Posts by bronwyn
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I don't see any reason why local government should be in the Lord Lloyd Webber business
Technically, they're not - that's why there's a seperate organisation with its own board and everything running it. As attractive as it is to imagine John Banks in his office humming along to tunes from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert , and then demanding a 6 week run in The Civic, it ain't happening.
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How does bfm fund itself?
I don't want to give anyone (COLEMAN) ideas, but most of the DJs on bfm are volunteers, which really helps to keep costs down.
It also explains why there's a pretty high turnover of DJs.
Other people will know the rest of this better than me, but there's also some support from the Auckland University Student's Association, alongside sponsorship of individual shows and advertising.
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I know this is not a discussion about CNZ, but Sacha, I can't let your list of CNZ music grant recipients go by without comment.
Yes, string quartets feature on the list more than once, but the rest of the list is actually reasonably diverse: I can see free jazz musicians, exponents of sound arts, performers of "new music", a student of 20th century Bengali music, a folky-ish singer/songwriter, one of the men who helped revive the art of taonga puoro and an experimental composer.
I know there's a striking lack of contemporary conscious hip hop, or log drum ensembles, but remember CNZ can only fund, or consider funding, those people who have actually applied to them at any particular time, so I think it's a little unfair to pick on them in this debate. (and yes, there's some systematic issues that mean that the string quartet is more likely to apply than the log drum ensemble but that's probably a discussion for another time).
Also, it's easy to miss as it's on another report, but in 2009 they also provided $300 000 to support the Maori music sector.
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Did anyone see the piece on Campbell Live last night about the school that applied for voluntary closure last year, but were told that there was a process that needed to be followed (which I'm sure there is, and presumably for good reason) and that the earliest it can close is in July this year?
In the meantime, the Ministry of Education is paying one principal, a .3 teacher, a caretaker and a school secretary to look after a school with no pupils.
Seems like that money could be used much better elsewhere.
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Government is cutting support for teaching deaf children.
Gosh. I don't even know what to say. And it's only four teachers. It's probably the equivalent of every Government department doing without buying their own $4 wall planners or something.
I am being slightly facetious, but only slightly.
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I used to work at a respite base for children with intellectual impairments & those on the autistic spectrum (as some of you will know, despite the vast range of needs, children are all often lumped together in this situations, often to no-one's particular benefit), and so I got to know a lot of families caring for someone with high needs. I know a lot of families did a tremendous job, yet there was also a number who weren't coping, and it seems to me that if these families had the choice about whether to employ someone (even someone in their family) to care for their child, it would have improved the quality of life not just for that child, but for everyone from their siblings to their classmates.
And Jackie - yes, I often used to wonder why I was able to access better training across a range of areas than most of these parents. The reason why, of course, is because I was a "professional" whilst these parents were just "naturally" expected to know.
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tools that really bring out my inner serial killer are the hippies who take their wee drums in their wee carry-bags to festivals and sit in earnest, crosslegged circles banging out the most tedious rubbish for hours and hours and hours...
Oh yes.
At Camp A Low Hum (which has just wrapped up for 2010; musical highlights were Signer, Orchestra of Spheres, The Dodos, Denim Owl and a ukelele player called Dent May) in 2008 a petition calling for the ritual disembowling of just such a person was circulated and widely supported. The drummer obviously hadn't realised that the wrath of hundreds of tight- panted men who have had their quiet enjoyment of other similarly-dressed men singing about girls disturbed could be so violent.
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A Guardian column apparently partially inspired by the Air NZ campaign, and I note, written by someone who more often than not is consigned to fashion reports.
Also includes a great quote from the super Joan Collins:
who surely earned the universe's eternal adoration when, asked whether she was concerned about her and husband Percy's 32-year age difference, replied, "If he dies, he dies"
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Dizzee has given the finger to everybody's expectations and just done what he wanted and it's really worked for him
I quite agree - I had quite a discussion with another music fan last week about Bonkers. He only wanted to play Dizzee "before he went pop" (imagine said in that way that people who don't really understand how great pop music can be); I said one of my songs of the year last year.
And then we played it for the party, and they went danced like crazy, and I felt smug.
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Oh gosh, you go away for a week to visit the Hector Country Music Museum and look what you come back to.
Anyway, discussion has moved on a little bit, but just wanted to respond to a couple of things.
I would like to note, however, that discussions about this on the interwebs almost invariably will start with rape ---> women/feminism and almost immediately divert themselves to "but prison rape!" ---> men. This thread was like a textbook case. It might be interesting to analyse why that is - why there has to be an immediate 'but also men!' before the discussion even gets going. Because I'm sure we all agree that statistically, rape and sexual assault are gender-imbalanced.)
Danielle, I know this is not exactly what you're saying, (I make no claim to try and understand the interwebs) but my take on the response to also include male victims of sexual abuse comes from the feminist position that many sexual violence agencies work from - that if you want to work towards equality then of course you have to acknowledge that this happens to both genders. As Steven has pointed out, traditionally services have been, and still can be, pretty unhelpful for males and this is not to anyone's credit. Certainly working with a male who openly talks about his experience of being abused by a woman has been pretty good at making me been mindful of using gender-neutral language when talking about this.
More generally, might be interesting to note that there are a handful of females in prison in NZ at the moment who have been convicted of sexual violation. A strong impetus behind creating the crimes of "sexual violation" and "unlawful sexual connection" was to recognise that "rape", defined as penetrative sex involving a penis and a vagina, meant that a whole lot of pretty shitty things were happening that people couldn't be charged with.
On another point, if we're talking about feminist writer, I am always forcing Cynthia Heimel on people - she used to write for Playboy with the view that her writing there might have more of an impact than in other publications (although they eventually fired her because they thought she might be scaring the readers), but if you want a sassy broad's introduction to feminism, she's a pretty good start. Also good to read when you've broken up with someone and she reminds you that you're allowed to cry into a pillow, bore your friends by talking about what went wrong, and then be a functioning human being.