Posts by Ben Austin
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Hard News: Friday Music: Virtual…, in reply to Russell Brown,
The beer is really easily available now in London, many pubs now will have it on tap, which is probably due to SAB Miller's influence.
Speaking of beer, I saw a long form advertisement for beer the other day, in the gym, from the Beer Alliance, which seems to be keen to convince Londoners that beer is the right drink for all kinds of meals or social situations. Including when eating tripe.
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Hard News: TVNZ: Emptied out, in reply to Myles Thomas,
You misunderstand my point, I think most people (myself included) here support a proper public broadcaster, but that is not what we have.
My confusion was more as to why the government hasn't decided to sell their stake in the broadcaster, given it has been fully commercial for sometime, when it has sold other state owned assets.
I do like the theory that people have loyalty to TV1, that makes some sense.
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I haven't really understood why TVNZ has not been put up for sale yet. We've had several rounds of sales and it never seems to be seriously discussed, despite clear expectation that it should be commercial.
If it is all about ideology, why does a state broadcaster get a pass? I would have though on the grounds of privatisation and general dislike of public broadcasters it would have been hocked off a long time ago.
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Because National is the party formed out of the Reform/Liberal (United) parties? Sure, that makes historical sense. Although trying to identify which parts of which party remained/remain in the final product 70-80 years on is a bit of a hassle.
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Hard News: The Hager saga continues, in reply to Kumara Republic,
It really does, doesn't it.
Although a Brietbart operation would be a vanity project in NZ, as I would suspect the revenue model would not support a for profit business. Not if it needs to sustain the level of staff/contractors they seem to be advertising for.
If we assume say, one person per role (seems like it would be more), what level of advertising revenue would they need in order to justify 17 full or part time staff? I'd assume rather a lot.
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Speaking of Wishart, what has he been up to of late?
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Legal Beagle: Terrorism is already illegal, in reply to BenWilson,
Nah, I think it was a coded message that National plans to renew the auld alliance with the gangs, Rob's Mob is back
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That dairy industry story is very interesting, thanks!
I had a bit of a look around and found a Q&A that the American government agency which sold the butter produced at the time, as you could imagine a lot of people in the US were highly annoyed at what was happening!
http://digitalcollections.library.cmu.edu/awweb/awarchive?type=file&item=571128http://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/07/business/new-zealand-s-plan-reprocess-us-butter.html
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Speaking as someone who has been overseas for all of Key's rule I find it rather hard to assess both his popularity and Cunliffe's lack of popularity. Both seem to be intangible and I assume make more sense if one is in country and interacting with locals.
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Speaker: Compulsory voting and election turnout, in reply to David Haywood,
I'm not sure if I appreciate that there is much of a distinction between compulsory registration and compulsory voting on your model (as opposed to you must vote for someone). If we are all ok with the former, then we should be ok with your scheme too I'd have thought.