Posts by Kyle Matthews

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  • Hard News: But seriously, drug policy,

    I just don’t think that dope is the answer to our lack of economic sophistication.

    I'd imagine that the future internationally with the magic ingredients in marijuana is in converting it to a pill or liquid form. Selling dope as a medicine is going to involve law change in many places where you want to sell it and legalising smoking it.

    Having proper medicine made out of it delivered in forms we're much more comfortable with seems a lot more likely.

    Also then it's packaged in forms and prices etc that works in terms of transport and the market.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report

  • Hard News: UPDATED: Media Take: Election…,

    We had someone come and get all the Year 13s who were 18 or who would be 18 by the election to fill in a form.

    I don't mean people who are going to be able to vote at the election that is coming up in the next few months, once every three years.

    I mean every year sign up everyone while most of them are still in school, even if they election is two years away.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report

  • Hard News: UPDATED: Media Take: Election…,

    I do wonder if we could enroll young people better if you could sign them up once they turned 17, so you could enroll people as part of year 13 at high school - say July or August.

    And then put them on a holding roll until they turned 18. Even if they moved in between you're likely to have their parents address for many of them.

    It does seem strange that so much work goes into getting people onto the roll, when some months or a year earlier we had them all sitting in a room twiddling their thumbs, looking forward to the day when they could buy alcohol legally (and vote).

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report

  • Hard News: Didn't see that coming,

    The quiz master has limited space in his scoring spreadsheet for long names, so he shortened it to "Cameron Slater is Shit" which we were happy with.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report

  • Hard News: Didn't see that coming,

    I think if KDC is going to throw meat around at political rallies, he’s got to expect he’ll attract media attention. If he does want the discussion about policy, best not talk about hacking credit rating systems. That said, I still think Corkery’s response was reasonable.

    The video showed her standing behind the reporters when they were beginning their reports to camera. She started mouthing off behind them to someone else, and then to the world at general. So of course they kept on recording and she kept on going.

    I think she's a terrible choice for their press secretary for any of IMP. They're going to have some wacky moments with the characters that they've got there and the background of the parties and their union. They need a media person who can manage that and put out fires rather than start them.

    Still she gave us a great name for our pub quiz team on Monday night: Puffed-up Glove Puppets of Cameron Slater, which won us a jug of beer.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report

  • Up Front: Oh, God,

    After my daughter was born and her mother and I had separated, she moved from being atheist to Catholic which has been very difficult for me. My daughter has come home to me religious, and as part of the negotiations through the family court I gave in on her choice of school and she went to a Catholic school, in return for me having her at my house more. Luckily recently I've been able to move her to a secular school.

    Drives me mad that it's legal for schools to bring in this nonsense, I remember that it happened at my primary school under the Muldoon government, and one kid from my class used to go to the library.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report

  • Hard News: We can do better than this,

    But that's not really relevant to any media in NZ other than Radio NZ or TVNZ, who are owned by the government. If the Herald sells heaps of newspapers from splashing Len Brown's and bad journalism about jobs being given to people at art galleries, that's just going to encourage them...

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report

  • Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Rob Stowell,

    At the time I felt blase about the changes to the Electoral Act. With this ruling (and the Key parody song) as examples (and no, not just because they are coming from the side of the fence I’m on) it’s apparent I was wrong.
    It’s dodgy. It does appear to infringe basic freedom of speech and expression in ways that go well beyond what I thought was the intention.
    Too late now, but it definitely needs to be changed.

    The Key parody song is not banned under the Electoral Act. It's banned under the Broadcast Act.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report

  • Hard News: We can do better than this,

    Sorry, Russell, but that’s bullshit. They choose to and I thought grown-ups were expected to be honest about, and accountable for, their actions in this sad and sorry world. At least, that sounds an awful lot like what political journalists are happy to demand from everyone else on a daily basis.

    I'm not sure how that's going to work in practice.

    If one reporter plays clean, stays out of people's personal lives etc, what's their editor going to do when every other media outlet is reporting it with abandon and getting all the sales and page views?

    We can expect better from the media, but also from the people that they're selling to as well by rewarded quality decent journalism with our money and eyes.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report

  • Hard News: Dirty Politics,

    You can see a rather hard road for National to walk over the next five weeks - several small dumps to back up Hager's book and possibly add a little more to it that he didn't cover coming from whaledump, just to keep the news on it coming back again and again - each time a new round of news stories and further interviews and further commentators pulling it apart.

    That's a painful environment to campaign in.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report

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