Posts by Rob Hosking
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
FletcherN wrote:
But, I seem to recall at the time, that mine was not a minority view.... And it seems to me an awful lot of people claim to have always loved Flying Nun/The Dunedin Sound....
They may indeed love it now, but some of them are full of it when it comes to thier historical view.... Just ask Flying Nun themselves about the early sales figures.
Hmm...I wonder...I know I made an instant friend of a young bloke in the only decent record shop in Tauranga when I bought 'Death and the Maiden'...he was this subversive who, whenever possible, would pull Alison Moyet or Wham off the turntable and stick on the Verlaines or the Chills or -going offshore a bit - REM or Billy Bragg.
I think a big attraction of the Nun bands - that early 80s wave anyway - was that they played real guitars. at the time synth music was everywhere, and some of the classic guitar bands had gone.
-
Waring does Lennon, yeah well...
A National MP does a single, one side of which is 'Working Class Hero' and the other was "Couldn't Get it Right'. Do you think she was trying to tell them something?
I remember it well, I think I may have even owned it at one point. It had a certain novelty value, but then, so did those "my plants are this high" Hitler T shirts...
I've often thought someone should put a lot of those old compilations onto CD. 'Goats Milk Soap' which someone mentioned, was pretty much the best one, but there was a lot of obscure tracks on the 'Hits and Myths' series as well (especially Vols 2 & 3). And some later ones, like 'Banana Dominion'...
-
You might also enjoy...
"all is forgiven", by Tex Don & Charlie, released either late last year or early this year. sort of a mix of alt country/blues through an Australian sensiblity.
Opening song is called Paycheques and begins
"If Fridays are for funerals
And Saturdays for Brides
I guess I'll take Sunday as mine
Cos on the weekend I peform miracles
Turning paycheques into wine..." -
Jon Stevens and INXS...no, wait...
-
A couple of comments on the original post - trivial ones first:
1. Hallelujiah. Someone who knows how to use the word 'infer' correctly.
2. Brash could never make it as a Wiggle. He's a Presbyterian Bible Class Boy, which means - and I say this as a PBCB myself - he can't dance for shit. Even Wiggles-style dancing.
3. More seriously: Your friend who made the comments about the money trader thing is onto something. What struck me about Key some time ago is he has a money market man's sense of where the returns are. The most revealing speech he made about this - and Hager is right to highlight the speech, atlhough he draws the wrong conclusions from it - was on asset sales in early 2005. One of Key's points was privatising TVNZ would not 'make the boat go faster' in terms of economic growth. But he wasn't jsut talking about the economic calculation. Privatising TVNZ - to stick with that example - would use a huge amount of political capital. And for what return?? The BRT would go 'yay' but that is not going to be much help.
4. Russell's point about the more experienced deputy: a lot is riding on English. Internally especially. The most signficant thing about the leadership change this week is it wasn't contested. This is a caucus which has been bitterly squabbling since at least the end of 1996. The penny has finally dropped that being in opposition sucks.
-
Craig wrote: "The short answer: Yes it would, but it would also be nice if we didn't crucify political leaders for not having a perfectly crafted, focus group-ready soundbite on demand. I don't necessarily think it's a flaw for someone to respond to a question with "I don't know"..."
Well, Bill English did that when I interviewed him on Tuesday.
You see! It CAN happen!
-
B Jones wrote "I won a prize at school for a poem about maths. The only way that could have been nerdier would be if I'd written a computer program to generate it."
And read the poem out to the Chess Club.
-
He's done more than that though. You don't think a different approach to relations with the small parties, race relations, and a radically different attitude to climate change, aren't substantial? I do. This is a radically different approach to the Brash years.
-
I thought the original post showed a degree of partisanship I wasn't expecting, as well as having just too many cheap shots.
You would not expect detailed policy just yet. That would be very bad process in a new leader.
You do though need to set a tone, with vision statements and the like. Any new leader of any organisaiton needs to do this sort of thing.
Clark did NOT do this when she took over Labour in 1993, and it was a huge mistake. Back then she scorned this sort of thing. She really did need to do that, as she'd just knifed Mike Moore and was seen as this humourless party apparatchik with a suspiciously deep voice.
Her first few years as Labour leader were pretty hellish - despite the unpopularity of the Bolger govt.