A tribute to Lewis Collins: the top five reasons he was awesome

A small tribute to actor Lewis Collins on his passing earlier this week (originally published in Lucire Men). 1. The cars The Triumph Dolomite Sprint Lewis Collins’ character, William Andrew Philip Bodie (he was a ‘regal-looking baby’) had in The Professionals had more power than Doyle’s TR7. And his Capris were far cooler. So cool […]

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Responding to blog comments—and where to from here?

Wordpress, with its automatic deactivation of Jetpack after each update, messed up, so I have no metrics for the last two months of this blog. Nor did it send me emails notifying me of your comments. It would have been useful to know how the last couple of posts went, to gauge your reaction to […]

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Campaign update: videos three to five

I have been posting these on the videos’ page as they became public, but maybe I should have added them to this blog, too, for those of you following on RSS. The multilingual one seems to have had a lot of hits. They have been directed by Isaac Cleland, with Khadeeja Dean on sound. Lawrance […]

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Being answerable to your public (or, if you can’t engage now, can we expect you to in office?)

One of my supporters Tweeted to say I was the only candidate at Vote.co.nz who has bothered to reply to citizens’ questions. It’s good for me, but sad to see my opponents so disengaged. I was also surprised to see that only three of us have bothered to register for the website this time, despite […]

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The statistics back up my manifesto: we need to help young Wellingtonians

One of the things I hear when campaigning is that one should not focus too much on youth, because young people do not vote as much. I think the first part of that is bollocks.    While it’s true that the youth vote has never been strong, no one can claim to represent a city […]

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Cities are, or at least should be, driving globalization

  My friend and colleague William Shepherd directed me to a piece at Quartz by Michele Acuto and Parag Khanna, on how cities are driving globalization more than nations—a theme I touched upon on this blog in March 2010. As he said, I had called it three years ago, though admittedly Acuto and Khanna have […]

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Park: wise

Earlier today, the following press release was issued by my campaign team. And so far, judging by comments on my personal Facebook and my mayoral campaign page, the mood seems to be in favour of a park at Cuba Street. I realize other policies won’t be as cut-and-dry, and discussion remains very welcome (as evidenced […]

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Getting ready for global

  I’ve known of this for some time through Medinge: the globalizing of The New York Times. This has meant the retirement of The International Herald–Tribune name, one which brand experts are divided on.    On the one hand, the NYT doesn’t have it wrong. There are global newspaper brands already, namely those that have […]

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In Wellington, the players need to change

The below was written on April 22, 2013, in response to an article in The Dominion Post. It was offered to the newspaper as an op–ed, then to The Wellingtonian, but it was eventually declined. The Dominion Post’s headline on April 22 confirmed what many of us knew after numerous friends and colleagues left Wellington […]

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