banana "toy explosives" in a bag and later wandered around the VIP area shaking hands with people and having his photo taken with David Tua. He got "within one metre" of the Chiefs' dressing room (translation: he tried to enter the dressing room and was told to piss off by a security guard).

And he got some of the Chiefs players to sign his bag ("containing toy explosives") after the match. The paper's photo (uncredited, but presumably snapped by paper's own, accredited photographer) shows the signing. It also shows a kid waiting to get his match programme signed by his heroes. Is this really what the Sunday Star Times wants to prevent at a provincial rugby game?

This is what the Star Times has done. It has had its reporters breach security established in one context – where the risks are low – and tried to sell its story as if it relates to a high-risk situation: even screaming "al Qaeda" on its front page in case any reader misses the story it's trying to sell.

A few people approached for comment have expressed obligatory concern. Cricket Players Association director Heath Mills declares himself "extremely disappointed" at the relaxed security at Eden Park, but may not have been made fully aware that the reporters actually got only about as near to any player as hundreds of paying punters did.

For all the paper's airs and graces, this kind of "investigation" is trivial and meaningless. Want to show how easy it is to smuggle "toy explosives" onto a passenger plane? Stroll onto any Air New Zealand Link flight with your exploding banana. It proves nothing. Do the same on an international flight to the continental US – where there is a real risk profile, if a still a tiny one – and you actually have a story. You're also in a shitload of trouble.

(Update: It's been pointed out to me that Jonathan Marshall has previously done just that on a regional flight.)

Ironically, even the Star Times is obliged to tuck away at the bottom of the page the news that, in fact, "intelligence operations aimed at identifying threats to the World Cup are well underway" and a security steering group will be led from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.

The paper has presented nothing in the way of evidence that security at the Rugby World Cup matches next year will not appropriately reflect the level of risk. But, really, you're not going to need the bomb squad to deflect intrusions like those staged this week by Wall and Marshall. When match tickets run to $900, and when corporates are forking over tens of thousands of dollars for access to hospitality, mere money will have a as much of a bracing effect on security as any thought of al Qaeda.

In the meantime, perhaps the Sunday Star Times could see about reporting some real news stories.

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Good Newsing | Mar 12, 2010 11:42

I'm a bit under the weather today, so I'll keep it brief: congratulations to all those involved with Pacific Fibre, and all power to their plans to build a New Zealand-Australia-US fibreoptic cable to be managed as if bandwidth wasn't scarce.

I remember when the Southern Cross cable lit up, and the promises that were made – and went unfulfilled. The cable, our only viable link to the greater internet, has always been managed so as to create scarcity and maximise revenue, even though there has always been spare capacity.

The room to move in the Southern Cross model has been amply demonstrated lately by the 75% price cuts it has been offering since Kordia started sketching out plans for a new trans-Tasman cable. It now appears certain that Kordia will work with Pacific Fibre on the larger project.

Rod Drury and Sam Morgan have often spoken about the way the pricing and management of international bandwidth make it hard to take a digital business from New Zealand to the world. And now they and others are actually doing something about it. Go those guys.

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And this week's Media7, looking at the Rugby World Cup and the media with Rugby New Zealand 2011 CEO Martin Snedden, Richard Boock and Richard Becht, was a good one. You can see it here.

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I'm delighted to say that an excerpt from This Is New Zealand has been added to NZ On Screen – the team even had to make a special super-super-wide player to do it justice. Like Peter Jackson, I was taken to see the film as a kid in 1970, and I've seen it several times since it was restored and digitised at Park Road Post in 2005. It's rhythmic, intriguing and by turns grand and wryly humorous.

Only the first three minutes have been posted, but Hugh Macdonald is preparing his film for DVD release soon.

NZ On Screen also has a new "badge it" feature, which burps up code for you to embed in your own website a badge linking back to any of its works.

Also, look out later today on NZ On Screen for a new Flying Nun video collection curated by Roger Shepherd. It includes this clip for the 3Ds 'Spooky', directed by my main man Andrew Moore:

The Phoenix Foundation have 'Buffalo', the first single from their forthcoming album, available for free download. Thanks, Phoenix Foundation!

And two tracks have semi-officially leaked from MGMT's forthcoming album: 'Flash Delirium' and 'Congratulations. I'm not exactly blown away by either of them ...

And, finally, CactusLab's Matt Buchanan shot this clip of 'Hey' at the Pixies' Powerstation show last night:

Boy, were there some excited tweets coming out of that room …

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