Posts by Hans Versluys
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What happens if RNZ Triple Yooth fails? How will the expertise now available at Concert FM ever be brought back?
Currently Concert FM broadcasts huge amount of hours of performances by NZ musicians and singers (not just records by NZ artists as they do on pop music stations). It records massive amounts of live performances of the NZSO, APO and countless others, including Womad, which makes it one the truly Kiwi radio stations.
All down the plughole, I suspect. -
Thanks for the interesting read. It also brings home the urgent need for UBI to allow everybody to figure out at their own pace what they want out of life, without the massive stress of "sink-or-swim" bearing down on you.
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"Charter-style public service considerations should be reintroduced with a certain amount of airtime devoted to meeting public interest needs."
We already do this at Face TV but we're stymied by the inability to get a free Freeview frequency for non-commercial TV (we are on Sky TV only for that reason) and its resulting inability to access NZOA funding. Freeview is a monopoly by Kordia, another SOE charged with returning the highest dividend to government and without a public service charter. -
Hard News: Be careful what you wish for, in reply to Russell Brown,
Re: the presidential vote graph, Kerry got 3m fewer votes than GWB in 2004. It's not that clear on that graph.
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1 MP parties are mainly electorate ones and they are exempt from the threshold (which indicates that there are two classes of MPs - John Banks always labeled them as Clayton MPs) This 'discrimination' is not solved unless the threshold is 1/120th. Also, the fragmentation of parliament under MMP so detested by majoritarians is due to electorate MPs (and MPs splitting off their main parties) not the list system or threshold. The 5% in Germany isn't actually working very well to keep the Nazis (or Pirates) out of their parliaments either these days.
Pity we can't have the Israeli system. Maori may actually be better represented by a range of parties under PPR (pure proportional representation) as they will have wider party choice than currently. -
Come on Eileen Dexy's Midnight Runners: The rhythm is perfect for drunk morons who can't dance even when sober. The lyrics shouted by said drunk morons at dreadful parties give me a worse hangover than cheap liquor.
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Hard News: Dirty deeds done by Digger?, in reply to James George,
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As one of the smug Waiheke dwellers, I can endorse the assessment of our island's micro-climate. We don't grow the best wine in the country without it. Weather bomb-schmeather bomb. Good to hear you had a swell time on Rotoroa. Oh, and if you had ever run out of booze, take a lead from the former inmates in 1914 in this delightful newspaper report: http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&d=EP19141031.2.133
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Greece (and Ireland) could learn a lesson from Iceland: refuse to bail out banks; make banks' international division go bust but keep the deposit taking as the core business of domestic banks; have capital controls to prevent bank runs; go back to basics of fishing (and tourism in Greece's case).
Result: Iceland has now got a credit rating back, paid off its IMF loan money, is growing strongly economically (even tourism is booming due to a cheap Krona), but still has capital controls.
Greece would need to leave the euro for this to make its internal prices and costs competitive on the international market by a devalued drachma. German tourists could then support their economy, even if they must get first choice of the sunloungers at the poolside.Interesting comparison of economic woes and responses by Iceland, Ireland and Latvia
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Hard News: Dispatches from Summer, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Euro collapses so I can turn forty in Copenhagen in some style at modest expense
The only snag is that Denmark doesn't use the euro.