Posts by Stephen Judd
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I'm saying that manifesting that dislike by calling up sponsors telling them you'll boycott their hotel/whatever is bad for free speech,
Perhaps the very notion of sponsorship is bad for free speech. Ideas with majoritarian appeal are privileged over other ones by a tiny cabal of capitalists who hope that the emotions stimulated by that speech will accrue to their brands and ultimately their bottom lines.
But if we are going to accept the notion of corporate sponsorship, why should we in the least worry about sponsors being told that their money is not yielding the result they wanted?
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As noted by others, my worry would be the impact on that handful of heroic independent booksellers who make a point of having a rich and if anything over-stocked New Zealand section (I'm thinking of Unity here).
I would also have the Commerce Commission on speed-dial as I foresee collusion by other players in the market to thwart this kind of thing. Could large chains pressure publishers to stop selling to authors at trade rates? I wonder.
Perhaps another hidden assumption here is that patrons just like New Zealand writers generically. The special sauce is supposed to be the blog, and yet I'm not inclined to read something merely because it is written by a local person.
On the upside, I can see this working even with just a few people, as long as the first few are well-known enough to maintain a trickle of sales because, as you note, the overheads are so low and the concept is so simple to implement.
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Neil: the structure initially proposed by Hide was anti-democratic, and to some extent still is. I don't see the hypocrisy in pointing that out.
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All racists are bad people;
All people who think or say racist things are racists;
I am not a bad person;
Therefore, nothing I think or say is racist. -
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When I worked at Pizza Hut as a teenager, one of our drivers was a top-flight cardio-thoracic surgeon from the Ukraine.
One reason immigrants are famously entrepreneurial is that many of them discover that it's easier to start your own business than to try to work in your ostensible profession. It's worth pointing out though that the local medical profession, like professional bodies everywhere, likes to restrict the supply of labour by making it very hard to get certified here. (Except for con artists, who apparently can jump through all the hoops by the simple expedient of forging any and all paperwork demanded).
I certainly have heard some shocking things from IT recruiters I've dealt with over the years. "Good English" and "New Zealand Experience preferred" are generally code for "no foreigners please".
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We are permanently engaged -- we had such good intentions, but weddings are so expensive and stressful, and if we wanted to spend so much money and be that stressed, we could just buy a house...
Apropos "companion": years ago, I was in the National Youth Orchestra. The guest conductor was Piero Gamba, a portly middle-aged man who explained to us that although he was Italian, he lived in Uruguay because he owned a Maserati and there is no speed limit in Uruguay. Gamba was accompanied by the much younger and much more attractive Maria. I can still clearly remember Erin St Clair, master of NZBC pronunciation, introducing them to the assembled young people: "this is Mr Gamba, and this is his... com-PAN-ion, Maria."
I can never hear the word companion now without thinking about this.
Finally, we got a phone call last night. The caller wanted to speak to Mr Lowry*, was that me? I explained that there was no Mr Lowry, but that Ms Lowry was available if required. So if Emma got accidentally married the other day, what just happened to me? Or did Kathy get a sex change?
*it became evident that it was a cold call to do with home ownership. I guess you would only ever want to talk to men about that on account of delicate ladybrains not being able to cope.
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Ross, there's a whole bunch of former Yugoslavs outside. I can't tell them apart but they seem quite unhappy with each other, even the next-door neighbours.
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Actually, I've been thinking about what Brotherston said.
The audience tell us over and over again that one of the things they love about Paul Henry is that he's prepared to say the things we quietly think but are scared to say out loud
I think a reasonable reading of this, bearing in mind the ambiguities of the pronouns in it, is that the Breakfast audience tell TVNZ that what they (the audience) love about Henry is that he says what they are thinking. You know, I wouldn't be surprised if many of those who write in praising Henry DO say that, and Brotherston is more or less telling the truth, sad as it is.
I'd love to know to what extent people watch Breakfast because they'll watch anything that's on at that time though.
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this is not true.
Goodness. Are you saying Andi Brotherston was wrong? She did say that Paul Henry says "the things we quietly think" and she's an official spokesperson.
Yeah, I know there are shining exceptions. I was just piling on with the sentiment that Brotherston was digging the hole deeper.