This past Wednesday evening, a group of saints and sinners (categories not mutually exclusive) filed down the stairs of Neck of the Woods in K Road for an annual ritual: the New Zealand Music Month Pub Quiz. ¶ The event benefits…
The most staggering thing about Donald Trump's speech announcing US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement is that it demonstrated he has no idea at all what the accord actually is. When he blathered that after withdrawing “we’ll see if we…
New Zealand sports writing has often suffered in comparison with with the more elevated work of American journalists, although that's not quite fair. Rugby scribes in particular used to write regularly at length, in tour journals and books. Some of…
The episode of Media Take that screened last night is our last for a while. We'll be back on August 22 to cover the general election campaign and its aftermath. And I'm happy to say we went out with a…
There should not really have been such surprise at news reports about associate Health minister Peter Dunne last week proposing the legal, regulated sale of cannabis and the Portugal-style decriminalisation of other drugs. He has been advancing essentially the same…
I was otherwise occupied on Budget day and thus missed most of the scoring and shouting of odds. But I did catch Checkpoint opening its coverage with a look at Budget's 2017's headline story: the combination of tax threshold adjustments,…
Nearly thirty years after the introduction of Equal Employment Opportunity, (EEO) into the New Zealand public service there is still an impenetrable glass ceiling for Deaf and disabled people. While government continues to “promote” employment for disabled people, career paths…
Jed Town has been through a few musical guises: Beatlesque punk rocker with The Features, and then everything from confronting experimentalist to electronic raver as Fetus Productions. But through it all there's been a continuous thread of melody. ¶ And that…
On Saturday night at the Kings's Arms, in the course of a triumphant two-encore show, The Chills' frontman Martin Phillipps made an announcement from the stage. He had recently received his test results back after antiviral treatment – and they indicated…
Earlier this week, a video of Snoop Dogg and his crew performing 'P.I.M.P.' at Jazz Festival in New Orleans came across the social media wires – and it featured an amazing performance. Not by Snoop or any of his crew, but…
The other day, I was looking at my younger son sitting on the couch watching the news predict imminent nuclear war, and thinking, “This 80s revival is going a bit far.” But surely, it’s my generation who’ve been there before.…
It doesn't feel like Autumn here in the North, and it still only looks autumnal round the edges. I've had to scrape together pictures suggesting autumn in their colour more than content. ¶ How's it looking further south? ¶
Techweek 2017 has begun in 23 centres around the motu and we're pitching in with a special Orcon IRL at Golden Dawn tomorrow evening. ¶ Much of the week, be it in Auckland, Westport, Rotorua or Whangarei, is serious stuff, so…
It's been a hell of a week, so a short post this time.Things you might wish to know ... ¶ Fazerdaze's dreamy, buzzy new album Morningside is out today, delivering more of what we heard in the taster, 'Lucky Girl'. ¶ It's…
Just after the Commerce Commission announced its rejection of Fairfax and NZME’s “#StuffMe” merger bid yesterday, Sinead Boucher, Executive Editor for Fairfax Media, tweeted her reaction. The decision was, she said, “Very disappointing for NZ journalism”. ¶ I scoffed, because to…
This week's Media Take looks at cannabis and the law from various angles – and it kicks off with something of a surprise. ¶ I've interviewed Māori Party MP Marama Fox on the issue before, for this November 2015 Matters of Substance…
There is a big difference between the way children I am related to interact with me compared to the children of strangers who might encounter me for the first time, perhaps as they walk towards me on the street, or…
Last week, in a futile search for a pair of cycling gloves at advertised clearance prices, I called three Kathmandu outlets. At two, my call was answered by a pleasant young Irish person. At the third number, the voicemail message…
For all her public denials, it never made sense that Theresa May would wait to 2020 for an election. Now’s probably as good a moment as she’ll get to grab a mandate for her vision of post-Brexit Britain. ¶ Her reasons…
I was flattered when I was asked a while ago to make a contribution to Base FM's Cover Story II exhibition – but also a little flummoxed. The show, which launched on Wednesday, asks DJs to nominate a special record and…
On the face of it, the words "BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards" might seem to beckon jokes about fairisle jumpers and and beards. Even given the reinvention of folk tropes by a new generation of artists, the words "BBC Radio…
In 1926 H.L Mencken proposed that the classical liberal solution to unaccountable democratic governance is to put more power in the hands of the voters, writing in summation "The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy." ¶ The last…
Nearly three years ago, I wrote a post called Two roads lead to the city about transport infrastructure near where I live in Point Chevalier. It was principally about the upgrade to the St Lukes interchange in support of the…
A file of decades-old letters can be mesmerising. Especially in a quiet library or archive with 2017 locked outside. Fragile, handwritten letters, typed and faded carbon copies, annotated missives. Who wrote them, why, and what was happening? What energy, and…
RNZ's video and audio podcast series The 9th Floor, a series of in-depth interviews with five former Prime Ministers, is a good idea well executed. Guyon Espiner's interviewing skills transfer well from the immediacy of morning radio to the longer…