Posts by Dave Patrick
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I was at an event last night where the Prime Minister spoke - he was supposed to have 3 minutes. His first 3 minutes was filled with making jokes about the speed with which Australia replaces Prime Ministers, and how he'd visited the sheep in Saudi Arabia and they were fine and had flown first class (unlike him), and some facile tale about multiple marriages and how the Saudi prince he was with would be allowed 4 wives but his first wife wouldn't let him (I don't know, other people seemed to find the speech funny, maybe I'm just a humourless left-wing nanny-state wowser).
He then said he was going to exceed his time and talk about something important - so he spent the next 5 minutes on a rambling justification for changing the flag to a silver fern. People wave it at sports events, it's on the gravestones of soldiers overseas, people will be excited about it and want to own it (with an aside about how New Zealanders are patriotic but don't show it, but if we had a nice new flag with a fern on it, then everyone would want to wave one all the time). This was after he insulted the half of the audience who wanted to keep the existing flag by calling them not as bright as the ones who wanted to change. it was cringeworthy.....
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Hard News: Not yet standing upright, in reply to Stephen R,
My issue with it was that I’d feel a bit mean stealing it off the Tino Rangatiratanga people unless someone asked nicely first, and I couldn’t see them going for that if the issues around shared governance et al weren’t resolved first.
It is a really nice flag though.
This.
bleak clipart
And this.
This was my favourite from the long list, but even then the koru is on the wrong side to hang nicely on a flagpole - you would have thought that woudl be one of the prerequisites to think about when designing a flag.....
I honestly thought at the beginning of this process that we might get an evocative representation of who we are and where we are as a new flag, but the process has just made me more disillusioned as it went on.
The whole thing seems to have been set up to fail – overt support for one option from John Key from day one, a huge expense to turn more people off, a panel of “distinguished” New Zealanders, half of whom I hadn’t heard of, the long list being a selection of variations on two or three themes, and then the blandest of the bland being chosen as the final four. Shit.
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Speaker: Protesting private prisons, in reply to Russell Brown,
Just got around to watching this. It says:
1. These deaths, injuries and apparent attempts to defraud are a good thing, because they give the private system a chance to demonstrate its superior accountability.
That's what I can't get my head around - is he seriously taking the position he seems to espouse, or has he disappeared into his own bizarro world and been replaced by Jeremy Wells' "Mike Says" persona full-time? Or is it just part of his activities as an unpaid shill for the National Party?
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Mike Hosking has been thinking hard about this issue - it's actually a sign that private sector accountability is working
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Hard News: Friday Music: What Alltracks…, in reply to Russell Brown,
Good constructive blog critique of Alltracks
Yep, I agree with him on the Metal and Rock chart - mind you, it's about the standard I expected when I saw who curated it.....
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Hard News: How about that cricket, eh?, in reply to simon g,
If John Key heads off to the MCG (“What by-election?”) I will want them to win 90%.
If he turns up on the telly at the game, 80%.
If he turns up in the dressing room, 60%.
If he wears one of those silly shirts and catches the ball … COME ON Australia!
If he gets in to another awkward 3-way handshake on the winner's podium like he did at the Rugby World Cup final, can we just revoke his passport and leave him in Melbourne?
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I bought this record today, from a band I'd never heard of before who recorded it in Whanganui - https://greenfog.bandcamp.com/album/bruce-farm
It's a big slab of loud droney guitar, in a similar vein to Black Boned Angel but with more notes, and it's quite wonderful.
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With 10 overs to go I was quietly confident.
With 5 overs to go I was resigned to losing in the semifinals for a 7th time.
For the last two overs I was on the edge of my seat, not even wanting to talk.
That has to be the best game of cricket I've seen in a long, long time.
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I've heard Key's "Hager's last allegations were categorically disproven" sound bite about 3 times across different media now, and not once have I heard a journalist ask him which allegations were the ones that were categorically disproven. He gets a free ride that allows him to set the agenda.
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I can attest to Robin Lambert's skill as a salesman in Sounds Unlimited - I would walk in, he'd recognise me, suggest 2 or 3 new arrivals to listen to, and I would inevitably leave with what I'd been intending to buy AND the 2 or 3 he'd played for me. I was only ever a weekly visitor, but he still knew who I was when I went in there - it was almost like having your own personal record buyer.