Public Address - Hard News (Home)

Hurtling Backwards? | Aug 01, 2005 10:58

It seems that today's post on DSL market issues has caused quite a flap. The info from readers wasn't quite right, but neither is the situation very flash either - as Paul Brislen's comment below indicates. Telecom is coming back to me with some comment, which I'll run tomorrow. Just to clarify for now that the accounts "no longer being promoted" are business DSL services. Anyway, the post originally began thus ...

Can anybody tell me some more about Telecom's decision to withdraw all its faster JetStream consumer plans - meaning that anyone who wants a 2Mbit service now faces a price rise from $79 a month to a "business" rate of between $249 and $299? I had heard chatter of this but had naively assumed that it couldn't possibly be right. It is.

I presume this is some sort of pre-emptive measure in anticipation of the final determination on TelstraClear's application on bitstream access, which would allow it (and subsequently other major ISPs, such as Ihug and Orcon) to offer more competitive deals in reselling Telecom's DSL. But I still don't actually understand it. Why would Telecom, having offered a reasonably affordable 2Mbit/s residential service since the inception of JetStream (lately with relatively generous data gaps), wish to so nastily stick it to its customers?

Peter Lees contacted me with what I assume will be a typical complaint:

I have Jetstream 600 access at 61.33 per month plus Orcom Business Jetstream at 17.73 pm total 79.06pm.

Now Orcon tell me that Telecom are no longer reselling JetStream plans after the 31st August and that I will have to subscribe to new Orcon Business Bitstream plan.

If I want 2MBPS I have to pay 249.95+ instead of 79.06!.
I can get 256KBPS at 59.95 but this is not the same.
It looks like a typical Telecom rort!

I checked XTRA, Telstra etc and they all have the same plans. Jetstream seems to have been deleted from Telecom site.

Anyone who can shed any light on Telecom's move to hurtle the local Internet community back into the past should feel free to get back to me.

NB: Computerworld's Paul Brislen has come back with a prompt and helpful comment:

Yes, sadly it's all true. Well, mostly.

Firstly, they're not doing away with the plans altogether - they're simply not advertising them any more. Subtle difference, I know, but if you know to ask your Telecom account person then they'll sell them to you.

Oh yes, it has to be a Telecom account person because these plans won't be sold via other ISPs as the JetStream Partnering Programme has been shut down in favour of the UBS wholesale regime.

Which means if you want DSL in NZ but don't want it from Xtra you have to buy one of the specially crippled services with a maximum up speed of 128kbit/s. Thanks a whole heap, Douglas Webb, for introducing that particular nasty.

On the plus side, well there is no plus side. NZ used to have the fastest (albeit most expensive) broadband in the world when it launched in 1999. Now we've got nothing but a service that doesn't actually make the grade to be called broadband (128 is too slow) anywhere else.

Oh, and if you're comparing prices, consider for a moment the Poor Dumb Bastards on JetStream business... we compared prices in CW a while ago:

Ihug's parent company, iiNet, offers its iiBroadband2 "medium" plan in Australia with 12Mbit/s download and 1Mbit/s upstream speeds, with a 40GB monthly traffic cap, for A$70 (NZ$75) a month. Telecom's best DSL business plan offers 8Mbit/s download and 600kbit/s upload speeds with a 30GB traffic cap for NZ$2,417.78 plus GST per month.

It's so appalling I don't know where to begin. New Zealand, of all the countries in the world, should be making the most of telecommunications. It defeats that age old monster we've all struggled with - distance. Suddenly we're as close to our markets as any other seller anywhere else in the world. We can compete in the emerging market of information if only we're allowed to.

Sadly Telecom tells me the market demand for faster upload speeds is "niche" and "easy to overestimate". Given the reader feedback from businesses as niche as accountants, lawyers, doctors, software developers, architects, consultants, opticians, designers and journalists (off the top of my head) this is not the case.

Meanwhile: hysteria on the right about a site at bloodyidiot.co.nz which, in the spirit of the Tui ad parodies, declares that "If You Vote Don Brash, You're a Bloody Idiot", (screenshot here), makes the coinage "George W. Brash", etc. I didn't think the site was so great, and my strong preference is for anyone posting this kind of speech (or almost any political speech for that matter) to identify themselves. A quick whois showed the domain name is registered to Tom Hovey, who works for Wellington development and hosting company Boost New Media.

The site turned up in a post at Just Left. Then there was a furious post from Aaron Bhatnagar (who has, it should be noted, had the good grace to post his own "attack ads" under his own name).

Hovey contacted Bhatnagar to say that he didn't build the site, "But I do know the group of people behind the site and have asked them to take it down in light of the recent negative publicity from sites such as yours. They're very disappointed and have protested strongly!"

Then this one from Sir Humphreys darkly noting that Boost (like every other web shop in Wellington, actually) does public sector work and listing the agencies for which it has worked. Then another one, based on fevered scrutiny of the page code. And there's another vigorous thread on DPF's site.

What I find funny is that the loudest howls of outrage are coming from people who have variously compared Helen Clark to Stalin and Nixon, and called her "butt ugly" and an "ugly bitch" - usually under made-up names. It seems a little rich. I also find the suggestions that the company Hovey works for should resign all its public-sector contracts pretty creepy.

NB: Mr Hovey has posted a set of answers to the various fevered conspiracy theories. Storm. In. A. Teacup.

But 'tis the season for advocacy, and with a little luck you'll see the following Google ad over to the right of this page:

Election 05 - be informed
Know what your voting for? Compare policy and candidates
www.nzvotes.org

The NZvotes site is, curiously enough, brought to us by that staunch defender of educational standards, the Maxim Institute … The site itself is being promoted as "a community service" and "non-profit, and non-partisan. All political content on this site is the views of the parties, candidates, and guest columnists, in their own words." The selection of those words is interesting, but oh well, carry on …

Meanwhile, further speculation as to the extent to which students might abuse an interest-free student loans system. Am I the only one who objects a little to the characterisation of such students, who might take money they don't need (at the maximum $150 a week) and use it for purposes other than their education, thus potentially wrecking the system for their peers who do need it, as "smart" and "entrepreneurial"? Entrepreneurialism is the admirable practice of combining resources in an innovative fashion and creating wealth. I'm not sure if ripping off the taxpayer counts.

And, finally, Children's Hour played on Friday night to a packed house and it was great. Really great, as in exceeding all expectations. For me, dare I say it, it topped the year's other big revival show, the Straitjacket Fits show. (As my mate Nat quoth after they'd roared through 'Looking for the Sun', "Well, if that didn't take you to the wall …")

But a correction is due to the YFC story in Friday's post. Although I'm not the only one who remembers it that way, it wasn't Ian Grant who served the letter on Jonny Ogilvie 20-odd years ago, but Brian McStay the then chair of Auckland Youth for Christ. Ian Grant was prominent in protests against the group and its name (and still believes they stood against "everything good in society"), but he didn't serve the letter at the Windsor Castle. Ian emailed to set me right (he did grant that Mr McStay looked similar enough to have been mistaken for him "if you weren't really thinking it through"), and I've annotated the original post accordingly. Apologies for the mix-up.

PS: You may notice that your protests about Orange Election Man have borne fruit. He only wobbles for a few seconds now, rather than on into infinity ...

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Stories it is now safe to tell | Jul 29, 2005 10:15

My old friends Children's Hour are back together and playing a gig at the King's Arms tonight, to celebrate the release of Looking for the Sun, a collection of live recordings retrieved and fixed up by Rob Mayes of Failsafe Records. I'll be there.

I was close to those guys for some time, after I met them by interviewing them for Rip It Up in 1983. We conducted the interview in the cocktail bar at DeBrett's hotel, and got along so well that we all went back to the big old house in Grafton where most of them were living, to party on. By the end of the evening I was quite drunk, and had a bunch of new friends, and a new flat. You can get a glimpse of the place we lived in the video for their song 'Caroline's Dream' on the Flying Nun DVD Very Short Films.

Some in the Flying Nun community didn't care for Children's Hour, who were dark and dangerous and decidedly un-folky. But they were my mates, and they could also be quite breathtaking live. By the time I left for London in 1986, they'd broken up then reassembled as the International Headless Chickens (who later, of course, became the Headless Chickens). They had a good bit of purpose about them, and had rented out the old charm school in His Majesty's Arcade as a base of operations, and staged a couple of performance events.

I had been in London only two or three months when I got a call at the record shop I worked at to tell me that Johnny Pierce, the bass player and "minister of finance" had taken his own life. (That's Johnny on the cover of the new CD; Rob Mayes has picked up the bass for tonight's gig and a final one in Wellington.) I was shocked, and felt a long way from home.

But there had been happy times. I joined them once to cover a national tour that was something of a riot. We crammed into a Toyota Hiace, drove to Wellington, crashed overnight with a guy called Craig and fronted up next morning for the ferry. Problem: no one in the band actually had any money to pay the fares. So I got out the Bankcard my father had arranged for me to buy my car (with all the usual warnings about being very careful with it) and paid up for everyone bar the two people hiding under gear in the back of the van.

We disembarked in Picton on a sunny day and dropped into the pub. But one member of the band went off to do something and didn't come back. We eventually emerged to discover that he had been detained by the local constabulary. Nothing too serious, but enough to delay our outset for Christchurch, where the first gig of the tour was.

I don't really remember the drive south, but I do remember us piling into the Record Factory in Christchurch late in the afternoon in what must have been a fairly unruly state. The shop was managed by Roger Shepherd, the founder of Flying Nun, and there had been some crazy talk that Roger might give the band some touring expenses. Explaining that I was out of pocket, I put this proposition to Roger, who looked anxiously at the young men crashing around his shop, whipped out a chequebook and wrote out a cheque for several hundred dollars. It might as well have been endorsed on the back with the words "PLEASE GET OUT OF MY LIFE IMMEDIATELY".

There are other stories from that trip it might not be appropriate to tell, in case they encourage bad behaviour in impressionable young people (I really don't know how I avoided being beaten senseless by the Magogs in New Plymouth - I probably deserved to be). But there's always the YFC story.

NB: A key element of what follows is untrue. It wasn't Ian Grant who served the letter at the Windsor Castle, but Brian McStay, the chair of Auckland Youth for Christ. Ian, who was prominent in protesting against Youth for Christ's use of the name, did allow that Mr McStay looked similar enough to have been mistaken for him "if you weren't really thinking it through," but it wasn't him. My apologies for the error. Carry on then …

YFC, a group of friends and fellow travellers, are also back together in support of a of a new CD, and are supporting Children's Hour tonight.

Anyway, one Saturday in the early 80s, YFC were playing the Windsor Castle in Parnell, which was where everyone played in those days.

That afternoon, there was a party at a house in Marlborough St, where I later lived. We were young and free and the party was swinging. It began to swing even more after a guy who did that sort of thing turned up with a little tin containing doses of a popular psychedelic drug. I would like to offer a very belated apology to the neighbours for the subsequent high-spirited carry-on.

It came time to go to the gig, and we piled into a van (I am pleased to say that all the stories in this post feature sane and sober drivers) all mad and madly happy. We stopped off at the Fort Street warehouse where I lived with most of Children's Hour and various other folks. I busted the fancy catch off the zip on my leather jacket on the way out, by surfing down a flight of stairs on my front. I'd do it again.

So we got to the Windsor, as a lovely late afternoon mused about turning to evening. I was seated at a table in the pub exploring my mind while the band set up when a slight, greying man appeared at the door, then approached me with an envelope in his hand. He seemed strangely familiar, but I couldn't quite place him

"Could you direct me to Jonathan Ogilvie, please?" he asked; Jonny being the singer and bass player in YFC. He had been at the same high-spirited party.

Suddenly, I realised who the man was. Older readers will recall a TV programme called The Herd, in which the presenter, Ian Grant, every Sunday, discussed faith and family and virtue with a group of decent young folk. I think quite a few people watched The Herd, for one reason or another, and Grant had a national profile.

He and several other people had had YFC in their sights for a little while, because back then YFC were more commonly known as Youth For Christ, having adopted the name of the then-ubiquitous school-age faith group in the spirit of irony. The last time they'd played at the Windsor, the Christians had sent spies. No, really, they did. A couple of undercover Christian youth turned up at the door claiming to be music journalists and trying to get in for free.

The guy on the door picked them as possibly being on a mission from a God, but let them in and had a word in my ear. This seemed fairly priceless. So (as I recall), Hilary Ord, who later established the Verona Café, and I bowled up to engage the couple in cheery conversation. So, he was a fellow music journalist, eh? What was his thing? The guy blurted out the name of a non-existent magazine and began to sweat his way through a highly enjoyable conversation, digging himself deeper in the folly of fabrication with every breath. So what did he think of Youth for Christ, then? "They're ... interesting," he gasped.

We eventually let them go, and they slipped out shortly thereafter, hearts presumably pounding with the falsehood they had wrought.

But anyway, back to late afternoon on that particular Saturday: here was Ian Grant from The Herd, standing in front of me at the Windsor. That would normally have been quite weird. In the personal circumstances in which I found myself, it was double-double-super weird.

"Jonny is ..." I turned around to where Jonny had taken his guitar out of its case and was looking quizzically at it, as if it might contain an answer. "Over there."

Ian Grant thanked me and walked over to Jonny and gave him the envelope, which proved to contain an injunction preventing Youth for Christ the band from using the name of Youth for Christ the faith-based organisation (they subsequently styled themselves Youth from Christchurch). To say Jonny looked startled is probably to understate the case - he looked like a swarm of bees might have invaded his head - but they had a brief, civil conversation and Ian Grant turned and exited to Parnell Road, unknowing but hopefully impressed by our good manners.

As soon as Ian Grant was out of sight, the thought occurred that perhaps it hadn't happened at all. But it really had. I know that.

PS: Staying with the 80s band nostalgia thing, Daniel Barnes has reviewed last Friday's Danse Macabre get-together at the King's Arms on Dub Dot Dash. And Big Ross, lately of dad-rock supergroup Raygunn, who got Bird Nest Roys back together for his wedding, has blogged on impending fatherhood, under his nom de plume Jimi Kumura. What a beautiful thing. Speaking of which, just how much does Tegan and Sara's 'I Bet It Stung' sound like Bird Nest Roys? Lots.

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Conniptions | Jul 28, 2005 10:32

I know I'm not the only one not planning to vote on the basis of direct and material self-interest in September, but it sometimes seems that way. Labour's student loans king-hit certainly had a flurry of current and former students urgently totting up what was in it for them (I understand the online calculator got 60,000 hits in the first three or four hours). But no doubt I'd feel the same if I had a $50,000 loan growing hourly while I tried to work out what to do about it.

I don't have a student loan; indeed, I wasn't a student. But Labour's announcement seems to me to not only be clever politics but a solution to a problem that has weighed heavily not only on former and current students but on their parents and grandparents. It also has the effect of encouraging skilled graduates to stay and work here, and it's only a few months since we were agonising over that as a serious problem.

It has certainly been amusing to suddenly see Labour tossing out the lollies and National complaining that it is "irresponsible". National has a valid point in saying that it plans to give tax cuts to all New Zealanders while Labour is offering its deal to just one (admittedly large) group. But it's on dangerous ground suggesting that students (and their families) should be added to the ranks of non-mainstream New Zealanders.

The idea that students will now go hog-wild with their interest-free loans is harder to sustain. They've been spared interest charges during the course of their study since 2002 without any apparent wave of abuse of the free money. And it's also no longer possible to simply borrow a big pile of money and run off; loans are doled out weekly. You'd have to be a pretty dedicated scammer to work that system.

The Herald editorial has a fit of conniptions today over Labour's "desperate" move, on the basis that it might "pressure" National to now offer imprudently large tax cuts to win back the initiative (so Labour is now responsible for National's policies too?).

Digging deep into the editorial thesaurus, it declares this "cynical … irresponsible … scornful" policy to be "out of tune with six worthy years of fiscal rectitude," as summed up in Michael Cullen's last Budget.

Amazingly, this is the same editorial column that actually greeted Cullen's Budget by asking whether "prudence is being taken to extreme" and urged "a little less caution". I mean, huh?

The Herald was, of course, plumping for tax cuts in May, and the student loan policy is not actually a tax cut, and won't drain the public offers to anything like the same extent - but, for those involved, that is precisely how it manifests. It's IRD that takes the money, after all - and an effective marginal tax rate is just that. And in that sense, the new policy is entirely in line with Cullen's philosophy: that tax relief is not an end in itself, but an instrument of policy.

Where the Herald is correct is in seeing a looming electoral bidding war. I think that's the story of this election: stewardship has taken a back seat to self-interest, and that seems to me to be quite a pivotal change. But to suggest that it only became the case on Tuesday of this week is just naïve.

Can I just say: celebrity drug scandal! Kingpin! 55 year-old company director! Lana! Josh! (I'm allowed to say their names, as it turns out.) Thanks! Because this whole thing has been really good for traffic. Whether it's links from biggie.co.nz or nzrave.com, or search engine visits (if I told you what was in the logs, I'd be breaching the suppression order) it's been booming. Our weekday traffic is normally around 3500 visits. Last Thursday it was 6367. Our weekend traffic is usually around 2000 visits. On Saturday, it was 3602. We haven't had a weekday under 4000 since.

There's nothing like a bit of gossip, is there? So do, please, point your family and friends to David's post yesterday about his celebrity magazine cover generator.

Brian Rudman says pretty much what I would have said about National's proposal to knacker the Resource Management Act.

OneGoodMove has video of a Daily Show interview with Fareed Zakaria, the editor of the international edition of Newsweek on the topic of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism. You might take issue with some of what he says (and some of the commenters on the blog certainly do), but it's a useful perspective on the issues.

Public Address alumnus Rob O'Neill (we still keep his farewell post around for old times' sake) is back on the blog with a brilliant idea: The New Zealand Blogging Corporation. Some readers may recognise the logo. Solid lineup too: Rob is joined by Chris Bell, Mark Broatch and Stephen Stratford.

Thanks to Robyn Gallagher for the link to this story from inside Australia's much-vaunted work for the dole scheme. It's funny. Sort of.

And finally, thanks for all the feedback on the Electoral Commission ad. Your views have been passed on and we have been promised a calmed-down version of the ad. In the meantime, Tze Ming's Post-It note solution might do the trick for you …

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Hail the New Victorians | Jul 25, 2005 10:58

National's new employment policy is out. And it is … put thousands more people on the public payroll! Judith Collins is promising that the last National government's unsuccessful work-for-the-dole programme would be revived as a matter of urgency under a National-New Zealand First coalition.

Let's be straight here: the imperative behind such a scheme is moral rather than practical. Work and Income's own assessment of the 1996 to 1999 scheme found that those forced into the scheme were less likely to find real jobs than those who were not. A Treasury analysis estimated that for every four makework jobs created under the scheme, one genuine private sector job would be lost. A Colmar Brunton survey in 1998 suggested that employers had little faith in the scheme's ability to deliver motivated employees.

Community groups are, of course, often happy enough to take free labour at the taxpayer's expense - and this is the basis of the Australian scheme that Collins says provides a model for National. But if there's a public good in a community getting a new swimming pool built, or having graffiti cleaned up, isn't it better that such work be properly contracted, and that genuine jobs, with holiday pay and employment contracts, be generated?

More worryingly, a study commissioned (and subsequently suppressed) by the Australian government concluded that participation in the Australian scheme measurably damaged the prospects of those involved moving on to real-world jobs:

The main conclusion from the study is that there appear to be quite large significant adverse effects of participation in WfD. For example, for the group of matched WfD participants it is found that the difference in fortnights on NSA payments between WfD participants and non-participants in the first 6 months after start of spell on WfD is 0.99 fortnights. More detailed analysis of exit from payments suggests that there is an adverse effect of WfD on exit from payments associated directly with the period of participation in WfD, but that there is partial catch-up by WfD participants after the conclusion of WfD.

What might explain negative effects of WFD participation on exit from unemployment payments? There appear to be three main potential explanations: (i) Stigma effects; (ii) Effect on job search activity – Participation in WfD may allow participants to reduce their job search activity, and may adversely affect the type of job search activity undertaken; and (iii) Scale of intervention – The WfD program represents a relatively minimalist intervention. Of these explanations, the potential 'chilling' effect of WfD on job search activity, seems to be most supported by international evidence, and to be consistent with the time-series pattern of WfD effects (that is, increasingly adverse during the six-month phase of participation in WfD, but then reversing to some extent after that time). However, stigma effects may also have played a role; and the minimal scale of intervention through the WfD is a reason why positive effects from the program would be unlikely.

Although the official Australian unemployment rate remains higher than ours (despite the fact that that rate doesn't count work for the dole participants), there are signs that the system there has become somewhat addicted to work-for-the-dole, with the CDEP scheme, which targets aboriginal communities, being asked to provide ever more jobs - some agencies' job targets have been tripled this year.

Okay, now compare that with a different approach to the welfare-to-work pathway - Work and Income's "Pacific Wave" scheme in Auckland. It was recently announced that that scheme had halved unemployment among Pacific Islanders in Auckland in two years. Unemployment among Pacific Islanders under 25 fell by nearly two thirds. And those people have real jobs. (And, by the way, total benefit numbers have fallen again. There are now more than 70,000 fewer beneficiaries than there were when Labour took office.)

Labour has been accused - sometimes fairly - of being prey to ideology in policy formation. But it seems to me that National has subjugated practical merit to ideological sizzle in a whole range of the policies - employment, education, the Treaty and law and order - that it will take into this election. Dunno about you, but it gives me the creeps.

On the other hand, New Zealand First goes a step further: promising "military-style discipline" for work for the dole participants deemed "at risk". You and I might think there are some civil rights issues there, but you know Winston's never been big on that sort of thing.

Elsewhere, The Fundy Post offers some insight on the bizarre background of the American activist Tammy Bruce, recently hailed by the Weekend Herald's unusual columnist Sandra Paterson.

And finally, Victoria University media studies student Amie Mills is conducting some work on blogging - and specifically, the people who respond to them. You are invited to respond directly to her at mills.amie@gmail.com, or go to the blog-about-blogging here.

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