Posts by Matthew Littlewood
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And I do suspect that, even given the qualms about its cost now, Dunedinites will find plenty of uses for a stadium with a roof.
Yeah, I can't deny that side appeals. I'm not against the stadium somuch as slightly disappointed in the council firstly, showing a lack of foresight in what it could have been, and secondly, the arrogance of how it was pushed through.
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Oops, that was rather long, wasn't it? Bloody parochial former Dunedinites, always think they're the centre of everything ;)
On another note:We're focused on the Auckland debate in the media in this week's Media7. The panel includes Simon Wilson, author of the pro-Supercity cover story in the current Metro ("Why Rodney Hide has got it right. Really") and Chris Trotter, who delivered a broadside against that story in The Independent.
Also, Hamish Keith, who has established a typically forthright blog as a home for his ideas -- he favours a unitary authority, but with a different configuration to the plan offered by the government -- and Rod Oram.
In the second part of the show, we'll be marking the 25th anniversary of the 1984 snap election, which permanently changed the direction of the country. The panel for that is Marilyn Waring (yes!), Richard Long and Richard Harman.
But here's the thing: because of a longstanding booking at The Classic, tomorrow's recording will be very early: 2pm. So we'd need you there by 1.30pm and have you out before 3pm. The bar will be open, should your nerves need steadying.
Don't mean to suck up, but damn, that sounds like a great show. Y'know, one of these days I might actually be up in Auckland to be in the audience.
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I think you'll find most of us in Dunedin who oppose the local stadium are not really against actually having a stadium (after all we already have one, did you see the game on Saturday? it was sold out, the new one will be a little smaller) - what we are against is PAYING so much for a second one - and having only 50,000 ratepayers pony up $200-400M for it - depending on overruns, 10% already in 2 months, and financing costs and whatever it's going to cost to reroute SH88
That was one issue, but for me, over and above the ratepayer issue is that in many ways, it's an opportunity lost.
The Stadium could have been, with a little more imagination and foresight, a proper "multi-purpose venue", if they incorporated other elements- wouldn't it be great to have something (as was the original intention) that could double as a facility for the Pys-Ed Students and be adjacent to an indoor stadium?
Wouldn't it be great, somehow, to have a stadium that's of a size and shape that means it's not merely limited to rugby?
I say this as a diehard Otago Supporter who spent far too many school weekends on the terraces with his dad, and then quite a few once University began, and say a stupid number of cricket internationals there.
But Carisbrook is, once you take away the romance away from it- an ugly, ugly ground that relies so much on its "atmosphere", because if you look at it objectively, it's a rickety windtunnel.
So, in that sense, the basic concept- a covered stadium- is at least a step in the right direction. But the initial promise- and I distinctly remember interviewing Malcom Farry about it back in the day- was much grander and more appealing. I guess it came down to the dual issues of cost and location, and the small matter of lack of private funding. But if all we're getting is a new, nicer looking Carisbrook in an admittedly nicer location, then it seems an awful lot of money to pay.
I want the new stadium to be a success, I really do. But I can't help but wonder what might have been.
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I've bust all day so I haven't had a chance to say how much I love this piece. But now I do, so I will.
I love this piece so much, Mr Slack. In fact, it reminds me of something someone else * wrote a couple of years back. I believe you helped him out.
But seriously, as you say, Key's problem as a leader seems to be, at the moment at least, his rudderlessness. Maybe that will change, but at the moment, things are going very askew because of his inability to nail things down to the mast.
*(And yes, may god stone me a thousand times for doing what I did there)
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No, this is just journalists having the same trouble with their script as the politicians with their diction - ethnic affairs has only passing relation to ethics, or is it versa vice?
The way Worth has been performing recently, you wouldn't bank on him being able to tell the difference.
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Breaking news: Worth speaks out and the gory details come out.
He offered her a job as an ethics advisor.
You couldn't script it better, could you?
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And ... The Listener. Having forced myself to wade through most of the interview with George Friedman, I cannot see why he and his book would have deserved even a single-paragraph review, let alone been stuck on the bloody cover of the magazine this week.
Terence O'Brien had it right: Friedman is an irrelevant cold warrior preaching to the choir. His advice for us little New Zealanders was as patronising as his grasp on global economics is slender. It was just embarrassing, both in terms of the rhetoric and the editorial decision to make it a cover story.
Absolutely- what next a profile piece by a representative of the Cato Institute? Actually, Terence O'Brien's rebuttal was so sharp as to make me wonder whether the Listener should employ him as a commentator.
Wilson is essentially phrasing arguments about Auckland -- you don't have to agree with him, but you won't be left in any doubt about what his point is and why he's making it. (This month, why a Supercity is really a good idea; last month, Auckland's sleepwalk to the Rugby World Cup.)
I thought his Super City piece was way too pollyanish for comfort, but yes, it was well put-together, and browsing through the issue at the cafe, it seemed to have some good subsidary stuff in it.
Re: Outrageous Fortune: yeah, good opener. But in recent seasons, I've had a slight problem with the way the show's pitched- can't put my finger on it precisely, but there are times when it seems to heavy and leaden, it's always at its most convincing during the more frivilous moments, especially those which involve Van and Munter and the grandfather, who are the show's heart.
That said, I can't deny that one of the reasons the show works is that it manages to juggle a whole lot of contradictory tones and styles, though.
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So much for Holmes' 10/10.
<quote>Yeah, but he gives Paula Bennet 8/10, so I guess it's all relative, really.
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Even putting aside all the other stuff, Slater’s not really made for TV, is he?
Just summoned the ungodly urge inside me to watch the clip online. And you're absolutely right. What's really striking about Slater is that for a supposed "activist" or "expert commentator" with his "finger on the pulse", he clearly knows nothing about the actual political process, beyond the vaguest framework.
I mean, if you were actually able to unpack his sentences he pretty much admitted he had no inside knowledge of what was going on at all. Which begs the question- if they really wanted a "right-wing" blogger, why didn't they just go for Farrar?
And I loved Colin Espiner’s comment on the question of whether Worth would leave parliament gracefully: “Well, he does have a high sense of self-entitlement”.
So did I, but more than that, the difference in ability, intelligence, likeability and general nous between Slater and Espiner was so obvious as to suggest the pair genuinely live on different planets. Which I suppose they do in a sense- Espiner, for one, actually seems to understand how the game works. More to the point, the bugger can write.
I guess the difference was most obvious in how they presented themselves- Espiner was funny, relaxed and concise, Slater was monosyllabic, rambling and oddly uncomfortable, even when Sainsbury was flattering him.
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David Clarkson, who, back in the mists of time, was a colleague of mine at the Christchurch Star
Dave Clarkson's great value- he was a tutor/subeditor at the Canterbury University postgraduate journalism course, who was a fout of great humour and much patience with ruffian would-be journos like myself.
I'm amazed he finds the time to do all that teaching (he also does stuff with the broadcasting school, I think) and act as (effectively) the sole Christchurch Court Reporter for NZPA- although his wife Anne helps him out with that. He's a bloody good writer.
As for the other topic raised in the post, I thought RB summed it up nicely. Really, it's amazing how unhinged the Family First lobby is, when you get down to it- no matter how much they couch it under the whole notion of "individual rights".