Posts relating to New Zealand.
In May, I wrote (in the wake of the Oravida scandal): The problem with all of this is: where’s Labour, in the midst of the greatest gift an opposition has been given for years? One friend of a friend noted that maybe Labour shouldn’t be attacking, because we Kiwis don’t like whingers. It is […]
Read More… from About Labour, I was nearly on the money in May
Simpsons fans should be able to connect the above scene with the post below. I’m sure some of you watched the al-Jazeera English documentary this week on the Boeing 787, and how there are safety concerns over the models built in South Carolina. In summary, ‘Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit and reporter Will Jordan investigate Boeing’s […]
Read More… from Reacting to AJE’s Broken Dreams: are there parallels between GM and Boeing’s 787?
We hear from certain parties that proclaim that they want one law for all New Zealanders, yet they’ll resort to targeting ethnic minorities anyway. A few weeks ago, Winston Peters had his ‘two Wongs’ joke, easily dismissed as being as passé as a Rolf Harris act. I see the Conservatives are now doing the same […]
Read More… from Conservatives: ‘The Chinese’ are coming! It’s the yellow peril!
This is when each political party uploaded their opening broadcasts to their official YouTube accounts. Ideally, they should have gone up on Saturday night, when they were broadcast on television, as that was when those of us online were hunting for them. (TVNZ did not have these up on demand on the night, either, but […]
Read More… from When the parties uploaded their opening statements to their YouTube accounts
Fed up with the Electoral Commission barring Darren Watson from expressing his valid view with his satirical song ‘Planet Key’, I made a spoken-word version of it for my Tumblr a week ago, with copyright clearance over the lyrics. I wrote: Since the Electoral Commission has imposed a ban on Darren Watson’s ‘Planet Key’—in fact, […]
Read More… from ‘Planet Key’ is good old-fashioned Kiwi satire
A week and a half ago, I appeared on Back Benches to talk about Winston Peters MP’s “two Wongs” joke, and confined my comments to that. My response, ‘There are still people who enjoy watching Rolf Harris, just as there are still people out there who enjoy listening to Winston Peters.’ And, ‘We have […]
Read More… from I thought political division got you nowhere in New Zealand
A Kiwi friend, based in Australia, and I were discussing the General Election yesterday on the phone. First, I told her, you wouldn’t know one was on. It’s like Christmas when the global financial crisis hit: people weren’t in the mood. Secondly, minor parties like Internet Mana are probably doing better than the […]
Read More… from The 2014 General Election: the impressions the parties have left, so far
The latest Victoria University study, expressing that there is a shortage of creative people, sounds very familiar. Dr Richard Norman highlights in a Fairfax Press editorial that knowledge economy companies are ‘struggling to capitalise on opportunities for growth because of limited local talent … ‘Many of these companies are well-seasoned and high-earning—a third […]
Read More… from A familiar call after two mayoral campaigns on Wellington’s knowledge economy
Embarcadero Waterfront, photographed by Ricardo Martins/CC BY 2.0. I was consistent about the Basin Reserve flyover in my campaign. Yes, I agreed we needed improvements to the area. But no, spending millions on it—it did not matter whether it was from taxes or rates at the end of the day, because that still meant […]
Be careful what you say on social media in Britain. English law permits mass surveillance of the big social media platforms, according to Charles Farr, the director-general of the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism, in a statement published last week responding to a case brought by Privacy International, Liberty, Amnesty International, the American Civil […]
Read More… from When it comes to mass surveillance, forget specificity