Posts by Russell Brown
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Southerly: Happy to Help (If I Can), in reply to Sacha,
you mean it has gone down since ?
In many cases, yes. It's a fucking bloodbath out there.
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Hard News: Music: The Passing of Vega, in reply to Grant McDougall,
Later, on the bus home, the penny dropped – it was the ex-bass player from Wellington punks Flesh D-Vice…
I recall in the late 80s that you could be assured f a solid NZ ex[at turnout to what to the rest of the world were pretty fringe acts.
The one that sticks in the mind is Pere Ubu's reunion show at the Town & Country. Bloody packed with New Zealanders. Including the woman who got up on her boyfriend's shoulders and flashed her boobs at David Thomas. Who responded, pricelessly:
"I'm not Jim Morrison."
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Speaker: Sprawled out, in reply to Moz,
The problem in this case really is that “the people”, specifically, those who vote in council elections, don’t want intensification.
That particular perspective isn’t universal in Auckland. Its loudest voices have come from a privileged class and been amplified by certain journalists.
But it is pretty amusing that that class – and in many cases the same people – are now tribally obliged to get behind their centre-right government enforcing change. I really think a few Auckland National party types want interviewing about whether they’ve changed their minds …
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Speaker: Sprawled out, in reply to Moz,
Yeah, problematic describes that paper pretty well. I find it amusing that first they complain about planners preventing people building what and where they want, then they flip that and talk about what people have been doing as an indicator of what they want to do. “very little intensification means people want sprawl” does not follow from “planners prevent intensification”, if anything the contrary would be true.
That's a great libertarian logic fail right there.
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Speaker: Sprawled out, in reply to Aotearoan,
We should get rid of the petty restrictions that stop people building on active volcanoes, I think.
I couldn’t agree with you less, Moz. Already the encroachment by housing onto the volcanic cones is too much.
Yes, people have built a fair way up several of the major cones – look at Mt Albert. I'm agreed that preserving parkland by the summit is really important. It's a small fraction of Auckland's land area and the public good in having the summits open outweighs the benefits making the land available for building.
I think viewshafts are a trickier question. In how big an area around the volcanoes do we want building heights limited?
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Southerly: Happy to Help (If I Can), in reply to David Haywood,
Oh, I’d kill to be in the same league as Ronald Hugh Morrieson. On the 30th anniversary of his death I cycled from Christchurch to Hawera (had to start before the actual anniversary, of course) and commemorated his genius by having a pint in every pub in town.
"We're taking this bloody bicycle to Hawera! Well, I am anyway ... "
I wrote a piece about it for the Listener in early 2003. They’ve yet to get back to me about the publication date (it was pending a decision by the editor last I heard) and I’m starting to wonder if they ever will.
On the off-chance they do get back, you can insist on the 2003 word-rate. Not a lot of people know that.
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Southerly: Happy to Help (If I Can), in reply to Emma Hart,
Um. Anyway. Best not bum anybody out.
It was kinda dark, but I think we can all move on.
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Hard News: Strange times with Starboy, in reply to Robyn Gallagher,
I think Bowden came across ok. He’s an eccentric – and he likes steampunk – so he’d have to majorly shut down his personality to come across as anything but a bit of a weirdo.
I found it a bit jarring in the context of the dodgy-looking drug factory. I do actually think he’s sincere about seeking a world with safer recreational drugs, but I don’t rate the conspiracy theory about why his businesses got into trouble.
And, pending evidence, I'm not convinced by the claims his synthetic cannabinoids weren't a problem but everyone else's were. I'd have been impressed if he'd walked away from that particular class of drugs.
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Just noticed this: some excellent corrective graffiti by Viv Albertine at a British punk rock exhibition that contrived to erase all the women of punk. Go Viv.
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Hard News: Obama's Mana, in reply to Joe Boden,
I think the recent primary has shown also that there were a lot of people becoming politically aware who were too young to remember what the Clintons were subjected to in the 90s
I just got a bit snippy with a local Bernie fan on Twitter for trying to play gotcha with someone who doubted the current Bernie-fan meme that Hillary was an unreliable come-lately on Citizens United.
Citizens United was of course a legal action by the group of the same name to try and have a Hillary attack documentary not considered as an election broadcast. Pretty sure she's been against that since it was a thing. And she has reiterated that opposition pretty firmly.
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