Posts by Rob Hosking
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I didn't see the SST story but I'd been thinking a bit about this issue over the w'end, funnily enough.
The infamous '54 spin doctors at MSD' isn't a particularly new story - I think it emerged from a select committee a few months ago. Used it in a column myself in October, I think, because it emerged just before I happened to find an old press release from Steve Maharey from 1992 which deplored the number of spin doctors being hired by the Bolger govt....
The thing I've noticed happening over the past few years is a growing sense among journalists that they are really up against in when dealing with govt depts. I know of one other govt agency with 50 people in its comms team: I was assured these are not all spin doctors but support staff.
How many support staff does the average journalist have, I wondered.
What I find increasingly common among journalists - and in extreme situations I've done it myself, although I've learned to watch it because its not particularly good - is that you find yourself, almost unconsciously, taking the attitude that they've got all these resources behind them to get the 'good news' out: I've got fuck all by comparison, so fuck'em. You do go in against some of these govt agencies knowing full well they've got a howltzer and you've got a couple of grenades, so you tend not to give them much of a break.
I'm not alone in this. And I have to wonder whether there isn't a bit of a law of diminishing returns happening with the huge hiring of media managers in the public sector.
Funnily enough - and this is purely anecdotal - it looks to me as though many of the country's corporates now have fewer media staff than they had a decade ago.
Couple of other points: the Nats don't have an army of spin doctors working for them. Opposition parties, even the largest one, don't get much of a budget for this sort of thing. They have five media people.
At ministerial level, I doubt Labour has more spin doctors than the Nats had when they were in power - at least, per minister. Of course, Labour has more ministers...
One other point: I can well recall many journalists running Trevor Mallard's line on INCIS and other govt IT screw ups in the late 1990s. This sort of behaviour is not new.
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For the password: try putting in written form the Helen Clark laugh - "the honk" I was told by a Labour staffer it is known as.
Not as menacing as Muldoon's 'heh heh heh...' drier and more forced.
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And he used a lot of repeated sentences components ("Hope is..; hope is...") which intensified with repetition. It's a MLK trademark, but it's also pretty common nowadays. Of course, MLK was a *lot* more intense, but he had the voice and the power for it.
Yep. And King got it from the King James Bible - esp Paul's Letters to the Romans and Corinthians. (which reminds me of an Eddie Izzard skit about the Corinthians writing back, but that's way off topic...)
Closest we've had to that style in NZ is Lange, who of course had been a lay preacher. He mixed it brilliantly with a Kiwi informality - his speech at the end of the economic summit in '84 was this style at its best.
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It's typical of Kyoto-sceptic "experts" - most of them have a background in finance or economics, not science - McShane's web site says as much. Baron Lawson (who visited recently) is another example who comes to mind.
Climate change is an economic issue. And Kyoto - whatever you think of it - is all about creating a different set of economic incentives.
A question: can the people who are objecting to supposedly non-qualified people speaking on climate change raise similar objections next time we Jane Kelsey - a legal academic - pronounces on economic policy?
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Two out of many...
As a teenager, the year I did the Christmas reading in our local church, as part of the Bible Class. It was kind of un-nerving. It was not standing up and speaking in front of a whole lot of people. Yeah, I was a bit nervous about that, but not excessively. I’d overcome my stammer by this point, and besides, I was related to most of the audience, some of them more than once. And of course there was a script. From Matthew, from what I recall. No, the bad bit was…well, I agreed to do the reading when the minsiter phoned and asked – the minsiter was a great guy, btw, a very open and practical man, so I’m not blaming him. But when I went and looked the bit he wanted me to read, it was about how Mary, despite being unmarried, got told she was going to have a kid. Now, I was 15 or 16, and a fairly self-conscious 15 or 16 at that. And it seemed every second word in this passage was VIRGIN. I got through the reading OK, I think, but rather rushed it.
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Christmases 1986 and 1987 - my postie years, working out of the old Auckland Central Post Office and studying part time at Uni. Used to tear around the walk to make lectures in time. This meant half walking, half running about 12kms with a load on my back, six days a week. I’d just love to be that fit again.Christmas was more leisurely (no lectures to worry about)…we had to finish the walk and go back into the Post Office between 2.30-4.30pm to do extra sorting. The overtime was absolutely brilliant. Some of the afternoon sorting was pretty random, because we’d all meet in a pub in Commerce St after we finished our walks, have a pub lunch and a few jugs.
Some people were great. A woman on Richmond Road always used to leave a beer, some Christmas cake and a chocolate bar in her mailbox for the postie at Christmas.
One Saturday I had, in my parcels, some kids book or toy which played ‘Jingle Bells’. Batteries had definitely been included, unfortunately. The destination was at the bottom of Hamilton Rd in Herne Bay, and every time I moved, it seemed, this parcel would start playing.Which meant the dogs heard me coming a long way off. Saturdays were always worst for dogs because people would be home to let them run around. Bastard Dog Owners.
Also that first year one of the posties got her holiday pay ripped off. She’d left her bankbook - remember bankbooks? – under the seat in her car. Car got nicked and not only did they get the car they went straight to her bank and got all her holiday pay out. Overtime and all.
She was devastated; we had a whip round for her and people chucked in heaps of cash.
Week after Christmas she’s doing her deliveries in Pompalier Tce and sees her car parked alongside one of the houses….nips into the nearest phone booth and calls the cops. Got the car back, I think she even got her money back. Or maybe the bank coughed because they should never have handed over the cash from a woman’s bankbook to a couple of blokes. Anyway, just remember the fluke that the thieves were on her walk. Good one, Santa.
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Somehow the atheist Jewbag got volunteered to cook on Christmas Day, but in other respects I'll be on holiday for a while, PAS included.
Give'em a Kosher Christmas, Stephen.
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81st Column
If this was a contest I think you've just won.
Nice piece.
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the church is staffed from the Church of Scotland so we have a traditional Presbyterian Christmas at the Manse. Quite jolly,
So. Not a traditional Presbyterian Christmas then.
That's slightly tongue in cheek, although I recall an inter-denominational Christmas church service as a teenager with the Methodists, Presbyterians and Anglicans ...the Anglican vicar made some crack about being able to pick the Presbyterians in the congregation because they were the ones with the solemn faces.
No one laughed.
[Declaration: I was brought up Presbyterian]
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The only unnerving thing was the nun with guitar sitting a few rows back from me -
Now, that would have had me getting off the flight.
Almost, anyway.
Either that or cracking 'sure picked a bad day to stop sniffin' glue' and 'don't call me shirley' jokes.
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Anjam,
The trick is lots of stops at places where they can run around. Rest areas away from the road, etc.
A really good trick is to include a stop at the hot pools at Tokaanu.
Little buggers soon fall asleep afterwards.