Posts by Kyle Matthews
-
Unfortunately for him (and thankfully for the rest of us, I feel), reality struck in the form of "parties' shares of offshore votes in the last election was mostly aligned with their share of the total vote, except for the Green Party, which gained 11 per cent of the offshore vote."
Those green voters. They effing hate taxes. They're so green, they want a tax free environment.
-
Russell,
I haven't seen the show yet (it's been that sort of week, I've been struggling to read email until tonight) but good on you for putting it on and then front up and facing feedback of the positive and negative sort. Important issues that need to be discussed, and then analysed and done again in a better way.
Be nice if more producers of stuff that goes on TV (see the current discussion about the future of the NPC on 'Field Theory') were willing to hear feedback and think about how they'd do things differently from the ordinary punters.
-
Sorry I misquoted myself: a minimum of one free per week. The "minimum is because I would sell games separately and not as a whole season. this means there might be three free games all shown on TVNZ in one week. It also means SKY may release games in the bidding process just so they don't have to show something for free. We could even have the phenomenon of games being shown on all channels!
I can't imagine any TV station would go for that, or if they did, they'd go for it on massively reduced money.
If Sky, or TV1 or TV3 can't run a heap of adverts saying "we've got the NPC/World Cup/Olympics exclusive" then they're going to be less interested. A lot of Sky's growth has come from being able to buy rugby wholesale.
They'll be a lot less interested in paying for it if they can't get all the games. All they can advertise then is "er, this week we have Manawatu vs Auckland on Friday, and Otago vs Southland on Saturday. If you want to watch the other teams... try another channel".
People seem to be wholly against rugby being on Pay TV, ignoring the fact that the professionalism of rugby has been driven by and paid for by the media who put it on the TV. A lot of benefits to the sport have come along with that.
I've never heard of, or seen a good promotion/relegation model which I feel would fit NZ rugby. The problem we have is that our top tier is professional, our bottom tier is amateur. That's big gap, and it continues to grow. Our second division players all have careers and jobs, if they got promoted they couldn't necessarily quit those jobs and hope they stay in the top tier. Their rugby club or province also doesn't have a professional structure. Marketing, merchandise, player contracts, sponsorship, craploads of money.
If you think about promotion/relegation, the obvious example that comes to mind is soccer clubs in the UK. But those are all clubs along the professional scale. Sure the top clubs have the most money, best players, grounds etc. But the next tier down is still professional, just 'less'. Here it isn't 'less', it is 'different planet'.
-
The Detroit Red Wings won the Stanley Cup almost in a canter last year
Ahem. Red Wings won the Stanley Cup _this_ year.
My Anaheim Ducks won the Stanley Cup _last_ year.
-
But back to the Harbour Bridge: do any cyclists care to comment on my modified shuttle bus idea, posted above?
To me it's illogical to get off your bike, and get in a bus to go over the bridge.
Yes for the ferry service, you get on the ferry because your bike won't work on water.
To not use your bike but put it in a vehicle to go over a perfectly good bridge? I think when you stand back and look at it it's silly.
-
The use of names that have no connection with a place derives of course from that cultural mecca we all want to emulate, the US of A, where buying and selling of sporting franchises is common as is moving the franchise when the local city doesn't front up with the appropriate bribes.
Doesn't always work too well however. Take for example the Minnesota Northstars, a fairly good ice hockey team, who were sold, and moved to Dallas. Which is somewhat in the south, and not so much in the north at all.
So they changed the name to the Stars, and kept the basic imagery.
-
Ah I feel better now I'm looking at the right list.
My next question was going to be "What the hell is David Benson-Pope still doing there?" ;)
-
I would have presumed that all electoral candidates would have made the list. Wonder why Grant Robertson isn't there (and any others).
-
While based on Illinois Senate transcripts Obama cares more about the legal liability of abortionists and couldn't care less about the welfare of a baby born alive after an abortion gone wrong ("whatever it is"), Palin knew about and gave birth to a baby boy with Down's syndrome.
There's two things that have nothing to do with each other.
Absolute respect for anyone who chooses to keep a foetus with a genetic disorder like DS. No respect at all to anyone who uses the difficult decision that parents face to abort a DS foetus for political capital. I cannot think of a harder decision to make for parents.
-
Chris Trotter's table thumping style wins him few friends in the modern world, he's so 70s people power revolutionary
Hmm. I think Trotter is as much old left as new left.
All I ever do is try to empty the sea with this teaspoon; all I can do is keep trying to empty the sea with this teaspoon.
My friend tells a story about how she wants to be the person who picks up starfish from the beach and throws them back into the sea. And when someone comes along and asks why she's saving starfish when there's thousands of them washed up on the beach, she'll never be able to save them all, she picks up another one and throws it back into the sea. "Saved that one" she says.
Which feels more positive than your teaspoons, but I guess it's eye of the beholder.