Posts by Russell Brown
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Carmen's dead, baby. Carmen's dead.
But perhaps she has a twin sister or a doppelganger cousin...
I loved Carmen. Not as much as Sarah Ulmer, but still quite a lot.
I think Theresa Healy was the original candidate for the Dimiti role in Rude Awakenings. She'd have been good.
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demagogracy.
It sort of sums up all the yelling and screaming over the Electoral Finance Bill
Ooh. That is clever.
Anyway, carry on discussing and I'll pull together a list of finalists and organise a vote on Survey Monkey.
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It's Word of the Year time! Last year Public Address readers voted "unbundled" to the top spot - and created whole new words like "brouhaka". What'll it be for 07? Nominate and discuss your favourites here and be in to win an extremely festive $500 Ezi-Pay Gift Station voucher for Liquorland and two Heineken mini-kegs.
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i just watched that clip of russian rug and it takes me back to being a 15 year-old lying on my bedroom floor playing the bilder' schwimmen in der see 7" on the family radiogram (one speaker model). that song was the very first i ever heard to clue me into the freakpower nature of music and i've never looked back since.
I know exactly what you mean. I was a little older, but there's a sense of being out on the perimeter in those records.
i wish i could join you at the masonic, russell, but the new boy has finally arrived this week. in 15 years' time i will be sure to lie him on the floor and see if it can provoke the same reaction in him.
Congratulations! Stay home! Bask in the warm glow!
PS for others: When he was at Flying Nun, Paul oversaw the Bill/Bilder/Builders CD reissues, which were a great thing. But seeing as I wrote the liner notes for the first one, I probably would say that.
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Re Second Life, I'm sure there are some useful applications, but it just doesn't seem that good, and the way it's been hyped for corporate marketing is just farcical.
And I'm dubious about going so far in orientating education resources around the commercial product of a single company.
At the summit yesterday, there were two giant screens with it running in the conference room. Most of the chat seemed to be of the order of "I can't hear anything!". It seemed to be a lot of effort to go to watch a bad, jerky version of the live webcast was on the internet anyway.
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Everyone has the right to remain silent. That's a valuable part of our legal system.
It's the people who have made actively disingenuous statements that piss me off. And there have been a few.
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You mean the kind of bullshit escalation that reads "Cavity search" when "intimate body search" is printed, and translates "alleged actions" into fact when they're based on individual statements while translating them into fiction when they're based on 150+ pages of extremely detailed evidence and argument?
Which is what I was thinking. Jesus Christ, Sara. Try and examine what you're writing.
You moved on from using the phrase without a shred of evidence to putting "cavity search" in quotes as if it appeared in some claim from an actual person. This is hysteria.
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Before I go make dinner, John Armstrong is quite good on the other part of today's post -- the Key video:
What we get is the standard National Party attempt to dress up its leader as a sensitive human being, family man and all-round nice guy. But Key is in no need of such a makeover.
He already sells himself on that front with ease. What is missing from the DVD is something meaty that shows a leader with a depth of insight, intelligence and ideas.
Key is not short of those qualities. But they are not revealed by having him parroting that he is "ambitious for New Zealand", how the country is "missing the boat" and how National can do things better. Every politician is ambitious for New Zealand and thinks things can be done better.
The question is "how". But there are no answers here.
He's right. And I was conscious of the distinction between the intellectually impressive Cunliffe speech (DPF described it as "superb" in the radio interview we did) and the vacuous presentation of Key. It's depressing to ponder that the video might actually be more effective.
(Before Craig gets up in arms, allow me to reiterate that Pete Hodgson, the senior minister on the day, was incoherent, and people did notice.)
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The sad thing about Howard was that at the same time as he insisted that "I've always said that it is not right to oblige and compel the present generation of Australians to apologise for something that they were not responsible for," he repeatedly expressed the view that the Japanese people, through their government, should apologise for what was done to Australian POWs decades before.
What a horrible little man.
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I think the core concern is that the PPP structure may not be an optimal form of procurement. Generally the private sector partner wants to be paid, and won't participate if it won't be. British experience suggests that when things go wrong with PPP's, they can go badly wrong.
Because it can be hard to do something about it when they do go wrong. That's one of the conclusions of last year's Treasury paper on PPPs. You're locking yourself into one provider for 30 years -- and if it goes titsup, you still have to bail it out.
They're a great buzzword, but the evidence that their benefits over conventional procurement outweigh their drawbacks isn't compelling.
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