Posts by SteveH
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to giovanni tiso,
After the blast at 3.50pm, the alarm was not raised for roughly two hours – the time it took for Daniel Rockhouse and Russell Smith to walk 2km out of the carbon monoxide-filled tunnel and alert emergency services.
That doesn't add up. The 3 News story I linked early has a timestamp of 5:12pm (the story has been updated since, that would be the original posting time), less than 2 hours after the blast. From that story:
5:50pm: Reports emerge of two miners leaving the mine, while 33 are still not accounted for.
4:50pm: Emergency services begin to travel to the mine.
3:45pm: Reports begin to emerge of an explosion at a Pike River Coal mine near Greymouth.The Herald story has taken the 5:50pm appearance of those two miners as the first report of the explosion, but it's clear that there were other reports before then.
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to Rich Lock,
The impression I got from the interview with one of the survivors in the paper last Saturday (if my recollection is correct?) was that they got out of the shaft, and then had to walk down the track through bush to raise the alarm from a location somewhere fairly far from the mine itself. And that that communication/alarm was the first inkling that anyone outside the mine had that there might be a problem. The two hours was the time it took them to get from the mine to the phone.
I think it did take two hours for the two miners who climbed out to make contact but that was not the first report of the explosion. The explosion happened at about 3:30pm. According Stuff's timeline first reports were received about 3:45pm, though emergency services didn't start to respond for another hour. This report from 3 News says the same.
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
In particular, given that robots are absolutely not standard mine rescue equipment, it’s not surprising at all that it would take time to organise them, and longer to get them in from the US and Australia. You’d have trouble getting people over here immediately, and that’s without having to ascertain that the robot is in fact at all suited for the job.
I would have assumed that these robots would have been specialised enough to require support staff to be sent too. Does anyone know if that's the case?
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Now I remember why I stopped writing here. Neither passion nor logic.
2500 posts to reach that conclusion?
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Strangely, when Helen Kelly said that it was all about tax relief and that the actor's ban had been lifted some days before, Fran Walsh called her a liar. It turned out Helen was right, on both counts.
On tax relief: it might have been required to keep the production here, but it's not what it was all about. If Helen was right about this she should be able to point to Warners asking for tax relief before the boycott. She can't because they didn't.
On the boycott: the notices lifting the boycott when up on the unions' sites on the 20th. This is when the actors knew they could sign contracts for The Hobbit. That's when the boycott was lifted. Helen was right in that there were discussions about it being lifted on the 17th but it was actually lifted on the 20th.
So I don't agree that she was right on either count.
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When an industry dumps half its revenue in one decade the Boston Consulting Group types like to tell you (for a big fee) that you better start making some last big cash until it collapses.
C.D prices were outrageous a few years ago, couple with online downloading and the rise of newer forms of entetainment the market has shed jobs like you wouldn't believe.
Jeremy, you keep talking about the "music industry" but you've only discussed the recording industry. What about live music? For example, in 2008 in the UK sales of recorded music fell 6%. You would no doubt use this fact to support your position. But concert ticket sales grew by 13% and overall spending on music was up 3% (source). I don't think you're looking at the big picture.
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Weeeeell, you could argue that tertiary brings foreign money. But what teachers can't really do is jeopardize that much.
That's true.
I'm going to break my usual distrust of the Nats by saying "Well done, John".
I'm saying "Well done, John, wish it hadn't been necessary".
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Cant access that url Marian (you are the Marian arnt you?)
Take the trailing "." off: http://tinyurl.com/27fguro
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So....no money to pay teachers more but money for Warner Bros. I guess my profession that does more for this country than making movies does doesn't count. Teaching's not sexy but making movies is.
Teaching also doesn't bring in hundreds of millions in foreign spending. The bottom line is that the government are spending US$10M to keep that spending here (the US$15M tax breaks don't really cost them anything as that tax money would have been gone if the production left anyway).
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Like I said, mischevious with their public statements.
What series of events would lead to the international unions not lifting the boycott after being advised by NZ to do so? None. So in practical sense once NZ says the boycott is over, it's over.
The boycott is over when NZAE tell the actors it's over. That happened on the 20th. If NZAE told only Warners on the 17th then it's not over is it? So how was Warners "mischevious with their public statements"? They were accurate statements as far as I can see. They never said they weren't in discussions prior to the 20th, just that they received official notice on the 20th.