Posts by Alfie
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Russell Brown,
The same lot of reporting includes the claim that Lynton Crosby thinks Cameron is a prick ...
I'll wager that the pig shares that attitude.
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Former Treasurer of the Tory Party Lord Ashcroft has published an unauthorised biography in which he claims that conservative leader David Cameron stuck his willy in a pig's mouth. He claims that there is photographic evidence, though that hasn't emerged yet. If it's true, this surely makes Ponytailgate seem almost innocuous.
Twitter is alive with David Hameron puns and Charlie Brooker denies any prior knowledge of the incident when he wrote a Black Mirror episode with an eerily similar plotline.
O'K... to be fair I know this has nothing to do with Key's Dirty Politics, but I can see a loose connection, even if it's only wondering how Crosby Textor will try to spin this one. Maybe they'll claim that someone is telling porkies?
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Hold the front page... there's a new player in the local streaming media market. It's... wait for it... Family First TV. There may be a few early glitches though. That image above is a popup presented when you first enter the site. Note the video? Nope... nobody can, because its privacy settings prevent that.
In fact you're not allowed to view any videos until you register. But whatever you do, don't try to play a video because that presents yet another popup requesting registration, and this one has no close button. Your only option at this point, assuming you don't want to register, is to exit the site completely.
However some videos do have trailers so I chose something which looked like it might be a surfing film, selected play on the trailer and... bugger! Even that was hidden to due "privacy settings". I'm sure registered users are allowed more access to videos, but it's sure as hell an unfriendly way to treat first-time visitors.
Alex Casey has an entertaining review of FFTV over at the Spinoff.
“Ever gone to watch TV and come away uninspired?” a lewd Family First monkey wearing a shirt and no pants asks a stressed out woman standing in the kitchen. “What if it was packed full of genuinely good viewing? Stuff you knew was good for the family?” The monkey’s tail flicks around its naked genital region horrendously.
The rest of the review is well worth reading for its humour.
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Another day, another poll. This time it's from 3News / Reid Research and involved 1,000 people. Having seen the government's final four choices, a huge 69% want to keep the current flag. Only 25% want a flag change and 6% just don't know. The poll ran September 8 - 16, margin of error +/- 3.1%.
As it doesn't suit his narrative, John Key has naturally dismissed the result out of hand.
This morning Prime Minister John Key dismissed the poll as "not terribly sophisticated", and urged supporters not to give up on the idea of a new flag.
"With the greatest respect, it's not a terribly sophisticated question because I could produce polls that look close enough to that, when it's a yes or no question," he told TV3's Paul Henry this morning.
And pigs might fly, sir.
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Lest we forget, Fumi Tanaka is an integral part of the Highlanders team. Appearing live here with Joe Wheeler. ;-)
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Scout's first week hasn't gone well. After all, following the heady launch "EXCLUSIVE" -- "Mike Hoskings Washes Car", there was really only one direction for the site to go. And it did. RNZ notes that by day three, the "exclusives" had completely dried up.
No new stories were posted between 9:30am and 6pm, and there wasn't any exclusive content the entire day, save for an attack on the Scouts Association of New Zealand.
If launching an assault on boy scouts was ill-advised, the site's factual accuracy was even more questionable. It's possible that people who inhabit a certain Auckland social circle might view Max Key as influential, if only for flaunting daddy's wealth. But as NBR points out, at least one of Scout's “25 most influential Kiwis 25 and under” is actually Irish, two didn't fit the 'under 25' bracket at all and another who made number 16 on the list is only influential because... well, because she is due to appear in the next season of TV3's predictable and overcooked reality show, The Block.
Today's Mediawatch has an excellent summary of Scout's first week, its gloss job on Judith Collins and blatant promotion of Mediaworks' personaltities.
Let's see...
* Kill NZ's best and most-loved current affairs show - check.
* Take failed in Oz former Nat candidate, give him his own show - check.
* Pour resources into vile gossip site - check.
* Take product placement & self-promotion to a new level - check.
* Turn company profit into a loss - check.Take a bow Mark Wheldon and Julie Christie... your work here must almost be done.
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Hard News: RWC 2015: This wasn't in the script!, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
With that scoreline, does that mean Japan got a bonus point too?
SA got one bonus point for scoring four tries, and another for being within seven points at the end. Japan scored three tries and just get four points for the win.
But what a fucking fantastic win it was! The Japanese played like fifteen little energiser bunnies throughout the game, their tackling was superb, they won all of their own scrums, most of their lineouts and they even managed to monster the Springboks with their rolling maul. That rates as one of the best games of rugby I've seen. Ever!
It'll be interesting to see how both of these teams fare against Scotland.
The Eng v Fiji game was slowed down and pretty much ruined by Peyper & the TMO over-refereeing and a few bad calls. You're right about the truck & trailer Russell... that gifted England a penalty try AND a yellow card for Fiji. By contrast this morning's game was controlled perfectly by Jerome Garces.
Ahh... sublime rugby. And not a politician in sight.
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There have been some big media announcements this week, starting with some serious PR spin from the Herald about forthcoming job cuts.
New Zealand Media and Entertainment (NZME), today announced plans for its print, digital and radio news teams to come together in one integrated, multi-platform, 24/7 operation.
The move comes ahead of the co-location of the teams later this year into one world-class, Auckland newsroom.
What that story fails to mention is that top journalists John Drinnan and Brian Rudman will likely have their roles disestablished, following the recent departures of Dita De Boni, James Griffin, Peter Calder and Paul Casserly. Up to 40% of sales staff will also lose their jobs. Morale in the Herald newsroom must be on a par with Mediaworks these days.
Then in an RNZ story oddly dated 20th (tomorrow), we learn that visitors to the Herald site will have to register before the end of the year in preparation for turning it into a paid / paywalled site. I'm not sure that sacking your best journalists then charging for content is such a great business plan, and it'll be interesting to see if the numbers prepared to pay for increasingly average content offsets the inevitable decline in advertising revenue.
And the New Scoop has launched, apparently without Alastair Thompson at the helm, in the galley or anywhere else on the boat.
The news is broken. Whether it’s adverts disguised as news, trivia masquerading as real content or important news simply missing from the news feed. Something is wrong. As traditional advertising revenues dry up, publishers are being forced to dumb down or distort the news to keep their businesses alive. And we are all suffering because of it.
While their basic premise sounds good, there's no detail yet of who's involved and what their mission may be.
We live in strange media times.
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Slater has been found guilty of contempt of court after publishing confidential information relating to a settlement with Matthew Blomfield on the Whaleshit blog. The fine looks like a mere slap on the hand.
Despite Blomfield's claim that Slater had "backers" with access to funds, Justice Asher said he would treat Slater has if he had "relatively modest means" instead.
He didn't agree with Blomfield's suggestion of imprisonment, because the contempts weren't of a serious nature.
He ordered Slater to pay a $1500 fine, half of which would be paid to Blomfield.
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Hard News: A better thing to believe in, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Can we run a Turing Test on this unit...?
Seconded.
