Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: About Occupy Wall Street, in reply to 3410,
Russ,
The whole Van Jones bit is in there twice.Gah. I did a dumb thing and lost half my post and then wrote it again. Fixed now, thanks.
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Hard News: Dropping the Bomber, in reply to DCBCauchi,
And this is why there's a good argument for building stuff in space rather than mucking up the surface of other worlds.
David, even by the extremely liberal standards of discursiveness that pertain here, you're way off topic.
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Hard News: Dropping the Bomber, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Then again, this bear of little brain doesn't understand why S&P et. al. are taken so very seriously when it seems throwing a bucket of chicken entrails at a freshly scrubbed wall gets roughly the same quality data.
It is grimly amusing that we find ourselves in thrall to the same ratings agencies who spent years not perceiving a developing disaster in the global financial system and green-lighting investment banks that we now know were a house of cards, yes.
Actually, second thoughts, it's not even that amusing.
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Meanwhile, even John Armstrong has criticism for Key over the Standard & Poors fiasco.
Key's conduct lately has been very poor. Not that that seems to have the slightest impact on his popularity, but it's distasteful.
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Hard News: Where are the foreigners?!, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Ahem. Canton Cafe.
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Hard News: Dropping the Bomber, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Hey, Sacha, as Russell might say woah there. I’m going to commit PA blasphemy here and suggest Joyce is as entitled to be pissed off at those allegations as our host is at insinuations from a certain corner that that Media7 and Public Address Radio were payola for a good little Labour sycophant.
Especially given that there’s documentary evidence that Joyce initially rejected the financing request. Brent Impey didn’t get satisfaction until he buttonholed Key at a Telethon function.
I am most assuredly not a fan of Steven Joyce’s work as a minister, but I don’t think the conspiracy theory stacks up.
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Hard News: Dropping the Bomber, in reply to Thomas Johnson,
I do recall that Hooten was booted some time back after a particularly torrid Politics session on the pledge card, so there is form there – a search indicated it was back in March 2006 when Labour was in power.
Kiwibloglink to that issue.
Woah there. They didn't drop Hooton, they dropped the feature. His lefty counterpart in that feature, Peter Harris, also went.
Bomber was singled out for a ban -- and for reasons known only to himself, John Howson took the crazily unusual step of notifying the staff of that in a mass email.
If they'd simply had a word with him, or even just quietly stopped calling him it wouldn't have been such an issue. But Howson, who is normally a fairly measured character, made a very public statement.
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Hard News: Dropping the Bomber, in reply to Thomas Johnson,
On Bomber, as someone who doesn't buy into his hatred of John Key, I commonly find his rants (in a pejorative sense) on RNZ unnecessarily over the top and unbalanced. I presume he is making the most of the platform and going 'all out'.
An as I indicated, I think that's a rude thing to do. But it doesn't seem to have bothered them at RNZ hitherto.
It could undoubtedly be handled better, but I wouldn't be surprised to find they have asked him in the past to tone it down, but he couldn't or wouldn't.
If that was the case, I'm sure they'd have said so. Instead, John Howson has now said (according to a Standard commenter who called him on the phone) that he was dropped because the rant was defamatory and the Prime Minister might be taking action. Which does rather suggest Radio NZ got a complaint from the PM's office.
Does RNZ pay people to appear on The Panel?
Yes. Can't recall how much, but it's under $100 i think.
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Hard News: Dropping the Bomber, in reply to Mark Graham,
Why won't the PM front on Morning Report? In fact, he's fairly reticent, as most National ministers seem to be, of fronting to the media.
We see McCully on the World Cup, Brownlee on occasion over the Christchurch rebuild, Joyce on Transport and English. Where are the rest? We never see Tollie, we never see Power (and he, more than most, should be justifying some of the things National are doing).
I have spent the past year, since Key last came on my show, trying to get him back on. I have repeatedly been fobbed off and now his Press Secretary won't even bother answering my emails.
Campbell Live has the same problem, which rather undermines the claim that Mediaworks has some craven quid pro quo going with the government.
And that really is the issue. The Prime Ministers and other senior ministers will not front for serious questioning about what they're doing.
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Hard News: Dropping the Bomber, in reply to Dovil,
Fantastic post. It would be interesting if Bomber’s comment actually does meet the legal requirements to be considered defamation since that’s what their justification is for the ban. I am doubtful that they consulted a lawyer.
It was so clearly hyperbolic and ironic that I cannot see how it could. I really don't think Bomber was seriously alleging that the Prime Minister is a meth addict.