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The Persuader
My personal blog, started in 2006. No paid or guest posts, no link sales.
Archive for the ‘Wellington’ category
09.09.2022
I wrote the below in Lucireâeven though plenty of publications have covered our monarch’s passing, it still felt right to acknowledge it. After all, she had appeared in Lucire a few times.
With the passing of HM Queen Elizabeth II on Thursday UK time, it would be remiss of this magazine to not mark this world event.
During the 25 years of Lucire, the Queen has featured several times, mostly from events that she attended. We werenât around when she was newly crowned in her coronation gown by Norman Hartnell, and wearing the latest British fashions in her youth, a glamorous symbol of a new Elizabethan era that lifted the United Kingdomâs mood after World War II and continued rationing. But it is easy to imagine the coronation in 1953 being a dazzling, colourful event, and indeed it was covered in the likes of British Vogue at the time.
Her era has seen unprecedented change. As the longest-serving monarch in British history, she presided over an era which saw television become mainstream (a technology that she embraced with her Christmas message), many former colonies gain their independence, the dawn of the World Wide Web, the end of apartheid in South Africa, and both her countryâs entry into and exit from what is now the European Union.
Much has already been said about HM the Queenâs sense of duty, and how she still read her red boxâs worth of papers as head of state right to the end. On Tuesday she asked Liz Truss as the new prime ministerâthe Queenâs 15th, having begun with Sir Winston Churchill when she ascended to the throneâto form a government.
Here in Lucire the late Queen has attended events we happened to cover, beginning in 2008, with her last appearance at the Cartier Queenâs Cup in 2017.
I only caught a glimpse of her during a state visit to New Zealand in 2002 during her golden jubilee. It was her last visit to Aotearoa.
The visit was very subdued and HM the Queen and HRH the Duke of Edinburgh were whisked from the airport round the back roads of Rongotai, past the main street by Lucireâs then-HQ. I managed to photograph them as they drove by.
A neighbourhood shop had a staff member who was a diehard monarchist. I mentioned I had a photo of the royal couple and later gifted her my print. I still have the negative somewhere.
At the time, my sense was that our Labour government had republican leanings and downplayed the royal visit, hence ferrying them in the viceregal Daimler past industrial areas; it was a far cry from an earlier visit I witnessed in 1981 when as a school pupil, my schoolmates and I lined the drive at Government House to welcome her.
As someone who chose to retain my British nationality (I dutifully renew my passport every 10 years), as well as adopting my New Zealand one in 1980, I admit to having a tremendous amount of respect for HM Queen Elizabeth II and her unwavering sense of duty. Some of us born in Hong Kong in the 1970s, whose parents had memories of less pleasant times behind the Bamboo Curtain, appreciated the freedoms, although they stopped short of democracy, that we enjoyed in a Crown colony. Up to a point: my father said he could have worked harder to lose his Chinese accent after fleeing Taishan for Hong Kong after the communist revolution of 1949, but he chose not to as he didnât want to be seen as sycophantic to the colonial power.
It was thanks to the Commonwealth that my Hong Kong-born, but China-raised, mother was able to obtain her nursing qualification from the General Nursing Council for England and Wales. When we emigrated to New Zealand, that made her transition into her job that much easier, as it was considered a notch above the rest. (Having said that, the Hospital Board put her on a lower pay grade than what she deserved, leading my parents to fight for it, with the help of Sir Francis Kitts, a family friend and the former mayor of Wellington. We won.)
When we came here, one familiar thing was that the currency had the Queen on it, and it was her constant presence that told you that there were, in principle at least, shared values. While we can rightfully critique the Empire and what it was built on, at least for this chunk of history, it was a reassurance for us as émigrés that there would be the rule of law in our new country, something that, as my parents could attest, China lacked during the difficult years of the war and immediately after.
My fatherâs preferred form of governance was social democracy, but he appreciated a constitutional monarchy; and my own studies at law school concluded that while an imperfect system, it was one which I, too, valued. The prospect of one of our own being president, at least to the law student me in 1992, seemed unfathomable and potentially divisive.
The success of the system does depend on our faith and trust in the monarch. HM Queen Elizabeth II gave us that sense, as one who placed duty first. As this nation enters into a period of official mourning, we also wonder what her successor, HM King Charles III, will bring to the table, with his interests in the environment and a UK government that he might not see eye to eye with.
Whatever the future, we pay tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II and mark the close of this second Elizabethan age.
Tags: 1970s, 2002, 2022, Aotearoa, family, history, Hong Kong, JY&A Media, Lucire, media, New Zealand, publishing, royalty, UK, Whanganui-a-Tara Posted in China, culture, Hong Kong, media, New Zealand, publishing, technology, UK, Wellington | 4 Comments »
06.09.2022
Almost makes you want to run for mayor again.
I had a look at my 2013 manifesto during the weekend and it wasnât half bad. And, with respect to our candidates in Wellington, each of whom I know socially (and politics aside, actually like), it goes into more detail, and is arguably more visionary, than what Iâve seen from them to date.
It was quite uplifting to read this from Stephen Olsen writing in Scoop, covering the 2022 mayoral candidatesâ meeting at St Peterâs Church last night:
To be honest the lack of rigorous thinking made for a lacklustre event. It even had me pining for the 2010 and 2013 Mayoral campaigns of an outsider, Jack Yan, who did reasonable and intelligent things like put forward a detailed manifesto and who did justice to the role of an articulate, knowledgeable and expressive candidate. (A disclaimer being that I was on the Back Jack team of 2010 and a supporting advisor three years later).
It was written without bias, and evaluates each of the three leading candidates.
Stephen concludes:
Tory Whanau did have a few Jack-like moments in calling as forcefully as possible for more democracy, more boldness, more engagement of citizens and more community-based co-design opportunities to rejuvenate Wellington. However for her campaign to get some wind under its wings it will need far more amplitude on those basic but vital notes. Itâs not a time to pull punches.
In both of the elections I contested, I said we could not have politics as usual. I stand by that, because look at the lack of progress between 2013 and 2022 when voters choose politics as usual: rising rates, little change in the industry make-up (which is another way of saying very few high-value jobs have been created as a proportion of the total), which leads to a lack of economic resilience (and things being unaffordable for Wellingtonians). I said as much nine years ago.
Paul and Andy represent the old guard, and are conservative. Tory is a well read womanâI recall seeing Richard Rumeltâs Good Strategy, Bad Strategy in her office, among others, and she is aware of the world outside politics. She is the same age Mark Blumsky was when he was mayor, and the same age I was when I first ran. A good age, young enough to articulate a vision and have the energy to carry it out.
Whomever took a jab at her âinexperienceâ as detailed in Stephenâs article obviously does not know her history or background. That person evidently does not know Wellington well enough, either, or just how well the last 30-something mayor we had improved the place. Maybe their memory’s playing tricks on them now and they’re out of touch. I mightnât have agreed with everything Mark did, and maybe there are some rose-coloured glasses at playâbut I do agree with the digital advancement this city made under him. Anyone miss the wooden bus stops along Courtenay Place? Anyone? Bueller? I thought not.
Our choices this year are Tory boys or Tory in name. Tory Whanau would make a fine mayor and (finally) the cityâs first non-white mayor, too.
It wasnât nostalgia that had me looking up my 2013 manifesto. It was one Jack Yan running for mayor this year. Not me, but the guy in Toronto.
Jackâs finally got his website up and got in touch, in good humour, as he saw the crazy coincidence of not just the name but of running for mayor of oneâs city. I naturally forwarded on the emails I received thanks to mistaken identity. Out of interest, I had a look through what I wrote back then and sent it on out of interest. Just helping a brother out.
He probably doesnât need it, as he has good, comprehensive policies tailored to his city. Thereâs a Tory called Tory running there. Torontonians have way more candidates to choose from. To the folks there, give the guy a chance and check out his website at jack2022.ca.
Tags: 2013, 2022, Aotearoa, book, campaign, campaigning, Canada, endorsement, history, local government, New Zealand, Ontario, politics, Scoop, Toronto, Tory Whanau, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara Posted in leadership, media, New Zealand, politics, Wellington | No Comments »
12.08.2022
There was a Tweet recently along the lines of, âDear media, stop characterizing a death from cancer as a âbattleâ.â If I deciphered their Tweet correctly, their rationale was that it canât be won, so using such a term is somehow (politically?) incorrect.
I call BS.
My mother characterized her fight as a battle. And my father and I were the enlisted troops to support her.
So f*** anyone who wants to lecture me on how this should be stated. You have your viewpoint, and I have mine. Donât get on your high horse about it, thanks.
And coming from a family where we have âwonâ against the big C a few times, all I can say is: fight it if you choose.
If you want to believe itâll take you and you want to give up, that is your choice.
If you want to characterize it as a battle and have some hope, that is your choice.
This isnât clear-cut, like so many other things.
My mother fought it very bravely. She wasnât given that long and she beat every prediction. If she had given up from the start, to meet some prediction, who knows if things would be different? The day she died the X-rays showed no cancer in her lungs and her blood tests were normal. It appeared that we had beaten the primary.
But sadly, it had spread elsewhere, to places where medicine couldnât reach.
In fact, she only knew about it because of back painâlike Olivia Newton-Johnâs third diagnosis.
About six weeks before it took her, Mum said to me, âI donât think Iâm going to make it.â
I was a dumb kid in denial so I said, âNonsense, I think you can do it.â (As this was in Cantonese, I would have started with ‘性ć㩿Ż.’)
With hindsight, I envy some of those families who have managed to say their farewells, but you canât turn the clock back.
On the morning about an hour and a half before she died, I saidâto God, to my inner voice, to my spirit guide, to whatever you want to call itââScrew this, no one should have to go through this sort of pain.â
Maybe that was letting go or accepting it. And not long after she was gone with Dad and me at her bedside.
So may I say in all sincerity, win or lose, fuck cancer.
Tags: 1994, family, health, history Posted in New Zealand, Wellington | No Comments »
05.08.2022

Above: Some French text in Lucire.
Regular Lucire readers will have seen a number of articles run in English and French (and one in Japanese) on our main website. Typographically, the French ones are tricky, since we have to distinguish between non-breaking spaces and non-breaking thin spaces, and as far as I know, there is no code for the latter in HTML. Indeed, even with a non-breaking space, a browser can treat it as it would a regular space.
So whatâs our solution? Manually, and laboriously, putting in <NOBR> tags around the words that cannot be broken. Itâs not efficient but typographically, it makes the text look right and, unless weâve missed one, we donât have the problem of guillemets being left on a line by themselves without a word to attach to.
The language is set to fr in the meta tags.
Among our French colleagues, I have seen some go Anglo with their quotation marks and ignoring the traditional French guillemets. Others omit any thin spaces and, consequently, adopt the English spacing rules with punctuation. For some reason, I just canât bring ourselves to do it, and maybe there is an easier way that we haven’t heard of. I hope nos lecteurs français appreciate the extra effort.
Tags: 2020s, 2021, 2022, French, JY&A Media, Lucire, programming, publishing, typography Posted in business, design, interests, internet, media, publishing, technology, USA, Wellington | No Comments »
23.07.2022
Earlier today, Amanda and I had a wonderful time at Te Papa to celebrate the Chinese Languages in Aotearoa programme. My contribution was appearing in a video, that was on this blog last October.
It dawned on me that despite being on YouTube, this really needs to be on the home page of this website, replacing the below.
It just never occurred to me any earlier how ideal the Te Papa video was, and how much it speaks to my whakapapa and my identity. But the penny has dropped now.
I know I still need to update the 2018 intro. It needs to be more profound than what appears in these blog posts.
It should also reduce confusion for visitors trying to find out more about my Toronto mayoral candidate namesake, who I note still does not have a declared website or email address on the that city’s official list.
Tags: 2013, 2021, 2022, Cantonese, history, language, mayoralty, museum, politics, Te Papa, Vimeo, YouTube Posted in China, culture, Hong Kong, media, New Zealand, Wellington | No Comments »
25.06.2022

I write notes for my appearances on RNZâs The Panel, and while I donât read them verbatim, they are useful for copying and pasting into this blog afterwards. (Anyone who has ever attended a conference where Iâve spoken might find this familiar: Iâll upload the notes but they arenât a word-for-word reflection of what I said.)
Last Wednesdayâs notes for âIâve been thinkingâ are:
Iâve been thinking that we pay our politicians a lot, and in some cases we get value for money. But I want politicians to be pragmatists, not ideologues. No government is perfect, and ours isnât. When ours makes mistakes, what does the opposition do? Spout more ideology, rather than do the hard yards and genuinely figure out how to fix things. There are some incredibly able MPs in National, some of whom I know well. Yet theyâre not the loudmouths who get press. Why are we giving these folks air time when they donât do their homework, donât have basic awareness of Kiwi political history, and what makes economies work? Why do some media talking heads fawn over them, looking at them doey-eyed like Stephen Colbert looks at Jacinda Ardern? I thought by the time youâre 25 you have a reasonable understanding of actions and consequences, and spouting ideology in the hope that a little gaslighting might fool voters isnât going to swing this swing voter. George Gair, whose politics were similar to my own, would not recognize his party, and neither do I.
You can find the three parts here on the RNZ website: the pre-Panel, part one, and part two. Wallace and Sally were in the Auckland studio, while I was in the Wellington one, trying not to change Kathryn Ryanâs desk set-up. I have to say Wallace is a very capable host as he knows I can’t see them, so he’ll give me little nudges where I can chime in. It was nice to be back on after six months and hopefully I kept up the notion that RNZ National is for the thinking New Zealander.
Tags: 2022, Aotearoa, New Zealand, politics, radio, Radio New Zealand, Wallace Chapman Posted in culture, media, New Zealand, politics, Wellington | No Comments »
16.06.2022
The second of three verses of the Scots College school song appears to be missing from the web. I posted them once on Facebook, back when people used Facebook, so of course it doesnât appear in Google.
We sang it, but I understand that the generation before, and the one after, didnât sing it. We seem to have been the anomaly.
In the interests of having them somewhere searchable on the web, and as the Secretary of Scots Collegians:
Weâll keep our tryst from day to day
And pledge our honour bright,
To follow truthâs unerring way
And march into the light.
Let God and right and the watchword be,
Let Scots have honoured name,
For joy be ours to know that we
Were heroes of its fame.
Corrections are welcome; these are to the best of my recollection.
The move to co-education at Scots several years ago means the song has had to change with the times, though I imagine that enough of us remember the lyrics to the other verses as they once were, and the old choruses, for me not to need to record them.
Tags: 1990, 1990s, Alma Mater, Aotearoa, history, music, New Zealand, Scots College, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara Posted in culture, New Zealand, Wellington | No Comments »
01.06.2022
Of course I remember there was a holding page prior to Lucire launching on October 20, 1997 at 7 a.m. EST, or midnight NZDT on October 21, 1997. I just didnât remember what it exactly looked like, till I discovered it at the Internet Archive:

There was no semicolon in JY&A Media, not even then; this must be some Internet Archive bug since I didnât use & for the HTML entity in those days. Most browsers interpreted a lone ampersand correctly back then. We also tried to save bytes where we could, with the limited bandwidth we had to play with.
Pity the other captures from the 1990s arenât as good, with the main images missing. I still have them offline, so one of these days âŠ
Tags: 1990s, 1997, Aotearoa, design, history, Internet Archive, JY&A Media, Lucire, New Zealand, publishing, web design Posted in design, internet, media, New Zealand, publishing, technology, Wellington | 1 Comment »
28.03.2022
There are a few experiments going on here now that this blog is on the new server. Massive thanks to my friend who has been working tirelessly to get us on to the new box and into the 2020s.
First, thereâs a post counter, though as itâs freshly installed, it doesnât show a true count. There is a way to get the data out of Yuzo Related Posts into the counterâeven though thatâs not entirely accurate, either, it would be nice to show the record counts I had back in 2016 on the two posts revealing Facebookâs highly questionable âmalware scannerâ.

Secondly, we havenât found a good related post plug-in to replace Yuzo. Youâll see two sets of related posts here. The second is by another company who claims their software will pick up the first image in each post in the event that I have not set up a featured image or thumbnail; as you can see, it doesnât do what it says on the tin.
Some of you will have seen a bunch of links from this blog sent out via social media as the new installation became live, and I apologize for those.
Please bear with us while we work through it all. The related post plug-in issue has been the big one: there are many, but they either donât do as they claimed, or they have terrible design. Even Wordpressâs native one cannot do the simple task of taking the first image from a post, which Yuzo does with ease.
Recently a friend recommended a Google service to me, and of course I responded that I would never touch anything of theirs, at least not willingly. The following isnât addressed to him, but the many who have taken exception to my justified concerns about the company, and about Facebook, and their regular privacy breaches and apparent lack of ethics.
In short: I donât get you.
And I try to have empathy.
When I make my arguments, they arenât pulled out of the ether. I try to back up what Iâve said. When I make an attack in social media, or even in media, thereâs a wealth of reasons, many of which have been detailed on this blog.
Of course there are always opposing viewpoints, so itâs fine if you state your case. And of course itâs fine if you point out faults in my argument.
But to point the âtut tutâ finger at me and imply that I either shouldnât or Iâm mistaken, without backing yourselves up?
So where are you coming from?
In the absence of any supporting argument, there are only a handful of potential conclusions.
1. Youâre corrupt or you like corruption. You donât mind that these companies work outside the law, never do as they claim, invade peopleâs privacy, and place society in jeopardy.
2. You love the establishment and you donât like people rocking the boat. It doesnât matter what they do, theyâre the establishment. Theyâre above us, and thatâs fine.
3. You donât accept othersâ viewpoints, or youâre unable to grasp them due to your own limitations.
4. Youâre blind to whatâs been happening or you choose to turn a blind eye.
Iâve heard this bullshit my entire life.
When I did my first case at 22, representing myself, suing someone over an unpaid bill, I heard similar things.
âMaybe thereâs a reason he hasnât paid you.â
âThey never signed a contract, so no contract exists.â
As far as I can tell, they were a variant of those four, since one of the defendants was the president of a political party.
I won the case since I was in the right, and a bunch of con artists didnât get away with their grift.
The tightwad paid on the last possible day. I was at the District Court with a warrant of arrest for the registrar to sign when he advised me that the money had been paid in that morning.
I did this case in the wake of my motherâs passing.
It amazed me that there were people who assumed I was in the wrong in the setting of a law student versus an establishment white guy.
Their defence was full of contradictions because they never had any truth backing it up.
I also learned just because Simpson Grierson represented them that no one should be scared of big-name law firms. Later on, as I served as an expert witness in many cases, that belief became more cemented.
Equally, no one should put any weight on what Mark Zuckerberg says since history keeps showing that he never means it; and we should believe Google will try one on, trying to snoop wherever they can, because history shows that they will.
Ancient history with Google? Here’s what its CEO said, as quoted in CNBC, in February. People lap this up without question (apart from the likes of Bob Hoffman, who has his eyes open, and a few others). How many people on this planet again? It wasn’t even this populated in Soylent Green (which supposedly takes place in 2022, if you’re looking at the cinematic version).

Tags: 1990s, 1994, 1995, 2016, 2022, Big Tech, corruption, Facebook, friends, Google, history, Labour, law, server, technology, Wordpress Posted in business, internet, New Zealand, politics, technology, Wellington | No Comments »
31.12.2021
Weâre probably far enough along from the event for people not to know which one I am referring to, as Iâve no wish to embarrass the organizers.
Earlier in 2021, we saw a weekend event that would take place at the âJohnsonville Community Hubâ. No address was given other than that. Both Duck Duck Go and Google seemed to think this meant Waitohi, the new library and swimming pool complex.
We arrived there to find that no one knew of this event, but maybe we could try the community hall next door?
No joy.
There was the Collective Community Hub on Johnsonville Road but their website made it clear that it wasnât open at the weekend.
We hung round Johnsonville for a bit and decided we would check out the Collective place, just to see it up close.
Sure enough, thatâs where the event wasâit was open at the weekendâand we got there after everyone had packed up.
They were very apologetic and we told them the above. They had noted, however, that there had been more information on Facebook.
To me, thatâs a big mistake, because I donât know what their Facebook page is, and even if I did, there was no guarantee I would see it for a variety of reasons. (Try loading any fan page on Facebook on mobile: the posts take unbearably long and few people would have the patience.) A search for the event on both Duck Duck Go and Google never showed a Facebook page, either.
A similar event posted its cancellation on Facebook exclusively, something which we didnât know till we got there, and after getting puzzled looks from the party that had booked the venue, I randomly found one organizerâs page and clicked on his Facebook link. Again, nothing about the event itself came up on Duck Duck Go or on Google.
In the latter case, the organizer had the skills to make a web page, a normal one, so was it so hard to put the cancellation there?
You just canât find things on Facebook. They donât appear to be indexed. And if they are, theyâre probably so far down the resultsâ pages that they wonât be seen. If youâre organizing an event, by all means, post there to those who use Facebook keenly (a much smaller number than you think, with engagement decreasing year after year), but it is no substitute for getting it into properly indexed event calendars or on to the web, where regular people will put in search terms and look for it.
Facebook is not the internet. Thank God.
Tags: 2021, Aotearoa, Duck Duck Go, event marketing, events, Facebook, Google, marketing, New Zealand, promotion, search engine, social media, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara Posted in business, internet, marketing, New Zealand, Wellington | No Comments »
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