Posts by Ross Mason
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I think the new tackle rules since the last WC have contributed significantly to the minnows being able to foot it without the games blowing out with cricket scores.
But it does impede progress of the whole team down the park. But i'm buggered if I know (still) when and where a teram can push stright over a ruck and pinch the ball without picking it up. And if I am confused, just think about how the players feel......
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Just come out from Wellington. Left Karori just after the finish of the Wales SA game. A cracker by the way!!!!
Bugger all cars. Even though lots of empty seats by the time of the final whistle. But i did take not of the car parks at the stations. Almost a weekday's worth.
Great public transport system down here for games. I feel sorry for you guys up there. You really are missing something well worth while.
We really gotta do something about it.
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Hard News: Towards the Truth, in reply to ChrisW,
I was referring to Fergusson's comment to Russell about the media training he had received when he was in Defence. Not how he DID perform in the interview. I thought he was pretty up front with what he knew. The scary thing was what he probably did not know.
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Former Air Marshal Sir Bruce Ferguson, the ertstwhile chief of the New Zealand Defence Force, joked with me before I interviewed him on this week's Media7 that he'd done media training, and learned that if there were any questions he didn't want to answer he should just keep talking for the allotted seven minutes.
He must have used the same media trainer as Don Brash when he was in the interview on the :Hollow Men" doco. Repeat.... repeat.... repeat.....deny the question.
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Field Theory: Four Years Ago, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Just read the Herald report. Scary. But if 1.5 million think that one line (with a couple of pseudo loops into the city from each direction will satisfy the public transport needs of the city then which planet are they on? If I am correct people had to catch a train INTO Britomart and then OUT to Eden Park??? And all this at the same time as millions were arriving at the waterfront for the big show???
Jeez Wayne.
Wellington got it right. The Cake Tin is at the END of the line. So maybe The Mallard Duck's idea of one on the waterfront was not such a bad idea. He may have been thinking along the same lines.
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Field Theory: Four Years Ago, in reply to Russell Brown,
We'd missed the cranes and John Key.
Figures. I couldn't contain myself.
Now, memory...going.....where did we see the Dancing Diggers???? Oh yeah. All over.
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TV news just told me that trains were stopping.....people pushing the emergency stop button.
What can I say oh north of Bombayites. It IS very Jafa like. Public transport by rail is a novelty. Nothing like a bit of....fun.
Turkeys.
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I forgot. This is fascinating. The first GCSB Director WITHOUT a military background.
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I think Nicki is rather perturbed by the Big Leak. Does he think someone else might have been getting at Wikileaks to let this out??? “Eratic”, “Don’t understand”, “Debacle”, “Contradiction”. “Politics”. He made it sound this is not like the people he had dealt with.
Sir Bruce is an excellent example of a person who can live in two worlds at once. It takes someone special. Whether that is a “good’ special or not could be a debate.
He started by saying that there was “At no stage any sort of philosophy or direction we would mislead either intentionally or unintentionally either the public, the media or the politicians.”
Obviously, if you do not include certain facts in your report then it appears you are following this philosophy correctly. Amazing.
He said they did not withhold any information about what the troops were doing in Basra. But not telling what they were NOT doing did not get advertised. Fascinating double speak.
Apparently he was the only one talking one on one with Helen Clark. But it does appear from Nicki that she was well aware that officers within defence were spinning yarns that, according to Ferguson, were not being passed through him. The admission of not seeing the “cover ups” of his officers seem to fit this story. Did he know this at the time?
The extensive discussion about the prisoners being transferred. Jon and David spent a lot of time discussing the pros and cons of what happened. Ferguson admitted that no one was prepared for the war they stepped into. Could these poor bastards in our uniforms have decided since the “enemy” was not following the Geneva Convention then why should they? It is unfortunate that the term used for these people was always “prisoners”. That is the disquieting aspect that our defence hierarchy seem to have ignored. They appear to have ignored the rights of those prisoners and even though some of our troops complained, turned a blind eye to their coalition mates.
Thankfully we have an exit date. Not only have the USA, Russians, British, Alexander the Great and who knows else not managed to control Afghanistan, they all ended up broken and broke. Which is nearly where we are.
But as Russell said. We learnt more in the last week from Nicki’s book of what our Defence did in the last ten years than any amount of freedom of information requests would have given us in a lifetime. And that is very sad.
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It's...........................................................................only
.........a.................................game............
.....................................................isn't it......?