Posts by Grant McDougall
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Hard News: News from home ..., in reply to Tom Semmens,
If you are not happy with the result, there’s the door bozo.
Really ? That sort of shoddy personal insult, as opposed to commenting on the actual facts, says a lot more about you than it does me.
-
Hard News: News from home ..., in reply to BenWilson,
Gawd, I hope that Tony Blair isn’t meant to be our saviour, though. It’s bad enough that our right wing PM wants to join the War On X.
Well no, of course not. I was specifically referring to his initial popular appeal to voters and uniting the British Labour Party, not his evenrtual, shoddy legacy as a war apologist.
-
An utter balls-up by Labour. Grant Robertson hosed in in both the caucus and party membership votes.
It should've just been solely on who caucus voted for, simple as that. Instead, Labour remains deeply divided and backing a leader that doesn't have the wide confidence of his caucus or party membership.
Labour will remain unelectable while this form of leadership voting process remains.
Andrew Little is undoubtably a decent, good, well-meaning man. But like, Cunliffe, Shearer and Goff, he has - no pun intended - little public appeal. He can't even win New Plymouth against a National backbencher.
The British Labour Party were hampered by the same leadership voting process in the '80s to mid-'90s and they too suffered having a donkey imposed upon them by the unions, contrary to the wishes of caucus.
It wasn't until that changed to a caucus-only vote that they gained a strong, popular leader and thus government. It beggars belief that the NZ Labour Party haven't learnt from the mistakes of their British cousins.
The Labour Party is its own worst enemy these days. I wish it wasn't, but it really needs to chuck out this voting process for its own good, both short and long term.
-
Best. Junket. Ever.
-
And with that, I’m off. By the time of next week’s Friday Music I’ll be in London.
What's happening over there ?
-
justice minister Amy Adams
Ever noticed how eerily similar she looks to Vladimar Putin ? Put a blonde wig on him and you couldn't tell the difference.
-
Hard News: Friday Music: An accompanied korero, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
the Christa Paffgen storyI’ll be your memoir…I also just found my copy of the 1992 book Nico – Songs they never play on the radio by her keyboardist James Young, it’s yours if ya want it, lemme know.
A hilarious, rip-roaringly-good read. Chocker full of brilliant anecdote after brilliant anecdote, though admittedly a few are of the "don't let the facts get in the way of a good story" whiff about them.
-
This 1970 clip of Lilburn ”demonstrating the sounds produced for a modern dance performance that include the electronic reconstitution of the sounds of the extinct huia bird” is wonderful. In this part of his career he was our BBC Radiophonic Workshop, in a way:
The 1975 three LP box-set prosaically entitled New Zealand Electronic Music featuring Lilburn, John Rimmer, Ross Harris, Ian McDonald, Jack Body and John Cousins is a must listen if you want to hear more of the same. It really is a most odd, yet enthralling listen.
Basically, Lilburn and the other music academics at Vic Uni wheedled a whole lot of state-of-the-art electronic instruments and a revamped studio. To, in effect, test-drive it all, they recorded the pieces that appeared on the box-set.
I doubt it was their intention, but if you didn't know any better, you'd swear you were listening to early Kraftwerk, early Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze and their ilk. It's since been re-issued on cd, I understand.
This one makes all sorts of references to the places people could buy pot in Wellington in the 1990s. Like the Black Power head quarters on what was Kensington St.
When I lived in Wellington in '95 I wanted to, er, acquire some and asked a mate. He directed me to a street in Mt Cook and said "Go down [whatever the street was called] and you'll see a house with a car that looks like the one at the start of Once Were Warriors. That's the place you're after. Go to the front door, knock on it and ask 'Is the shop open?"
The door opened and told me to come in. My eyes just about popped out of my head. I won't go into details, but it was immediately obvious they were doing a roaring trade.
-
Hard News: Doing over the witness, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
I never liked Hell Pizza’s marketing approach – but that’s no reason to take someone’s life apart, just because you can.
Agreed. But while Slater is odious, Hell Pizza aren’t exactly, er, saints, either. A couple of years’ ago on Campbell Live (iirc) there was a story on a couple that’d bought into the franchise and somehow ended up in dispute with it.
The franchise responded with some pretty heavy legal threats, etc. It was real "using a sledge-hammer to kill an ant" stuff. Hell Pizza came across as rude, inconsiderate bullies. The couple were very, very pressured and stressed to a completely unnecessary extent.
-
Serious question: can anyone figure out why the police were there for 10 hours ?
Hager's not a materialistic guy, so I assume he's got an average-size house. Let's assume two bedrooms, lounge, kitchen, bathroom and his office. So six rooms, for argument's sake.
There is no way it'd take 10 hours to search six rooms. Maybe two or three at most. But 10 ? Why so long ?