Posts by Rich Lock
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God damn! I didn't think to type "jockey cap"
We are sorry, but this product is not available at this time
"houndstooth+mod+cap" seems to bring up some close results.
Or 'houndstooth+jockey+cap'.
Shouldn't be too hard to find them. Ebay has a couple of 'close but no cigar' listings, like this and this.
I'll let Danielle off. I do her this favour, maybe she do me a favour sometime....an offer she can't refuse...
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Hard News: It Began ... in Chicago, in reply to Danielle,
I will give anyone here one thousand dollars if they can find me that hat
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Up Front: Where You From?, in reply to Tom Beard,
Do alternate realities count?
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If Labour lose, Ben, it's your fault.
Do you want that on your conscience? Do you? DO YOU?!
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Up Front: Where You From?, in reply to James Butler,
my accent is often mistaken - by NZers and otherwise - for English, or perhaps South African. Perhaps that's another reason for being "from" Wellington - when asked where I'm from (or more insidiously, where I'm originally from), it's easier to reply "Wellington" than get all defensive.
When asked where I'm from, I normally reply (in my best public school queens english) 'Auckland'. Normally kills the conversation stone dead for a second or ten while they try to work out a polite way of framing their next, obvious, question.
My wife, (who is also English) generally does it in a cut-glass home counties accent, which is even more effective at causing a taken-aback, mouth-flappy face.
I'd love it if people asked "where are you going to?" rather than "where are you from?", since someone's future seems much more important to me than their past. But it's hard to ask that without sounding like a new-ager or some sort of NLP creep, and besides, it's part of my own sense of self that I don't know where I'm going to.
It's not where you're from, man, it's where you're at.
Groovy.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Now Axe the Tax may very well be a pragmatic and perfectly appropriate response to our media environment. In the middle of the first term in opposition you come up with a catchy slogan and a red bus and travel the country hoping to remind people that you exist, knowing that you can do little to differentiate yourself or get people to listen to actual policy. People who follow politics are going to hate it: because they remember it was you who introduced GST in the first place, and because they have worked out you have no intention of actually axing the tax. But it still positions you against raises in consumer taxation in the public mind.
OK, but this raises a slightly different issue: the implication is that Labour have effectively resigned themselves to at least two terms in opposition. That's probably entirely likely, but it does tend to create a mindset where they may spend the first term coasting, rather than fighting tooth and nail for every inch of ground.
That doesn't do much to galvanise the base, or to kick-start the internal reorganisation that might be necessary.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Not really. You presented these as alternatives:
what is the best way to proceed?
1) Continue to sit around and bitch about how biased the media is.
2) Actually work up a strategy for dealing with it and getting the message out there in clear and simple terms.
They are patently not. And 'the Left', as you so generically put it, most certainly needs to continue to agitate for better media (including: more public service oriented news and current affairs programmes a-la TVNZ7), and get its message out there in clear and simple terms through the media that we have.Yes, you're right - what I wrote is not quite what I meant, which will teach me to type in haste and repent at leisure.
I don't think the Labour strategists are sitting around doing nothing but complain. But whatever it is they are doing, it isn't working, and they don't seem to be able to come up with something else that might not be utterly laughable a la 'axe the tax.
'the Left', as you so generically put it
Again, couldn't think of an appropriate collective noun for 'not National, ACT et al' in a hurry, and didn't want to start using 'us', 'you', them'. Got any good suggestions?
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to giovanni tiso,
What you don't seem to grasp is that complaining of media bias and operating with the media that we have aren't mutually exclusive. Nobody, and I mean nobody, has said the media is biased, let's sit on our hands. Least of all Labour's strategists and comms people. You seem to think that media analysis leads to inaction. Somehow.
A slightly incorrect reading of my position. To clarify: I don't think they're sitting around doing nothing, I think they're doing a really, really piss-poor job of dealing with a known and entirely predictable problem. And they don't seem to have the imagination to come up with an alternative or parallel strategy.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to giovanni tiso,
I find these lucid and impassioned refutations of arguments that absolutely no-one has put forward to be utterly engrossing.
You mean, apart from the several people on this thread who have done exactly that, including, amusingly enough, right after my post. Plus the extensive discussion, right here, of Clare Curran's 'Standard' post (which admittedly I haven't read)
Can we have more please?
I'll do you a bulk discout, plus 10% off if you pay cash - no need for the taxman to know, eh? Where would you like it delivered?
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
It’s all very well being in denial about media bias, but in NZ we have a daily newspaper monopoly in each city, with the only newspaper you can buy following a clear right-wing agenda.
Most of the time, this isn’t explicit in the Fox News / Daily Telegraph style (except during the last election, when the Herald in particular became a 25 page National party handout).If 'The Left' continues to sit around and bitch about media bias, what is likely to be the result?
1) NZ media suddenly goes 'oh my gosh, you're entirely right. Here, let's run a few more fair and balanced in-depth stories about policies and shit'.
2) NZ media continues, for the next six months, and several decades thereafter, to run biased stories, with a generous side helping of what F-list celebs are up to, whilst sniggering and pointing at the lefties, and occasionally making rude gestures.
If, as I do, you consider 2) to be more likely, what is the best way to proceed?
1) Continue to sit around and bitch about how biased the media is.
2) Actually work up a strategy for dealing with it and getting the message out there in clear and simple terms.
I don't know what that strategy might be, but then again I'm not a highly paid adviser for the Labour party. Frankly, some serious arse needs to be kicked in the strategic communication dept.
Complaining about media bais is about as useful as complaining about gravity, or rain. We need to deal with the facts of life as they are, rather than how we think they should be.