I was commenting the other day on a Dr Tennant’s Verbal Highs isolation nation station pop-up radio thingy he’s been doing, about the States rights vs Feds, and how most states didn’t F around waiting for the completely out of touch and unorganized bunch of losers in the White House, and called a “Shelter In Place” well before “that guy” even started hinting at it, which is all he’s done – hinted, no take the reins at all, and then uses the excuse that he’d rather “leave it to the states"… what a bullshit excuse for not doing the obvious correct thing, and missing the boat on doing it early enough to have some decent effect on things……

In fact, here in San Frandisco, we went into “lockdown” 4 days before the State of California even enacted it, and we’re seeing some encouraging data trends.
New Zealand’s move to Level 4, when case count was low was a phenomenal move in my opinion… I don’t care who you support, but Jacinda and team played an Ace with that move. Kiwis should consider themselves very lucky, but should also stick to the game plan…. this is a long haul thing…I mean, what’s worse, being accused of going too hard, or being responsible for many deaths??… on top of that, if half your population die, your economy’s gonna be more screwed and will take way longer to recover too, so the “economic” considerations are by default secondary, whereas over here in the US, it is the forefront of current “lockdown relaxation” thinking.

Another thing I talked about is the way that the NZ Govt has been way more transparent about what they’re doing and thinking, compared to the USA, to the extent that I’ve been able to watch online the Simon Bridges’ version of “Celebrity Squares”, or the intro to “The Brady Bunch” where he grills mainly opposition ministers about things that I think are on a lot of NZer’s minds, whereas over here, we get an incompetent, lying leader having a 30-45 minute fiasco of a press conference, that has even recently featured political $$ donors reading from the bible telling us that trust in god will see us through…
God help us….

Great column Russell (not like your others aren't...)
Best.Kiwi.Band.Ever IMHO

pre-BFM was 1404 AM Radio B...but I should know that...

Also on Sat April 8, but in a regular venue, not a forest... Punk It Up...

Thanks for doing the research on this Russell, but even so, the whole debate on property developers profit driven plans vs what's good for the community is one that needs to continue. This scenario is a good wake-up call, albeit a bit of a false alarm it appears.
The loss of the KA would be horrendous to not only the AKL scene, but NZ as a whole. Without a solid venue of that capacity in AKL, promoters won't have a "budget making" gig for a tour, which would cover any losses for other city's gigs (i.e. Welly, ChCh etc), and so will be very unwilling to bring over more "fringe" type acts, and surely would be unwilling to add the extra cost/potential loss of playing other cities also.
I love playing, promoting at, and attending gigs at the KA, it is an excellent venue, with excellent sound, staff and layout...God save the KA!!!