Local, national and international politics.
The day the current mayor, Kerry Prendergast, announced her intention to stand for a fourth term, I was asked by a few media colleagues what I thought. The wittiest reply I gave to Salient, as it was an email interview, and I seem to be cheekier in writing than I am in speaking. I won’t […]
Read More… from Trading identities in the personal branding space
Funny how a media article can inspire you to send out a release, especially when you’re a ratepayer and you wonder if our City Council of élites understands how hard it was for us to make that money. In today’s case, it was Lindsay Shelton’s Scoop Wellington op-ed about Wellington City Council going nuts with […]
Read More… from Wellington needs free wifi and jobs, not a council that goes nuts with spending
My Wired for March 2010 arrived today (things take a while to reach the antipodes), with the most interesting article being on the Google algorithm. And hold on, this isn’t a Google-bashing blog entry. Steven Levy’s article was probably written before the furore over the Google Buzz privacy flap. And it points out how […]
Next year marks the centenary of the founding of the Chinese republic. We got rid of our rather hopeless Ching Dynasty, and ushered in Asia’s first democracy. Both the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China see 1911 as an important year, and Dr Sun Yat-sen as the founder of the nation […]
Read More… from How could the Chinese republic celebrate its centenary?
While I’ve been a LinkedIn member for many years—my LinkedIn ID has six digits, which gives you an idea of how long ago—I have to confess that I did not browse the brilliant Wellington, New Zealand group till quite recently. And free wifi is being talked up there, too, as something Wellingtonians genuinely want. […]
I’ve heard it all before. In the 1980s, the New Zealand Government promised that, with the introduction of Goods and Services’ Tax (GST), people would be better off, because it would mean more money in our pockets. With the proposal to hike GST to 15 per cent under the current government, Prime Minister John […]
Read More… from I do not stand for John Key’s defeatist talk
This map (via pedroelrey on Tumblr) is food for thought, about international press freedoms: Those of us who enjoy a free press need to use it and not take it for granted. We might not always like what’s being said, but we should embrace the fact that we can say it at all. […]
Preparing for one of my Swedish speeches, I came across this, which I delivered in India in December 2008: If you ever get to read Michael Lewis’s writings about the US financial industry, you’ll learn that a lot of people within there do not know what they are doing or why they are doing it. […]
We all expected someone to go on about ‘experience’ sooner or later when it came to my mayoral campaign. Mr Bertrand Brown, I thank you for raising it in the comments at the Stuff website. And this is a genuine thanks, not one of those BS ‘with respect’ ones, as you signal that it’s time […]
Read More… from Convention holds us back, but Wellington wants to move forward
Remember the issue I had last year with getting a new Permanent Identity Card for Hong Kong and finding that the British Government—which I have accused of apartheid over the situation surrounding British Overseas Nationals—would not do its job via the Foreign & Commonwealth Office? No, it hasn’t been solved, but I thought it […]
Read More… from A reminder to the British Government: Hong Kong Chinese have died for you