Posts by Simon Grigg
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Hard News: Some things just don't let…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
- just sayin', credit where credit's also due...
Word, Ian.....
Doug & Victoria's annual Chrissy BBQs were notorious for all the right reasons too.
Ross' paragraphs about the immediate pre-FN era are equally skewered as is his very narrow overview of the scene thereafter.
And 'Nothing’s going to happen—the unofficial anthem of New Zealand rock' wasn't actually a Flying Nun record.
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Hard News: Some things just don't let…, in reply to Danielle,
3. She is such a wonderful pop songwriter that I find it difficult to say anything about the music but get all swoony. That shit is right in my wheelhouse.
You don't think Paul McCartney may at some stage want the bits of Magical Mystery Tour and Hello Goodbye back?
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Up Front: Absence in the Arcades, in reply to Hebe,
And of course you know you were far from alone in that.
Just looked at that and my page linked to there and realised it's been a year. In those twelve months I've had about 35 emails from all over the planet responding to that piece, arriving steadily (the most recent was a week back).
He's much missed and it's incredible to hear from people in places like Germany and Chicago who still regard Tony as part of the reason they are who they are.
Seemed like they played every other week in my memory; maybe that's because they were the most vivid nights.
You'll perhaps enjoy the first two videos linked here then.
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OnPoint: Fiscal Responsibility is the…, in reply to Islander,
luv ya, word/senseplyer mate who is so often right on the mark/button/instance-
And you say that so much better than I possibly ever could. Thank you to the both of you for your words.
You make my day. Often.
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OnPoint: Fiscal Responsibility is the…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Not to mention how sustainable it is to have a third of the population as aspirant city dwellers and the rest as dirt-poor peasants. Or the whole issue of how China gets enough resources to keep going.
Hasn't the percentage of city dwellers now passed the rural mass now? Or at least that's what was being touted a few weeks back - some of whom are now in places like Shanghai where the average person lives longer than New Zealand.
Many of the other major cities are much the same now.
There is a big rural-urban disparity but I think it's disingenuous to assume that this isn't something that the nation, both as a whole and regionally, isn't aware of and attempting to address. They're not inanely sitting there waiting for their roof to collapse and I think it's an odd assumption - found as a recurring theme in the China-is-doomed memes - that this is the case. We're not dealing with lucky idiots but that seems to be a core assumption.
But how long can growth over 5% be sustained
Those articles I posted above - predicting doom - use that as central argument too, but given that 70% of the Chinese economy activity is domestic (about the same as NZ) it does feel a little like wishful thinking.
And on one hand you're bemoaning the growth and on the other criticising rural poverty when that growth is funding vast infrastructure and much else in those same rural areas.
Not sure how that works?
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OnPoint: Fiscal Responsibility is the…, in reply to Jim Cathcart,
But for every 100 bullish newspaper articles about China, you don't get that many doom/gloom tirades.
I'd argue that the opposite is the case. I've read countless well argued, figure backed op/eds in the likes of Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and the FT over the past ten years or so predicting approaching Chinese economic doom. It peaked in the 12 months or so after the 2008 crash and the pace has only slowed slightly since.
A small sampling:
A bizarre one from the Times of India predicting the Chinese economic collapse will lead to war with India.
Those took about 5 seconds to find.
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OnPoint: Fiscal Responsibility is the…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
When that goes away
Got a timeline on that, Rich?
It's just that people like Bloomberg, Fox and the US media have been warning us monthly that it's imminent since - ohhh - about 1996.
I have to go there now and then so I'd be keen on some insight as to when this crash is happening so I can work my life out around it.
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Hard News: When the Game is Over, in reply to Robyn Gallagher,
I'm kind of glad that the RWC didn't really have an official theme song.
It does - unfortunately... [warning: NSFAWDT]
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Elvis gets Elmoed
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Hard News: Winning the RWC: it's complicated, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
Instead of experiencing our hospo, it has been plastic cups with overinflated prices for shitty beer.
See, I don't think it's all been like that at all.
I was walking down Ponsonby Rd last week, looking for a friend who had yet to arrive. A couple came up to me and offered to help - assuming I was foreign - and I was thrilled. That sort of thing doesn't happen most elsewhere in the planet - in much of the world you would assume that it was a scam, but in New Zealand it was just the sort of common decency that we take for granted. I think any visitor would've felt the same.
The Cloud may be everything awful that I think it is - don't get me started - but on my two visits there I found the crowd to be overwhelmingly (as in 90+%) New Zealanders getting screwed by whoever was pocketing the overcharges.
I think anyone from abroad who ventured into 'burbs beyond the cash grab of "party central" would've discovered quickly that we are a pretty warm, welcoming and convivial bunch mostly.
And more than a few clearly did if you talk to retailers and hospo folk in Ponsonby/Parnell/Mission Bay etc. The bigger problem was that there simply do not seem to have been the sorts of numbers promised to make that worthwhile for the businesses that hoped for more (the 95k figure includes the 60k who would normally come to NZ over a similar period I'm told, so the increase was 35k) and that for a variety of reasons normal trading was stifled by the cup.