Posts by izogi
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Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
This just in. Pebbles Hooper has resigned from her Herald roles.
I think it’s good she apologised quickly and I hope she learnt from it but really isn’t her witterings just synonomous with reality trash TV?
I also hope she’s learned something. But I still have trouble reading her attempted apology as something which actually acknowledges she mightn’t have understood the real context of what happened with that woman and her three children, or was at any fault besides “careless wording” that should more correctly have avoided isolating it to just that case.
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Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to Alfie,
Pebbles:
I never aimed to target or isolate this issue to one family.
Alfie:
Of course you didn’t Pebbles. Quite obviously it was aimed at the numerous other families killed by CO from car exhausts in recent memory.
Uhuh. Maybe it’s youthful idiocy from a 25 year old who "grew up travelling the world" and has "always felt 15", is always broke 3 weeks before payday, isn’t allowed a credit card, and has aspirations to not need to ask her parents for money by the time she’s 50. But it’s still just a fairly standard blame of other people for taking offence at what she said instead of taking real and actual responsibility for what she said. [sigh]
I’d like to think there’s more action coming from the Herald based on its statement that they’ll be “taking the matter up with her this week”, but from its recent editorial track record I don’t have my hopes very high.
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Polity: The overconfidence man, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
It crossed my mind to wonder. I'm still not clear if it was a giant mass mailing, or a targeted thing at addresses recently identified to have new occupants for the purposes of gauging political preferences at the address.
The return slip address was freepost to parliament, but I guess it could be argued that anyone responding is trying to communicate with MPs (and also authorise partisan political spam in their email inbox).
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I expect Key will ditch his underperforming Ministers, copy as many of Labour’s ideas as he can get away with, and go into the election with a new, refreshed team proposing big ideas for New Zealand’s new issues.
Well, in today’s mail my wife and I received a personally addressed, tidy and colourful letter signed by John Key on behalf of the National Party. It makes a big deal about National’s success with (1) free GP visits & prescriptions for under 13s, (2) jobs & higher incomes, (3) “better education”, (4) “helping children living in hardship”, (5) warmer, drier & healthier homes, (6) breakfasts in schools, (7) grants for first-home buyers, (8) “more paid parental leave”, (9) improved mmunisation, and (10) more money in your pocket.
As I see it, at least 7 or 8 of those headlines are stomping directly onto typical favoured opposition territory.
Then there’s the tear-off slip to ask me what my priorities are for the future. I get to write my own name and address or postcode, but there’s a tiny 9 digit number at the end of the tear-off form, so I presume there’s scope in the system for them to match my name and address with my apparent political preferences, no matter who I say I am or where I say I’m from.
Not long ago we also received a personal letter from Brett Hudson. He’s the National list MP who stood in our electorate, basically to say “you should vote for Peter Dunne instead of me”. I haven’t read his letter yet, but National seems to be on a bit of a marketing drive around here lately. Or maybe they've simply noted on the electoral roll that we shifted here recently, and more targeted data about us is needed.
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Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to izogi,
I wouldn’t expect it to be great in a journalistic sense, but there’s already precedent for doing more or less this, with The Project on Channel Ten, which is overloaded with comedians on the payroll thanks to Melbourne’s comedy scene. The format would surely appeal to much of the audience currently watching Seven Sharp.
…and then despite its general flippancy, the Project comes up with stuff like this (facebook video, sorry), which if anything demonstrates just how much a group of Channel 10 on-staff comedians can produce a result more similar to what Campbell Live used to aim for, yet would probably never see the light of day on Seven Sharp in its current state.
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Polity: Government votes not to improve MMP, in reply to TracyMac,
the great unwashed seems to have no problem at all ranking their preferences
The ability of often being able to tick a box to apply the recommended rankings of one’s most preferred candidate, without necessarily even considering or knowing what those rankings are and who else you might be electing, probably helps with that. Interpretations may differ but to me it seemed the whole thing’s so convoluted and confusing that they’ve built in methods to help people not consider who they’re voting for.
I’ve only needed to vote in an Australian election once (Vic local body election ranking 30+ candidates). Despite caring little about the municipal rectangle of suburban arterial roads and dog-walking parks where I spent my overnight time for the 12 month lease before I moved to a different rectangle, I felt some responsibility for others who lived there to actually make an effort to put thought into my compulsory vote. After a long, painful evening of trying to care, I just did the donkey vote thing, numbering 1 through 30-something from top to bottom.
Theoretically I think some kind of preferential system could make MMP much fairer, both in electorates and in the Party vote. But in practice, I’m also wary that one of NZ’s problems is in getting people to vote at all (and ideally actually want to vote if they do). Making the system even more complex, to the point that it’s even harder for more people to understand and trust what’s going on, seems unlikely to help with that. Australia simply gets people to vote by making it compulsory to cast a vote in whichever convoluted system is put in front of voters.
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Hard News: Happy Days, in reply to Sacha,
Let's hope the folks creating Yours TV can do a more effective job some day, if they're not already.
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Hard News: Happy Days, in reply to Moz,
Job ads are only worsted by actual HR “interviews”.
My main experience with typical job ads has been that, at least in my own (IT) sector, they’re frequently for jobs which no longer even exist, and largely still remain in the list so recruitment agents can suck applicants in to be part of their buzzword-organised portfolio which they often don’t, themselves, necessarily care much about understanding.
I wish there were a more fair way, but with job ads in the normal places, any fairness is exchanged for a high dose of irrationality. I’m ashamed to admit that every job I’ve had to date has come either from a direct approach, or by knowing people who know me.
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Envirologue: Swamp Monsters – the…, in reply to Whoops,
(embed fail…just tilt your head a little)
Or click through to the large version. (At least, Firefox auto-rotates it for me.)
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Yours TV looks awesome, even if I'm not sure I look forward to a day when teenagers might have more effective and relevant media than their parents and grandparents.
Without knowing exactly how to measure and compare it, is there any word on the types of ratings or viewership it gets?