When the media advocate racism to hide the real culprits behind bad driving

This op–ed in the Fairfax Press smacks of typical yellow peril journalism that has come to typify what passes for some media coverage of late.    Yes, some Chinese drivers are awful in their home country and they will bring those bad habits here. But I’d be interested to get some hard stats. For instance, […]

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The trials of being a dual national (or, Kiwis are better at this stuff than Brits)

I have just under a year before my British passport expires. In the great tradition of apartheid, it’s a British overseas national passport for those of us born in the colonies, and both in 1996 and 2006, I had to use a different form to British citizens. I presume Britain was worried about overseas British […]

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A year of random thoughts: 2014 in review

For the last few years, I’ve looked back at the events of the year in a tongue-in-cheek fashion. (In fact, in 2009, I looked back at the decade.) Tumblr’s the place I look at these days for these summaries, since it tends to have my random thoughts, ones complemented by very little critical thinking. They […]

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National and Labour in the General Election, summarized for non-Kiwis

Would this be the easiest way to explain how the two major parties were during the General Election this year to those overseas? First, National; second, Labour. You may also like Steve Guttenberg shows us how a Kiwi accent is done A year of random thoughts: 2014 in review Secret “Asian” man (with apologies to […]

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Quick Autocade stats

I was curious tonight to see the rate of growth of entries on Autocade. It hasn’t changed greatly. The initial 500 didn’t take long, but, since then, every 500 entries have taken 18 months to be added. However, the traffic has grown at a much faster rate. March 2008: launch July 2008: 500 (four months […]

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Little Big Man was antiestablishment, as is big man Little: straight talk is what Labour needs

The Hon Andrew Little MP has had a good first week as Leader of the Opposition. Some are saying what a breath of fresh air this straight-shooter is.    He’s been an MP for three years. And in the context of Labour, which has factions within, that’s a good thing. A guy who isn’t tainted […]

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Everything’s perfect with those Auckland systems, nothing to see here

I contacted Auckland Airport through its Facebook on Tuesday over the matter in my previous post, and got an immediate reply from someone monitoring its social media. She tells me that she will ask them to furnish me with an urgent response. I am still waiting. It’s a bit of a worry when this is […]

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Bypass Auckland when you can

It’s a shame I had to write this to Auckland Airport today (salutation and closing omitted): I’d like you guys to know that on Monday night, your inter-terminal bus never came. Passengers (around 20) were waiting at the stop at domestic from 9.45 to 10.15 p.m. The airport staff I spoke to were really surprised […]

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Autocade hits 5,000,000 views: what are its most read and least searched?

With Autocade exceeding the 5,000,000 page view milestone (it’s on 5·12 million), I thought it might be fun to look at a few of the models on the site: the most popular, the least loved, and the first on the site.    Looking at the stats, here are the most popular models. These shouldn’t be […]

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Brand Kim Dotcom: what has changed?

Equal access: an audio recording of this blog post can be found here. It’s disturbing to see so many Kim Dotcom jokes post-General Election, with plenty of Kiwis happy to ridicule the bloke because of Internet Mana’s terrible showing in the polls, and the loss of Hone Harawira’s seat.    Yet not too long ago, […]

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