Cautiously optimistic about Boucher

When I ran for office, there was often a noticeable difference between how I was treated by locally owned media and foreign- owned media. There are exceptions to that rule—The New Zealand Herald and Sky TV gave me a good run while Radio New Zealand opted to do a candidates’ round-up in two separate campaigns […]

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Live from Level 3

Finally, a podcast (or is it a blogcast, since it’s on my blog?) where I’m not “reacting” to something that Olivia St Redfern has put on her Leisure Lounge series. Here are some musings about where we’re at, now we are at Level 3.    Some of my friends, especially my Natcoll students from 1999–2000, […]

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Social media produce some terrible clairvoyants

I see Billie Eilish is singing the next James Bond title song, and it sounds pretty good.    The last one, ‘Writing’s on the Wall’, wasn’t one of my favourites and while I didn’t mind Sam Smith’s composition, I felt a female voice might have suited it better. On a Bond music forum on Facebook […]

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Andrew Yang’s campaign: #YangGang was just the beginning

Gage Skidmore/Creative Commons On Andrew Yang’s run for the Democratic nomination in the US: If Mastodon ever stops supporting that Javascript, I wrote: ‘Pretty stoked at what Andrew Yang has managed to achieve. Certain forces tried to minimize his coverage, to give him as little legitimacy as possible (sounds familiar). Yet he also normalized the […]

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Social media sheeple don’t know they’re sheeple

Andrew R. Tester/Creative Commons It’s pretty hard to deactivate one’s Facebook. When I ceased posting in 2017 and reduced my activity to client stuff and group management, I made sure that I had no more Facebook sign-ons left. But it turns out that Lucire’s Twitter-to-Facebook page script relies on my account.    I did look […]

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Alone again, naturally

Looking back over the years And whatever else that appears, I remember I cried when my mother died Never wishing to hide the tears. And at fifty-nine years old, My father, God rest his soul, Couldn’t understand why the only lass He had ever loved had been taken, Leaving him to start With a heart […]

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Victor Billot on the 2019 UK General Election

I often find myself in accord with my friend Victor Billot. His piece on the UK General Election can be found here. And yes, Britain, this is how many of us looking in see it—like Victor I have dual nationality (indeed, my British passport is my only current one, having been a little busy to […]

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First night

Forty-three years ago (September 16, 1976), we arrived in this country.    As we flew from Sydney and into Wellington, my Dad pointed out the houses below to me. ‘See, those are the sorts of houses New Zealanders live in,’ he said. I thought it was odd they lived in two-storey homes and not apartment […]

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‘If you don’t like it here, why don’t you leave?’

I didn’t read this thinking of Trump, which is what the Tweeter intended. I read it thinking of New Zealand. Heard the ‘If you don’t like it here, why don’t you leave?’ bullshit a lot—I dare say every immigrant to this nation has. English-born American columnist Sydney J. Harris, in 1969, answered it better than […]

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Bypassing the media, Carlos Ghosn tells it as it is

I haven’t blogged much about Carlos Ghosn, though I’ve Tweeted aplenty since his arrest last November. Earlier this week, his lawyers released a video of Ghosn stating his position, and it echoes much of what I had Tweeted. He couldn’t make a personal appearance at a press conference himself, thanks to some conveniently timed (for […]

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