Posts relating to New Zealand.
There have been a few times in the history of this blog where I stepped away from writing regularly. At the end of 2006, I had a pretty good excuse: I was in France. This time, my reasons for stepping away for a few weeks do not include: (a) I was spending too much time […]
Read More… from Chatting to TV, radio and internet journalists for the mayoral campaign
I had a very insightful meeting today with one of the country’s leading information strategists, which put things into perspective for me regarding the mayoral race. His thoughts (though not exactly his words): Wellington has almost always voted for the right person at the right time. We needed someone like Mark Blumsky to give […]
Read More… from A new decade demands a new way—and a new mayor
You have to love the thinking behind the local newspaper in Wellington when it comes to the mayoral election. We have five people shown here in their poll, one of whom (Councillor Foster) hasn’t declared his candidacy. Spot anyone who’s missing? I’m very glad to say ‘None of the above’ is leading at […]
Anyone notice just how quickly Air New Zealand planes are these days? It takes the grand total of ‘1:00 mins.’ to get from Auckland to Wellington, which equates to travelling at 18,360 mph or 29,520 km/h. I am not quite prepared to do that in case the G-forces squash me into a pulp. And if […]
This weekend was spent in recovery mode after getting some weird stomach bug before Anzac Day. Without getting too gross, let’s say it took a lot out of me. That’s right: I was energetically drained. But it’s not to say that the campaign has stopped or slowed. Things seem to be proceeding at a […]
It’s been an exhilarating few days. First up was speaking to the residents of the Rita Angus Retirement Village last Friday—a very fruitful discussion to cement further some of my ideas for the mayoral campaign. Saturday, meanwhile, was Residents 2010 and Public ACTA—two conferences which were both very important to Wellington’s future and representation. More […]
The good news today is that Wellington Airport is officially in two minds about what type of sign it will put up on the Miramar cutting, which means that the ‘Wellywood’ sign protest has had a victory of sorts. I’m thrilled at the news because it shows people power—especially people like Anthony Lander who […]
I seem to be on a lot of social networks (Facebook, Bebo, MySpace, Vkontakte), so I thought I’d look in to Sonico. I can see why it’s not as big as the others. For a start, there seems to be insufficient globalization of its features. Try entering a Chinese film in to the favourite […]
Due to others’ appointments, the Vista Group meeting today was a mere duo: myself and Jim Donovan, Esq., who will give up blogging in 10 days. It meant it was the second-least well attended meeting in our history. Jim has never let us forget the least well attended one. I have always said that […]
I don’t have the other writers’ permission to show their side of this Facebook dialogue, but we had been chatting about growing the creative clusters here in Wellington as one of my mayoral policies. I wrote: Mostly by focusing on growing creative clusters and taking a bigger slice of the cake. So it is […]