So farewell then, George Martin. You encouraged The Beatles to be adventurous, and then you helped them make those adventures real. You transcended what a producer was half a century ago and you helped define what a producer is now.…
I like to take what I consider to be a healthy interest in other countries’ politics. In part, this offers a refreshing break from crying when people tweet about New Zealand electoral law. ¶ I’m not ready to pay too much…
Before I get a flurry of hate mail, let me start off with a disclaimer. I’m well to the left of pretty much everyone running for President in the US right now. And frankly, so are you if you live…
One of the frustrations of local body cycling networks is that they tend to ignore some of the key ways people actually ride. Official cycle maps have tended to show official cycleways that are part of the transport network, but…
One week short of six years ago, Rob O'Neill published a story for Computerworld revealing the background to the Auckland Transition Agency's decision to apply a "veneer" to the integration of the IT systems the constituent councils of the imminent…
If current polls are to be believed, this month the flag referendum will fail as more than 60% of voters reject the Kyle Lockwood design in favour of the current flag. ¶ This news won’t be welcome with Prime Minister John…
It's been ten long summers since Sleater-Kinney last played in Auckland. The band took a break from touring and recording in 2006 to work on other projects – Corin Tucker's two solo albums, Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss's indie-rock supergroup Wild…
Auckland City Limits has published its timetable and site map for March 19 The site configuration will be familiar to anyne who went to the last Big Day Out, but there a few differeneces – most notably that the entrance and…
I published a Q&A on how to vote in the first flag referendum, and because a first-past-the-post election with two choices is one of the few voting systems that cannot be gamed, I was going to write a half-joking post…
Duncan Greive's recent The Spinoff column The real problem with New Zealand TV drama is a follow-up to his earlier review of the new NZ On Air-funded drama series Filthy Rich. Actually, no: it's a consequence of that scathing review.…
Called to account on Morning Report on Monday for the strong support for keeping the current national flag indicated by recent polls, Prime Minister John Key gave a strange answer. ¶ "It's (a) very early days," Key told Guyon Espiner, which…
Like Wrestlemanias and Superbowls before it, the Greater Wellington Brewday had its IVth annual festival at the weekend. In a paddock decorated with hay bales, flannel, and amusingly non-ironic tattoos, 2,000 appreciators of beer congregated to sample the finest ales,…
We walked down the hill on Friday evening to a beautiful play of light: the last of the sun reaching over from the west, the broad shimmer of the sea, the high moon looking down, the glow from the tents…
Mediaworks' decision to replace its longtime news chief Mark Jennings with Hal Crawford, hitherto editor-in-chief and publisher of the Australian Ninemsn website, buys the company the kind of strategic expertise in digital publishing that – witness the Scout debacle – it has…
Yesterday's decision by 13 Auckland councillors to remove the council's voice from a Unitary Plan process in which, by any assessment, it should be the major player is being greeted as a victory by those responsible. ¶ Richard Burton, the leader…
The killer fact is a public speaker's friend. It can be used as a way of not so much simplifying a complex argument, but of giving the audience a peg on which to anchor the complexity. I deployed a few…
I'm very pleased that Metro magazine has posted my feature K Road at the crossroads on its website. Because it appeared in the December-January double issue, it's been a longer wait than usual for the story to reach the free-to-read…
At the outset, let me say this is not a post that says the polls are wrong, nor that the left are where they want to be. ¶ But the analysis of the polls this week has been poor. ¶ Primarily, there’s…
It’s not often I get a column mostly written in my head, and then have to tear it up and throw it away. Surely that should be even less likely to happen with a memorial column: isn’t the subject the…
The now-or-never argument - that we must change the flag now, or be stuck with it for the rest of our lives - is plainly wrong. ¶ We will have to change the flag if we become a republic; and we…
The Taite Music Prize, with its mandate to judge solely on the "artistic merit, creativity, innovation and excellence" of the best New Zealand albums each year, with no heed paid to commercial success, has been a welcome addition to the…
John Key’s a political poker player, and in poker there’s an old maxim about projection. When people are stuck in weak position, they go out of their way to project strength. It's how you try to get out of a…
Children are empathic sponges. The environment they find themselves in, soaking up and feeling what those around them feel, unavoidably affects them. This is no truer than with anxiety, and now five years on from the beginning of the earthquakes…
I went tramping this past weekend. A quick overnight jaunt with a friend up an ill-frequented Tararua river valley. In a sunny summer weekend, we saw only four people in two days. ¶ We got lost a few times, shared a…
This week, Helen Kelly, who has metastatic lung cancer and is terminally ill, received a letter from the Ministry of Health to tell her that an application by her oncologist Anthony Falkov under Sections 20-22 of the Medicines Act to…