Posts by Alfie
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Hard News: The flagging referendum, in reply to Sacha,
While I agree with Simon 99% I'm not sure about that call to allow children to vote on the basis that they'll have to live with the consequences of a flag change for longer than us old fogies. There were even calls to the Justice and Electoral select committee asking for the voting age to be lowered to just five years for this referendum.
I daresay that if the flag panel had included children, laser kiwi might at least have made the final cut. But that logic surely applies equally to most of the important issues facing NZ today, including the TPPA and climate change. Undoubtably the children of today will suffer the worst effects of both. But would I want primary school kids influencing national policy decisions? No way.
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Hard News: What you lookin' at?, in reply to Myles Thomas,
Guardian writers are no better than Sun writers – they’re just doing a different job, informing vs building audiences.
That’s like saying there’s no real difference between this blog and venues like Whaleshit. Sure, they target different audiences, but the Guardian attracts a better standard of writer capable of providing intelligent analysis. The Sun employs hacks. They’re not interchangable.
Equally the TVNZ commissioners work in a deeply commercial, precarious and risk averse environment.
And some are more competent than others.
I’ll tell you a little story. I produced a series for TVNZ a while back called Remarkable Vets. It had a particularly Wakatipu flavour with all-local crew, local music from Noel Coutts and a locally-produced title sequence. My commissioning editor loved it.
When we were about halfway through making the series she went overseas for a couple of months, so another commissioning editor took over. He didn’t like the titles – so we went through another half dozen variants at considerable cost until we found something he was happy with. Even worse, he hated the music. He demanded something safer and more generic so we were forced to replace the original score with library music throughout. Jeez it sounded awful.
A week before the first show aired our original commissioner arrived back in NZ and demanded to know who had screwed up the titles and music. I flew up to Auckland and spent a couple of days replacing the title sequences for four shows and remixing two hours of sound to reinstate all of our original music.
The TV2 show rated well in a 7pm Sunday slot, despite TVNZ running it against a really good Marcus Lush series on TV One. It sold well internationally and we received great feedback on the music.
Commissioning editors are not created equal. Just like journalists.
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Here’s a court case which may set a precedent. A woman from Golden Bay appeared in Nelson Court charged with importing medicinal cannabis products and five other related charges. She has a US prescription for medical cannabis and received a discharge without conviction.
The judge recognised that it should not matter whether the medication is carried into New New Zealand by the patient or posted to them. Either way there was no good reason to criminal sanction a person who was using prescribed pain relief for good reason."
So a visit to a US doctor may override this uncompassionate law. I guess that’s good news.
Sadly, at the bottom of that story there’s an unrelated case of a 45 year old woman from Takaka who was fined $500 in the very same Court, on the same day, for cultivating marijuana to treat her MS.
Go figure.
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Hard News: The flagging referendum, in reply to BenWilson,
The only way I can find to protest this process is to not take part in it at all.
And risk ending up with the tea towel flag?
I'll certainly be registering my protest by voting to keep the current flag. Not because I have any particular affinity to the union jack, but like so many people I'm offended by the stupidity of the two-vote process, the stage-managed fanboys rallying around Key's choice, and the deeply flawed way the whole mess has been managed at enormous cost to the country.
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Former Listener editor Finlay Macdonald writing for RNZ -- Has the PM mistaken himself for a flag?
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Support for Helen Kelly's situation is growing with some very public calls for a change in the way medicinal cannabis is treated by the government.
A call for compassion from Jeremy Elwood & Michele A'Court.
And a strong piece from Barry Soper in today's Herald.
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Hard News: UNGASS and the "Drug Free…, in reply to Russell Brown,
Moves to allow “drug-checking” at nightclubs and music festivals have won support in principle from Peter Dunne.
Well done Peter Dunne -- it's refreshing to see harm reduction being given a greater priority.
In marked contrast, across the ditch NSW premier Mike Baird has his own answer to the problem of untested and sometimes dodgy drugs being used at gigs -- just shut down music festivals by refusing to grant permits for events on public land.
In response, the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation have announced a private initiative to provide trials of pill testing at music festivals, with or without government approval.
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Today's Herald cartoon.
The same paper also has I don't give a hoot what Richie and Dan think -- a heartfelt opinion piece from Lizzie Marvelly describing the process as ...a taxpayer-funded national "best drawing" competition judged by a group of people with absolutely no design experience.
With all due respect, I don't give a hoot what the Prime Minister, Richie McCaw and Dan Carter think about the flag. To me, the relationship Kiwis have with their flag should be wholly their own. They are absolutely entitled to their own views, but it is not for All Black legends or a leader democratically elected to serve all New Zealanders, to try to tell us what to think, much less how to vote in this ballot of lasting national significance.
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OnPoint: Yeah nah, but what *do* we…, in reply to simon g,
I did read Smythe’s piece, but won’t bother with Logan’s.
I really have no idea who he is but Google shows a connection to the Maxim Institute. Sorry if I accidentally offended anyone.
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Amidst the onslaught of famous people say change the flag stories scattered throughout the MSM at the moment, there's this little breath of fresh air.
The Herald allows writer Bruce Logan and designer Michael Smythe to explain why the Weetbix-packet emulating aoteatowel (Smythe's term) is such a poor choice for a national flag.
