Posts by Russell Brown
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I can understand - especially with student loans as a fact of life - why young folk go to London now with their eyes on a prime job, but it was different in my day. I tended to see it as a chance to find my way without too much in the way of responsibilities.
One big difference: does anyone squat any more? New Zealanders used to be champs at it. The council would smash the toilet in an empty house in the belief that that would stop anyone moving in, but doughty Kiwis would just come in and fit a new one. I broke a squat with someone who is now a well-known person - there had been junkies living there before, and the toilet was stuffed solid to the brim with shit and paper. We tried hydrochloric acid, but eventually me and her girlfriend had to literally shovel shit into a bag. I found that shouting and singing stopped me smelling it.
Bonnington Square, in Vauxhall, where I lived later, was first squatted by New Zealanders, then there were quite a few more as it filled up. The long-servers eventually got to purchase their houses as part of a co-operative.
Later on in the same square, the owners of Wellington's Café Astoria (__not__ Verona, as I mistakenly typed) Janice and Sue, moved into a house that was vacant on account of the previous occupant having blown his brains our. They had to paint over said brains on the wall, and they had a little ceremony with candles to make it good with the former occupant. There was a squatter's café there that could be hired for a couple of quid, and I think I'm correct in saying that that was Janis and Sue's first hospitality venture.
It was near a pub that was frequented occasionally by Eno and U2, whose signed pictures were behind the bar. I'm not sure who compiled the tapes they played on Friday nights, but the music was great.
There was plenty of mischief, and one of my most fond Bonnington Square memories is of a group of us boys and girls hoovering up lines, doing a few spots off the stove, then running for the Tube to get in and see The Fall play at Astoria in Charing Cross Road. We burst into the room just as they came on stage and launched into 'Australians in Europe'. Truly, we felt it was for us.
But the best night, without doubt, was when I was cursing my luck at being committed to being at my friends' Hallowe'en party at No.62, when I knew there was a Mutoid Waste Company party (later described in The Face as "the party of the decade") on the other side of town.
And then … in walked my baby. We were never apart again.
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Friends in America, eh. I guess that means I have friends in the UK who are keeping me up to date with Doctor Who and (OMG) the latest series of Big Brother.
Your friends might also want to send you - in suitably small pieces - an excellent (and funny) doco that aired on the Beeb last week called 'Bust My Ass' - about the erosion of civil liberties under Blair.
People here should see that before Annette King starts talking about ASBOs again.
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That being said, I Coddington was not alone in her line of attack when that article was published. I personally heard Stephen Franks floating a few interesting "ideas" about Asian immigration (old good, new bad). Franks was a bit smarter in that he posed his particular whistles as "questions" that the audience should be thinking about.
I think Franks is much less guarded when he thinks he won't be quoted. When he confided in Ben Thomas that the gay community was "riddled with pathologies" I expect he thought he'd be saved from himself.
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For fifteen years, I was a sleeper agent. Russell would monitor my progress while my programming lay dormant.
That got so boring. Couldn't you have rebelled or something?
Unbeknowest to my friends and family, I was actually a ticking timebomb, with "Deborah Coddington" emblazoned on my left buttock. (Actually, the "ton" is carried over to the right one. Let's just say I won't be going back to *that* tattoo parlor again.)
Do you know how hard to was to find a tattooist who'd tattoo a seven-year-old's butt? You can't afford to be picky in such cases.
I was activated in 2005, having built a cover story as a "student journalist". For the past two years, I've been waiting for my chance to strike, and now I have.
Excellent ... unfortunately, the Mok sleeper appears to have re-written its own programming and gone rogue. I can offer no warranty as to its future conduct.
And now, Ng, I must trigger the shutdown routine. It gives me no pleasure, but the mission is now complete and I cannot risk an armed AsianBot falling into the hands of the enemy.
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Seriously, does anyone else think Coddington and North and South might have been saved considerable damage if, well, the story had been through a significantly more rigorous editorial and fact-checking process? Like, by someone who could have seen the thesis was not supported by the evidence?
Absolutely. I think it was Keith who pointed out quite early on that there was a story there: just not the one she wrote and N&S printed.
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From the decision:
Press Council members considering this complaint were Barry Paterson (Chairman), Aroha Beck, Ruth Buddicom, Kate Coughlan, John Gardner, Penny Harding, Keith Lees, Denis McLean, and Lynn Scott.
So neither Alan Samson (who's a particularly accomplished reporter, especially on science topics) or Terry Snow, a former Listener editor, were involved in this particular decision.
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__Good old Lauwaly is now the science/tech reporter & she still claims ignorance on the subject__
Health actually, but don't let the facts get in the way.
And she's been that for quite a while, IIRC. I'd be much more inclined to applaud that than mock. One of of the great weaknesses of TV news reporting is that there are so many generalists who need the story explained to them.
3410 In 20 years time? I'll undoubtedly have sold out to some high paying PR/Comms job. Would you expect any less?
I'll either be a successful media entrepreneur or a very bitter freelance journalist. Either way, lunch is on you.
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Bravo.
By way of background, I may have called Ms Coddington "the most bizarre woman in Auckland" 11 years ago, but I'm damned if I can find it, either online or on my hard drive.
I did however, find my mention of the 1997 Metro column in which she claimed that the police picked on "white" kids and ignored the dark-skinned villains who pursued them. I used the words "horrible" and "crass" in that instance.
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But I'm not about to insist everyone else watches MMA, or that the city pays for a massive event. I just enjoy it in my own time on my own money. And I think that's really the main gripe NZers have with the America's Cup. It's just not fun to watch, however deep and fulfilling it is for the participants.
I take a practical view of it. As you say, it's not much of spectator sport, but if Team NZ does win, and brings the regatta back, I'm all for it. Those events brought a degree of money and glamour to Auckland that made the city fun - and they were the making of a lot of small businesses. My buddy and his wife had a catering company - they barely slept for a year during the last challenge, but it got them a deposit on their house and capital for their next venture.
I would, of course, hope that public money is better spent next time. Some of what went on around the village was pretty bizarre.
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Brian Gaynor wrote a brilliant analysis of the string of transactions through which F&R enriched themselves, usually at the expense of their shareholders. That's gone from the Herald website now, but this 2003 column is also instructive:
A Fay, Richwhite consortium bought New Zealand Rail from the Government in 1993 for $328 million and changed the target company's name to TranzRail. The deal was a typical private equity transaction, with $223 million or 68 per cent of the purchase price funded by debt and the remaining $105 million by equity.
One of the first priorities of a private-equity investor is to sell surplus assets to repay the acquisition debt and/or make a capital repayment to shareholders.
TranzRail sold its 15 per cent stake in Clear Communication for $73 million and made a $100 million capital repayment in June 1995. This reduced the capital contribution of the original investors to just $16 million (additional equity had been issued to management between September 1993 and the share buy-back).
New shares were sold to the public through an IPO in 1996 at $6.19 each and most of the funds used to repay borrowings. Part of this debt had been raised to fund the capital repayment to the private equity consortium.
The rest is history as far as TranzRail is concerned. The company was engulfed in a sea of debt, Toll Holding acquired a controlling stake at a fraction of the IPO price, and a number of the former private equity investors have been subject to a long-running insider trading case initiated by the Securities Commission.
Nice work if you can get it.
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