Posts by sandra
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I saw this week's Native Affairs segment dealing with the changes at TVNZ but came away none the wiser. Te Uraroa Flavell says there was no reason he should have been informed (as Minister of Maori Development) and Mihi Forbes got nothing much out of him or her other guest, who had once worked for TVNZ, and Willy Jackson was more sound than light.
(Disclaimer: I find her languid speaking style disconcerting in that she never sounds as if she cares about anything so miss Julian Wilcox tremendously.) -
I came home to New Zealand at the end of 1989, after almost a decade in the northern hemisphere. At the end of 1989 I watched the launch of TV3, and from January 1990 thoroughly enjoyed the "this is our country" television coming out of TVNZ to celebrate the sesqui, including archival footage of all sorts of events, Ruud Kleinpaste's "The Enduring Land", etc, many of which I taped to watch again. These days you can't rely on TV One for anything, even current affairs.
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Hard News: TVNZ: Emptied out, in reply to Josie McNaught,
even an experienced free lance sub can only get around $30 an hour b4 tax
Tell me where – $30 an hour before tax, bliss. And I’ve been subbing for nigh on 40 years.
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Working for a newspaper in an Arab Gulf state in the 1980s and had the chance to interview Ms Black while she was doing a one-night only show - but unlike the generous Elaine Paige and Barry Humphries she wasn't in the mood, even though the interview had been previously arranged.
"Come back after the show," was the message. "She'll see you then." Yeah, right, an interview with someone who at that stage was a bit of a has-been, at midnight, or later. Checked with my editor, an Englishman, who basically said "forget it". So I forgot it. My near-brush with Cilla Black. Saw her across a crowded room, for an instant.
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Hard News: Privacy and the Public Interest, in reply to UglyTruth,
@UglyTruth, you're quite right. My best solution so far is highly impractical.
I think every citizen who feels strongly enough about what's been revealed should look an MP in the eye, one on one, and ask them about their moral standards, about where they rate serving the citizens of this country as opposed to staying in Parliament, about what he or she has done to clean the stables. Obvs Nats first, but they could all do with being reminded why they're there - to serve this country and its people, not themselves.
Remember, I already said impractical!
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What I would love to see happen is for the people to be heard - and taken notice of, for the National politicians to really get that most people are furious about what's been going on, that their party needs a cleanout, but for all of them to wake up to the fact that the citizens of New Zealand do not want this kind of behaviour, ever. Street marches, maybe (theme song "we're not going to take it"), certainly grilling candidates at meetings and definitely voting with a conscience. Use your heart this election.
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I'm mostly a floating voter, although I tend to be left-leaning. Almost voted for the Maori Party one year but then Tariana said something silly ... Also note, a voter from the provinces.
The revelations from "Dirty Politics" have left me embarrassed and ashamed of the politicians in Government, the people running this country. How bloody dare they? How dare the Prime Minister smirk and shrug his shoulders when one of his senior ministers is clearly up to her neck in unsavoury stuff with an unsavoury character (or three). How dare the deputy Prime Minister say it wasn't him but make no effort to do anything about it, like hold some of his Government colleagues to account. How dare the Minister of Justice use her office to attack private citizens, and even sometimes civil servants. It's beyond belief - and while we might laugh about the revolving governments of Italian politics, this is just as revolting as Berlusconi and his "bunga-bunga" parties.
Morals and ethics are not old-fashioned terms, plenty of young people care about them too. But it's the older voters who don't want to face what's been revealed. The dyed-in-the-wool blue voters, who wouldn't change their vote if their life depended on it. Yes, the ones who bang on about the war and how much their generation sacrificed for those who followed, the ones who expect respect, the ones who cheer John Key. I'd like to respectfully point out to those unthinking voters that our young men and women - your friends and comrades - did not die on foreign battlefields for this kind of muck to be happening in our society or for it to be sanctioned by the highest levels in Government.
And believe you me, I would be just as wild if it had happened under a Labour government.
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It wasn't only learning impaired children that were put into institutions - I recently met a man who, during the course of an interview about gardening, revealed he had been put into a welfare home at age 14 because he refused to attend school. He was interested in marine biology to the exclusion of all else (and was probably bored by what his peers were doing and was being bullied) and was basically teaching himself. They finally discovered at the home that he had a massive IQ. These days he might be recognised as "gifted" but back in the 1960s no one knew what to do with him. He was sent home after the IQ test with an apology and permission to study as he wanted. He has since had an unconventional career path, including 15 years managing a recycling centre staffed by IHC workers, a job he loved.
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I really got excited about the internet while living in Lebanon from 1998 - I could either go to the British Council library to research stuff in their reference section, or try and find it on the 'net. The latter was often more convenient, although a year later reliable electricity became the issue, thanks to a certain country to the south.
Somebody said way back at the start of this thread that searching the net used to be more fun, leading into all sorts of byways, and I agree. I didn't mind using two or three search engines and getting different results from each, although admit the Google is pretty mind-blowing. -
In the early 1990s (90-92) I used the term "virtual reality" in conversation with my husband and was mocked, if not scoffed at! (I'd read a Time magazine article and had discussed it with my boss, who, despite being apparently ancient, was pretty clued up on evolving technology.)
So I had to work really, really hard to convince old Forkbeard that we should have an email account, starting out with voyager who, later on, dumped us, sigh.