Posts by simon g
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Hey, it turns out I can emulate Phelps.
From the BBC:
"I have been eating a lot of pasta and pizza, a lot of carbs. I have been eating and sleeping as much as I can."
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they'll both have acheieved their aim.
Who cares about them? The medal table is for us and our blobby butts, so we don't have to ring Murray Deaker and moan that we're below Uzbekistan because our kids have been captured by politically correct teachers who don't keep the score.
It's a stupid problem so it needs a stupid solution. This used to be boycotts (we were a Great Sporting Nation in 1984), but now we have to be more creative. Getting rugby in is just the start.
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Darren Liddell won 3 Commonwealth golds in KL, thanks to the generous double (triple) dipping rules. With that, NZ zoomed up the medal table, was no longer a Nation In Decline, and Jenny Shipley was saved.*
*until France. -
How NZ can match Phelps (and Spitz, and Biondi ...):
Olympic Rowing Events:
2000m: Waddell & Drysdale (same boat), Waddell & Drysdale (relay boats), Waddell, Drysdale.
1500m: Waddell & Drysdale (same boat), Waddell & Drysdale (relay boats), Waddell, Drysdale.
1000m: Waddell & (you get the picture)Repeat for women
Repeat for mixed
Repeat, but facing a different wayI mean, these swimmers are great, but that's what the medal haul really comes down to: opportunities, arbitrarily decided. Why do (e.g.) windsurfers spend over a week and many races getting just one? Why can't they race six times over six distances for six golds?
Put me on the IOC, I'll sort it out.
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More news on Gate-crash-gate - and I'm claiming that one, all you thieving journos who read Public Address ;)
NZPA reports:
Wellington City Council has given the National Party surveillance camera footage which might help it identify the infiltrator who secretly taped conversations with MPs at a cocktail party last Friday night.
There were no cameras inside the room where the party was held but there was cover of a staircase leading to it, council spokesman Richard MacLean told NZPA.
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The MPs are furious about the covert recordings and had hoped security cameras would show the conversations taking place.
Those hopes were dashed when they were told last night there was no cover of the party, but now they have tapes which might reveal who went into it.
"The reality is the footage isn't that great," a spokesman for party leader John Key said.
"You're talking hundreds of people and it will be a case of us working our way through it quietly and methodically, looking for people we know and people we don't.
"Whether we come up with something is anyone's guess. It's not going to be a quick process."
The conference was held in the Town Hall and the cocktail party in the adjacent Michael Fowler Centre.
The council was at first reluctant to hand the tapes over, saying it usually only gave them to the police.
But its legal advice was that as National had hired the venue for the party, it had the right to control access to it and could have the tapes.
I wonder how many party workers will be giving up their weekends for this? Wouldn't it be easier to introduce Duncan Garner to water-boarding?
And what about that poor couple who were getting it on in the stairwell ...
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The National Party's bid to find out who secretly taped conversations with its MPs was dealt a blow when it was told there was no security camera footage of the cocktail party in the Town Hall.
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National tonight released a letter from the council's chief executive, Garry Poole, who said: "I can advise that no security camera footage of the cocktail function exists."A party spokesman said it was considering what to do next.
Let the conspiracy theories flourish!
(mine: footage erased by Nats. Well, think about it - would you want people watching you get all pissed and inappropriate? Could be far worse than the audio clips ...)
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Those rubbish pictures are a disgrace.
They are incontrovertible evidence that the National Party does not recycle (exception: their candidates). Several items on the grass belong in the blue bins. John Key needs to clear up this mess and sort it out.
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Taping is wrong without prior knowledge
Well, yes. It fails the simple test: "do you want it done to you?".
But if you do it, and write the story, and the story gets public acclaim and something wrong is exposed and justice is (alas, only partially) served, then you get a Qantas Media Award (see Philip Kitchin, Louise Nicholas, and the cop Dewar).
When is a spy an investigative journalist? We can toss it around but I think we'll end up at the familiar place: ends, means. Not nice, but then Utopia is still a work in progress.
I wish bad things only got reported in good ways. I wish everybody burst into truth as soon as they saw a microphone. But until they do, we have a choice of evils, and you choose the lesser one. Which one it is, is up to you. Is anybody insisting on absolutes (see example above)?
So it's worth repeating: this "secret" was about public policy, not personal lives. And it was a cocktail party, not the SIS.
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Well, John Key on Radio Live, developing his "dirty tactics" theme, has just made the allegation that Nicky Hager "broke into" the e-mail system. And this morning he said that Helen Clark got him to do it (NZ Herald).
Personally I find this constant smearing of Hager a lot more "dirty" than anything that's come out of the Nats' cocktail party.
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Spying on people, Craig?
Bugging a caucus meeting - most definitely. Unethical, presumably (not a lawyer etc) illegal.
Turning up at a cocktail party with a cellphone (or whatever it is) in your pocket? The cocktail party where Winston admits he knew about Owen Glenn's donation, for example?
I wouldn't destroy that tape, and nor would you.