Posts by Ben Austin
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Certainly a mad time for everyone, although great to see life returning to NZ media that looked down for the count.
It is quite weird, still, to see how widely NZ/Aus/Taiwan have diverged from everywhere else. In London we are once again under a stay at home order and presumably by tomorrow the rest of England will return to that and things are similarly bad in Northern Ireland, Wales and much of Scotland. Let's hope those vaccinations continue to roll out quickly!
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Legal Beagle: Election '20: The No…, in reply to ,
That seems like an odd thing to say but even if it was, what interest has Jaime-Lee's lawyer got in a counter factual 2020 election without a threshold?
Because if JL is paying a lawyer to have an opinion on that, then JL needs to add this to his list of things to reflect upon.
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2PM today, today! Hope everyone is excited!
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The overseas votes will be interesting - whilst they usually apparently have a stronger Green presence, I suspect this year Labour will do pretty well, as Ardern has had a very high positive profile overseas. I certainly have a lot of people semi randomly praise her to me here in London (not Kiwis) and I suspect that will feed into voter sentiment.
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Thanks for the explainer - I must say I hadn't known anything really about the Special Votes before!
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Scientology front groups seem to be how they operate everywhere. Apparently the best approach is to be relentless in exposing them to the public or decision maker (if not the public).
So hopefully public knowledge of connection will become widespread
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Hard News: Rage and change: RNZ's music problem, in reply to Rob Stowell,
I could sort of see it making sense if RNZ, like TVNZ/whatever 3 is now called were all in the same city/area AND there was quite a bit of new money coming in, so it could be plausibly argued that the newsrooms could cohabit and the new money keep the public service brief. But it isn't that way.
It seems like a defensive measure, like TVNZ/3 merging. That almost makes more sense really. Two Auckland based newsrooms who both run commercial operations.
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Hard News: Rage and change: RNZ's music problem, in reply to Rob Stowell,
I am still a bit unclear on what the benefit is to RNZ or the RNZ audience by the merger.
Surely after several decades of financial neglect there isn't really much in the way of savings that could be made by merging it into another organisation to save money and even if there were non trivial savings, would that not in effect gut the current organisation (given that it is quite small).
Does merging the two somehow give RNZ / radio more money to be spent? If so, how? Or is it just diversion of commercial advertising revenue towards bolstering or enhancing the radio offering?
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Very interesting to see the NZ connection, young Kiwis bored and in need of a challenge beating a path to London and all that.
The campaign to make No Deal/Crash Out/WTO Brexit a popular option has been interesting to watch - loads of people are now convinced that they specifically voted for WTO Brexit, despite it not being a thing in 16 or even 17. The marketers / consultants hired by whomever have been very good at finding new slogans to reinforce that.
I went canvassing over the weekend out in the Home Counties, to help a mate and it was very interesting to see how the strong Conservative voters (as identified by our systems) we spoke to are very angry if Leave leaning, at the party, leadership and everything. Whilst they're gagging for a No Deal, they're also seemingly, like many people Leave or Remain also desperating seeking someone who will take control and march us to a defined direction, even if that happens to be Remain. Anything to escape the current mess.
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Hard News: Cannabis reform is a serious…, in reply to Joe Boden,
A two stage referendum maybe? First stage - Choose Which Option; Second stage: Status Quo vs Chosen Alternative