The end of the month was nigh, and so it was time for NZ pol bloggers to check and submit their blog's post and comment counts for that period of 31 days. Hot cocoa on their desks next to a lit candle stub, the bed-hat wearing pyjamaheed did wipe the sleep from their eyes and tap gently at their keyboards, careful not to wake the sleeping cat on their laps as they did their sums.*
So anyway...
To ensure publication in the first attempt at the March Bloggage post please be sure to email in your stats (to spanblather at gmail dot com) as follows:
As part of my ever present wondering about the roles of men and women in our society, and in particular when they are in a relationship and have children, I've wandered somehow into thinking about infertility. I'm not quite sure how this happened, but I guess with my posts on the pressure on couples to have children and all the general judging that seems to go on when it comes to pro-creation,* considering gender roles and the inability to pump out progeny was bound to occur to me at some point.
Further to the great placard pic that Paul has up at The Fundy Post, I would really like to know from readers who are opposed to Sue Bradford's Bill:
Why is it ok to hit your child, when it is not ok to hit your partner or yourI am not being (intentionally) facetious, I am really baffled by the logic and would like to know your reasons. It just seems completely counter-intuitive to me.
pet?
Ok this is published a day earlier than usual, cos it's full and cos there are some other admin type things I need to put up tomorrow morning. Enjoy.
Standard intro - if you have a post of your own, or some else's, that you'd like to highlight please feel free to add it in comments, or to discuss the above posts, or indeed most anything else.
Adventures in Lame - Realization: I'm An Angry, Humourless Feminist - Reb delivers the rant that has many times sat just above my own heart at the hearing of yet another dumb "joke" that isn't actually funny.
DagCentral - Kiwis in Amurrica: nau mai, haere mai... - DC covers the recent Clark-Bush tet a tet, from the point of view of a leftie American who hearts NZ.
Feministe - Why Feminism Is Still Necessary - zuzu exposes one particular case of harassment against a woman blogger, but riffs on the general theme as well.
The Fundy Post - The dog ate my homework - wherein Paul Litterick eventually recreates a recent piece he wrote for Craccum and thus reveals to us all how hard it is to be a tory.
Larvatus Prodeo - WorkChoices one year on - Mark looks at the impact of the Australian employment laws brought in last year by Howard. Two word summary? Not good.
Liberation -The farce of democracy on the Representation Commission - Bryce Edwards writes about the bias of the Representation Commission (which decides electorate boundaries) and the irony of David Caygill representing Labour on it.
New York Times - Why I Was Fired - One of the US District Attorney's fired for "performance related" reasons (said "performance" being the loyal Bushie role he neglected to play) writes about the scandal.
Pandagon - Fighting the system - Sheezlebub follows up her post on the cost of our economic system (listed in Vol 9 of Linky Love) with some practical suggestions to challenge it.
Pandagon - As motherhood slowly changes into a choice - Amanda Marcotte writes in response to a Guardian article looking at three generations of women and the changes in attitudes to motherhood, birth control, and assorted related matters.
PunkAssBlog - On Trolling and PunkAssBlog - A damn fine post on what is, and isn't, trolling.
Sparkle*Matrix - Second Life: Rape games ~ update - Some pretty sick news about online role-playing game Second Life, brought to us by sparklematrix.
Tales from the Reading Room - Sleeping With The Enemy - litlove contributes her thoughts on reviewing a manuscript for a publisher, something every aspiring writer should check out.
WIMN's Voices - Top Model's beautiful corpses - Jennifer Pozner covers the America's Next Top Model scandal. Yes, I tend to agree with Pozner (and incidentally many others who have posted on this in US feminist circles) that taking photos of models made up to look like they died violent deaths trivialises violence and even dehumanizes women.
And don't forget, previous volumes of Linky Love can be found in their own shiny category.
I remember when I was a student activist and the balance was heading rapidly towards $3B and we just couldn't get our heads around the size of the debt. Now it is three times that.
My impression is that Labour is comfortable about it, and they think the electorate is comfortable about it too. There is a new consensus around tertiary education, as everyone in Parliament, except the Greens, seems to be of the opinion that tertiary study is a privilege, and one that must be paid for. This makes me sad.
If the electorate is now resigned to tertiary fees, this doesn't seem to hold true for restricting access to student allowances. Repeated surveys, over many years, have shown high levels of public support for a universal student allowance. It still seems bizarre to me, 11 years after I first became politically active because of these very issues, that students are the only group of NZers who can't access some level of income support if they need it. Instead they are judged on their parents' income, until the arbitrary age of 25, and must borrow to meet their living costs if their parents are considered too wealthy and they cannot meet their needs through other means.
According to NZUSA figures, around a quarter of students under 25 receive some level of allowance support, despite the fact that they can get a payment, of diminishing size, if their parents earn under $72,000. This tells me that the bulk of those studying are still the rich(ish), and that is a problem, for both our now and our future. It seems tertiary study and training are still not seen as an option for those outside the middle and upper classes, and that should worry us all.
Is it realistic to expect parents to support their adult children? Particularly as wage growth in the last twenty years has not met inflation and the size of mortgages and rents has increased dramatically? So many students take up the offer of a student loan, for living costs as well as fees, because they aren't getting support from their families and they simply cannot earn enough to live off and still study at the same time.
And of course there's the impact of the student loan after the degree or diploma is gathering dust in the back of a cupboard somewhere. Most of my friends are unlikely to buy a home anytime soon. That choice is constricted for many by significant student loans. Of the contemporaries I know who have been able to get on the mortgage treadmill it has often been due to a windfall - an inheritance, family support, the good luck of a lotto win. And of those who have repaid their loans, many have had to go overseas to do it.
The social impact of student loans is yet to be fully realised. Certainly the scheme is a lot better than when it was first created, but Labour** has not made the real moves necessary on fees and allowances to reduce the need to borrow in the first place. Until it does that $9 Billion will continue to multiply and become even less possible to address.
* NZUSA's handy debt counter hasn't quite ticked over to $9,000,000,000 yet, but it is very very nearly there. If I was really masochistic I could sit here and watch but alas there is work to be done.
** And again I keep thinking, "but National would be worse, so whatcha donna do?"
Further to my two recent posts about the repeal of s59 of the Crimes Act, and removal of the defence of parental discipline, Just Left has the skinny on a website where you can show your support for Sue Bradford's Bill, cunningly entitled Repeal Section 59.
It seems to me, as a NZ leftie, that really there aren't a lot of choices for me at the moment. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that there aren't a lot of options I like, politically.
On the right hand I have National, Act, and the general Forces of Darkness who throng around concepts I find anathema. Ideas like low (or no) taxation, privatising state services, selling assets, cutting benefits, and generally advantaging the rich (and priviledged) over all others.
The left palm displays the Labour-led Government, which doesn't exactly set my leftie heart aflame with passion for their policies, or even their principles, but is better than National.
And that seems to be all there is. As far as Government leadership goes there's only National or Marginally Better Than National.
On international relations, I can wicker all I want about Helen Clark's senseless lunch attempt to get a free trade deal with George W* whilst delicately not mentioning the USA's human rights abuses. But I know that John Key and his ilk would probably lick the POTUSA's boots clean after the soup and enthusiastically ask him where he got all those fab ideas for dealing with prisoners by the time the entree was on the table. At least Clark didn't commit us to a stupid war in Iraq.**
On education, I can express my extreme frustration with Labour's approaches to tertiary, secondary, primary and early childhood, but at least I know they are not going to set up direct competition between state schools and encourage the profit motive ahead of all else. There is still a pretence (and possibly in some of the Labour caucus a genuine belief) that education shouldn't be about making money. Unlike another party I could name. At least Labour has significantly increased funding in this Vote and brought special education and kindergarten back into the state sector.
On health, I could vent my spleen about the way Labour-led administrations rely heavily on
the goodwill of those working in the system, but I know they won't gut the public provision of healthcare like National would. And they have given the nurses pay parity, which is A Good Thing, and one that National would certainly not have done.
On the parlous state of our police force, in particular it's attitude to women, the Labour-led government certainly hasn't been as fulsome in its condemnation as I would like, but at least Clark has actually said some critical things. What's the National view on the police? Judging by their membership in the blogosphere the general view in that party might be that this was all about a few rotten eggs and not systematic at all, no siree.
I could go on and on with examples, but you get the drift.***
What this situation means is that Clark and co can rest on their laurels to a certain extent. They know that whatever they do it is unlikely to be as bad as what National would do in the same situation, from the point of view of their supporters and those further to the left. Why bother trying when you've already got a substantial number of votes sewn up, purely because the other option is worse?
(I did warn you I was a bit grumpy and bitter at the moment.)
So what's a leftie to do?
this blog passed 100,000 hits since I installed the Statcounter.*
I was going to just put this in the next Linky Love, but I can't keep my plug for it to a simple sentence.
Fundamentalist Christians & Fundamentalist Muslims
Have Different Attitudes to Women? Not so Much.
Sheep, Duder's Regional Park
Cattle, Cornwall Park 
Gull, Mangere Bridge
It's Friday morning (already!), so it must be time for the next volume of Linky Love.
Standard intro - if you have a post of your own, or some else's, that you'd like to highlight please feel free to add it in comments, or to discuss the above posts, or indeed most anything else.
Celsias - Supermarket Secrets - Craig Mackintosh has the BBC documentaries which cover the supermarket supply chain practices that are questionable for not only the environment but also human health.
Columbia Journalism Review - The Opt-Out Myth - EJ Graff writes powerfully dis-proving the idea that smart, educated women are choosing not to pursue corporate careers. And here's further comment on this article, and the opt-out myth, from Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon. Plus, Make Tea Not War posts briefly on this article at What We Said, and gets some interesting comments out of the bargain.
DagCentral - John Howard: Patriot. Statesman. Dumbass - dagcentral takes on John Howard's ridiculousness about Obama, Al Qaeda and the 2008 US presidential race.
Feministe - Legal Abortion = Lives Saved - Jill (I so heart Jill!) looks at the drop in deaths from illegal abortions, and the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church.
Frogblog - Welfare for Australian Banks - Russel Norman looks critically at the Government proposal to cut company tax, through the example of what could happen for Australian banks operating in NZ.
Joe Hendren - Iraq can be a St Paddy's Day issue - Joe examines the parallels between English imperialism in Ireland and US imperialism in Iraq.
Just Left - Four years of blood on their hands - Jordan Carter gives his thoughts about the fourth anniversary of the Iraq War.
The Legal Soapbox - Follow the leader - Legal Eagle examines our lack of tolerance for dissent, and what we will do to avoid being in the ostracised minority.
Mainly Politics - Measuring public sector performance - Chris Hipkins writes about Phil "ex-National staffer" Rennie's "independent" report on where all the money has gone under recent Labour-led Governments.
No Right Turn - Misplaced priorities - Idiot/Savant has the skinny on where our research funds have been directed in regards to energy. And it's not where Al Gore would like.
Pandagon - The cost of the system - Sheelzebub eloquently expands on the theme that sweating (as happens in sweatshops) is an intrinsic part of our economic system.
And don't forget, previous volumes of Linky Love can be found in their own shiny category.
Got a crazy few days at work so likely to be low on posting for the rest of this week, but please do check out and contribut to a number of quite live discussions on s59, rape and women walking alone at night, RNZ National's new approach to news, and self-esteem in women (and men, thanks to the commenters).
Plus there is a completely unguessed pic up here for you to have a gnaw at.
Will hopefully pop in to comment, and hope to be posting again by Friday.
Is Stuff's news crossing journalistic ethical boundaries into blatantly promoting Fairfax stable-mate TradeMe? Particularly as there are now a rather large number of online auction sites springing up, doesn't it seem a bit odd that Stuff puts all its emphasis on that one site?
Hat tip to Satsuma Salad, who has the above link and a some a couple of other examples in her Fairfaxwatch category.
Further to my post on the weekend about the appeal of repeal, a reader emailed me with the list of MPs that Family First* is targeting their lobbying efforts toward. If the forces against the Bill think these are the wavering parliamentarians, then those for the Bill should definitely get their views in these ears too.
Labour - presumably people who might be convinced to vote against
Clayton Cosgrove, Sue Moroney, David Cunliffe, Damien O'Connor, Harry Duynhoven, Mahara Okeroa, Mark Gosche, David Parker, George Hawkins, Mita Ririnui, Dave Hereora, Ross Robertson, Darren Hughes, Dover Samuels, Winnie Laban, Maryan Street, Nanaia Mahuta, Paul Swain
(Labour are whipping MPs to vote in favour of this Bill, so for an MP to vote against would probably mean major ructions)
NZ First
Brian Donnelly, Barbara Stewart, Doug Woolerton
United Future
Peter Dunne
National - presumably people currently voting for
Paula Bennett, Simon Power, Jackie Blue, Katherine Rich, Paul Hutchison
You can find contact details for all of these MPs here.[PDF]
The Family First list also included the Maori Party but I can't see them going back on their promise to support Sue Bradford's bill now. I do wonder about the potential of Labour's Maori MPs voting against, given that it could provide them with a point of difference with their Maori Party opposites in contested Maori seats in 2008, but I suspect no Labour MP won't break ranks. Tim Barnett, Labour's Senior Whip, is not only highly respected (and by many sides of politics) he's also clearly very good at his job. He must be pretty glad he doesn't have to herd Taito Philip Field anymore!
Many of those on the Labour list surprise me (particularly Maryan Street), but it comes with no shock, not even a sliver of an eyebrow raised**, to see the usual suspects for conservatism: Cosgrove, O'Connor, Hawkins, Robertson, Duynhoven and Samuels.
I have no idea why the National MPs who are voting against have decided that way but I note that both Jackie Blue and Paul Hutchison are medical doctors and Katherine Rich has little children (I think she had one just before or after she was elected?). Has anyone asked John Key his views? Other than where he'll put his actual vote? Links in comments most welcome.
It seemed like this vote was all sewn up last week, with the Maori Party's announcement they would cast 4 in favour, but now it's seeming less secure. Which I guess was the point of Field's attempt at filibustering, so at least he's achieved one thing as an independent, even if it's not something I like much.
*Who you might expect to be against violence towards children, but they are Pro-Smack.
** Except perhaps sardonically. I do love a good sardonic arched eyebrow.
Massive thanks to Idiot/Savant for navigating me through the coding.
ScoopIt is a NZ equivalent of Digg, and enables users to submit and rank articles, posts etc that they like and determine for themselves what makes the front page. You can find out more about ScoopIt here, and register as a user over here. Go here to vote on the Pending Scoops.
I suspect not that many Spanblather posts will get voted through (if any) but I figured I would give it a go and see what happens. At the very least I now have a shiny new button under every post!
Cheerio
Span
In honour of jo blogging about her beautiful cat Maxine, here's another shot of the always on-form Mara.
Thank you, thank you very much.
It's my fervent hope that in the next few weeks Sue Bradford's bill to remove parental discipline as a defence under the Crimes Act will pass into law. I haven't written about this earlier because I haven't really had time, but I'm about to rectify that omission, oh yes indeedy.
For me the debate about repealing s59 actually began in 2000, when I was first involved in Staunch Alliance and was made aware that repeal was on Laila Harre's agenda as Minister of Youth Affairs. It was something on the edges of my political perception - I didn't fully understand it and it didn't seem likely to pop up on the public agenda anytime soon. Certainly it didn't apply to my life right then - it was a long time since I had been smacked, and the likelihood of me in the possible role of smacker seemed an equal infinity away.
Now Sue Bradford (my favourite Green MP by a long way) has a Private Member's Bill that looks likely to pass in the next fortnight, removing an archaic defence from our books. I've long found it anathema that many see their children (particularly their daughters) as personal property. It just seems bizarre to me that we purport to care so much for our children, and yet we hit them.
I don't recall being smacked often myself. In fact I can only explicitly remember one time - the last time. I think it was the third time I was ever smacked, I was a pretty tame child.
I remember this occasion quite vividly. I must have been about 7 or 8 and I remember Mum sitting down on the edge of her bed, facing the wall, and pulling me over her knee. It was the old bedspread, the blue paisley one, but it was new then. I recall that she was very very angry, and I can remember thinking that she wasn't really angry with me and that what I had done wrong (lost in the mists of time) wasn't sufficient for a smack. As the hits came I felt a righteous anger that I hadn't deserved it, that, bloody-minded little bugger that I was, it wasn't going to stop me from doing whatever I'd done again. Serve her right I thought, she's punished me and I will punish her. Eye for an eye and all that. Being much littler than her I intended to store my vengeance away, stoke it mightily, and one day wreak my revenge. I can't recall if I ever did or not.
The other thing I remember very strongly was the tears. Not just mine, but Mum's too. She was angry yes, but when she was done she was sad. She apologised to me and hugged me, we were both crying. I still felt unfairly treated, but I recall being grateful that she had recognised the injustice in her action.
Not to malign my mother at all, who has been and remains a really wonderful parent and grandparent, but I always had the sense that she did it at a desperate time, not because she thought it would be the most effective parenting tool but because she needed to lash out. Certainly I could see afterwards that we both felt bad about it; me because I felt it was uncalled for, and she perhaps because she knew that. We've never discussed it, so I don't actually know what her motivation was or how she felt, beyond what I could see for myself and interpret with my child's mind, and what I remember of that now.
Smacking from the parental perspective is not something I've experienced yet, so I have to go on my recollection of being on the receiving end. I acknowledge that experience changes your views on things. Just as in the past I have changed my mind about abortion, there is a possibility I might change my view on smacking, or anything else for that matter. But I can't really write about how I might feel in an unknown future. Certainly my intention now is not to use violence against my own children.*
But I can see the argument about slapping a child's hand away from a hot element, carefully carrying a child to a time-out place, pushing a toddler out of the way of harm. I do not believe that any of these sensible precautions, motivated not by anger but by protection, will be prosecuted after s59 is repealed.
In fact Bradford's Bill (amended and subsequently backed by the majority of the Select Committee who considered it) very specifically allows this kind of action, thusly:
1. Every parent of a child... is justified in using force if the force used is reasonable in the circumstances and is for the purpose of:
preventing or minimising harm to the child or another person; or preventing the child from engaging or continuing to engage in conduct that amounts to a criminal offence;
or preventing the child from engaging or continuing to engage in offensive or disruptive behaviour;
or performing the normal daily tasks that are incidental to good care and parenting.2. Nothing in subsection (1) or in any rule of common law justifies the use of force for the purpose of correction.
3. Subsection (2) prevails over subsection (1).
The Select Committee report is an interesting read, in particular the summary of the points made by submitters for and against, and the statement that Child, Youth and Family indicated they did not expect their thresholds for removal of children would change if s59 was repealed. The report states in it's conclusion:
We consider that there is widespread misunderstanding about the purpose and
possible results of the bill as introduced. We do not consider that the repeal of section 59 will lead to the prosecution of large numbers of parents ... in New Zealand. (my emphasis)
We are asking NZ to be brave, to look at the possibility of a culture where we
don't hit our children, and that we can actually find an alternative way of
bringing up our children.
Standard intro - if you have a post of your own, or some else's, that you'd like to highlight please feel free to add it in comments, or to discuss the above posts, or indeed most anything else.
High number of posts about sexism and the like in this volume, because of International Women's Day on March 8th. In the USA this was of course our March 9th, and it was dubbed Blog Against Sexism Day.
Alas (a blog) - Fear - Maia (who has also posted this at Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty) tells the story of what happened to her after the Wellington IWD protest, sadly an everyday tale of the fear women face walking alone at night.
Auckland's Burning - What drugs are the socialists on? (And why don't they share?) - John's message about climate change to the socialists? No having of cake and eating it too.
blogging it real - A que cono esta Bush? - Bobert asks why the hell has George W headed down to Latin America when only bad things can happen? (Apologies for mangling the title of Bobert's post, I don't know how to insert the correct grammatical letters).
Feministe - Hi, I'm Jill, and scummy law school sleazebags have gone after me too - This one will have you outraged within seconds. Or at least it should.
Hear Me Roar - In-depth Look at Rape - Tobes particularly examines a startlingly long list of movies that perpetuate the myth of the high frequency of women making false rape accusations.
Ilyka Damen - "We Don't Go For That Sexism 'Round These Parts" - gennimcmahon outlines her first memory of experiencing sexism and asks readers to contribute theirs. A fascinating comment thread.
Ilyka Damen - Early Registration - Ilyka examines the birth of her feminism, and the realisation she had in her late teens courtesy of a Cover Girl eyeshadow trio, in the staff restroom at MacDonalds.
Joe Hendren - Rickards case raises real issues with jury trials in New Zealand - Joe gives us his thoughts on the police rape trials, and the surrounding legal issues.
Kiwiblog - How to delay a bill - David Farrar explains the various delaying tactics those in Opposition can use, in the context of the debate on the repeal of s59 of the Crimes Act.
Kiwi Herald - Kiwi Mums and Dads Get In Last Few Slaps - John reports on the trend in Moenui, ahead of Sue Bradford's bill to repeal s59 becoming law.
Liberation - 2008 NZ election likely to be fought on the environment - Bryce Edwards postulates that our 2008 Bunfight will go a similar way to politics in the UK at the moment, namely end up focused on a fight about how to beat climate change.
Maramatanga - Field's path to re-election - Maramatanga looks at Taito Philip Field, Labour, and Mangere, and the possibilities for a new Pacific Island or family values to evolve from the mess.
No Right Turn - The section 59 debate - Idiot/Savant covers the Parliamentary debate(s) over the committee stage of the repeal of s59, doing his bit for enlightening us all on the creation of law.
Pandagon - I Like My Sexism Like I Like My Hardwood Floors: Deeply Ingrained - Auguste writes about his evolution away from sexism and towards enlightenment.
Ranting off the ROK - Ranting in Laos: Planes, Plains and Phonsavan - stef has left Korea and is travelling home via as many other Asian countries as she can shoe-horn in. In this post she writes about Laos, with pics!
Secret Passage - Corned Beef, dognuts and representing the Western Springs - Robyn reports colourfully on her visit to the Pasifika Festival.
Smell the Magic Kitty - Lindey Lohan upskirt, Britney crotch shots - Yes, I know, you can't believe you just read that on this blog. Bear with me; click through, and then mouse over the hot links...
Tales from the Reading Room - Atwood & Tolstoy - litlove covers The Handmaid's Tale and Anna Karenina, with some very interesting feminist observations.
Previous volumes of Linky Love can be found in their own shiny category.
Recently I've been musing a bit on self-confidence and I think I may have finally concluded that I'm not a total freak.
Two things happened today to reinforce that view.
I talked to a colleague (who we'll call Shirley, because that is surely not her name) about our belief in our own abilities, in relation to our job performance. I shared with Shirley that when I first won by current job another woman working in our industry had told me "fake it until you make it," but that I still felt like I was faking, not making, two years later. Shirley in turn told me of all the strong, capable, inspiring women she knows who have told her recently that they too feel considerable self-doubt. Our korero turned from focusing on our insecurities to thinking about the reality - that if other people perceive that we are achieving perhaps we truly are, despite our own deficeit of confidence.
When I got home today and cleared my Bloglines there was a post from Amanda Marcotte about how women share critical comments about their own bodies and abilities to bond. While this is depressing it is undeniably true for me and for many women I know. If North Harbour had scored a try for everytime I've traded tales of my body imperfections with another woman then my team would be top of the table every season and make no mistake. It's like a reflex - sometimes when I say it I don't even mean it at first, it's just the polite thing to say, but then after the words have escaped into the world they take on a reality of their own and I start to believe them.
And really, is it any surprise that women police not only each other's body image but also their broader self-confidence, when we live in a society that still often sees women as inferior beings? We are so frequently told, subtly or overtly, that we are just baby-makers, or sexualised objects for men to do with as they will, or the property of a father or husband. That we constantly reinforce that status ourselves, internally and with other women, is commensurate with the world we have lived in for generations, albeit against our own best interests.
All of this negativity, to ourselves and to others, is a coping mechanism. I blame no woman for going down that path, but I hope to reject it myself.
Update, 16th March 2007, 9.33am: gennimcmahon also has a post on this subject, from a the angle of thinking about her daughter, including the quote that sums it up:
Our culture makes clear to girls that liking themselves is egotistical and therefore insufficiently modest.
As always, guesses in comments please - but, not as always, I would like you to kindly identify (if possible):
Darling readers (and commenters in particular),
It has come to my attention that some of you are having difficulties with the word verification thingy on the comment form. Namely that the scrambled letter picture is not appearing.
To rectify this I have turned off word verification until such time as Blogger fixes the problem or I drown under a sea of spam comments.
I hope that this will be an efficacious solution for the time being.
Yours always,
Span
National RadioRadio New Zealand National has undergone something of a brand transformation of late.
Michael Wood has already noted the cheesy "Sounds Like Us" campaign, which was also satirised by Saturday morning host Kim Hill. I didn't mind the SLU soundbites all that much initially, but pretty quickly they seemed waaaay toooo looooong and frequent. Plus the sounds picked seemed to me more like some 1950s NZ that never was, as if the Jon Pertwee Doctor had travelled back in time to the Taranaki of the past and was stranded on a small farm.
While the SLU campaign seems to have quietly diminished, sadly there is no denying that the transformation is no longer limited to external advertising and stings.
Morning Report stories are now often festooned with music, some of which seems irrelevant, and most of which goes on for longer than the actual reporter or quotes of the participants. There seems to have been an increase in "human interest" stories - the dreaded 7 legged spider stuff. And there is now an absolutely terrible advert for Morning Report that tries to sell Geoff Robinson and Sean Plunket as some kind of jovial FM breakfast crew, with Nicola Wright chipping in at the end with "it's not all bad news."
Well I'm sorry, but it is bad news. In fact it's not news at all.
I also feel that Nine to Noon has morphed a bit this year. Instead of a few indepth interviews we now have Kathryn Ryan (who I have totally hearted in the past) engaged in at the most two lengthy interviews per morning and then conducting several short filler chats with various people. I don't mean the regular "columnist" type slots, many of which I find very interesting. These are one off interviews with people who are either a) not that intriguing ("human interest" rears its ugly head again) or b) very very stimulating indeed but only allocated five minutes of interview time.
The rebranding info on the RNZ site states:
There are no major changes to programmes or schedules for Radio New Zealand National or Radio New Zealand Concert as a result of the new branding.But my strong perception is that the dumbing down has begun. And that makes me sad.
| Your Personality is the Rarest (INFJ) |
 Only about 2% of all people have your personality - including 3% of all women and around 1% of all men.You are Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, and Judging. |
So National's new industrial relations spokesperson Kate Wilkinson has discovered that unions are not The Enemy. Hat tip to Aucklander at Large who has written about his scepticism, a sentiment I share.
One thing that bugs me about National and their approach to unions is watching John Key simultaneously sidle up to his idol John Howard. Howard has brought in some of the heaviest anti-union legislation seen in a long long time, far worse than our own Employment Contracts Act was. National has got to be looking across the Tasman with longing, especially given they all seem to believe that the unions provide the bulk of Labour's campaign funding (not true).
Kate Wilkinson is a loooong way down the caucus rankings, so her hold on the industrial relations portfolio suggests to me that National doesn't intend to do much campaigning in that area in the next year or so. This worries me. It means that that part of their policy isn't going to get much media scrutiny, and probably that journalists will be gentler in interviewing Wilkinson, as a newbie, than they would have been with the previous holder, Wayne Mapp.
Because surely we must all know that National will want to at the very least gut the Employment Relations Act? There is no consensus between the Big Two on industrial relations, far from it. And employment law affects every worker in New Zealand.
An unscrutinised industrial relations policy (or simply, an unstated one, as seems to be the case with most National policy these days) could mean some big surprises after the 2008 election for voters, if National take the Treasury benches...
Update, 15th March 2007 6.47pm: Bryce Edwards gives his take on National's new paramour too.
The threads advertising the International Women's Day events at both No Right Turn and Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty have turned into debates on what happened at the Wellington protest and the heavy criticism of the police culture of misogyny that the media has portrayed as the main thrust of all the events around the country.
1. I was marching against the culture of misogyny that still persists in New Zealand. And which provides oxygen for the violence and rape that affects too many New Zealand women's lives.
2. I marched in particular on this day against the manifestations of this misogyny that can be found in our police force.
3. I also was marched to express my outrage against the rapes committed by Shollum and Shipton, and Rickard's repulsive attitudes and abuse of power.
4. And I was marching for changes that lead to a justice system that is more in tune with the needs of rape victims and which, while still offering fair trials to all, makes it easier for the perpetrators of rape to be brought to justice.
Standard intro - if you have a post of your own, or some else's, that you'd like to highlight please feel free to add it in comments, or to discuss the above posts, or indeed most anything else.
Alas (a blog) - Workplace deaths are overwhelmingly male - Ampersand looks at the reasons why US workplace deaths are mainly amongst men, in particular occupational segregation. My perception is that NZ stats would be similar.
Auckland's Burning - Workers fired because of union membership - John has text and pics about a group of Unite members who had jobs at the Ascott Metropolis in Auckland, until they were fired for having the gall to be union members.
Contradiction - Recanting - George Darroch changes his mind about the post featured in an earlier Linky Love about banning gang patches. Good on him for doing so publicly.
Feministe - File Under: Get pregnant, lose your civil liberties - Jill shines a much needed light on yet another example of discrimination against pregnant women.
Feministe - The New Feminism - Another great post from Jill, this time about how a new reality TV show based on the Pussycat Dolls is apparently empowering to women. That would be why high heels are so uncomfortable to wear then - the pain is empowering me!
Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty - Expecting More - Maia rips apart the post by Russel Norman, Greens co-leader, about the trials of Rickards, Shipton and Schollum. She has written some amazing stuff on the trial and its outcome, including this, this, and this.
The Fundy Post - Listener now to be available as soothing Gel - Paul Litterick flexs his satire muscles in response to news of a declining Listener readership.
Hard News - Bad men - Russell Brown on the police rape trials, resulting in a multi-faceted comment thread which dips into trollville before being redeemed by D&D veterans. A thread to make you cry a lot, and, eventually, laugh a little.
The Legal Soapbox - The Old School Tie - Legal Eagle explores the issues lefties face when choosing between public and private schooling for their progeny.
The Legal Soapbox - Barefoot and pregnant with a gavel - Legal Eagle gets a second nod for a post on some really quite ludicrous reasons why women shouldn't be judges according to Shariah law.
A Long Time Ago and Not True Anyway - With these bombs democracy - Terence expands on a debate on Public Address System about imposing democracy, comparing Germany and Japan with Iraq.
