Tag Archives: NZ Herald

Persecuting the innocent to appease the majority #2drinksmax

Posted on by Brad Heap

Over the last two nights Auckland police have been running a drink driving blitz testing 21,000 drivers. 77 people were found to be over the limit. In other words 0.37% of all drivers stopped or 1 in 273 drivers. Yet the NZ Herald continues to run its scare campaign suggesting every second driver on the road is a drunk homicidal maniac on a rampage to kill you.

The logic that the Herald is applying to this campaign is the same as the police used over the last two long weekends to try and stop people from speeding, make the law extremely strict and enforce it with no leeway. The problem with this approach is it doesn’t stop those people who flout the law regardless of what the limit is and instead turns those otherwise mild mannered, considerate and normal drivers into criminals. It is like trying to do keyhole surgery with a jackhammer.

The reality is regardless of the limits and the law a few people will continue to disobey the law and cause problems. This is a fact of society and is not something that can be just wiped out by persecuting the masses.

At least one of the Herald’s own commentators gets the stupidity of the campaign:

The Two Drinks Max thing is nothing more than the latest top-of-mind issue that’s the current thing to bang the drum about.

The absurdity of a two-drink maximum is the people who sign up are already responsible enough to know being half-cut and driving doesn’t mix. I give this campaign about another week or three and it’ll be gone only to be replaced by something along the lines of saving a few more whales or whatever.

I won’t be signing up to this campaign or anything like it. Give me something with some cojones and I’ll be there in a flash. Chest thumping does nothing for me along with a lot of people I have spoken to this past week. We don’t want a flash campaign, we want action and lowering the limit won’t solve a bloody thing.

Banning someone from driving a car for five years after a second offence, and permanently for a third, would do the trick for me. I would have preferred a publication to have a go at why so many recidivist drink-drivers are allowed to keep on getting their licences back. Or maybe a concentrated follow up on why public money is spent on helping disqualified drivers get their licences back as reported in the Sunday Star Times. Now that’s what I call a big worry – you get your licence suspended for a good reason, mostly drink driving but allegedly Work and Income will help pay so you get it back. Go figure.

So instead of fudging around the corners and telling everyone to only have two drinks, get behind something that’ll do some good. Hit the heavy drinkers and tell the PC brigade who reckon “the most important thing for drink-driving is treatment” and having people in work can be “therapeutic” to pull their collective heads in. Not too sure how letting someone who’s been convicted of drink driving go back to driving will stop them drinking.

Have a go at that lot and stop targeting folk who already know better.

Is it a slow news day or just a plain weird one?

Posted on by Brad Heap

Three very weird headline news stories from the NZ Herald this afternoon.

West Coast cannabis haul slumps 42pc

The West Coast’s reputation as the second most popular cannabis growing area in New Zealand after Northland may be under threat.

The headline and opening line of the story makes it appear that cannabis is a major export earner for New Zealand.

a “standard fault” caused delays of about half an hour

Auckland commuters on the Western line faced 30-minute delays this morning when a train broke down and had to be pushed down the tracks.

I don’t see how a train breaking down and having to be pushed to another station can be considered a “standard fault” and be treated as such a minor and simple operational issue. It is little wonder Auckland has such poor public transport given the “meh” type response to this sort of issue. The Auckland rail network has only 3 routes on it and yet it seems to have more failures than any other major city that I know.

Hotplate mistaken for a landmine

A tense situation involving an apparent land mine under a Mount Maunganui house was defused after Defence Force bomb disposal unit members identified the mystery object as an old and corroded hotplate.

I know that you can’t take bomb threats/concerns as jokes but really a hotplate as a landmine? And how the hell do you defuse a hotplate!

The defining moment of the last decade.

Posted on by Brad Heap

It is an almost scary idea that in 5 weeks time the first decade of the 21st century will be over. I can still remember the celebrations at the turn of the century ten years ago (at the time I was only 12 years old!).

In the herald this morning there is an article on the defining moment of the last decade.

The writer of the article makes an interesting choice for the defining moment:

The defining moment of the last 10 years wasn’t George W. Bush reading “The Pet Goat” to a bunch of kids on 9/11 while New York was burning, or the Hadron Collider finally producing its first bang this week. I fear the true essence of this decade was captured in four minutes of a flash mob video of 20,000 perfectly syncopated bouncing Oprah fans “spontaneously” erupting in a choreographed dance to a Black Eyed Peas performance in the middle of Chicago’s main thoroughfare.

However the article also makes a point that we have gone too far with the mass publicity of our private lives:

It took radio 38 years to reach an audience of 50 million. Facebook got there in 24 months, according to Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod’s now infamous “Did You Know” series. To put this in perspective, Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter didn’t exist at the start of this decade. I can be patient. We’re bound to outgrow this over-sized hyper-connectivity lust. I’ll be the really edgy, new advocate for two people just sitting in a room talking – because that’s all it needs to be sometimes.

Personally I have not given much thought to what the defining moment would be, there are a lot of things that could be considered. Maybe that is the topic for a future blog post?

Coddington on the Cringe Factors

Posted on by Brad Heap

From the Herald on Sunday:

Deborah Coddington: Journeys afar highlight cringe factors at home

Home to this beautiful country after five weeks overseas and why does it feel like someone inserted a crummy made-for-television movie in the nation’s main channel and pressed constant replay?

MPs know the public hates pettiness yet they’re still throwing their toys out of the cot and calling each other puerile names.

Calling Hide a Buffoon was great though. It was great to see a politician say it as he saw it, honesty at its best.

For crying out loud – Henare, Hide and Harawira are supposed to be on the same side of the House. These boys need to get out more.

Here’s a question for the Act Party: If its leader would sacrifice his ministerial portfolio for his “one law for all” policy, why does this party of principle advocate a different law for children when someone accused of perpetrating violence against a child comes before the court?

Deborah Coddington used to be a MP for the ACT Party so it is interesting to see such a public smack down of ones own party.

I cringe when I read overseas headlines proclaiming that despite New Zealand’s dreadful reputation for child abuse, we want to defy international trends and bring back pro-smacking legislation.

How to explain why we’d do this, especially if you talk about child murders like James Whakaruru or Nia Glassie?

Commentators who sneer Sue Bradford’s law change hasn’t saved a child from death miss the point.

It’s illegal to hit an adult but that doesn’t stop adults from murdering each other. Perhaps a smartypants will start a petition to permit reasonable force against wives who don’t cook their husbands’ eggs. We could call it “Jake’s Law”.

Oh can someone please start the petition. It would be fantastic just for a laugh.

The rest of the story continues on about NZ’s reputation overseas – it is a must read. Unfortunately the wake up call is probably falling on the wrong ears.

You know something is big when the Hearld reports it.

Posted on by Brad Heap

A few days ago I blogged on the TV battle in the United States between Jim Cramer and Jon Stewart. Well now the aftermath appears to be even bigger than the event itself with a wikipedia edit war started on the battle, the press secretary of President Obama being asked for comment, and it being reported in the little local newspaper, the New Zealand Herald. (yes little (when compared on a global scale)).

The full story is here:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=10562013

First came the imperial marching music and a fiery explosion.

“You’ve watched snippets of them for days, or meant to after your friends sent you the link,” a voice boomed with mock gravity. “Tonight, the week-long feud of the century comes to a head.”

It was a comically absurd drum roll for what, on the surface, was merely a squabble between TV presenters.

In one corner, Jim Cramer, the closest thing to a celebrity in US financial journalism. In the opposite corner, Jon Stewart, satirist and host of the fake news programme The Daily Show. But unlike many a big fight, this one surpassed the hype. Nothing less than financial reporting itself was put on trial – and found wanting.

Cramer, who dispenses raucous advice to investors on the Mad Money show on the business channel CNBC, was eviscerated by a serious and genuinely angry Stewart.

Meek and contrite, Cramer was pummelled like a rope-a-dope over his profession’s failure to be an effective watchdog of Wall Street.

The interview was one of those classic television moments that crystallised the public mood. Stewart articulated the anger and bewilderment of millions of Americans who now feel ripped off and afraid. He framed the question that everyone wanted asked: how were the financial masters of the universe allowed to pursue their ruinous behaviour unchallenged for so long?

It caught the attention of the White House, prompted a frenzy among bloggers, and soul-searching in the media, who failed to spot the biggest story of a lifetime or warn the public.

CNBC and other supposedly objective journalists stood accused of complicity with big business, belonging to a cosy coterie that egged on chief executives and fanned the flames of excess.

The interview has also burnished Stewart’s reputation as the last best hope in the media when it comes to, in the earnest phrase of news network CNN, “keeping them honest”.

James Moore, a former TV news correspondent, blogged on the Huffington Post: “Jon Stewart has set new standards for both comedy and journalism. Oddly, he was originally supposed to just make us laugh on Comedy Central. He’s done that, but Stewart has also figured out that some jokes are sad as well as too important not to tell. But he’s not supposed to be doing the job of reporters.”

For years Stewart has been building a reputation as the one-man antidote to what many regard as bland and talk-heavy US news channels. During last year’s presidential election as Barack Obama, John McCain and other politicians queued up to appear on The Daily Show, a headline in the New York Times asked: “Is Jon Stewart the Most Trusted Man in America?”

His assault on Wall Street began in earnest with a classic Daily Show technique: a series of juxtaposed clips revealing incompetence and hypocrisy.

Stewart dissected the channel’s mistakes, in which it made bullish statements about the market and investment banks before they collapsed. He added: “If I only followed CNBC’s advice. I’d have a million dollars today – provided I’d started with $100 million.”

Such is his influence, in the next days ratings for Mad Money went down 10 per cent in the 25-to-54 demographic. But Cramer, a former hedge fund manager, is not one to take barbs lying down. Known for his hyperactive style, he declared war with the sarcastic riposte: “Oh, oh, a comedian is attacking me! Wow! He runs a variety show!”

As the media stoked up the row, a showdown was set for last Saturday.

Stewart showed the instincts of a journalistic veteran. He charged that CNBC knew what was going on behind the scenes on Wall Street but failed to tell the public. He accused CNBC hosts of abandoning their journalistic duties.

Cramer proffered feeble mea culpas and acknowledged they could do better. But Stewart produced footage of a 2006 interview with TheStreet.com, in which Cramer described certain barely legal things a hedge fund manager might do to work the market to his advantage.

He launched an eloquent assault that struck at the very foundations of the American financial press and television.

“Listen, you knew what the banks were doing, yet were touting it for months and months – the entire network was.”

“For now to pretend that this was some sort of crazy, once-in-a-lifetime tsunami is disingenuous at best, and criminal at worst.”