Posts by Russell Brown
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Still relevant: Matt Nippert's 2013 story A licence to print money:
How good was SkyCity's winnings from that deal? An Australian casino consultant believes the Government significantly undervalued the gambling concessions it finally granted to SkyCity.
The Government's own officials consistently raised concerns as far back as 2010 that the nub of the deal - the 27-year extension of SkyCity's exclusive Auckland casino licence - was being similarly undervalued. Across the ditch, casino licences have sold for hundreds of millions of dollars.
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Hard News: Masters of Reality, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Welcome back Russell. I feared for a while you had been swallowed by some middle class monster, what with your house now being worth more than a million bucks.
I've been busy!
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In related news, this is an actual Taxpayers' Union press release:
Masturbating Nun a Poor Use of Ratepayer Money
In an unusual coalition the Taxpayers’ Union is backing concerns expressed by the morally conservative Family First lobby group regarding a highly offensive t-shirt being displayed at the Canterbury Museum. The t-shirt features a semi-naked nun masturbating.
The Taxpayers' Union has received confirmation from the Museum that ratepayer money has been used to support the "T-shirts unfolding" exhibition. Taxpayers’ Union Executive Director, Jordan Williams, says:
“Our objection isn’t to the t-shirt per se, our objection is ratepayer money being used for what is, at best, an item with little cultural or historic value.”
“In matters of taste there is a higher onus on publicly funded bodies to avoid funding matters of a highly dubious nature. One can argue that restrictions on freedom of speech and blasphemy are unjustified, while also acknowledging that higher standards should apply to what public money is used to promote."
The day we listen to Jordan Williams on "cultural or historic value" is the day it's over for we humans.
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Speaker: Losing cultural treasures under…, in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,
But quoting, sampling, retelling, reframing etc – what if I don’t want the thing I’ve created quoted, sampled, retold, or reframed? If I’ve created it, don’t I have that right? Or is that the moral right mentioned earlier, separate from copyright?
Should that right exist in perpetuity?
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Hard News: Friday Music: Love Unknown Orchestra, in reply to Peter Darlington,
Courtesy of Gilles Peterson, tracing the history of London’s Pirate Radio stations. These (and Peel) made me fall in love with radio. The chaos and freedom of the north and east London dub pirate stations was a joy.
Oh, great tip! It was Passion and Lighting for us in Brixton.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Love Unknown Orchestra, in reply to philipmatthews,
Until this week, I thought it was “And I quietly count with a gun …”
You are not the only one.
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Hard News: CWC 2015: Contains graphic horror, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
is it just me?
Definitely not just you. The 10-minute cricket skit that turned out to be a setup for John Key was just weird.
Although many of us in the crowd on Twitter last night did take what might be described as a perverse pleasure in watching.
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Hard News: Talking @Splore, in reply to Sacha,
Wish I was physically up to a festival experience right now.
Being at Splore involves a non-trivial amount of effort. There can be quite a bit of going up and down the hill.
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Hard News: Talking @Splore, in reply to Simon Telfer,
Hi Russell - I think your embedded link for Esther's chat is going awol
Thanks for that Simon. I copied the URL out of a Facebook message and effing Facebook added effing Facebook garbage to it.
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Hard News: Talking @Splore, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
I am glad you kept an ampersand (&) between ‘Art’ and ‘Soul’ – people have called me something similar to ‘art soul’ in the past…
Heh. I seem to recall bFM having an arts commentary feature called 'Arts Hole' at one point ...
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