Poll Dancer by Keith Ng

I haven't introduced myself yet - how rude of me! So here's a brief self-introduction, and this is the only self-indulgent blog I'll do. I promise.

I'm Keith Ng. By day, I'm a politics tutor at Victoria University and News Editor of Salient, and by night, I do pretty much the same thing. We work long hours for shit pay, but we do it for the love, and hey - at least we don't get busted for porn, offensive language, intoxication and gambling where we work. Hell, I even brought a packet of illicitly illegal drugs - nos!! - to work for a story last week. I intend to make whipped cream with it.

This is me, with former Salient Editor Sarah Barnett, celebrating Armed Forces Day (21 May) last year.

Salient is also part of the Aotearoa Student Press Association (ASPA), which has a spot in the Parliamentary Press Gallery with my name on it. This was a bit of a coup, thanks mostly to the stellar rise of my predecessor Matt Nippert and former VUWSA Publications Officer Mark Sainsbury's nostalgia for student media, I think.

And it was good that they did. Because this coincided with the restoration of the ASPA newswire, which goes to 13 student magazines around New Zealand, which gives it (by our rough reckoning) close to 100,000 readers. It was an interesting experiment to squeeze ourselves into the big leagues, and has worked spectacularly well. Now all we have to do is keep it.

I suppose I was expecting the old hands to welcome young upstarts like me with a few jugs and Yoda-like advice. But no such luck - a had a good chat with Tom Scott (over coffee, unfortuantely) and Jonathan Hunt for an article that's been in the works for too long, but right now, I think I'm the Lynne Pillay (who?) of the Press Gallery. Except without the patsy questions. Doh!

At least the politicians have been taking me seriously, which does mean that my access is steadily getting better now. Can't compare with the real insiders or the journos who've lived in Parliament for decades, of course - but unlike them, I am not bound to a party line and I have complete editorial freedom. And unlike the good folks at Dog Biting Men, I've got enough freedom in my day job that I don't need to vent via blog pseudonyms. And that's why you should read this blog.

This blog was originally going to be called Noodlegate. However, Tze Ming Mok had cornered the noodle market, and I ended up with Poll Dancer. Unfortunately, I forgot that student media Goddess Holly Walker, Editor of Critic, had a column called Polldancing last year. For my transgression, I owe her a drink and effusive praise in this blog. I originally offered a pole dance... ah well, her loss. Despite her lapse of judgement in passing up that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, she really is an insightful and dedicated journalist and I wish her and her crew every success in being the second-best student magazine in New Zealand at this year's ASPA awards.

Incidentally, this blog is not really a blog. It's really an online column with links. The goal is to have all the interconnectivity, multimedianess and immediacy that the blog offers, with the focus, purpose and research that goes behind a column. The ASPA photo archive will be used frequently, too, to allow you, dear reader, to see for yourself. Already up are photos from the Hikoi and the National Front march last year, as well as the Destiny Church march and Labour Party conference this year. Email me if you want to use them.

Go on. Tell your friends about this blog. Spam your acquaintances. You know you want to.

First eyebrows, and now frogs?

This election is getting a bit too Andy Warhol for me already.

The Greens have taken to wooing their hip young target demographic with the ultimate weapon in the political arsenal of the 21st century - a blog. Like, dude, that's so, whack. But also, like, you know, totally down-wit-it.

The blog is called frogblog. Because frog rhymes with blog. And frogs are green. And the Greens are also green. That's, like, whack.

It's been a big month for the Greens - they've been all over the international press for their campaign against the Black Caps tour to Zimbabwe and the protest against the Indonesian President, they're also running a "mini-campaign", and still found the time to blog like there's no tomorrow.

The "mini-campaign" is a chance for the Greens to rev up their campaigning machine, do a few laps to get the rank-and-file volunteers warmed up.

Training? Organisation? Maybe even discipline? Whatever happened to traditional hippy values?

Then there's the matter of the 400,000 pamphlets (a.k.a. Branded tree carcass fragments) they'll be delivering. I think the theory is that the killing of a hundred trees can be justified if it means that another thousand trees will continue to live.

Speaking of heinous crimes, the Jakarta Post's coverage of the Indonesian President's visit notes that "a student who joined the pro-Indonesia protest accused the Green Party of paying demonstrators to protest against [Indonesian President] Susilo". $30, in fact.

It's nice to live in a country where we can laugh at these things.

Also nice is the campaign against the Zimbabwe tour. What's not nice, however, is seeing Helen Clark and Phil Goff saying the right things, then throw their arms up and refuse to put their money where their mouths are. Their rationale was that they didn't want to set a precedent for future cases - just in case, you know, other sporting codes decide to take human rights seriously in the future. Man, would that be a slippery slope.

I wonder if the campaign can recapture the sense of idealism of the Springbok tour protests. That tour was way before my time, and perhaps it's been idealised and romanticised through the retelling, but the sheer idea of it - being a part of a movement that helped to better the lives of millions, an event that was a milestone in world history and a defining image of New Zealand's national identity -  it's an idea that's at once intimate and alien.

Intimate because I've felt inspired by it before - and not in some namby-pamby, I'll-buy-a-bumper-sticker way, either. But alien because the inspiration has always been private, historical and/or fictional. I've seen it, I've even felt it, but I've never been in it.

Here's a link to the petition. It ain't no Salt March, but it's a start.

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In other news, the V8 debate has just finished before it even really started. I was going to call it the defining issue for Wellington Central for this election, after Blumsky position himself as a fun, inventive and vrrrm-vrrrm supporter, while Hobbs ninja-leaped off the fence to face-off Blumsky as the sensible, cultured and environmental-responsible one.

Good thing I didn't make that call, then. But my prediction that the Wellington Central race will be fought on the blogsphere seems to be eventuating, with Jordan Carter and David Farrar pushing their respective candidate's positions on their blogs. It's all very civilised so far.

While on Wellington Central, I hear that the Hobbs camp and the Kedgley camp are getting friendlier now, after earlier resentment that Hobbs came in late on the V8 race (which Kedgley had been against all along) and stole the thunder (and doing it poorly, according to the Greens).

It makes sense - Greens did very well in Wellington Central last time, taking 16% of the party vote. Kedgley, realistically, doesn't have a chance at the electorate seat, but should have enough votes and influence to give Hobbs a substantial boost. It's likely that Kedgley will pull out in favour of Hobbs at some stage (assuming Hobbs needs it), but being on good terms might just help influence when and how it happens.

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Coming soon:

• 
  A formal introduction, with special mention for the fabulous Editor of Critic magazine, Holly Walker, whose talent, wisdom and beauty is second only to Salient's benevolent Editress Emily Braunstein.
  
• 
  Number munching: Why whiners should stop their whiny whining about the electoral commission allocations. Or at least whine in a different tone.
  

Coming eventually:

• 
  The West Wing Effect: Who are the Toby Zeiglers of Wellington? Are they really that cool?
  
• 
  The Surplus That Wasn't There: Is that a $7b surplus in your pockets or are you just happy to see me?
  
• 
  Blogademic: An epidemological analysis of blogs.
  

Coming maybe:

• 
  Shocking revelations about Jim Peron!
  
• 
  Dairy-free whipped cream: Secret recipes revealed!
  
• 
  Confessions of an Asian driver!
  
• 
  The truth about salt they didn't want you to know!