Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Cranks, self-seekers and the mayor, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
If you have information that leads you to believe Penny Bright represents some sort of threat to the mayor, you should make it public.
I didn't say that, Graeme. But I could understand the security management being wary of her and her friends on sighting their protest.
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Hard News: Big Friday Music: Counting…, in reply to Matthew Littlewood,
I kept imaging his girlfriend worrying whether he would be messing up his clothes.
That's a lovely little observation.
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Hard News: Cranks, self-seekers and the mayor, in reply to simon g,
3 News duly repeated the ‘Brown’s bodyguards’ spin tonight, as if Brewer had written the script. That’s not good journalism, guys, not even close.
I am told that it did look that way at the scene. Presumably, someone looked at the handful protesters and decided they might be a problem (given that Penny Bright was involved, not necessarily a bad guess) so stuck a bit closer to the mayor
But I am very, very sure that it was a standard event hire and the mayor's office had nothing to do with it.
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Hard News: Cranks, self-seekers and the mayor, in reply to Sacha,
There are plenty of people in the public eye who have benefitted from gifts from SkyCity in the last few years
Though they weren’t part of big decisions that benefitted the company.
This is true. The way the EY report treated room upgrades was weird – and if widely applied would see plenty of MPs in trouble. But accepting gratis rooms from that company in those circumstances was unquestionably bad.
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I've now confirmed independently that the security guards were hired by Auckland Transport purely for crowd control on the day. And that the Herald was very clearly told this.
In the circumstances, I feel quite confident in saying the Herald's framing of the story is utterly disgraceful. They're lying to their readers.
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Hard News: Cranks, self-seekers and the mayor, in reply to Sacha,
Fecking Herald is still headlining Mayor hires a ‘bevy of heavies’ despite clear evidence it was Auckland Transport who hired security guards.
Apart from the dimension where it's borderline defamatory referring to professional security guards as "heavies". Fucking hell.
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Ah. I'm told the author of the creepy "love rat" banner is Penny Bright. Figures.
Left and right seem to be meeting at the point of their shared lunacy over this.
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Hard News: Big Friday Music: Counting…, in reply to Tom Semmens,
Many/most large European events have used chipped cards pre-loaded to a certain $ amount ($20, $40, $60, $100 etc) for at least a decade now. You can purchase when you arrive or from vending machines. When you purchase anything, the amount is deducted from the card. Speeds things up no end.
Good point.
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Hard News: Big Friday Music: Counting…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
That’s very generous of you – but they are the professionals, it’s not like they are newbies to the promoting / festival business.
To be fair, Laneway has yet to conquer its problems with queues for wristbands and bars, although they do better on toilets.
From the chat I had on the radio with event coordinator Etienne Marais, I got the impression they were focused to a fault on egress from the site itself. The published site map had a toilet block sited on the entry/exit road -- as far as I could see, it wasn't there on the day and may have been nixed to open up the space.
I don’t know the site of this choke point – and whether it was possible to add a bailey bridge beside it or not, but it sounds like that was what was needed – any point like that has be able to take maximum people safely not just cope with low flow – what if there was riot or a fire or other panic inducing event (Len Brown singing surprise?) – perhaps the lake is wadeable, i dunno – but I wouldn’t give them a pass on that.
History has too many ugly incidents with crowds at choke points to ever take it lightly.That was actually the first thing I said about the site to Campbell when I interviewed him last year and I was surprised they didn't have a better handle on it. I'm not sure they had it separated into in and out lanes at the start of the day, which is a pretty major flub. I suspect that's the best they can do -- I don't think there's room for a bailey bridge, although if there is there should be one.
But the old site was no stranger to uncomfortable and unpleasant crushes -- particularly around the old Boiler Room.