Posts by Andre
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I've also got to wonder how much of the (IMO) blatantly deceptive election ads run in Australia would get past the Broadcasting and Advertising Standards Authorities here
Unfortunately our organisations policing advertising laws are actually very weak in my experience and love to water down their decisions if at all possible. They are really into self-regulation so if there is any way to get the complainant to back down they will take it. We had an opponent lying in their ads to compete with us and it took almost 3 years and 3 different authorities to get them to desist.
Our political parties might not be allowed to run ads predicting what their opposition are going to do if they take power but if they did then Asset Sales would be top of the agenda if I was writing Labour's ads here. In fact the whole Time Warp concept works. -
I look forward to meeting you again Jackie and all the best of luck with the diagnosis.
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I can confirm that we'll have at least one Skyview there! Yay!
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We could set up a Skyview with a twitter feed... apparently Quentin from Pead PR was discussing it with Orcon earlier in the year so we'll see...
http://www.facebook.com/people/Skyview-Floating-Av/100001030365328?ref=search -
I really enjoyed "The Circuit" on Maori TV and its replacement "East West 101" is way cool too.
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I'm currently fighting my way through tender documents for the fan zones and it's been fun talking with councils up and down the country gearing up for the RWC. There are literally hundreds of kiwis working on it already and thousands more when you count suppliers. It'll be a huge nationwide party and "party central" is really a distraction. I wish they all requested their information in similar formats though - we're talking various 100-page documents all asking the same questions in a different fashion. Bureaucracy gone mad!
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Imagine if Prast had been caught. Jailing drug addicts seems extremely dumb especially after Denmark chopped its prisoner numbers by a whopping 65% with no corresponding rise in the crime rate: http://penal-system.suite101.com/article.cfm/denmarks_prison_system
When it gets to the point that the Herald editorial is joining in the debate against Judith 'Hang em High" Collins plans to jail more and more kiwis then maybe we're getting somewhere towards sanity:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/government/news/article.cfm?c_id=49&objectid=10658577
Can you imagine what jailing Simon Prast for P use would have achieved for society for example? Would he have come out a "better" citizen? When is a politician going to have the nouse to campaign against us having the 2nd highest prison population in the world per capita?
It's a lot harder building programmes to rehabilitate people than it is to chuck them in prison so we're taking a lazy way out. Prison should be kept for serious and recalcitrant offenders so that we're not just further ruining young lives. Collin's $1.2 billion profit claim makes me feel ill. -
After being selected as Metro magazine's Auckland Man of the Year 2003 Prast was looking for an even bigger high... and with a law degree under his belt he was taking an informed risk apparently.
His admission of p-smoking had to be dragged out of him and you wonder how many other people he lied to about his use while he was hooked. It's a shame because he does actually have a fair management record from helping to set up and then running Auckland Theatre Company and AK03.
The funniest thing was the former head of the territorials and UN peacekeeping in Israel, Tenby Powell, putting his hat in the ring on behalf of right-wingers worried about Bank's growing unpopularity and the Herald mentioning that he is Sharon Hunter's husband (now running the companies her PC direct fortune bought) but not his military accomplishments. Hilarious. A bit like Willie Apiata running for Mayor and the Herald referring to him as a pig-hunting farmer. It almost had "glowing follow-up ten-page feature article planned (endorsing Tenby and his celebrity wife)" written all over it. All pictures of Tenby brandishing a p-pipe will be most welcome.
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It seems that many think that the NZFC should focus on helping young talent emerge when in reality they are tasked by the government to foster a profitable export industry. This is their brief: "Parliament gave the new agency broad, permissive functions, charging it ‘to encourage and also to participate and assist in the making, promotion, distribution and exhibition of films’. The Commission was also charged with promoting cohesion within the New Zealand film industry’, ‘the proper maintenance of films in archives’, and ‘the study and appreciation of films and film making’. They need to pick winners as well as potential winners but in an industry this small this is always going to be a political minefield abounding with critics. Maybe the government should just widen their brief to specifically include fostering young talent. Either way the organisation seems to have done a very good job creating a profitable industry that employs many kiwis (almost based on the success of The Lord of the Rings alone). The problem is that "‘We need to encourage the younger crowd coming though. They’re not talking to the Film Commission. They feel they can’t.’ The Film Commission's brief doesn't require them to encourage young filmmakers, just to fund them if they can potentially turn a profit.
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We need a Jaime Lerner. If he stood for Mayor on those platforms here you wonder how far he'd get fighting the multi-nationals who control our waste management services and roading firms and their political supporters though.
The closest we've come to a local politician with great vision is Tim Shadbolt in recent memory I reckon.