Hard News: I'm a Pakeha and you can stick your war
62 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 2 3 Newer→ Last
-
The problem with journalism in NZ, IMHO, is the prevalence of the “Look at me, look at me, look at meeeee” factor.
Eh, but Laws is only a journalist in the most literal "writes for a journal" sense.
I never thought I would miss Frank Haden, but I do. At least he had a decent prose style, a Johnsonian sympathy for the poor, and the ability to write a piece that wasn't wholly composed of non sequiturs glued together with insult.
-
I don't see why -- I know some thoroughly appalling people whose deep love for their families are their sole redeeming feature. Otherwise, still triple-decker turd burgers.
Oh, I know exactly what you mean. I guess I was just musing that sometimes a change in personal circumstances can change one's political outlook. Y'know, like the old saw about how "a liberal is a conservative who hasn't been mugged yet," and every libertarian is one car accident away from being a social democrat, and some of the staunchest members of PFLAG were once raving homophobes, and so on. It can happen.
-
I thought it was one word, "mascara"?
hmmm... probably a my bad there.
regardless, laws will always be a mustachio'ed, be-mulleted, en-made-up 90s celebrity in my eyes.
and yes, that is celebrity in a pejorative sense.
-
regardless, laws will always be a mustachio'ed, be-mulleted, en-made-up 90s celebrity in my eyes.
I'm not 100% sure on the details of the maquillage, but it's been the same since the late 1980s. Definitely a candidate for a makeunder, in that case.
-
I'm not 100% sure on the details of the maquillage
heh. clearly remember seeing him on tv and thinking at the time (and you're right, the late 80s), "most probably a cock."
-
The 'broken windows' thing works for graffiti. At least in toilets.
This is one reason I'm not entirely convinced that 'zero tolerance' and 'broken windows' should be dismissed out of hand. I'm not very familiar with the reasearch, but the conclusion seems to be 'not proven to work in isolation from anything else', rather than 'doesn't work at all'.
At the risk of sounding like a law-and-order politician, it does seem to make sense that an area which doesn't look totally post-apocalyptic would be more likely to attract small businesses, first-time buyers looking for something in their price range, etc. And that these invested residents would be more likely to self-police an area, call the cops, and so on. Which in turn would create a positive feedback loop (more businesses and residents).
I'm more shocked that no editor had the good sense and decency to yank it out.
Russell, I'm a pom whose been living over here for about six years. When I first arrived, I was frequently left slack-jawed with amazement at what subject matter was considered within reasonable boundaries for advertising, media commentary, and so on.
One of the first adverts I saw here showed a 'Hiroshima' bomb dropping and a voice-over saying something like: 'Lost your job? Think it was unfair dismissal? Give us a call!'
Call me old-fashioned, but the instant annihilation of several hundred thousand people does not seem to me to be a legitimate equivalent, and 'bad taste' seems to be understating the case somewhat.
And a couple of weeks ago, TV3 ran a puff-piece about the MTV party plane flying off to Sydney. Their background footage to help illustrate this story included footage of one of the 9/11 planes flying into the tower.
Is it just me, or is this so far beyond the boundaries of anything even approaching acceptable that the line is actually somewhere over the horizon?
The footage was still on their website a week ago, if anyone wants to search for it. At least one formal complaint has been lodged, and I would be delighted if anyone wanted to submit some more.
However, given that TV3 are labouring under the misapprehension that Lars's balder, more smug and self-satisfied older brother and his real girl make a great pair of hosts for their morning programme, I'm not going to hold by breath on anything coming of it.
I'm not saying that the UK is squeaky-clean, but there is certain subject matter that is simply off-limits in the UK industry, full stop end of story. And its generally off-limits for good reasons.
-
This is one reason I'm not entirely convinced that 'zero tolerance' and 'broken windows' should be dismissed out of hand. I'm not very familiar with the reasearch, but the conclusion seems to be 'not proven to work in isolation from anything else', rather than 'doesn't work at all'.
Hmmm. Toilets are a nice 'contained' environment, that can be engineered to be relatively graffiti resistant. Ergo, it's very easy to run an efficient broken windows policy, relative to say a whole city. An interesting thought might be that 'graffiti boards', deliberately easy to write on surfaces in an otherwise hostile environment 'collect' graffiti and save the other surfaces. Perhaps councils could build nice walls explicitly for tagging?
There are so many good bits of research on this from the 70s, but there was one case where the researchers dressed up as plumbers, and inspected each cubicle post visit in order to see if any graffiti had been added. They also managed to surreptitiously note characteristics of the offenders. I'm not sure how easy it would be to get this past an ethics committee now.
Historically, women's toilets were relatively free of graffiti, and a mint 60s paper argued that this was because men graffitied for 'phallic expression', and that smoking while in the loo served the same purpose for women. Umm, yeah. Parts of the Kinsey Reports also deal with toilet graffiti as an insight into sexual behaviour.
-
This broken windows thing is a broken record.
Norman Kirk & "Take the Bikes off Bikies" anyone?
And Giedeon Tait "Never Back Down".
http://www.laworderreferendum.org.nz/Tait.htm
Moral panics about graffiti, but not about middle-aged-white-men with knives.
From Stats NZ
Violence is my age group 30-39
Boy Racers are the over 40s
http://wdmzpub01.stats.govt.nz/wds/TableViewer/tableView.aspx
-
tell you what, i'd like to know who's going to tidy up this graffiti.
i can see some condescending cow out there now, "ahmed, i tolja once, i tolja a hundred times... no heiroglyphs on the ancestor's tombs..."
-
Shep. Your second link is broken.
-
Bugga, sorry - I don't have time to do it again.
Just looked at stats for violence & traffic on age/gender basis & 30-somethings lead in the punch up stakes and over 40's are far ahead on trasffic crimes.
-
Tom Scotts Cartoon is well worth a giggle.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/0a17218.html
I wonder if the first offence isn't the concrete block walls of Fortress Fendalton & suburban tagging a fair response to the social/civil statement these walls make?
Post your response…
This topic is closed.