Posts by George Darroch
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Firstly, curling!
New Zealand has a community of curlers, I've been led to believe on the basis of Mainland cheese ads. I'd like to give it a try!
The ski sports were another disappointment. Wonderful to watch, as always, but there were problems. The record warmth meant that the snow conditions deteriorated as skiers went down the mountain, and if you were last you were mired in sludge. A climate change writer gives his take on this Winter Olympics.
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Actually, I used to share an office with a dutch bloke who'd been a competitive speed skater in his youth. He reckoned that one of their training regimes was to line up at one side of a field, crouch down, then basically hop forward in a crouch until they got to the other side. Definitely one of those sports where you're really only using one big set of muscles.
Do the tracks always go one way? I'd hope they rotate.
That sounds exactly like running or swimming. The top competitors tend to do exactly that in their heats during the summer olympics.
I turned on coverage, and thought I was watching heats. I got to the end and they handed out a gold medal (to a man who admittedly deserved it).
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George, cycling is actually a closer analogue to speed skating than running...
That is true, but African and Carribean countries aren't strong in cycling yet, unfortunately (South Africa excepted, and Rwanda is giving it a lot).
Another random thought: cyclists and speed skaters tend to look like dinosaurs, with huge legs and rather disporportionately small arms.
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The speed skating was amazing, and intense. And wonderful to watch.
Mostly. There were too many athletes in the finals who seemed to slow down early, sliding across the line rather than giving it everything. Many of them were saving something in reserve for other events, and this indicates to me that there is a lack of sufficient competition to see people forced to become true specialists in particular distances. (as compared to swimming or running, for example).
I do wonder if this event, more than any other, could be a venue for athletes from hot-weather countries to break into the Winter Olympics. It goes without saying that you need a great deal of talent to win, but there's also physique. I really do wonder what a well trained Usain Bolt or Michael Johnson equivalent could do on ice.
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Guys! Dream bigger!! If you expect nothing, you get nothing. Think Big Radio! If the government can build a dam to employ underemployed workers, they can damn well build Radio Cricket, and Teh Awesome Soul FM, and UkeLive
Awesome. I vote for your party!
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Jan Farr said above that concert music is serious music. It's true.
But can you dance to it?
Who is to say that music 'that makes you think' (or whatever else that statement is meant to mean) is more worthy of a nationwide Government-funded station than music you can shake your hips to?
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Unlike Concert, which has a large domestic audience overlapping considerably with National's voter base...
Look out desk, here I come...
See, this is where the ability to draw Venn diagrams would have been handy. I expressly didn't say that Concert listener and National voter were functionally equivalent.
Politics is the art of not pissing people off. If even 10,000 Concert listeners were National voters, a wise National Government would try not to piss them off. The number is of course considerably larger than that, and if the Cabinet forgets that then they're greater idiots than I thought they were.
So they'll look for a soft target within RNZ (preferably something they can wedge Phil Goff with).
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RNZ International (shortwave broadcast to Pacific Islands)...
I've heard a suggestion that RNZI could be dropped as the ABC have a similar Pacific broadcast.
Given the particularly forthright attitudes of McCully and Coleman, that is a very reasonable fear. Unlike Concert, which has a large domestic audience overlapping considerably with National's voter base, RNZI is almost invisible despite its crucial role.
I immediately thought that this was the most vulnerable part, but I ended up getting distracted with other things (see above).
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can we abandon the icecream metaphor, in favour of something else?
My alternative was pretty cheesy.
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It is narrowly focused on some of the best music ever made, music which is not played by any other channel. That is a public good. It is also, as you say, elitist; but that is an aesthetic good.
It is very good music. You will find no disagreement there from me.
I am still uncomfortable with the notion that this is sufficient _on its own_ to demand a station. I seem to want utilitarian arguments, such as listenership, promotion of artists, and inclusion.
Other things are objective goods. Very good wine, or cheese, for example. These are things that are good, and ordinarily out of reach of the average person. And again, not everybody appreciates their merits. Yet the Government does not have a delivery program taking these into every home - it supports them through trade and industry programs, in the same way as Creative NZ and the NZ Film Commission are used to promote NZ culture.
On the other hand, perhaps there is more of a case for the NZ Government to support and intervene in favour of institutions (in the widest sense) thought to be objectively good.