Hard News: The Interesting Party
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Have I told you lately how amazing you are?
Aww, shucks.
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Many thanks Russell for a year of the best reading on line. Happy Christmas to you and yours. Ian & I wish a healthy, peaceful 2009 to you all.
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I'd like to criticize PA for taking up too damn much of my time. It's the only website I have to keep open (other than Gmail) and compulsively refresh (which prolly accounts for a fair few of those page views, sorry) just to stay abreast of the latest Ranapianism ;-)
It's also the only site that made me start my own blog.
Thanks, Russell and all the varied others who make up PAS. It's fun to be here.
Merry wotsit to you and a happy new thingummy
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This site is consistently the most interesting, provocative, funniest and informed take on local affairs. I don't always agree, but then, I don't expect nor need to. But it is essential daily reading.
Have a great summer and hope '09 is full of wonder for us all.
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The Word of the Year should be "Media7." Thanks for a great year of smart, funny, important stuff, in all your various media and from all your various people.
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PA became my new addiction this year, love the quality conversation, information, debate - I can't stand to read those other loathsome blogs, I don't like to be daily reminded how vile folks can be. But PA is the sort of connectivity and village community that really makes the best of the possibilities.
Thanks to all the bloggers who share their lives and poignant moments.I'm just heading off to Hawkes Bay, or, THE Hawkes Bay as Auckland proles like to call it, for family catch-up and looking up some old mates. Have a fine old time till next year, everyone....
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what I can do, what I've always done, right from 1983 when I worked at Rip It Up, is throw an interesting party. That's what this is.
I hate to think what the state of your carpet is after two years.
I love System enormously, and I'm so pleased that it's surpassed my most optimistic predictions. Even the Insanely Offended Emails are kind of sweet in their own way.
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The Word of the Year should be "Media7." Thanks for a great year of smart, funny, important stuff, in all your various media and from all your various people.
Actually Paul, I should have thought to thank you for being our number one audience member. We should just start cc-ing the call sheet to you.
Now, I was thinking of the perfect PA commission for you yesterday. I'd send you on an architectural and philosophical tour of the former Tourist Hotel Corporation hotels. You would meet interesting people, tell jokes and fit each stop on journey into a cultural and technical framework.
Unfortunately, there is no budget for such a project. Interest from sponsors is welcome.
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@Emma
I love System enormously, and I'm so pleased that it's surpassed my most optimistic predictions.
I was looking back at the launch day of System recently, and recalled your mild amazement that you'd actually registered a profile under your real name.
We outed you!
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Russell Brown wrote:
On the local front, we had eight visits from Piopio in January and the buggers never came back. I'd wager that David Haywood has somehow caused them offence.
I believe I might have implied that the Piopio public toilet's reputation for cleanliness was "exaggerated".
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Oh, and if you're after some radio, the always-interesting (and apparently ageless) Gordon Dryden is hosting five afternoon shows next week on Radio Live, from 2pm each day.
Gordon says the shows will embrace "hopefully a national debate on the future—with some more positive news than the Wall Street wankers."
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I'd like to make more of the best reader comments (I like the way Josh Marshall does it on TPM) on Public Address. In my big year there wasn't much time to think about enhancements to the site
If this means letting the comment-cream rise and matters of taxonomy, bring it on.
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Hope you, Fiona and the boys have a great refreshing (of the restoritive rather than browser sort) holiday Russell.
PA is like the Christmas gift you realise you wanted and you get all year... Thanks so much for all the work you put in to it and Media7.
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We outed you!
Well, that's never happened before. Okay, not unless I was playing Taboo.
My mother still thinks you're dodgy, btw.
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Still tying up loose ends, sometime PA sports-blogger Grant Robertson has his maiden speech up on YouTube:
It's a really nice speech with some dry humour and, at about the 12 min mark, a deeply welcome commitment to special education issues. I'm so glad to have someone like Grant in Parliament.
See also, Phil Twyford's maiden speech:
There is cause for optimism.
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My mother still thinks you're dodgy, btw.
It is possible she is correct.
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Gordon says the shows will embrace "hopefully a national debate on the future—with some more positive news than the Wall Street wankers."
Hmmm, potential slogans for 2009:-
"Public Address -- Fewer Wankers!"
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I'd like to second your love for Grant Robertson, not just because he came along to present at the TAWAs but also took my enthusiastic drunken hugging in the good spirit it was intended.
And yes, I'm still one-track-minded and only thinking of the Wellingtonista right now. But I would like to thank you Russell for all the support over the year, even if you tried to steal one of our writers, and I look forward to swimming at more Great Blends next year!
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Re Grant Robertson, also seconded. (I seem to be seconding everything Russell says lately.)
I was impressed by his performance at the Aro Valley meet the candidates, and consequently voted for him. I think he'll make a good representative. I'll remember to give him another drunken hug if I'm ever a bit boozed around him. The odds of that are fair.
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Have I told you lately how amazing you are?
Yes, but I'd still like more money. And while I'm sure it just slipped your mind (being the Merciless Ming of a multimedia empire does that), perhaps a little little credit to the nice chaps at the Downlow Concept who produce Public Address Radio: especially Glynis Bartlam who - through the wonders of modern technology -- makes the whole exercise sound much more together than it really is.
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Thanks for another great year, RB.
Next year is going to be a very interesting time in NZ, in good and bad ways, and PA will be a place where much thought-provoking and informed discussion will happen. The prevailing culture here - a non-parochial pride in NZ and a fundamental optimism for its future - will be a much needed tonic from all the griping.
And when we do get down to the griping...for me, I guess it's going to be somehow much more satisfying slagging off a Government than the Opposition for a change.
To everyone, get out, get some sun, and consume some of that great music doing the rounds these holidays!
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Thank you Russell for your lovely thankyness. And I would like to say thankyou to you for providing an oasis of sanity on an otherwise mad, mad planet. I find myself drawn to the more personal blogs of all your contributors - so I would like to thank them . I wanted to say thank you to all of you for writing so well, and sometimes so personally about your lives, and beliefs, and experiences. Some things we have in commmon, some things I have never thought of, and some experiences I will likely never have, and it makes my world, for one, a richer place. And thank you to the regular posters - my PA Womens' XV especially. We have engaged in some lively discussions, haven't we? My warmest wishes to you all at this lovely, sometimes difficult, time of year.
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Thanks for those speeches Russell. As one of those parents that Grant Robertson alluded to, I was touched and impressed by his comments about how we fail special-needs children. I wish he was in a position to do something significant about it. Unfortunately, as Hilary Stace has said here and in the paper on Sunday -- great letter if you're reading, Hilary -- the education amendments are going to have the opposite effect, penalising the parents of kids who find school stressful or difficult.
And Phil's speech -- I'm sure he appreciated the ironies of being someone of Key's generation who remembers exactly what it was like to be politicised by the anti-Apartheid years.
I also think PAS has been really great this year. My "blogosphere" resolution for 09: no more reading the comments on Kiwiblog ...
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My "blogosphere" resolution for 09: no more reading the comments on Kiwiblog ...
I gave up reading right-wing blogs two Matarikis ago - it helps keep the blood pressure down, I tell you.
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It's a really nice speech with some dry humour and, at about the 12 min mark, a deeply welcome commitment to special education issues. I'm so glad to have someone like Grant in Parliament.
I remember that march where he was called NZ's #1 terrorist! Ironically, in the activist circles involved, he was about as 'moderate' as it got.
Grant will be a minister in the next government, and it should be something in Education. That will definitely be a good thing. After a few years he'll be pretty effective during debates in the house too, I can imagine a few members of the National Party taking body blows from him before this term is up. He's young and I hope we see him have a stranglehold over that seat, he will serve it well.
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