Posts by Grant McDougall
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dangerous fruit loop # 1, John Bolton
Isn't he just?
I saw the end of a TV interview between Bolton and John Pilger a few years ago, just after Dubya went into Iraq.
Pilger asked some question that Bolton didn't like. Bolton's reply was - and I quote word for word - "Are you a member of the communist party - the Labour party?". Pilger replied that he wasn't.
So, by Bolton's logic, Tony Blair, Dubya's best mate in the whole sorry Iraq debacle is a communist. Dear oh bl--dy dear.
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Thank god we here in Dunedin don't have to worry about a Christain conservative or a nutbar Christian conservative being mayor (I'll let you decide who is who...).
Would you be more satisfied with a nutbar atheist liberal?
I've no qualms about a mayor's religious leanings and yes, I would prefer a liberal to a conservative. But most importantly, I'd prefer a level-headed person than a nutbar.
Peter Chin is a middle-of-the-road conservative, but he's not a nutbar like Banks and has been a good mayor, so I'll be happy if he's re-elected.
The point I was trying to make overall is that Auckland haven't got much of a choice, personality-wise, between the two leading candidates, have they?
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There was a good Chris Knox cartoon in the Listener when Banks was first voted mayor, saying that Auckland got the mayor it deserves; it'll be interesting to see what he comes up with should he get re-elected.
It'd be unfortunate if Banks does get re-elected through vote-splitting more than any actual strong genuine support for him.
Thank god we here in Dunedin don't have to worry about a Christain conservative or a nutbar Christian conservative being mayor (I'll let you decide who is who...).
Incumbent mayor Peter Chin, a Chinese lawyer, is going to hose in. He, of course, replaced an India woman (Sukhi Turner). Beat that for open-mindedness and respect for other cultures, the rest of NZ!!
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I'm 38 and have known who Keith Holyoake was most of my life (I was at primary school in Gisborne with some of his grand-kids).
Going back to uni as a, ahem, mature student gives you a new perspective on such stuff. You say something like "When David Lange was Prime Minister..." and the youngsters are like "You were alive when David Lange was Prime Minister?"
The other day after a POLS 301 (NZ Political Economy) lecture on the Muldoon era, myself, the lecturer and another old bloke reminsced on Muldoon's impact on the country. It's a sign of how massive it was that we were discussing him 23 (!!) years since he was PM, yet Jim Bolger is already barely mentioned these days.
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FWIW, I've only met two people who worked for the SIS. They obviously didn't say much about their work, but they were both hellishly bright.
There was a time when people claimed to read Penthouse for the articles they published. Maybe some of them were telling the truth.
Or indeed worked for the SIS and read Penthouse.
I can't recall exactly when it was, round about the late '70s / early '80s and a misplaced SIS brief case was found on a park bench in Wellington.
Upon being opened, it was found to contain documents, a copy of said stick mag and...a pie. -
But to give praise where praise is due, WTF is Sean Plunkett on and where can I get some? I don't know if he's switched to decaf or what, but over the last couple of months I've been able to turn on Morning Report without an instant migraine. He is more pleasant to listen to - and a damn sight more effective - now that lunging for the jugular isn't his default interview technique; Kathryn Ryan is much more cconfident with the more 'lifestyle' elements of Nine to Noon. and if Mary Wilson can just chill out a wee bit, I'll have no reason to turn on TV news ever again.
There's a good interview with Plunket (__one__ 't' by the way) in the Sept 8 Listener in which he touches on this.
He says: "I listen back to tapes of me and I sound completely different, I'm not actually pushing as hard and I don't sound stressed out. I've learnt to sit back and let it shake down a bit."So the implication is that he's just mellowed out somewhat, at last.
I agree about Ryan but not Wilson, I love it that she's just so direct. She's much better at asking hard questions, putting people on the spot thasn a lot of other journalists.
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I'm charitably assuming that Leanne Malcolm was instructed to take that line of questioning.
Very charitable of you. I'm more familiar with how newspaper journos operate than TV journos and generally the chief reporter / ed tells a reporter to interview so-and-so on such-and-such issue, but no more, presuming the reporter is sufficiently intelligent to formulate their own line of enquiry.
But do TV news reporters in NZ get instructed what line of questions to ask as well? Leanne Malcolm's always struck me as a reasonably on-to-it journo, so I was puzzled by the inane questions.
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I know it's shooting fish in a barrel, but someone at TV3 "News" needs to be smacked hard on the head with a frying pan: the third or fourth item in this evening's news was some crap about whether Paris Hilton might like an NZer for a boyfriend.
It was based entirely on a contrived interview with two of her mates in Queenstown. Leanne Malcolm made speculative suggestions and they both gave vague, non-comittal answers. The two friends also seemed uncomfortable about discussing Hilton, one wanting to talk about whatever it is in Queenstown she's there for.
If it was the "fluff" peice at the end, well, I could've lived with it. But that early? No way.
It was cheap, stupid and irrelevant.
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Regarding Holmes trundling off to Prime, it's obvious that Prime saw Holmes as a rock band, but the public saw him as a footballer. (No wait, let me explain...)...
E.g, when a band changes record labels, the fans still follow them and buy the albums on the new label. But when a footballer leaves a club, that club's supporters' don't transfer their allegiance to the new club either, do they? No, they don't.
So the public stayed loyal to their "club" while Holmes schlepped off to the rivals.
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The decision does Howard no favours either, reiterating his creepy, Bush's-puppet image.
Well, tough titty. I don't believe that's the function of the state or federal judiciary. Might also be a rather good idea if the Prime Minister also kept an appropriate distance from the operational functions of the NSW judiciary and police, don't you think?
Somehow, I don't think the folks who think Howard suffers separation anxiety when Bush's fist isn't up his arse were going to change their mind, no matter which way the decision went.
Craig, you've got me down as if I'm some raving, feral protester or something; I'm not.
Of course I agree with the seperation of state and judiciary. But the key word was "image". In other words that while Howard had nothing to do with the actual decision, it will, nonetheless, reitierate the image of him being Bush's beeeatch.
As for your second point, as I stated in my original post, the protesters' spokesman said on RNZ yesterday that they were going to protest even if the decision went againsty them.