Posts by Bart Janssen
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Hard News: The digital switch-off, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Designing buildings? that would mean bringing in teachers from overseas I reckon
As far as I can tell the easy way is to download the plans from teh intertubes and plonk it on the section the wrong way around like our neighbours did.
And we have no grass at all, but you don't want to get into analogy fail discussions as well do you?
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Hard News: The digital switch-off, in reply to Steve Barnes,
I have been arguing against this kind of thinking for years.
I'll bite. To some degree if you can buy local that's great. And if the only reason overseas goods are cheaper is because they pay slave labour rates then definitely buy local.
But if you insist on always buying local by preference then you can easily get to the point where inefficient and sometime crap quality local suppliers are being favoured and efficient overseas suppliers (energy efficient, labour efficient and "good") are being excluded. That situation has existed in my memory in NZ.
So as an idea it's cool. But there are times when I'd rather our local suppliers made something else and left overseas supplier to supply things they can make better.
To use your analogy, if by getting your kids to mow the lawns you are preventing them from going to school and learning how to design buildings etc then you are much better off getting your neighbour to mow your lawns.
TLDR the policy is OK but not as an absolute.
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Hard News: The digital switch-off, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
the majestic plural
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Hard News: The digital switch-off, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Ok so I'm wrong. Broadcast TV is just fine and dandy and y'all can trust that your favourite programs will get made just like they used to. My pointless post was pointless, move along.
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Hard News: The digital switch-off, in reply to Russell Brown,
We’re watching more TV than ever
Yup. But we aren't watching it as it's broadcast. We record it on hard drives and play it back while skipping the ads. We buy TV series on DVD and Blue-Ray. We watch movies on DVD and Blue Ray. We watch live sports and go get snacks at half time. We surf the internet. We watch 100 different channels. All on our TV.
The result is advertisers can't be sure their ads will reach the viewer. And so they stop paying. And that is the problem. Without advertisers paying for TV, how can you afford to make TV programs?
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So how do we pay for TV in the next decade?
With broadcast viewer numbers dropping steady advertising revenue is getting harder and harder to maintain. I don't see a viable model for paying for the production of new TV programs. And the dilemma is worse for time sensitive programs like current affairs or locally relevant content. I just don't see any long term viable commercial way to sustain the medium. Especially the things that exist on TV7.
So do we let them die?
Personally I believe there is value there. If not of the kind that buys you lunch at Kermadec.
To me that is the place of the government. To pay for locally relevant content. Stuff that serves 40000 viewers at a time who have no way to organise themselves to pay for that content but can contribute to a common pool of money that can then be used to pay for that content.
Sadly we don't view our taxes that way. Taxes are merely seen from the view of the economist, something to be manipulated on paper to make New Zealand "richer". Seems to me we've lost the concept of having taxes as a common pool that can pay for more than we can afford individually.
We certainly don't vote for governments that support that kind of thing.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Carol Stewart,
No need to snap, Jackie
I'm pretty sure Jackie is biologically incapable of snapping.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Steve Barnes,
And last but by no means least, for a City of National importance…
Steven JoyceI tried to make that once with my slot car set but just didn't have enough bits :(
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Steve Barnes,
That's kinda cool. Not really sure what it would be like to live in and needs more trees.
But that's suburbia which we are hoping doesn't need to be completely rebuilt. How about one of these in the CBD? It's a museum not a small sculpture!
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Granny did a few articles about a month ago
Yes funny how they decided to do that article at exactly the peak time for rentals when university students come back from where ever they go and run around Auckland trying to find flats.
Perhaps the same story any other time of year would have had 12 people turning up to view the flat but lets not let that get in the way of a story.