Posts by Rich of Observationz
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...how hard it is to fill half an hour of current affairs 5 days a week however many weeks a year we both do it, in a country our size
Well said. Maybe it would be an idea to do an hour a week of relevant stuff, rather than 2.5 hours of Justin Bieber. Also, it's a big world out there, interesting things happen, and modern technology makes it cheaper than ever to go and cover them (no need to transport half a tonne of satellite dish, for a start).
But we don't get much international coverage of anything beyond sport stories and John Key's <strike>holidays</strike> global diplomacy missions. I like the way RadioActive* now lead on international news and cover NZ after that.
* Wellington's leading student-focused alternative commercial radio station
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There’s no politics involved here
There's always politics.
Why doesn't National fund Solid Energy to keep the mine running for a few years to see if the market picks up? An ideological belief that the market is king and the state has no role in sustaining employment.
Why don't parties on the left necessarily want the mine kept going? A belief that we have to find sources of income that don't involve resource extraction and pollution. And don't pitch us head-to-head against countries that don't care about environmental or safety standards.
Why do National want to shut schools in Christchurch? A desire to peg back borrowing in a recession and help their core constituency of the asset rich. A desire to experiment with alternate school models that superserve a wealthy elite. A consequence of imposing a governance style and framework that cuts out local decision making in favour of "decisiveness" (and one that was wholeheartedly accepted by the media to the point that any opposition was interpreted as a callous disregard for earthquake victims).
Everything is political.
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Cracker: Weapons of Mass Production, in reply to Yamis,
See also Milton Keynes/Stevenage/Basingstoke (or Christchurch, for that matter).
I grew up partly in Basingstoke, and it's amazing how you can get from green fields to a really boring suburban wasteland with lots of roundabouts in the time it takes a kid to reach teenageness. Although all those building sites made for great play areas, in the days before high fences, alarms and watchmen.
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popular current affairs very frequently "sides with people against power"
Appearing to do so while actually doing the opposite is a key skill for establishment journalists like Holmes. Supporting someone who arguably diverted the revenues of a public school into their own pockets, for instance. Those revenues, which could have be used to better educate ordinary kids, instead went into the pocket of the wealthy and powerful management class.
Even the "look, a pony" stories (boy bands, overweight sheep, musical nostalgia) are part of the same agenda. Giving time to the latest contest for ugly proletards who can't sing keeps issues that affect peoples lives off the agenda.
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Cracker: Weapons of Mass Production, in reply to Russell Brown,
I hope they weren't implementing "Public Address Auctions"
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Graham: I see you've got another similar piece in the Dom Post today.
Well done, but shouldn't the subs have labelled it as satire? Also, they've left your name off it?
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I thought so at the time Key was claiming this source of confusion:
http://publicaddress.net/system/cafe/legal-beagle-kim-dotcom-questions-and-answers/?p=271044#post271044 -
Legal Beagle: Kim Dotcom and the GCSB, in reply to Jarno van der Linden,
That's possible.
But one could also imagine that GCSB were too tight to buy proper gear (like a Netquest or similar lossless monitoring device, fibre taps, etc).
Also, if Dotcom was paying for expensive corporate fibre service (as he was) even Telecom could have sorted out routing issues quite easily.
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Hard News: Irony Deficient, in reply to andin,
It was a social control thing. Earlier forms of pantheistic belief had a wide range of gods and idols a person could worship. This hindered social control, as if someone objected to the assertions of their priests that an activity was wrong and evil, they could go to another more accepting temple.
Insisting that everyone follow a single rigidly prescribed religion makes it easier to keep them in check. This was particularly attractive first to the Roman emperors whose empire was falling apart, and later to Arab leaders wanting to unite their people against surrounding groups.
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Legal Beagle: Kim Dotcom and the GCSB, in reply to Andre Alessi,
It looks a bit like "somebody" was intercepting Kim Dotcom's traffic without a warrant.
That could only happen either with telco collusion, or by cutting a fibre. I'd rather discount the latter. Alarms would have sounded, TDR would have been employed and the unauthorized gear would have been found. Especially since this appears to be a divert, not a passive optical tap.