Posts by linger
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Hard News: Footpaths, not manifest destiny, in reply to Steve Todd,
A direct link might be more helpful.
Presumably you’re referring to this post here. -
Hard News: Bowie, in reply to Bart Janssen,
every generation has had a unique Bowie that is their own to remember. From each unique starting point many of us have then explored the other Bowies
This point was quite well made by Mitch Benn in September 2015. (The episode is currently unavailable, but there's a good chance it'll be repeated in the next few weeks.) Benn also notes how hard it is to make a generic "Bowie" parody rather than referencing specific Bowie songs.
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Hard News: Footpaths, not manifest destiny, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Chch governance is one ugly motherlode of Fe and loathing.
It just makes it easier to get lost when someone’s taken the compass. -
Hard News: Footpaths, not manifest destiny, in reply to Moz,
push the responsibility down but keep the funds
So interposing a federal level between national and local govt is just adding a layer of muddle management (as Kiwis'd call it)?
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Hard News: Footpaths, not manifest destiny, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
I’m missing the irony
I’d say that filing’s full of it; or more accurately,
the comprehension gulf there is a sarchasm. -
Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Sacha,
There’s a few ways it could still be true.
(i) The MI5 investigation into Wilkins was initiated by a request from the CIA [who were concerned about a combination of three things: Wilkins had once been a member of the NZ Communist Party; he had been working on the Manhattan Project; and he was openly in favour of sharing scientific knowledge to facilitate collaborative research across borders]. The MI5 documents were declassified in 2010; but the CIA documents may have been declassified more recently.(ii) The MI5 investigation spanned five years, so if documents related to the start of the investigation were released in 2010, that would mean documents relating to its completion would be released now.
(iii) It’s also very likely, given the sheer volume of material declassified, and its release in nonelectronic form, that journalists will have taken several years to find any particular story in the mass of data.
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
The real reason might be the most boring one, that Stevens heard the BBC programme and thought it might make a more interesting story for a NZ audience if the Kiwi connection were emphasised more.
Sure, he also jettisoned the nuance and scientific detail of the BBC account (and the fact that MI5 concluded Wilkins was innocent and closed the file in 1955) – but do we expect anything else of our news media now? -
Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Aha! Repeated media attention on Wilkins in the year marking the centenary of his birth seems less of a coincidence -- though that particular argument for timeliness was not explicitly made in either the BBC programme or the Stevens piece.
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Hard News: Humour with heart, in reply to linger,
Carey Marx's show about his heart attack has finally been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Available to stream until the end of January.
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Sacha,
Exactly – the point of the story is that we now have access to MI5 files on Kiwis suspected of being spies in the early 1950s, including Wilkins. The article may be badly written, with poorly selected and organised information (the potted family history, in particular, seems supremely irrelevant), but it does not seem in any way a deliberate attempt to smear Wilkins. The point is explicitly and repeatedly made that though Wilkins was one of several suspects at the time, there was no direct evidence, and it is highly unlikely that he was actually the person sought by the MI5 investigation.
Neither are these descriptions of Wilkins especially new: see e.g. this BBC radio program about him from July 2015 (MP3 available for download).