Posts by Russell Brown
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John Roughan has changed his mind and thinks he'll vote no change.
My god, he's wrestled with this.
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Not online yet so far as I can see, but John Roughan seems to have changed his mind. He really is agonising over this.
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Hard News: What you lookin' at?, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
I also saw half an hour of The People v OJ Simpson and was appalled at how wooden it was – David Schwimmer and Cuba Gooding Jr looked like they were reading lines taped on other actors or out of shot, with the emotional range of a gas stove – maybe that was the intent – I read a lot of books these days instead – but it is all different strokes for different folks.
Gooding’s OJ is really one of the weak links in the show – but oddly enough, it’s doesn’t really matter, because OJ isn’t the lead in his own drama. The face-off in this week’s ep between Sterling Brown’s Chris Darden and Courtney Vance’s Johnnie Cochran was visceral.
According to The Wrap's OJ Fact Check, the key exchange isn't far from the truth.
I’m sure part of what I like is that it’s the re-playing of a major news story. It’s fun seeing real people depicted – the Dominick Dunne character was spookily close to looking at the real thing this week.
But the truly weird thing – and it entirely befits the whole weird story – is TMZ’s scoop on the possible murder weapon that’s been at home with an idiot LAPD officer nearly 20 years.
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Hard News: Friday Music: You are among friends, in reply to Danielle,
(I was at the 10pm one in Auckland and it was truly one of the greatest live musical things I’ve ever seen.)
Sticking determinedly – well okay, desperately – to my "Yah, he was great when I saw him in 1986 too" talking point.
It sounds like it was awesome.
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Hard News: What you lookin' at?, in reply to James Dunne,
My secret dream has always been a period drama with SIS spooks picking over the underbelly of Muldoon-era Wellington, but I suspect our defamation law means such an exercise would be a bit risky, to put it mildly.
My experience with Roger Douglas's response to Media 3's 25-years-on consideration of For the Public Good suggests you may be right. But it would be great – maybe throw in a few period radicals. Maybe have it done in flashbacks after a millennial discovers damning documents in 2016.
I think Westside has done the period thing pretty well – the episodes that touched on Mr Asia were great. The second series takes place entirely in 1981, which was quite a busy year ...
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Hard News: The flagging referendum, in reply to TracyMac,
But as for those here saying petulantly that they won’t vote for anything Key endorses, grow up. Fair enough if you were against the whole process and the lack of proper consultation. But if that wasn’t a concern, even if Key endorsed the “best ever design”, you still wouldn’t? Come on.
Agreed. I was determined to participate in good faith in the first round of the referendum and to make a positive choice in doing so.
But ... it could be said that the Lockwoods are the kind of thing the guy whose favourite movie is Johnny English and favourite music is "easy listening music" would choose to champion.
If there's a tribal element to my response, it's not really political, but cultural. That flag seems to perfectly embody the mediocrity of recent years. The idea of enshrining that into an enduring symbol gives me the screaming shits.
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Hard News: The flagging referendum, in reply to JLM,
What is the evidence for the second assertion? I mean the Key involvement with Lockwood, not its impropriety.
From Stuff’s report on Key announcing the referendum in a speech to the RSA back in 2014:
The Prime Minister had softened his preference for a silver fern on a black background, saying it was unlikely to be a popular option.
He had swayed more toward a design by Kyle Lockwood, which retained New Zealand’s current flag colours, with a Silver Fern and a southern cross.
David Farrar quickly followed up with a post featuring the Lockwood design headed Our next flag?
All before entries had even opened.
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Hard News: The flagging referendum, in reply to Craig Young,
I’m going to hold my nose and vote for change because I think this is a first, faltering step on the way toward more comprehensive redefinition of our political culture.
I’m an inveterate incrementalist, but this is not a case of incremental change. We don’t get a do-over on this. We’re locked in.
And as Keith Ng noted, it looks less like change than giving the status quo a lick of paint.
Key should have stepped back and not become so closely associated with the Yes campaign, it has muddied the issue too much.
He was closely associated not only with a Yes vote, but with the Lockwood designs, before the process even began. It was really improper.
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Good column on the RNZ site by Finlay Macdonald:
The singular achievement of Mr Key and his pro-change acolytes is to have ruined a good idea for a long time. A huge proportion of those who will vote to retain the current flag will do so regretfully; they would prefer to replace it, but not with just anything, least of all the meretricious logo of a phony national brand campaign.
It's more than ironic that the Union Jack should become an unwitting emblem of dissent in modern New Zealand. But Key's flag campaign has inverted old establishment orders to a surprising degree. A vote for change is, weirdly, a vote for the new political orthodoxies embodied in the current prime minister.
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Hard News: So what now?, in reply to Sacha,
Ak 2040 spurn new peace-making efforts by Council. Article also shows the sort of image Mr Burton has been using to scare the public.
Burton seems determined to burn everything to the ground.
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