Speaker by Various Artists

Prime minister John Key has returned from a flying visit to Los Angeles announcing he has negotiated a workable capitulation to the demands of Hollywood moguls in the matter of tax concessions and incentives for American film studios.

Mr Key said the capitulation will be in the country's best interest when it comes to ensuring major American film projects are developed in New Zealand and he expected at least five thousand new jobs in catering, hospitality and cleaning up-type stuff to come on stream in the next decade.

It is believed a cabal of Hollywood producers have also underwritten the development of New Zealand's cycle trail, a pet project of Mr Key's, to the tune of $2 million or the weekend receipts from the new Adam Sandler comedy Golf Goof, whichever is the lesser.

“This deal with Hollywood has been a major breakthrough,” said Mr Key, “and should create gainful employment for many mum and dad investors currently struggling to find money to invest in the many assets which we intend to  sell to keep the country buoyant, or at least afloat for a little while.”

Mr Key said ceding national sovereignty to the American film industry was a small price to pay for a new cycleway which can now be expanded to take donkey carts to become a crucial part of the country's transport network in the next two decades.

At a dinner in Los Angeles hosted by Herod King of the Screenwriters, Actors, Technical Artists Negotiation Guild, Mr Key was introduced to Hollywood power players such as Sandler, Pauly Shore, Halle Berry and that guy who plays a werewolf on one of these television shows. You know, the guy with the high cheekbones who always speaks in a whisper.

Although Mr Key was not allowed to make eye contact with the stars, his new press secretary Solomon Weintraub (R-Cali) said the meetings had allowed the prime minister to feel the glow of stardom and had given Hollywood and New Zealand a firm platform on which to stand.

Mr Weintraub said that although Hollywood owned that platform Mr Key was told he would be allowed to stand, or kneel on it, any time he liked.

Although there was some speculation the Hollywood power players would be discussing the on-going case of Kiwi folk hero Mr Kim Dotcom, Mr Key said last night his name was mentioned only in passing.

“One of the SATAN Guild, Mr Erhit Lar from Warn-Fox, did bring his name up over dinner but after a half hour free and frank diatribe he didn't pursue the matter.”

Following the dinner at the upmarket Berchtes Garden Restaurant, Mr Key was entertained by Demi Moore who did an exciting dance involving veils. Afterwards she was seen to approach Mr Key and whisper something to him.

“Oh, it was something I'm pretty comfortable with, it was just a small request which we will be looking into in the coming weeks. I didn't quite catch what she said and will be getting clarification in the coming days, but I think all she asked for was something like, what Dotcom said on a platter. I think we can get that engraved for her.”

Mr Key was also photographed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame next to the star for Mr Ed, the Talking Horse.

The prime minister disembarked from the Warner-Fox-Langley private jet in Wellington on Saturday enthusiastically waving the contract with Hollywood saying, “It bears Erhit Lar's name and mine.”

It was however a windy night and words from his subsequent sentence were blown away by the strong breeze.

It is believed he said “Prosperity in our time” but this cannot be confirmed.

A visibly tired John Key returns from Los Angeles after successful negotiation in Hollywood

My name is Grant and I am a music geek. If you want me to bang on about Robert Wyatt solo albums, Velvet Underground bootlegs, which is the best album by The Fall or what Straitjacket Fits were like live, feel free to buy me a beer or a coffee, push the start button and wave a white flag when you want me to stop.

Apart from the actual music, a big part, rightly or wrongly, of being a music geek is having a music collection: umpteen hundred vinyl LPs and singles, boxes and piles of CDs, a few boxes of back copies of MOJO, Uncut, The Wire and Real Groove going to seed, a bookcase with Lester Bangs anthologies, John Coltrane biographies, a few of those “1000 Great Albums...” type books and Simon Reynolds’ majestic Rip It Up And Start Again in it. Not to mention the limitless amount of music available on the internet.

Apart from the never-ending thrill of the actual music, part of the appeal is just knowing it’s there, looking at it and being able to say to yourself “Fuck that’s a great collection”.

Having frequented record shops for decades, I gotta say that High Fidelity, both the novel and the rom-com pretty much rings true: my standard line whenever it’s mentioned is “Yes, great documentary…” And while music obviously appeals to both sexes, record-collecting and geekery is pretty much a male domain, more fool us.

I assume it’s genetic: guys go for music crap, women go for shoes / dresses / handbags and the like. To illustrate this, I was in excellent Sydney record shop Red Eye four years go almost to the day when I bumped into a Dunedin musician and his wife. “We go around the shoe shops in the morning and the record shops in the afternoon” he said. We all laughed, knowingly. Also, next time you’re at a school or church fair, you’ll note it’s mostly guys buying books, and women buying clothes.

Which is why last week I did something that would horrify any other music geek. Completely unexpectedly and unnecessarily I coldly, ruthlessly and dispassionately put up for sale over 350 of my records, about 1/3^rd of my collection. I’ve been buying music since 1980, when as a 12-year-old I treated myself to a copy of Kiss’ Unmasked. The last time I had a clear-out was in 1995 when I sold a mere 20 or so.

The funny thing is, I don’t actual need the money – but I just wanted a few things. These things, unsurprisingly, are to do with music as well. Let me explain…

In short, I took up guitar a year ago and I want to get a few effects pedals and an electric guitar. Also, I want to go up to Wellington to a mate’s 50^th, so given that I’m not working full-time at present I couldn’t just rely on a weekly salary and budget for them. So, I figured, why not sell a few records ?

I enquired at Radio One about having a stall at the OUSA market day. I mentioned I’d be selling records and breakfast host and programme director Aaron Hawkins’ ears pricked up like a police dog’s sensing a prowler. “Really ?  - how many ? what sort of stuff? ” he asked, clearly curious. “Not sure, maybe about 50. I’ll know when I get home. I’ll get in touch tomorrow”.

I got home and started the cull – and that was when things got really interesting. I was like the great West Indies’ batsman Brian Lara at the crease: once I got going, I couldn’t stop. I started flicking through the large wooden record case and found myself going “Nuh, nuh, nuh, nuh, nuh, nuh, nuh…” and chucking record after record on to the floor.

That was something I never thought I’d do. Never, ever. Not in a million years. Uh-uh, never, never, ever. But I did and it simply didn’t bother me at all. Even more interestingly for myself, it simply didn’t bother me. I felt no loss, sadness or pity. It was just an exercise, a cull.

Before I knew it, there was over 360 on the floor. About a third were albums I’ve since got on CD as well, another third albums and bands I’d simply stopped listening to and being excited by, another third albums I’d bought once and never listened to again. 25 years ago I thought Buzzcocks’ debut Another Music In A Different Kitchen was the greatest album ever made. 25 years later, it was in the sale pile.

I didn’t cull any of the NZ stuff and next to nothing from the krautrock and jazz sections. Anything else had been fair game.

I messaged Aaron on Facebook: “I’ve got 360 albums for sale. I noticed you were wearing a t-shirt of Television’s live album The Blow-Up yesterday. I can do you that for $40.” He replied “Bloody hell, this is going to be expensive”.

I  couldn’t be stuffed with the hassle of putting listing after listing on Trade Me or lugging them up to Too Tone. The only rule I made for myself was that I had to sell them at a competitive price, but cheaper than what they’d be in Too Tone, Penny Lane, Slow Boat or Real Groovy. I wasn’t going to be emotional about what anyone did or didn’t buy. This was a purely utilitarian exercise. Prices ranged from $10 for “bread and butter” albums, $20, $25, $30 for notable indie / cult albums, $40 for fairly rare or doubles.

Aaron came around the next Sunday and left with 26 albums. That alone had exceeded my target figure financially, anything from now on was just going to be gravy. But almost as important as the sale was that they were going to a good home. This was something crucial – they had to now belong to someone who’d appreciate the music, not simply see them as commercial items and flog them on Trade Me a week later. Anyone who listens to Radio One’s breakfast show knows he appreciates music; I chucked him in a copy of Slint’s debut, Tweez, for free.

The next day I bumped into the poet David Howard, who has just been selected as the 2013 Burns Fellow at Otago. He bought eight albums of me and in doing so made a salient point: “If you haven’t listened to it in the past five or 10 years, you’re not going to listen to it in the next five or 10 years”. I know he’ll give them a good home, too – hell, he might even write a poem about it.

I took three boxes of about 60 records each down to the market day on Thursday last week. One box of punk, indie, etc, one of classic rock, singer-songwriters and such, one of bits ‘n’ pieces – soundtracks, country, etc, all $10 each. I’d contemplated taking some of the pricier stuff, but I couldn’t be stuffed haggling.

I sold about 40, mostly from the punk / indie box. Chris Heazlewood (King Loser, etc) had a nosey through them. He didn’t buy any himself, but he very kindly tipped off some young chap about which Buzzcocks and Echo & the Bunnymen albums to buy. Cheers, Chris.

Every now and again I’d get asked for discount, but the one time I gave any was when it wasn’t even asked for. A young woman had spotted four mid-‘80s British indie pop albums, one each by hopelessly obscure even then bands like The Jasmine Minks, the June Brides and the less-obscure Orange Juice. She just about exploded with joy when she saw them. Her name was Sylvie and she was a part-timer at Radio One. Clearly, they were going to go to a very, very, good home, so I gave them to her for $30.

Last Friday morning I bumped into my friend Jeff Ruston, who’s been a scenester since the ‘70s and told him about how I’d put my records up for sale. He was impressed and said he’s been selling some of his on Trade Me, too. “Your mother will probably say you’re finally growing up” he laughed. Two days later my Mum rang from her home in Queensland as I was walking along George St and I told her I’d sold some records. “Good god, that must’ve been like selling your babies” she remarked. “Mmm, I suppose so” I replied before changing the subject and asking her what’d been happening on the Sunshine Coast lately.

That evening two friends came around and bought about 10 albums each. One of them, Bill, has worked in Scribes, Dunedin’s leading second-hand bookshop, for several years and completely understands the nuances of collecting and selling. He’d recently been as dispassionate about selling some books as I had been with records.

“Sometimes, if you want to buy this (holding up left hand), you’ve got to sell that (holds up right hand)”.

The other friend, Tim, was as pleased as Sylvie was at seeing the British indie stuff when he saw Galaxie 500’s On Fire album, which again reiterated to me the importance of them going to a good home.

On Sunday a student that’d bought a few of the $10 albums at the market day popped around and splashed out $50 on Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland double LP – the rare, nude girls cover issue to be exact. It’s going to a good home.

As of today I’ve sold just over 100 of the 360 that were for sale and I have no regrets whatsoever. There’s a nice Fender Strat copy electric guitar now in my name and if any of you Aucklanders see Paul Crowther around, do tell him that Hot Cake 1208/30 really does work a bloody treat, please. Plus, more importantly, I’ll get to go to a mate’s 50^th in Wellington, which’ll be heaps of fun.

The friends I’ve already sold stuff to already might buy one or two more things, but otherwise I’ve shut up shop. Whether I’d sold 10, 50, 100 or 200 records is unimportant, it’s served its purpose and I don’t need to sell the remaining 200. I’m just not interested in being greedy about it.

As I’ve said to a lot of people recently, I’ll love music until I fall into the ground, but these days there are certain aspects of it that I can hold at arm’s length. I suppose one’s music collection is one of those aspects.

Incidentally, apart from music my other main interest is long-distance running. I’ve run several marathons over the years, so if you want anyone to prattle on about running over the Sydney harbour bridge or around Lake Rotorua, you know who to ask…

Wednesday evening, September 19, was Suffrage night in New Zealand, marking 119 years since Christchurch's Kate Sheppard, together with a small group of women and men from the wider region of Canterbury, began a movement that successfully led the world to win the vote for all adult citizens, women and men.

Since the 2010 and 11 Christchurch earthquakes however democracy has been eroded in the city that was once the epicentre of the women's emancipation movement. Today. Christchurch has become something of a "democracy-free zone" as command and control decision making has sidelined local communities.

A botched and sudden announcement of the decision to re-organise schools across the city, and "consult" on the "firm proposal" to close 13 schools, merge others and "reorganise the education network" (a move which will eventually see locally elected school boards replaced with larger clusters) was the last straw for many families.

Schools have been the backbone of community support at a time when government has focused more on recovering returns for economic investment in the central city than relief for suffering local residents. Families and children have needed the stability of local schools to help them recover from a national disaster.

So statements from the Ministry of Education that express sympathy for those who "inevitability upset" while expressing the expectation that communities will eventually come to "accept change" are particularly frustrating and patronizing.  They avoid acknowledging how many children in Christchurch are living in highly precarious situations, in a country that as a whole already leads the OCED with the highest rates of youth suicide, and highest growth in social inequality,  and high rates of child poverty.

The statements also fail to acknowledge that reckless policy change on a large scale may well make the situation worse not better. Many plans may be welcome, and replanning is needed, but the decision to reorganise the entire schools network on a grandscale de-legitimises the suffering of local communities and brushes off suggestions we should take an exceptionally cautious approach to education review in a national disaster. 

Although not as obvious or as immediately problematic as the suffering caused by large scale education policy reform, the democratic implications of reorganising locally elected school boards are also deeply troubling.

Many state school boards emerged in the study we conducted in Christchurch as surprisingly important in modelling democratic decision making for young citizens and the policy plans are accompanied by plans to introduce new public-private Charter schools in some of the poorest communities of the city, where major education changes are focused.

This potential loss of local state community schools comes on top of an extraordinary decision to suspend regional council elections with no constitutional justification. Citizen vote and voice has also been lost in the very process of rebuilding the city iteself, with the  brushing aside of meaningful elected city council decision making in favour of a central government department tasked with replanning the central business district in 100 days.

A courageous Press editorial speaking out on the loss of democracy in the region both validated and successfully articulated a growing public concern. Widespread community concern with loss of voice and vote in school, city and regional decision making, resulted in more than 700 residents joining us on Suffrage night with two days' notice --- people came together to create a public moment -- to listen to children's concerns and hopes for their city and to protest the loss of local democracy in decision-making.

What next? To fully recover from a disaster we also have to recover our ability to make decisions collectively and democratically as a community. The Suffrage rally marks the beginning of a  campaign calling for Rebuilding Suffrage in 100 days,as spontaneous events all over the city aim to return decision making to elected processes , so we can determine the future for our schools, our city and our region with our vote.

At the rally we unrolled a giant petition of calico which children and adults painted, echoing  the famous suffrage petition  of 1893  taken to parliament in a wheelbarrow and rolled out down the length of the aisle. We hope more and more lengths of calico will be added to this 'petition' in the coming weeks as children and adults create petitions at their own  community events all over the city -adding strength to calls for restoring democratic voice and vote to the local community.

As we recover from the earthquakes, let's do so in a way that restores Kate Sheppard's remarkable democratic legacy to the children of this city. See if you can create a 'Rebuild Suffrage' petition event in your local community and at the same time add your name to our online petition which also launched last night -- this is day one of one hundred days.

Take a first step to help rebuild suffrage, sign here - it's what Kate Sheppard would do!

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Bronwyn Hayward is Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Canterbury and the author of Children, Citizenship and Environment -- Nurturing a Democratic Imagination in a Changing World. This post is republished from Bronwyn Hayward's original blog post here.

It's been a long time since the bleeps and bloops of the video games of the 80s and 90s. Graphics and gameplay have evolved, and so has the music of video games - a part I'm always worried gets overlooked. Some fantastic stuff goes into modern games, so I figured I'd bring up a couple favorites of mine.

Bastion - 2011

Released back in 2011, Bastion raked in a ton of awards for its storytelling, music and artwork. One of the songs from the soundtrack actually won the best song in a game award at the Spike Video Game Awards 2011, and it's not hard to see why. Composer Darren Korb mashed up some more nostalgic instruments with some more modern stuff and the result is a sort of neo-western - a mash up of fantasy and american frontier.

A Proper Story

Build That Wall (The award winner)

Brusher Patrol

The Bottom Feeders

The album is 22 tracks long and I highly recommend checking out the rest of it. You can get to it from the bandcamp links above.

Dark Souls - 2011

Also from 2011 was Dark Souls - a chillingly atmospheric adventure through a post-apocalyptic fantasy world tied together by an incredible soundtrack and crazy difficulty. Composer Motoi Sakuraba took the orchestral soundtrack thing to 11. The results are terrifying and oppressive - You might want to turn your volume down for these. Or up.

Taurus Demon

Bell Gargoyle

Iron Golem

Ornstein and Smough

Again, I highly recommend having a listen to the rest of the soundtrack. Getting hold of the soundtrack can be tricky, but it comes on a disk with the PC version of the game or the collector's edition of the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions. The latter can be very hard to locate, though.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2

Time for a blast from the past. Red Alert 2 was released back in 2000 and people still play it today because of its kickass soundtrack by Frank Klepacki, absolutely crazy story and almost perfect gameplay. The music was definitely ahead of its time, as was most of the stuff by Frank (who also worked on most of the other Command & Conquer games).

Hell March 2

Grinder

Power

Burn

Fortification

Unfotunately, RA2's soundtrack isn't available legally but if anything I'd advise against buying it. Electronic Arts (the people who own the rights to the games) seem intent on pissing on the franchise's grave and are huge dicks in general.

Trust me when I say this isn't even the tip of the iceberg. There's tons more soundtracks like these, full of overlooked or forgotten music, and if you guys want to hear some more I'd be happy to dig up some more classics.

Leo Rae Brown is @MysteryPirate on Twitter and Pallas on Steam.

The Hard News Friday Music Post is sponsored by:

Communication.  I love it. Especially effective, two-way, online communication involving elected officials and their staff on one hand,  and real people.  Sometimes it needs some effort but it works.

I spend a bit of time talking about it and encouraging it,  to the point that I measure the number of MPs using Twitter  (How many?  you ask  -  71 in the last week out of 121 MPs.)  Twitter is my medium of choice because it is open, direct, and you can hear the authentic voice of the person. In 140 characters there is little room for dissembling or prevaricating either.  Yet the ability to add links allows for long form debate to happen too.

It was great yesterday morning to see two real-life examples, one here in Wellington and one from slightly further afield.

Yet  it was a rather large surprise when Alec Ross weighed in just after 9.30am to ask if he could help fix a problem caused by his government.  As in the United States of America.  Now I’d heard of him.  Alec is Hillary Clinton’s Senior Advisor for Innovation.  Every US Ambassador is trained in social media by Alec before taking up a posting. Alec had been in New Zealand last week as part of Project (R)evolution conference, a collaboration between AUT University, SocialMedia NZ and the US Embassy.  I knew he’d played a key role in Barack Obama’s social media and online campaign on the Way to the White House.  He was instrumental in generating the tidal wave of microdonations for the 2008 campaign.

@alecjross 9.33am @philiplyth Your tweets got my attention. What did we do wrong vis a vis transcription? Tell me so we can fix.

So why did he get in touch?  (I have no idea how he found me.) And how did he do it from Washington DC within 75 minutes of my first tweet on the subject?

Early yesterday morning,  Russell Brown blogged in Hard News,  taking issue with Prime Minister John Key apparently giving an open-ended commitment to fight alongside the United States in any and all future conflicts.  I say apparently.  That was based on the US State Department publishing a transcript of Key’s remarks in a joint appearance with Hillary Clinton at the Pacific Islands Forum in the Cook Islands last weekend.

Russell had not unreasonably assumed that the State Department could be relied upon to publish an authentic transcript,  but not so.  With help from New Zealand journalists who supplied a digital soundfile from their dictaphones,  John Key’s actual statement was clearer.  (There must be someone in Washington DC right now who is feeling very small and wishing they could crawl into a mousehole to hide from the world.)  Take a look at the State Department’s original paragraph,  and my correction  (emphasis added.)

Secretary Clinton and I discussed the broad range of issues in the Asia Pacific region as we look towards the APEC summit in Russia in around 10 days time. New Zealand warmly supports the United States rebalancing towards the Asia Pacific, and we welcome the opportunity to cooperate with the U.S. in the next conflicts. We discussed our ongoing (inaudible) along side a number of other countries (inaudible) partnership agreement. Secretary Clinton and I share the goal of securing a high quality, (inaudible) free trade agreement, would be a significant (inaudible) countries involved, indeed to the region as a whole.

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Secretary Clinton and I discussed a broad range of issues in the Asia Pacific region as we look towards the APEC summit in Russia in around 10 days time. New Zealand warmly supports the United States rebalancing towards the Asia Pacific, and we welcome the opportunity to cooperate further.  In that context, we discussed our ongoing efforts to negotiate along side a number of other countries a trans-Pacific partnership agreement. Secretary Clinton and I share the goal of securing a high quality, 21st-century free trade agreement, would be of significant benefit to the countries involved, indeed to the region as a whole.

 Some of us,  myself included,  began discussing matters both in the comments section of Hard News and on Twitter.  These included journalists, mostly clarifying, with one taking umbrage.

Because I’m the sort of guy who believes that people deserve to know they are being talked about,  I rang the good folk at the US Embassy in Wellington,  and talked to Stephen Johns.  He assured me someone would be on to the apparent transcription error.  (And the big error has been fixed.)  So when Alec Ross got in touch I was able to tell him the Embassy was onto it.  He sent a followup tweet as well,  making a point that is good for all of us to be reminded of occasionally.

9.53am @philiplyth - good, thanks. Tweet me if all not rectified. And re filters, as I tell our ambassadors: you have only 1 mouth, but 2 ears.

How the heck did Alec Ross come to tweet me?  I have no idea.  At 8.32am I had noted the irony of the State Department making a monumental blunder when in a NZ Herald profile, Alec  had said that the choice of a specific word has repercussions.

I noted above that Twitter is open.  I did mention Alec in one of my tweets, but not by his Twitter handle, @AlecJRoss.  I’ve wracked my brains to see what,  out of all the millions of tweets flying around the world, could have brought me to his attention or the attention of an awesome filter. I checked his tweets and mentions of him.   I still have no idea.  Alec modestly demurs possessing superpowers, saying:

9.58am @philiplyth Not omnipotent. Attentive.

That is still impressive.  And the timing was too  -  his first tweet to me was at 5.33pm daylight saving time in Washington DC.

Now, I promised you a Wellington example.  Michael “Koz” Koziarski is a software developer and partner at  software studio Southgate Labs. He tweeted his frustration at trying to ring Inland Revenue:

@nzkoz 10:07am How long will the IRD keep pretending that everyone has a land-line? Do they also require filing of tax returns on parchment with wax seal?

A few minutes later, Revenue Minister Peter Dunne tweeted  about IRD’s phones:

@PeterDunneMP 10:17am IRD had quietish week last week - about 78,000 phone calls with majority of service standards on priority and general queues met.

It seemed appropriate to immediately fire Michael’s question to Peter,  and to his credit there was a reply within minutes:

@PeterDunneMP 10:25am @philiplyth @nzkoz @nzben reason partially historic, partially technological, and partially legal. Change is coming.

So the point of this column?  That it is possible to engage government(s) by online communication.  After all, they are all made of people who put their trousers on one leg at a time.  There is some value in knowing how to go about it, but that is another story.

 And Alec Ross?  Today I learned he is a family guy, living in Baltimore with three children.  He had tweeted that one of a daughter asked him to bring back a hobbit from New Zealand.  I hope she got a nice present when he returned home.