Posts by Alfie
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Mass lamb deaths, multi-million dollar bribes to an offshore businessman, a blank refusal to release the official report, McCully caught telling porkies then using redacted documents to try and pin the blame on Labour. The whole Saudi sheep thing didn't go well for the Nats, did it.
At this point you'd probably expect any future discussion of such an embarrassing incident would be downplayed as much as possible. But no... Nathan Guy is thinking about sending more sheep.
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Hard News: A cog in the Mediaworks machine, in reply to Sam F,
That's an excellent analysis of the trainwreck that is Scout. Given the recent austerity measures at TV3, it's hard to believe that they splashed out five grand to buy photos of Hosking cleaning his car. Just think how many cases of Weldon's wine that would have provided for those all important board meetings.
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Hard News: A cog in the Mediaworks machine, in reply to Rob Stowell,
Gloating may not be appropriate, but surely a little gentle meditation on karma would be in order.
It feels like a savage and unrestrained vandalism destroying tv3 from within.
“The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.”
Hunter S. Thompson ~ Generation of Swine (1988)
Weldon and Christie presumably see that quote as an aspirational statement, rather than a criticism.
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It's not only our local spies who have trouble monitoring the bad guys. The Intercept reports that the success rate of the US surveillance programme to date has been a massive... er, zero.
In fact, there’s no evidence that the NSA’s extraordinary surveillance dragnet, as revealed by Snowden, has disrupted any major attack within the U.S. ever.
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Hard News: Something we ignore at our peril, in reply to Graham Dunster,
I suspect your post may have been intended for another thread Graham as it doesn't make a lot of sense in this context.
While the continuing widespread use of synthetics is an important issue, it's interesting to note that neither the Herald or Stuff appear to have any coverage of the 3D story today. I guess more trivial gossip from The Block is deemed to be more relevant to their target audiences.
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That was one of the better 3D programmes and it's a sad reflection on our legislators that this situation exists in New Zealand.
While Peter Dunne probably hadn't seen the programme when he made his comments, he is badly informed on two counts. Dunne's insistence that the market for this crap does not exist on any scale -- the programme certainly put paid to that theory -- and his poorly informed statement that in any event, natural cannabis represents a far greater health risk. You'd have to ask just who is advising the minister.
Parts of Ireland have a huge heroin problem, but instead of calling for more police, Dunne's equivalent has called for decriminalisation to solve the problem and he has the full backing of the police.
Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, who is in charge of Ireland’s drug policy, said this month that the country should move towards decriminalising possession of small quantities of certain narcotics, including all class A opiates, as part of a “radical cultural shift”.
He said attitudes to drugs must move away from shaming users, focusing instead on helping them, and that there was a difference between decriminalisation and legalisation.
The Garda Representative Association, which represents 11,500 frontline officers, has welcomed the move to decriminalise personal possession, saying it would free up police resources.
Synthetics are mainly prevalent in territories where enforcement is seen as the solution. Ask the people of Colorado if they have a problem with kids using synthetics. How about Washington, or Spain, or Italy? And they're virtually unknown in the Netherlands where natural cannabis has been freely available for years, yet only 7% of the population smoke dope -- half the rate of the US.
The proof is there that criminalisation does not work. Drug use is a health problem. Our lawmakers need to grasp that simple truth.
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In his John O’Shea Memorial Address to SPADA last week, media commentator and producer Phil Wallington considers the state of news and current affairs in New Zealand and the general decline of journalistic standards.
And he sums up TV3/Glucina's dying venture most succinctly.
Can anyone derive any useful information from the quick stock-show montage of cellulite and plastically-enhanced celebrity bodies. It is trashy and second-hand slander of people famous for being famous in concentric circles? TV3, which generally has a better sense of news and a better news bulletin, is suffering declining ratings.
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Hard News: A cog in the Mediaworks machine, in reply to izogi,
Also, it’s very impolite to spread gossip.
Touché!
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And lo, only one lonely scout remains.
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There's a story in the Herald entitled Five Eyes gives NZ an advantage in fighting terrorism which includes a revealing quote from Key.
I wonder whether the right characterisation isn't that they failed but that the terrorists are becoming more sophisticated and quite a lot of the communications they have are what, in the business, we would call dark. In other words we can't actually monitor them.
That's right. Despite the NSA and their five-eyed friends sucking up every scrap of data they can get their routers across, they admit that they have no real way to monitor terrorists.
Remind me again why the rest of us need intensive surveillance of all our communications?