Posts by Russell Brown
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Also, because Bryan Adams is awesome, I feel like linking to my track-by-track analysis of his 1984 album Reckless, which is one of the very first things I ever put up on my website. (Shut up. I was only 21.)
Thank you for sharing. I've just been told off for singing 'Run to You'.
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And she's not anything like Little Jimmy Osmond? Because they sound kind of similar.
I was too intimidated by her being, like, Bjork and everything to really have a conversation, but she was right about the chocolate cake. My friend Ange made it, with her trademark whole chunks of chocolate in it.
I did have a yarn to the guys from the Sugarcubes (it was that era) though. I told Einaar I liked his interviews. He gave me some of his absinthe.
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But I think of how I was to him and how I sound recounting this, and I sound like a horrible, shallow character in a Katherine Mansfield story.
No you don't. I think we've all agreed that he's a really nice chap, and if he does happen one day to ego-surf his way here, he will have his heart warmed by that, and be philosophical about the rest.
Hi Bryan!
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sometimes people on the internet make things up,
I know - you're really a dog!
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Bryan may make awful music, but he's a good guy and incredibly bright,
I liked him when I met him. Just hated his music.
But it must have been The Police at Western Springs ...
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Everyone says Telecom was a disaster. It's easy in hindsight to see the errors but it was a time of learning and the Govt still got $4bn for it in 1990.
Can't quite face going through all this again, but from a very long post on related matters:
For nearly 20 years, New Zealand's official approach to telecommunications has been unique in the world, embodying a philosophy of "light-handed regulation", and (until recently) eschewing an industry-specific regulator. It's too long to go through here, but Auckland network industries specialist Paul Hewlett has an excellent backgrounder on events since the Post Office monopoly was broken up in 1987, and the network placed with a new entity, Telecom Corporation of New Zealand.
Although most of the horror stories about the Post Office era are true - it sometimes took two or three months to get the phone on - the old system had some successes. We had a very high penetration of phone lines relative to our population. In three years of public ownership, the new corporation made another important step; establishing digital connections to nearly every exchange in the country.
One of the most striking parts of the story is the then-Labour government's acceptance of an "undertaking" from Telecom's new management that it would "ensure that interconnection would be provided to competitors on a fair basis, and the relationships between Telecom companies would not disadvantage competitors." On this vague assurance, any mention of interconnection was left out of the Telecommunications Act.
It is difficult now to credit the stupidity of those who devised the policy. After Telecom was sold to Ameritech and Bell Atlantic (themselves, ironically the product of the greatest regulatory intervention in telecommunications history - the forcible break-up of AT&T in 1982) for $4.25 billion (the money was prudently used to retire external debt) in 1990, there was no way that its private owners would - or even should - have made any agreement not to their advantage.
Something like that. I just don't think "it was a learning time" cuts it.
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If that's the sort of response Mr Easte gives to someone who confesses to being "not a big fan", I'd hate to see the essay a full-on insult would prompt.
'Specially seeing as I've decided I'm gonna vote for him ;-)
I was going to reply to Graeme's email along similar lines, but I might as well do it here.
Years ago, when the burghers of Grey Lynn voted to end the area's "dry" status, there had to be a subsequent vote as to how "wet" we'd get.
One Sunday afternoon, when I was trying to have a quiet read of a book in my lounge in Grey Lynn, a man banged on my window. It was Graeme, and he'd heard I might be interested in getting behind a licensing trust for the area.
Now, I happened to think licensing trusts, as they manifest in Auckland, were a bloody awful idea, as I tried to explain to Graeme. But he banged on regardless, standing on my deck, talking to me through my window. I was (a) annoyed, and (b) alerted to the fact that I was not Graeme's political soulmate.
(I might add that I think the subsequent fairly orderly development of boutique licensed premises in Grey Lynn bears out my view of the matter.)
From memory, I've disagreed with a few other things he's said since, but he's hard-working and I don't think he's a bad guy. And, as I said, I'd hate to be on the Water Pressure/RAM shitlist the way he is.
It's one of the quirks of Auckland local body politics that there's not a lot of middle ground -- the left of CV is a bit too left for me (I thought the street sign crackdown was mad) and too many of the CitRats come across like Kiwiblog commenters. I'd love to be able to vote for Richard Simpson and I'll be really) pissed off if Hobson voters tip him out this time.
So, um, yeah ...
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Still fuming about the way that the CitRat flier for my ward reads like a wingnut blog ...
Western Bays is supposed to be the heart of creative Auckland. Lots of clever people are reckoned to live here.
I'll vote City Vision, but I wish I at least had an option. Where's Action Western Bays when you need them?
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OMG, I've just remembered ... the first time Bryan Adams came here, I interviewed him at the Sheraton.
And I told him about this new song by a local group that was on the same bill as him (the Bowie show?) at Western Springs.
It was ... 'Sex and Agriculture' by the Dance Exponents.
The circle is complete.
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Telecom? Where you would phone up, like my parents did, and say "Can I have a phone put in our new house please, my wife is pregnant with twins and we might need to phone the hospital when she goes into labour.", and they reply, sure you'll get a phone in....
EIGHTEEN MONTHS!!!
I was talking about how the public feels about those privatisations -- there were quite a few calls to that effect after the bFM interview.
I'm not saying that Telecom shouldn't have been privatised -- of course it should -- but the foolish manner in which it was done really hurt New Zealand. And I think you'll find that the real turnaround in Telecom's customer performance, and a lot of the capital investment, took place when it was an SOE.
Or New Zealand Rail. Which was a bloated useless dinosour simlpy unfit for a long, thin sparsely country like New Zealand.
Of course. It was a much better idea to let Fay, Richwhite run the sale, grab some for themselves (their shareholders never benefited) and leg it before the house of cards collapsed.
Toll's subsequent takeover valued it at $230m. After originally selling the lot for $400m the government ended up paying $80 million for the Auckland rail network, $50 million for other assets and $2 for the rest of the network, which had been allowed to fall to bits. In 2004, having been gutted and loaded with debt by F&R and their mates, the company lost $364m.
What happened there was a complete disgrace.
Or Air New Zealand? Where the Taxpayer had to unnecessarily front up with $800 million dollars because of the government's silly nationalism where we have to have a "national carrier" as opposed to letting a big professional like Singapore Airlines sort Air new Zealand's problem's out at no cost.
And the assorted captains of industry who had been running it did such a good job, didn't they? FFS, even English is hailing it as a success. I don't think it's necessarily repeatable, but I'll take a publicly-owned and profitable Air NZ over a never-quite-clear prospective offer from Singapore Airlines (itself a winning example of "silly nationalism") any day.
I'm not saying the government has to own every enterprise, but the history of privatisations in NZ is horrible.
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