Posts by Danyl Mclauchlan
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
During my ex-pat days my boss referred to Singapore as 'a cross between East Germany and Disneyland'. I've never heard it summed up so well.
-
North & South magazine editor Robyn Langwell has been forced out of the job she has held for 22 years.
A source close to Langwell has confirmed the editor is to step down from the role, with June 23 set to be her final day on the job.
Rumours of her impending departure began circulating yesterday, when subscribers received the July issue of the magazine, featuring an editorial by Langwell, entitled Golden Moments.
In the column, Langwell described her job as editor as "the role I love" and paid tribute to the writers and designers at North & South, commending their talent and tenacity.
It is understood that Langwell is not leaving of her own volition and lawyers are involved in the matter.
ACP Media, which owns the title, is believed to have made Langwell redundant as part of a restructuring move.
ACP group publisher Deborah Millar was unavailable for comment today but yesterday told the Business Herald she expected to confirm changes to the company by the end of this week.
-
Oh, and the party of personal responsibility. Except, apparently, for Debs who is a victim, not of her own incompetence as an journalist and statistician, but of a grand, shadowy conspiracy.
And besides, an older boy made her do it.
-
I'm sure there are some freedoms Franks feels passionate about - I'm sure he has highly principled notions about his freedom not to have to pay any tax.
-
Franks has gone into bat for Debs on Nat Radio this evening.
Here's what I find bizarre about their position: Franks, Coddington et al were MPs for ACT, the liberal party, the party that wants to fight for personal freedom and keep the evil power of the state out of people's lives.
Unless, apparently, you have the poor taste to be asian in which case the state should be able to strip you of your residency or citizenship, stick you on a boat and ship you back to communist China.
Does it strike anyone else as weird that these staunch defenders of indivuality and personal freedom have picked racial profiling and forced deportation as free speech issues worth taking a stand on?
-
Wow. It's also interesting to revisit the original article after all this time and gasp at how jaw-droppingly, unashamably racist it actually is. Selected excerpts:
Welcome to New Zealand, the new home of Asian drug runners, illegal suburban brothels, health cheats, student P pushers, business crooks and paua smugglers.
[Asians] also brought murder, extortion, kidnappings, assassinations and disease.
Kiwi kids dropped off at school by mums in battered hatchbacks seethe with resentment as they watch Asian classmates arrive in their very own late-model BMWs, Mercedes or souped-up Subarus.
[Asians] are helping themselves to our hospital care and seafood (WTF?)
And my personal favourite:
. . . not every Asian is a good Asian . . .
And that's all just on the first page.
-
Presumably the 'retired diplomat' is Denis McLean, our former ambassador to Washington. Obviously a lightweight unqualified to pass judgement on his betters . . .
-
Incidentally, I'd be curious to learn the identity of the people on the press council. In her column about the 'Hollow Men' Coddington described Steven Price - who assisted Nicky Hager with the book - as a 'a Wellington blogger with a law degree'. Since Price is actually an Adjunct Lecturer at Victoria Law School and a Fellow in Law and Journalism I'm sceptical of Coddingtons rather dismissive description of the councils members.
-
Heh heh. That's nice work.
Coddington's column in the Hos is an entertaining exercise in doublethink and raises some fascinating questions about her character and mental state.
I don't know what to think of her rant against journalists who have technically broken the embargo on the story by discussing it, given that in the same column she is explicitly breaking the embargo on the story by publishing it's findings. Weird.
I'm also intruiged by this passage:
Even the complainants should be peeved by this pathetic decision. If I'd been judged by my peers - senior, investigative journalists - I could respect their conclusions, however "damning". Instead, I was found guilty by three lawyers, a retired diplomat, a teacher, a writer for Department of Trade and Enterprise, the editor of a rival publication and just one journalist I respect - John Gardner of the Herald. But even he should have excused himself, since two of the complainants were Herald reporters.
So, just to sum up, she want's to be judged by her peers - being in Coddington's imagination 'senior investigative journalists' but apparently they can't work for APN 'since two of the complainants were Herald reporters' and neither should they be from 'rival publications' which rather conventiently precludes virtually every print journalist in the country from passing judgement on Coddington.
-
<blockquote>IMHO, there are countless things that work, which have never been accepted by Western scientifically based medicine.</blockquote>
That acronym at the beginning is really the key to your mistake. When you're talking about healthcare, and science in general it isn't enough to be able to say 'in my opinion shining a pink light on you will cure you of cancer'. You have to be able to provide proof to back up your opinion.
How would you go about obtaining such proof? Well . . . you could give cancer to a bunch of rats, shine the pink light on half of them and do nothing with the others . . . hey presto! You're doing science!
I'd be interested to hear what these 'countless things' are, since treatments like chiropractice and acupuncture are now widely practised methods within the western medical tradition - even though the theory behind their efficiency is deeply disputed.
To go back to homeopathy, I'd suggest that it's not accepted within western medicine not because the foundational theories (water has memory, serial dilutions, 'vital forces') are gibberish, but because it always fails clinical trials.
To my western educated mind acupuncture also sounds like nonsense - it treats 'patterns of disharmony' - but it damn well works, which is why it's now such an accepted part of mainstream medicine.