This was the back of Mum’s 1985 tax assessment slip from the IRD. Helvetica, in metal. The bold looks a bit narrow: a condensed cut, or just a compromised version because of the machinery used?
Not often seen, since by this time phototypesetting was the norm, though one reason Car magazine was a good read was its use of metal typesetting until very late in the game. I know there are many reasons the more modern forms of typesetting are superior, least of all fidelity to the designed forms, but there’s a literal depth to this that makes me nostalgic.
Posts tagged ‘government’
Helvetica in metal, 1985
03.03.2021Tags: 1980s, 1985, Aotearoa, family, government, Helvetica, magazine, New Zealand, retro, technology, typeface, typesetting, typography
Posted in design, New Zealand, typography, Wellington | No Comments »
Searching for Murray Smith
09.12.2020Earlier today Strangers, the 1978 TV series created by Murray Smith, came to mind. Smith created and wrote many episodes of one of my favourite TV series, The Paradise Club (which to this day has no DVD release due to the music rights), and penned an entertaining miniseries Frederick Forsyth Presents (the first time that I noticed one Elizabeth Hurley) and a novel I bought when I first spotted it, The Devilâs Juggler. He also wrote one of my favourite Dempsey and Makepeace episodes, âWheel Manâ, which had quite a few of the hallmarks of some of his other work, including fairly likeable underworld figures, which came into play with The Paradise Club.
Yet thereâs precious little about Smith online. His Wikipedia entry is essentially a version of his IMDB credits with some embellishments, for instance. It doesnât even record his real name.
Donât worry, itâs not another dig at Wikipedia, but once again itâs a reflection of how things arenât permanent on the web, a subject Iâve touched on before after reading a blog entry from my friend Richard MacManus. And that we humans do have to rely on our own memories over whatâs on the ânet still: the World Wide Web is not the solution to storing all human knowledge, or, at least, not the solution to accessing it.
Itâs easy to refer to the disappearance of Geocities and the like, and the Internet Archive can only save so much. And in this case, I remember clearly searching for Murray Smith on Altavista in the 1990s, because I was interested in what he was up to. (He died in 2003.) I came across a legal prospectus of something he was proposing to do, and because it was a legal document, it gave his actual name.
Murray Smith was his screen name, and I gather from an article in The Independent quoting Smith and his friend Frederick Forsyth, he went by Murray, but the family name was definitely Murray-Smith. Back in those days, there was a good chance that if it was online, it was real: it took too much effort to make a website for anyone to bother doing fake news. My gut says it was George David Murray-Smith or something along those lines, but thereâs no record of that prospectus online any more, or of the company that he and Forsyth set up together to make Frederick Forsyth Presents, which I assume from some online entries was IFS Productions Ltd. Some websites’ claim that his name was Charles Maurice Smith is incorrect.
Looking today, there are a couple of UK gazette entries for George David Murray Smith (no hyphen) in the armed forces, including the SAS in the 1970s, which suggest I am right.
Even in the age of the web, the advantage still lies with those of us who have good memories who can recall facts that are lost. Iâve often suggested on this blog that we cannot fully trust technology, and that thereâs no guarantee that even the official bodies, like the UK Companiesâ Office, will have complete, accessible records. The computer is a leveller, but not a complete one.
Tags: 1990s, 2020, Altavista, government, history, internet, Richard MacManus, SAS, Scotland, TV, UK, website, Wikipedia, World Wide Web
Posted in business, culture, interests, internet, TV, UK | 1 Comment »
Forget the stereotypes: how immigrants write with English as their second language
12.09.2020How interesting to find a photocopy of a letter my Dad wrote to the Department of Social Welfare in 1986, to apply for National Superannuation on behalf of his parents.
We had been here less than a decade, but, frankly, Dadâs correspondence was always like this. The whole idea of immigrants coming to Aotearoa with limited English always smacked of racism and intolerance to me, and this letter illustrates that it might actually be our linguistic superiority in mastering another tongue that has racists and xenophobes worried.
There are some minor errors here, and he could have used a few commas instead of full stops, but itâs on a par with period correspondence from native Anglophones.
I still have this Underwood typewriter.
Tags: 1980s, 1986, Aotearoa, correspondence, family, government, immigration, New Zealand, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara
Posted in New Zealand, Wellington | 2 Comments »
Saddened to see colleagues lose their jobs as we bid, ‘Auf wiedersehen, Heinrich Bauer Verlag’
03.04.2020I am privy to some of the inner workings at Bauer Media through friends and colleagues, but I didnât expect them to shut up shop in New Zealand, effective April 2.
Depending on your politics, youâre in one of two camps.
TV3, itself part of a foreign company who has made serious cutbacks during the lockdown, said Bauer had approached the government and offered to sell the business to them at a rock-bottom price in the hope of saving the 200-plus jobs there. The government declined. I believe that’s the angle foreign-owned media are adopting here.
Both the PM and the minister responsible for media, Kris Faafoi, have said that Bauer never applied for the wage subsidy, and never approached the government to see if it could be classified as an essential service to keep operating. Indeed, in the words of the PM, âBauer contacted the minister and told him they werenât interested in subsidies.â
Itâs murkier today as there is evidence that Bauer had, through the Magazine Publishersâ Association, lobbied for reclassification for it to be turned down, though the minister continues to say that it had never been raised with him and that Bauer had already committed to shutting up shop.
Outside of âwe said, they saidâ, my takes are, first, it was never likely that the government would want to be a magazine publisher. Various New Zealand governments have been pondering how to deal with state-owned media here, and there was little chance the latest inhabitants of the Beehive would add to this.
We also know that Bauer had shut titles over the years due to poor performance, and Faafoiâs original statement expressly states that the Hamburg-based multinational had been âfacing challenges around viability of their operations here in New Zealand.â
With these two facts in mind, the government would not have taken on the business to turn it around, especially while knowing the owner of Bauer Media (well, 85 per cent of it) has a personal worth of US$3,000 million and the company generated milliards in revenue per annum.
I also have to point to its own harsh decisions over the years in shutting titles. In 2018, Bauerâs own Australian CEO told Ad News: âThereâs a really interesting view that somehow we are here to provide a social service. The reality is weâre here to make money and if we canât make money out of our magazines, weâll sell them or weâll close them.
âWe have an obligation, whether thatâs a public company or private company, to make money for shareholders. If it doesnât make money, why would we do it?â
That, to me, sounds like the corporate position here as well, and no doubt Bauerâs bean counters will have crunched the numbers before yesterdayâs announcement.
Iâve had my own ideas how the stable could have evolved but itâs easy to talk about this with hindsight, so I wonât. Enough people are hurting.
But Iâd have applied for whatever the government offered to see if I could keep things going for a little while longer. Even if the writing was on the wall, it would have been nice to see my colleagues have a lifeline. Get one more issue of each title out after June. Maybe Iâm just not as brutal. I mean, Iâve never defamed Rebel Wilson as Bauer’s Australian publications have. Maybe itâs different for a small independent.
If I may use a sporting analogy, Bauer hasnât let their players on to the field and kept them in the changing room, and more’s the pity.
One comment I received yesterday was that Bauer wouldnât have been in a position to pay its staff even with the government subsidy, with no advertising sales being generated. Iâm not so sure, with annual global revenues of over âŹ2,000 million. New Zealand was probably too unimportant to be saved by Bauer’s bosses in Hamburg. I guess weâll never know.
Tags: 2020, Aotearoa, Auckland, Australia, Bauer, business, COVID-19, Fairfax Press, Germany, government, Hamburg, Jacinda Ardern, Kris Faafoi, libel, magazines, media, Mediaworks, New Zealand, pandemic, politics, publishing, The Spinoff
Posted in business, media, New Zealand, politics, publishing | No Comments »
We’ve been here before: foreign-owned media run another piece supporting an asset sale
04.05.2018
Clilly4/Creative Commons
I see thereâs an opinion piece in Stuff from the Chamber of Commerce saying the Wellington City Council should sell its stake in Wellington Airport, because it doesnât bring in that much (NZ$12 million per annum), and because Aucklandâs selling theirs.
Itâs not too dissimilar to calls for the Council to sell the Municipal Electricity Department a few decades ago, or any other post-Muldoon call about privatization.
Without making too much of a judgement, since I havenât inquired deeply into the figures, itâs interesting that the line often peddled by certain business groups, when they want governments to sell assets, is: âThey should run things like households, and have little debt.â
This never applies to themselves. When it comes to their own expansion, they say, âWe donât need to run things like households, we can finance this through debt.â
The same groups say that governments should be run more like businesses.
However, their advice is always for governments to be run like households.
Has it escaped them that they are different beasts?
I wouldnât mind seeing government entities run like businesses, making money for their stakeholders, and said so when I campaigned for mayor.
Doing this needs abandoning a culture of mediocrity at some of those entities. Some believe this is impossible within government, and there are credible examples, usually under former command economies. But then there are also decent examples of state-owned enterprises doing rather well, like Absolut, before they were sold off by the Swedish government. If you want something current, the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. is one of the most profitable car makers on the planet.
The difference lies in the approach toward the asset.
But what do I know? I come from Hong Kong where the civil service inherited from the British is enviably efficient, something many occidentals seem to believe is impossibleâyet I live in a country where I can apply for, and get, a new passport in four hours. Nevertheless, that belief in inefficiency holds.
Change your mindset: things are possible with the right people. Donât be a Luddite.
And therein lies why Stuff and I are on different planets.
Tags: 2018, Absolut, airport, Aotearoa, business, China, civil service, corporate culture, Fairfax Press, finance, government, Hong Kong, local government, media, New Zealand, people power, politics, SAIC, Wellington, Wellington City Council, Whanganui-a-Tara
Posted in business, China, culture, globalization, leadership, media, New Zealand, politics, Sweden, Wellington | No Comments »
It’s as though Statistics New Zealand set up this year’s census to fail
04.03.2018You have to wonder if the online census this year has been intentionally bad so that the powers that be can call it a flop and use it as an excuse to delay online voting, thereby disenfranchising younger voters.
Itâs the Sunday before the census and I await my access code: none was delivered, and I have three addresses at which this could be received (two entries to one dwelling, and a PO box). If itâs not at any of these, then thatâs pretty poor. I have been giving them a chance on the expectation it would arrive, but now this is highly unlikely.
And when you go to the website, they claim my browserâs incompatible. I disagree, since Iâm within the parameters they state.
This screen shot was taken after I filled out a request for the access code yesterday. Statistics NZ tells me the code will now take a week to arrive, four days after census night. Frankly, thatâs not good enough.
While Iâve seen some TV commercials for the census, Iâve seen no online advertising for it, and nothing in social media. My other half has seen no TVCs for it.
Going up to the census people at the Newtown Fair today, I was handed a card with their telephone number and asked to call them tomorrow.
Youâd think theyâd have people there at the weekend when weâre thinking about these things. Letâs hope I remember tomorrow.
And I’m someone who cares about my civic duty here. What about all those who don’t? Are we going to see a record population drop?
I’m not alone in this.
Same friends feeling disenfranchised for not having a computer. I understand reasons for online census but I think organisation and comms around it leave somewhat to be desired.
— Duangjai 🌸 (@Duangjai) March 3, 2018
Theyâll be very busy, as Sarah Bickerton Tweeted earlier today (the replies are worth checking out):
So how many people on NZ Twitter have or haven't received their letter yet for Tuesday's Census?
— Sarah Hendrica Bickerton 👩🏻💻 (@sarahhbickerton) March 3, 2018
and there are a lot of people among her circles, myself included, who donât have the access code. Kat’s story is particularly interesting (edited for brevity):
Third call to Census NZ about getting a form for another dwelling on the property. This is specifically a question they talk about on the letter we got with our code, but operators are unable to issue extra codes. The request goes up to the supervisor.
— Kat (@katjnz) March 3, 2018
When a field officer called around to give you a form, they sorted out issues like a second dwelling at the time, right there. They had authority to do so. They answered questions, and made sure you knew what you needed to do.
— Kat (@katjnz) March 3, 2018
And I can't help but surmise that low socioeconomic communities are going to be the ones who:
a) most likely won't have the time or inclination to fill in another bloody form for the government, let alone proactively pursue it
b) need to be represented in the stats for funding— Kat (@katjnz) March 3, 2018
Online systems are robust and can be successful.
Itâs just that they need to be backed up by people with a will to make things succeed, not people who are so intent on making them fail.
PS.: Jonathan Mosen’s experience with this census as a blind person makes my issues seem insignificant. Fortunately, for him, Statistics New Zealand came to the party.âJY
Tags: 2018, advertising, Aotearoa, communications, government, internet, marketing, New Zealand, statistics, technology, Twitter, web browser
Posted in internet, marketing, New Zealand, politics, technology | No Comments »
TPPA-11: same thing, different face
22.02.2018
Neil Ballantyne/Wikimedia Commons
How much has TPPA changed? Not a lot, according to this petition. The full content is below, and if you agree, click through to dontdoit.nz and add your signature. Point (e) is the one that most of us understand, and according to the petition, it’s still there.
While all trade agreements have some form of investorâstate dispute settlement process, what has leaked out (since the process remains secret) about TPPA, and TPPA-11, is that the process remains unfair. ISDSs have morphed into something where corporations can get far more than a fair go against governments that might, for example, nationalize their assets, which were their original intent, one that I think is fair. But here are some examples of where things can go terribly wrong, and there’s nothing in TPPA-11 that (apparently) prevents these sorts of things happening.
We, the undersigned, express our grave concern that:
(a) The Labour Party, New Zealand First and the Green Party all said in the Select Committee report on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) that they would not support its ratification;(b) The text agreed by eleven countries after the US pulled out, the TPPA-11, remains the same as the original TPPA, with a small number of items in the original text being suspended, not removed;
(c) The government has promised a new inclusive and progressive approach to trade and investment agreements, but there is nothing new and progressive to justify the renaming of the TPPA-11 as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement on Trans-Pacific Partnership;
(d) There are many provisions in the TPPA-11 that restrict the regulatory sovereignty of the current and future Parliaments;
(e) The Government has instructed officials not to include investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) in future agreements, yet the TPPA-11 still contains the core investor protection rules that can be enforced through ISDS;
(f) The secrecy that the governing parties criticised in the original negotiations continues and that the text will apparently not be released until after the agreement is signed;
(g) There has been no analysis of the economic costs and benefits of the TPPA-11, including the impact on employment and income distribution, as the governing parties called for in the select committee report;
(h) There has been no health impact assessment of the revised agreement as called for by the current Government in the select committee report, nor any assessment of environmental impact or constraints on climate action;
(i) The Crown has not discussed ways to improve the Treaty of Waitangi exception and strengthen protections for Māori as the Waitangi Tribunal advised;
(j) Despite these facts, the Government has announced its intention to sign the TPPA-11 on 8 March 2018;
and urge the House to call upon the Government:
(k) not to sign the TPPA or the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement on Trans-Pacific Partnership;
(l) to conduct a principles-based review of New Zealandâs approach to free trade, investment and economic integration agreements that involves broad-based consultation;
(m) to engage with Māori to reach agreement on effective protection of their rights and interests consistent with te Tiriti o Waitangi and suspend negotiations for similar agreements until that review is concluded;
and further, urge the House to pass new legislation that
(n) establishes the principles and protections identified through the principles-based review under paragraph (l) as the standing general mandate for New Zealandâs future negotiations, including;
i. excluding ISDS from all agreements New Zealand enters into, and renegotiating existing agreements with ISDS;
ii. a requirement for the government to commission and release in advance of signing an agreement independent analyses of the net costs and benefits of any proposed agreement for the economy, including jobs and distribution, and of the impact on health, other human rights, the environment and the ability to take climate action;
iii. a legislative requirement to refer the agreement to the Waitangi Tribunal for review prior to any decision to sign the treaty; and
(o) makes the signing of any agreement conditional on a majority vote of the Parliament following the tabling in the House of the reports referred to in paragraph (n) (ii) and (iii);
and for the House to amend its Standing Orders to
(p) establish a specialist parliamentary select committee on treaties with membership that has the necessary expertise to scrutinise free trade, investment and economic integration agreements;
(q) require the tabling of the governmentâs full mandate for any negotiation prior to the commencement of negotiations, and any amendment to that mandate, as well as periodic reports to the standing committee on treaties on compliance with that mandate;
(r) require the tabling of any final text of any free trade, investment and economic integration agreement at least 90 days prior to it being signed;
(s) require the standing committee on treaties call for and hear submissions on the mandate, the periodic reports, and pre-signing version of the text and the final text and report on those hearings to Parliament;
(t) require a two-third majority support for the adoption of any free trade, investment or economic integration agreement that constrains the sovereignty of future Parliaments that is binding and enforceable through external dispute settlement processes.
Given New Zealand First’s vehement opposition to it while outside of government, it’s hard to believe that the minor changes would have satisfied the party so easily.
If you have the same concerns as the petition writers, and believe our government should do (k) through (t), then the petition’s at dontdoit.nz.
Tags: 2018, business, free-trade agreement, globalization, government, international trade, Labour, law, New Zealand, New Zealand First, politics, TPPA, trade, Winston Peters
Posted in business, globalization, New Zealand, politics | 1 Comment »