Friday Music! 'Tis the Season
It's been dark a long time but it's starting to feel like summer. And that means the parties are starting. The nice people at Base FM kick off with a party on the roof of Rydges Hotel in partnership with…
Recent Posts
Catch you later
This is my last PA post for a while, as I’ve recently taken on a staff role as Deputy Chief of Staff in Andrew Little’s office. Doing that job requires radio near-silence, which I’ll be attempting as best as my…
From Zero: Drugs and popular culture
The third episode of From Zero, my RNZ podcast series about New Zealanders and drugs, looks at drugs and popular culture: music, movies, TV and magazines. ¶ There is more of this than most people realise. New Zealand was a bit…
World of Food 1: Afghanistan
It's funny how sometimes meaningless conversations or moments can turn into inspiring ideas down the track. It was a little more than a year ago that a random conversation with my trainer spurred an idea that has now finally become…
Friday Music! Mic drops and dance pioneers
I enjoyed Aaradhna's mic drop at the Music Awards last night: it added energy to an event that was already getting much of its energy from the Māori and Pasifika creativity on show. But I think there's something that needs…
Giving It the Bish
About ten days ago, I was in a pretty good mood. There was going to be this U.S. election that Hillary Clinton was going to win. A couple of days after that, my best friend was going to visit, and…
The fake news problem
The Washington Post, Buzzfeed and others are reporting something strange and troubling today: a fake news site falsely claiming that Donald Trump and not Hillary Clinton has won the popular vote in last week's US Presidential election is the top…
From Zero: Weed
The second episode of From Zero is available online this tumultuous morning. It's about cannabis. ¶ I talked to quite a range of people for this episode: a dealer, a grower, an advocate and two doctors among them. But for wholly…
#eqnz: Okay?
Earthquake news comes with baggage these days. We know what happens and we know what happens afterwards. It's rotten news to wake up to in Auckland. We slept through it, but it's a measure of the magnitude of last night's…
Music! Staring into King Loser
King Loser's brief reunion this year could have been a bit of a calamity: indeed, the first few minutes of their first show, at The Other's Way, weren't up to much. But the creature gathered itself, stood up and growled.…
A Singer Must Die - Leonard Cohen, In Tribute
Leonard Cohen passed away yesterday at 82. One of the great singer-songwriters of the ages has gone. Yet it is the very rich, deep music that he leaves that so wisely and beautifully articulates the frailty of life and the…
No, there isn’t a popular uprising of the white working class against the status quo
I didn’t sleep very well the last two nights. Cold sweats and waking up more scared than I’ve been about the future than in all my life. Just the disbelief that this is all real. ¶ In a more naïve time…
Be careful what you wish for
As things stand, Hillary Clinton has won about a quarter of a million more votes than Donald Trump – who in turn has won about 1.5 million votes fewer than Mitt Romney did in 2012. That changes nothing about the result,…
The Long, Strange Trip
Like many of you, even though I cannot vote, I've taken an interest in the US Presidential election that lies somewhere between keen and visceral. ¶ This isn't a new thing. America looms large in our in culture, historically and in…
Education: We stand together, or we fall apart
There is a growing awareness in New Zealand that our education system is not delivering on basic obligations to a significant and vulnerable group of children. ¶ This failure of the system affects all of the country’s children: When a child…
From Zero: New Zealand and drugs
Over the past few years, psychoactive drugs and the means by which society deals with them have become a specialist subject for me. It's a field where so many things meet: science, medicine, politics, the law, philosophy, culture. It runs…
Music! The time Sneaky Feelings played at my house
We nearly all have cameras now, built into our phones with a ubiquity that doesn't even bear comment. Back in the day, you had to make the effort first to bring the camera, then, to pay money to see whether…
Short circuiting the legislative process; or why are we still writing about Nuk Korako?
Sometimes a law change is so important and so urgent, that Parliament feels it needs to pass it immediately, without the possibility for select committee scrutiny, and public submissions. Today, we got some insight into what that threshold is. ¶ And…
Now we are Five
My son Harry turns five tomorrow. It was five years and a bit ago when we were expecting, that I wrote this piece for Metro. Because I'm feeling nostalgic, and I've always quite liked it, I'm publishing it again here.…
The light train to Roskill
Is Andrew Little’s promise of light rail to Mr Roskill a byelection bribe? Does John Key have any idea at all what his own Auckland transport plan looks like? ¶ –– ¶ The barrier arms are coming down and the bells are going…
Full Volume
Thursday night was the launch for Volume: Making Music in Aotearoa. Russell has covered this on his Friday Music blog, with a few photos he and I took. ¶ To try and give you a taste of this excellent exhibition, here…
Friday Music! It's us, as culture
Last night, we went to the opening of Auckland Museum's exhibition Volume: Making Music in Aotearoa. As I've noted here previously, the very fact of this exhibition is an endorsement of popular music as culture – our culture – and Mark Roach,…
Meth houses and stigma
This week, the Ministry of Health published a review of standards for the remediation of former clandestine methamphetamine labs. The "review" in the title signifies a review of relevant international literature, but the document effectively also functions as a review…
National Standards and the threat to autistic creativity (a little bit of history)
The documentary ‘The HeART of the matter’ screened in the recent NZ Film Festival. Archival clips show New Zealand schoolchildren in the 1950 and 60s doing all sorts of glorious creating ‒ making art and music and dancing. The equipment,…
Just get the App, already
It’s over two years since then-Minister of Transport Gerry Brownlee boarded a plane in Christchurch, after entering a secure area through a no-entry door, skipping past the security check. ¶ I spent time that day on Twitter, trying to work out…