Posts by Russell Brown
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Ive been critical of you on various occasions.
You've been directly insulting on various occasions. I don't think you know you're doing it, but please try and bear in mind that it's my house. Most of all, try not to imply I'm lying. That does tick me off a bit.
The point of my comments was to criticise you.
you've done the same on many an occasion and I show you the same degree of respect you show me. As I said I'm not a fan of your music critique work. I am against you being involved in issues of music funding or guiding policy on music because I don't think you have a solid grasp on it.Whatever ...
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I'm not trying to make friends with you Russell, and especially not Brendan. I'm trying to challenge what you say and what he's done.
Rob, these threads all seem to go the same way. You don't really pay attention to what anyone else says, you bait people with lame-arsed taunts like "ok, noted, kyle can't handle lateral thinking" and you generally don't show a lot of respect or maturity. You've been insulting towards me on various occasions, which I just put up with, but please don't do it to other people here. It starts to look like trolling.
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Have I been combative to you?
no?then ...... what u getting so upset about?
He wouldn't be the first to simply get weary of you being a dick. Honestly.
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Craig Ranapia muses on The Tragical Farce of Phil Goff and That Interview" and concludes that "solid reporting takes time, effort and often just isn’t ‘sexy’. Certainly not as sexy as goading a politician into a sin-sational soundbite, or an unguarded thought you can later sneer at as a ‘flip-flop’ or ‘u-turn’" ...
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Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of YorkIf Ian McKellen is heading back to Wellywood, I wonder if he could be convinced to forget about Gandalf and enter politics. His performance as an art deco fascist, in the 1995 adaptation of Richard the Third certainly had its serpentine charms.
But I don’t think even an actor of Sir Ian’s prodigious skills could bring off The Tragical Farce of Phil Goff and That Interview. For me, the only feature of interest is that the interviewer, Alt TV’s Oliver Driver, mercifully chose not to extend Naked News into Naked Current Affairs.
The usual suspects on the right are seeing Lady Macbeth in drag, who’s forgotten you've got to get the blood on your hands before you can bewail that the damn spot won’t come out. Elsewhere, we’re seeing poor Phil recast as Mr and Mrs Othello undone by the all too clearly motivated malignancy of the Iagos of the Press Gallery. (Who in their spare time are stirring up toil and trouble on behalf of the National Party and their associated hollow men, naturally.)
I can’t really work up the required level of outrage. Goff answered a rather silly hypothetical question, with the kind of candour (however carefully qualified) that I don’t think he would have shown on Morning Report or Close Up. There is, according to Goff, the possibility that Labour will lose the election. Helen Clark probably isn’t planning to die in office, and when she departs he might want to enter the leadership race.
One can say that all of the above is a statement of the blindingly obvious. Which it is. In Clark’s position, I’d rather have my frontbench focused on the election rather than the succession, I doubt she’s seeing some Shakespearian bloodbath in the offing. She shouldn't. After all, both Helen and Will know the best kind of coup is the one your victim doesn’t see coming until it’s all over.
But pardon my cynicism if it’s a little hard to feel any sympathy for Goff being on the end of the kind of pathetic ‘gotcha’ he’s been quite happy to leap on when the Tories are on the receiving end. I cordially loathe departing Rakaia MP Brian Connell, but don’t believe I was the only one who cheered when he told One News’ Chris Faafoi to “piss off”, after being chased around Parliament — and into toilet — while having the same question barked at him seventeen time. I don’t understand why that was considered a lead story, or why Faafoi was on air with the self-satisfied smirk of someone who'd just broken Watergate.
Here’s the dirty little secret. Solid reporting takes time, effort and often just isn’t ‘sexy’. Certainly not as sexy as goading a politician into a sin-sational soundbite, or an unguarded thought you can later sneer at as a ‘flip-flop’ or ‘u-turn’. And if we’re going to be honest, don’t we just love seeing people made to look stupid? Then, to make it even better, when politicians become guarded and evasive we write them off as lying toe-rags with a secret agenda.
McKellen’s Richard III is well worth tracking down, but as you watch it remember that Richard’s victims are the victors in a long and brutal civil war. Nobody’s hands are entirely clean.
I can smile, and murder while I smile,
And wet my cheeks with artificial tears,
And frame my face to all occasions.
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days. -
My question is, at what point should the general public start expecting to see some returns on this investment in terms of a greater proportion of kids leaving school who are equipped to onto further study (or at the very least being able to read and write)?
Our best students are amongst the best in the world, and getting better. Our problem is the similarly-sized group at the other end of the scale (~8%) who aren't attaining at the lowest level.
But even so, New Zealand students outperform the OECD average at every attainment benchmark. In maths, the proportion of students who achieved at the high or very high benchmarks increased by about a quarter between 1994 and 2005, and the number that failed to achieve the low benchmark fell.
The improvement was more significant in science, where the proportion of students failing to meet the low benchmark halved to around 8% between 1994 and 2005.
And the average length of time New Zealand students stay in education ("school life expectancy") increased sharply between 1999 and 2005.
I'm sure there's more, but you get the picture.
Sources here, here, here and here.
Has the extra investment in health cut waiting lists as much as the increase in $ might have led people to expect?
Despite their prominence in the media and in political spin, elective surgery waiting lists are not the only health benchmark, and I think that's not actually where the greater part of the expenditure has gone.
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I'd rather not be embalmed, just let the worms etc get stuck in. My only concrete request at this stage is that they play You're Gonna Miss Me as they carry me out of the place where the service is held
Oooh. That gives me an idea for the disco part of the proceedings: Turntable Orchestra's 'You're Gonna Miss Me When I'm Gone'. Perfect ...
A heartbreaking moment:
We recently buried my 2 year-old nephew. After tea and sandwiches at his grandmother's house, my son asked who was going to go and collect Pressie, cos he'll be lonely and scared in the hole we'd put him in.
Phew ...
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__'Bliss' is as much a part of our music history as any other song that Dave Dobbyn performs,__
true and if you were around at the time it came out you'd be hard pushed to hear it on the airwaves. what's your point?
I'm not sure about 'Bliss', which was almost a posthumous release anyway, but I recall that 'Be Mine Tonight' did get played on the radio. And it really stood out. I can actually recall the first time I heard it (post-school holiday with my mates at Woodend Beach) and I thought, what the hell's that?
There was actually a brief period when the commercial network was still in public ownership and the ZM stations got more or less adventurous. I think even Toy Love got some play.
3ZM in Christchurch was really okay for a while. You could even take your demo tape in to Mark 'Mainline' Morgan and he'd play it on a Sunday night. You could just buzz at the door and go in and see the guy right there in the studio ...
I remember writing an indignant letter when ZM went "commercial" again.
I really think there was a sadly missed opportunity when some new frequencies were released in Auckland, and Blackie, Botica et al, put up money for 89FM, which was supposed to be a "real" music station. They hired some interesting on-air people, including Andrew Boak and a game lassie from student radio called Fiona Rae.
But they spent so much their lavish set-up that operating such a station was never really viable, they imported Australian radio consultants and it all got sucked back into the machine.
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In any case, crazed and inaccurate rhetoric can be found on the other side of the spectrum, case in point the NZ Herald's Your Views section.
See comments along the lines of "I earn $80k a year and this budget will make me worse off!"
I had a look yesterday. It is the place of utter unreason.
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The Brunettes, The Ruby Suns, The Phoenix Foundation. And Cassette, Connan & The Mockasins, SJD, Dimmer...yawn bro yawn.
What about me ? It isnt fair. Iv'e had enough now i want my share. Can't you see. I wanna live but you just take more than you give.
Never so true a lyric was written about electronica and hiphop. For all BS justification and self congratulatory backslapping. It's still all a little back asswards looking and pandering to the safe crusty old tradition of boring indy styled lo fi guitar bands. I'm still not seeing the turnaround to a brighter future, an exit strategy from the invasion of mediocrity assulting our airwaves , anything that inspires me to think this is the guy to lead us into the digital age and i'm afraid for all his protestations i'm now more than ever convinced he is not.
I think you just jumped the shark. Have a self-serving whine if you must, but it's hardly necessary to slag off a group of artists who are actually getting noticed. Are you seriously saying that NZ On Air should not only ignore radio rock, but all forms of "boring" rock music? Including artists as complex and eclectic as SJD and Dimmer? (And, one would assume, Rob's bands?)
It's cool that you're got your stuff on Beatport et al, but you need to get a sense of proportion.
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The Herald editorial is a bit of a classic.
After venturing that "even $70,000 is a modest income these days", it dismissively observes that most of the extra money for education has gone on teachers' pay ("Beside them, the 5 per cent lift in schools' operational funds looks insignificant"). Those rotten old teachers, eh? What important job do they do?
The new pay scale for head teachers, of course, tops out at $68,611. Some way short of modest, then.
The Herald then concludes that the money in the tax cuts "rightly belonged to the overtaxed all along".
Sigh ...
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