Hard News: Imagining Auckland: no thanks, actually ...
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Oh and wrt Dunedin, we were living in St. Kilda Borough when the amalgamation went through and bodies like that had become a nonsense. But going all the way to Middlemarch? I questioned swallowing Mosgiel. Port Chalmers and the Peninsula, yes that's a geographical entity, but Mosgiel gets cut off from Dunedin in a big snow and Middlemarch is the other side of the Rock and Pillars.
I expect the stadium stushie is the result of it. A council well aware that too many outside of the city proper would be implaccably against even before you factored in metropolitan antis so decided to railroad it from the start. I don't know the history of how Moana pool got funded way back, but it has certainly been a valued asset.
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Ah, but according to the Obmudsman, the Ministers themselves are not subject to the OIA. Go figure.
And yet, they keep answering my requests for advice they have received...
The other value in a site for OIA is for transparency - seeing what process goes where, and how the machinery of government works. Very useful in a democracy. Also, you can look at what other questions are being asked and perhaps contact the requester if you think their results might be useful to your own queries.
I'd like to see a community grow up around the site, dedicated to keeping government honest. I think an open site that shows progress and procrastination by government agencies in answering OIAs is valuable in itself. If nothing else, it may spur those answering if they know that there are others watching from the sidelines.
I agree with all of the above. And it would be a great source of data on how the process worked in practice for the public (something which is difficult to get).
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BTW, the Monet exhibition at Te Papa, like quite a few others there, isn't free but it *is* well worth paying to see :-)
Just remember to stand well back.
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I still really don't get how dumping on, say, Downstage, helps the arts funding issue which is what these two Metro clowns did. I guess setting up an inter-city stoush sells more mags and pulls in the viewers.
I can imagine the AKL-WLG stoush coming to something like, "Be careful what you say... or the museum gets it!"
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Won't somebody think of the taonga?!?
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Erm, to quote someone who is currently on Celebrity Rehab with Dr Drew (!): 'can't we all just get along?'
We're so miniscule. I always feel as though bitching about some other region or city to make a point is totally ridiculous.
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Here in the UK we have recently moved to PR for local elections
According to Wikipedia England is still determinedly undemocratic and sticks to FPP. Only Scotland has a PR system for local and national government, and it's a lot better governed as a result.
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We're so miniscule. I always feel as though bitching about some other region or city to make a point is totally ridiculous.
Pfui, I say. May I remind you I come from the country that came up with the whole idea of parochialism, and that it literally means the pride in your parish, and that back in the day there was a parish church every other street? If you don't bitch about the next suburb, nay, other parts of your own suburb or village, you're really not trying hard enough.
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being charged $50 for it. When did this come in? i seem to have missed that one. It highlights a hypocrisy where if I injure myself due to my own carelessness ACC picks up the tab but if I need hospitalisation because I catch a communicable disease through no fault of my own I pay through the nose.
It's been around for a long time. St John have had a fee for non-ACC transports for well over a decade. That's why Wellington Free Ambulance has that middle word in its name. SJA do offer membership, at a cost slightly higher than that of a single ambulance ride, and that then covers "repeat customers". People with medical conditions usually join, just because it's a one-off payment each year and isn't actually that unreasonable.
Also, before you get too outraged, consider that that charge is to cover things such as O2 or other medications, dressings, laundering the linen on the trolley, and any need to wash the bus out if you make a mess. In the US you usually get a three-figure invoice for the most basic of ambulance rides, never mind if you actually require any kind of care prior to being deposited in the care of physicians.Plus, hypocrisy is not the word you're looking for. When did hypocrisy become shorthand for "An inconsistency that looks bad and with which I don't agree"? Not just picking on you, because it's something I've noticed starting to creep into general conversation.
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If you don't bitch about the next suburb, nay, other parts of your own suburb or village, you're really not trying hard enough.
I suppose I think there's a line between 'oh ho ho, west Auckland bogan mullet Holdens neenerneener', which I'm mostly amused by, and 'we pay all your taxes, assholes!' which I'm... not.
(A biopic of my life would have a title something like Stating the Obvious All the Time: The Danielle Moreau Story .)
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(A biopic of my life would have a title something like Stating the Obvious All the Time: The Danielle Moreau Story.)
I've got Always Compulsively Reminding People of Where He's Originally From: The Giovanni Tiso Story.
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A friend of mine says his autobiography will be called My Indecision is Final . If he can make up his mind to actually write it.
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Danielle:
Erm, to quote someone who is currently on Celebrity Rehab with Dr Drew (!): 'can't we all just get along?'
That phrase goes back a bit further, and in a far less benign context...
People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? Can we get along? Can we stop making it, making it horrible for the older people and the kids?...It’s just not right. It’s not right. It’s not, it’s not going to change anything. We’ll, we’ll get our justice....Please, we can get along here. We all can get along. I mean, we’re all stuck here for a while. Let’s try to work it out. Let’s try to beat it. Let’s try to beat it. Let’s try to work it out.
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In principle I support the super city idea, because I think that local governance in Auckland now has a completely Balkanised culture that is holding back city-wide development. The sort of tiresome parish pump petty political kaleidoscope of grey haired oldies, whacky water protesters, die-in-a-ditch Greenies, philistine businessmen and obstructionist Maoris (not to mention the fact that three of the last four Auckland mayors have been happy clappy fundies) that dominate local body politics in N.Z. is simply not viable as a governance model in a fast growing CITY of 1.4 million pushing towards two million plus inhabitants. A city requires something altogether more professional than what works in Timaru.
Looking at the Royal Commission report on Auckland I can't help but get the feeling that privately the Royal Commission came to the conclusion that at least part of the cause of all the inter-authority squabbling in the '09 was the fault of the assorted fools that have been elected to the various governing bodies. From that they seem to have concluded there isn't enough elected talent in Auckland to justify all the democracy that it has, so they resolved to use their report to trim the democracy to match their perception of the level of the talent. In that light, the details of how Aucklanders are supposed to elect the pitifully few 23 councillors the report recommends is alarming. It seems to me their proposed solution to mediocre talent in gridlocked squabbles is to simply create a system that will allow as little as 20% of those who choose to vote to seize power and implement their agenda. Presumably the Royal Commission believes a bad plan is better than no plan, and better an unrepresentative dictatorship than the current "order, counter-order, disorder".
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even though it's more recognisably a museum than Te Papa
I remember Auckland museum being very traditional, though the last time I was in there was 20 years ago. Everything in glass cases very boring, look don't touch. Hope it's changed since then.
Te Papa is the only museum where the general exhibits interest my son. He likes the earthquake house, and the digital games that follow your body movements and the walk in earth's crust section.
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a far less benign context...
Yes, I know. Sorry, I should have been clearer: *Rodney King* is currently on Celebrity Rehab with Dr Drew.
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I've got Always Compulsively Reminding People of Where He's Originally From: The Giovanni Tiso Story .
That would be a chapter in my book when I lived in the USA.
Yes, my name was Giovanni Tiso then. Boom-tish.
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I remember Auckland museum being very traditional, though the last time I was in there was 20 years ago. Everything in glass cases very boring, look don't touch. Hope it's changed since then.
It has, but it still feels like a museum rather than a post-modern jumble. I often feel dissatisfied by a visit to Te Papa -- although it's worth trekking up to Te Papa's top floors to see the art; and that's only there because of the review commissioned by Helen Clark in 2000. There's an absorbing essay on the review by Paul Williams here.
It includes this quote from Ian Wedde, the 'concept leader' of Parade , which is what Te Papa had for a gallery before the PM stepped in.
Experience has convinced me that most people are similarly content to channel-surf, and that a rich playground offers plenty of opportunity to stop and attend if the time and material seem right. Out of this subjectivity developed an intersubjectivity: a project on material culture that was eclectic, with unresolved shifts in value and meaning, broadly historiographic but with architectural and narrative sightlines that constantly took you off the track. An exhibition developed as a mall with chapters (Listener, 14 February 1998).
Arrggh. I'm sorry, but I don't want to "channel-surf", and I don't want to have to wade through someone else's "project on material culture"
I want to, as Hamish Keith always puts it, have my own "conversation" with a work of art . Either display the paintings or send them to Auckland with a covering cheque, and we'll slap a national art gallery on the waterfront here.
And yes, I am troubled about agreeing with Denis Dutton on anything ...
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I'm firmly on the Wedde camp. I think the top floor of Te Papa is awful in its design, just the wrong space to display art, and fosters no conversation at all. The rest of the museum, in its watered down version of the original idea, is not as bold and interesting as it used to be and could have been. It wasn't perfect under Sotheran, but it had a lot more potential than it does have now.
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I'm firmly on the Wedde camp. I think the top floor of Te Papa is awful in its design, just the wrong space to display art, and fosters no conversation at all.
Certainly, it's the left-over space, but at least there are, like, paintings in it.
The rest of the museum, in its watered down version of the original idea, is not as bold and interesting as it used to be and could have been. It wasn't perfect under Sotheran, but it had a lot more potential than it does have now.
I guess we'll have to differ on that then. I've had wonderful life-enhancing experiences with art: none of them with the Parade jumble sale. It's irritating, prescriptive and incoherent.
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Regarding recent debates on Media 7, do take the opportunity to read Peter Thompson's (Unitec) excellent paper The Demise of the TVNZ Charter: The Arguments the Government Wants Us to Ignore, which has been posted on Scoop today.
Compulsory reading for PA people, I reckon.
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It's irritating, prescriptive and incoherent.
It might not be far off how I would have personally characterised it the first time I saw the Colin McCahon next to the fridge, but the idea grew on me, and I think it had the potential of encouraging broader reflections on art and culture. An unrealised potential, to be sure. But one of the goals of the project was also to popularise the museum, which is hardly achieved by sticking paintings on walls. You need to provide a cultural context, and that's a hard thing to do. But going back to not doing it just because it's hard and always in danger of being seen as patronising or prescriptive is not the solution.
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Compulsory reading for PA people, I reckon.
I like the way he identifies incidents of just-making-shit-up.
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I guess we'll have to differ on that then. I've had wonderful life-enhancing experiences with art: none of them with the Parade jumble sale. It's irritating, prescriptive and incoherent.
I think Te Papa is a bit of a defining line. Some people like it, some people definitely don't. My son asks to go there most times that we're in Wellington, and I can't say that about any other museum he's seen.
If it takes that to get him interested in the topics that the museum covers then I'm in favour of the different strokes for different folks approach.
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My son asks to go there most times that we're in Wellington, and I can't say that about any other museum he's seen.
But does he go see the art? Because I think that's the rub at the moment. Now that they've largely gone back to compartmentalising and separating the gallery from the cultural exhibits, I think they've made both a lot less interesting. There's plenty there for a kid to enjoy, but an entry point to the art of the nation it isn't.
(Mind you, they still do some things exceptionally well: the activities around Matariki are just brilliant.)
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