Posts by Tom Beard
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There is nothing that beats waking up to the sound of Sean and Winston going at it.
Nothing, but nothing, can now erase that mental picture. *shudder*
Plunket's tenacity can be vital with the slipperier guests trying to avoid giving an answer, but when he overdoes it it seems like he never gives them a chance to answer at all. There's often a sense of him badgering away until he gets the soundbite he wants, or forcing people to give "yes" or "no" answers to questions that are actually much too complex for such a simplistic response.
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It is public service broadcasting which treats its audience as intelligent people who deserved to be informed, educated and entertained.
And that, in a nutshell, is presumably what Ralston doesn't like about it.
I agree with Bill Ralston. RNZ is in desperate need of refreshment and new voices. It's not known as Radio Left-Wing for nothing.
What's the connection between being left wing (not that RNZ seems all that left to me) and being in need of refreshment? Time for a "purge", is that what you're thinking?
All of you people seem to listen to a lot of radio. I have Morning Report on for 45 minutes on weekday mornings, and that's about it. Otherwise I'm at work (and I find it hard to concentrate while listening to talk radio, even if I felt it appropriate to use my employer's bandwidth for streaming radio) or out, so I don't get much chance.
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"a peculiarly Auckland culture that baffles outsiders"
Yes, that did seem a little odd, including the implication that the only people who refer to "Mercs" and "Beamers" live in Auckland. It is, however, tied up with the desperate attempts to manufacture a celebrity culture, which isn't exclusively "Auckland" but seems to be centred there because that's where most of the mass media is based. Wellingtonians seem to go out of their way not to appear excited by TV presenters, reality TV "stars" and goss mags, though indie filmmakers, musicians and obscure writers are a different story of course.
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I do think said metaphor is very poorly used in this particular thread
That happens all the time, especially with the term "Nazi": the degrading of a word with specific historical associations to the point where those who bring up those specific historical meanings in an attempt to challenge the speaker's hyperbole are put down for overreacting. As one example, over on Poneke's blog there was a post about smoking in public spaces and someone brought out the old line about "Anti-smoking Nazis". I made an admittedly flippant comment about how actually it wasn't the Nazis who tried to stop people being killed by poisonous gases, and someone snapped back with "Oh, everyone knows that 'Nazi' just means a PC busybody who wants to tell other people what to do".
So now you know. Nothing to do with Hitler, then.
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That general idea has been repeated quite a few times, but it isn't entirely true. The current Government for example, has until recently rejected out of hand the notion that oil supplies may be near or past a peak. As a result, they've invested heavily in building new roads, resisted legislating to increase the fuel economy of the fleet, and been at best lukewarm on things like cycling and public transport.
But that's exactly what the people who keep calling for the gummint to "do something" about high petrol prices would want done, or even more so. Most people who complain about high petrol prices want their car-dependent lifestyles to continue, rather than have better cycling and PT facilities. There's a view in some quarters that the government should just drop the taxes on petrol, based on the impression that our petrol taxes are somehow outrageously high, rather than being the fifth lowest in the OECD.
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most New Zealanders seemed to treat it like a Telethon
Has there been a statistically reliable study to show that "most" NZers supported the truckies' actions? A couple of opt-in phone polls and anecdotal evidence of people lining up and cheering doesn't prove widespread support: most of us who thought the "protesters" were a bunch of truckwits wouldn't have bothered lining the streets to counter-protest, since we were busy getting on with our lives.
And is Peter Low just an actor paid to make Garth McVicar look sane by comparison?
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Interesting to see that Ponsonby still has a pocket of "most deprived". Deprived of "what"? This season's Issey Miyake?
One problem with NZDep is that it makes some assumptions about "deprivation" that may apply for the bulk of mainstream suburban NZ, but don't work well for truly urban lifestyles. Lack of access to a car, and renting rather than owning one's home, both contribute to "deprivation". Thus places like Wellington's CBD have a surprisingly high deprivation index, despite a fairly affluent population. Living without a car in the outer suburbs would be a nightmare, but when urban amenities are at your doorstep and there's decent public transport, a car-free life is a liberation rather than a deprivation.
Also, I'm not sure whether they normalise income for age and family circumstances. A single twenty-something might be earning less than the average wage and still have a high disposable income. Thus the NZDep index can be quite useful if you're comparing families from two different suburbs, but when you compare that to people with very different needs, some apparent anomalies arise.
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"Road no one will be able to afford to use cost NZ society $1.025 billion, study shows"
I reckon it's time for a study into the social harm caused by one particular highly addictive drug: oil.
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I/S: "empirical"? Bah! No wonder the mainstream media look down on bloggers, with their pathetic reliance on "facts" and "analysis" rather than moral outrage and simplistic sensationalism, which we all know are the vital pillars of proper journalism.
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"I haven't tried here, but I don't suppose you can buy spirits by the bottle hear like you can in the UK?"
The one-litre vodka bottles on top of my bookshelf would seem to suggest you can.
I mean in the bars, rather than in off-licenses. I've known people to order bottles of Cognac after dinner at restaurants (there was a whole wall of signed napkins from people who'd splashed out on bottles of Louis XIII at Il Casino), but I haven't tried at a pub. Maybe I'll try it tonight: "Barkeep, a bottle of tequila and two glasses, please!"