Posts by Steve Withers
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I listen to radio, but I have to say there is only one station I ever listen: National Radio. I can't bear the "morning crew" garbage and the ads annoy me beyond endurance. Yes, I am older and grumpy...and I don't have to listen to any of it. That said, I have recently been catching a bit of George FM via the Internet and some BASE FM via Freeview. All is not lost.....but the chances of randomly stumbling across great radio these days is remote...and I haven't been interested or motivated enough to seek it out. My kids (19 and 24) are opposites. One listens to The Edge and other gets everything via social networking 'word of mouth'.....Tumblr and Reddit, it seems. I've signed up for Spotify, but haven't had much time to just.....listen.
NatRad. Hard to beat for information and head food.
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I found the Ransom story to be not compelling. Someone who doesn’t live here sold a business that makes nothing and employs no one here…and none of any of it returns any money to NZ. Yet Liam Dann of the Herald, and others, said we need more people like this. A Lotto winner is more economically relevant.
I'm very much looking forward to Media3....though will be recording it in MyFreeview. I never turn the TV on before 6pm on pretty much any day of the week.....and it doesn't stay on long.
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Hard News: Judge Harvey: My part in his downfall, in reply to Russell Brown,
I was surprised Judge Harvey wasn't more careful as this would be exactly the sort of thing that can be twisted out of context and deliberately misrepresented....which is what the Herald seems to do best these days.
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Hard News: It's not funny because it's…, in reply to Tristan,
Genter is a new MP. She may yet seek to table that information when she has had time to think and consult / get advice. If the Minister is lying that could / should see a complaint to the Speaker....one he can't help but uphold because Brownlee got caught making sh*t up.....again.
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Brownlee is one of the ugly faces of the National Party…and I’m not talking about his appearance. Somewhere I have an mp3 of him in full cry, making his contempt for democracy and accountability all too clear. I’ve kept it to remind me there are genuine democracy-hating fascists in the National Party…and they hold many important jobs. I’ll post it somewhere later today. In the meantime, here is a Scoop story reporting Gerry Brownlee, in 2009, simply refusing to answer a question about mining on conservation land. Relevant to recent moves to enable mining in……conservation land. Scoop story
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Hard News: Who'd have thought?, in reply to Scott Chris,
It can't be called a "trial" when you take an incomplete, poorly-thought-out policy and implement it nationally. Attempting to make such a claim just debases language and makes perfectly good words meaningless.
A trial is when you test something on a smaller scale to tease out the issues and resolve them before wasting resources on a much more vast scale throughout an entire system.
It's plain to me that "waste" to the National party is something they don't like....and anything they do like can't be - by definition - wasteful. This is obvious in almost every policy area: public transport, health care, education, fiscal policy.
WRT fiscal policy, Bill English says he wants lower interest rates and a lower Kiwi dollar....despite that policy sustaining and expanding the debt bubble and taking money out of the pockets of savers......and imposing higher import costs on a country that now imports virtually everything from shoes to toothpaste.
Their policy set as a whole is incoherent.
In a word...."wasteful".
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I heard that woman talking on NatRad. I concluded it's the local version of the US morality nutbars trying to inflict their neuroses on us....and worse, our kids. It demonstrates a certain rigidity of mind that tends to reveal itself in other areas across the ideological and political spectrum. I'm increasingly sympathetic to the idea that one's politics is an extension of one's mental and psychological development.....and rationality has little do with it.
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Hard News: Strange days for journalism, in reply to Richard Llewellyn,
Fran's loyalty is to trans-national neo-liberal economic policies . Anything else is socialism and xenophobia as far as she's concerned.
Never mind the same policies have lead to declining economic well-being everywhere they have been introduced.
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Hard News: Strange days for journalism, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Craig: My suggestion was a starting point for thinking of it in a way that flows in the opposite direction from aglomeration and editorial monopoly. What would you recommend / suggest? (Seriously..)
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Hard News: Strange days for journalism, in reply to Rob Stowell,
I'd like to see no person or corporation allowed to own more than one media outlet of any type. Anything else results in barriers to entry and monopolistic editorial control serving narrow interests.