Silliness from Colin James

This is from today’s Waikato Times – I can’t find the column online at Stuff; maybe it will be there tomorrow. Anyway, under the heading “National’s success bad news for Labour” – you don’t say – Colin James is trying to explain National’s high poll rating and Labour’s conversely low poll rating:

The fourth reason is Labour’s invisibility. That is not Labour’s fault. It has an innovative website which is scoring well. It pours out press statements, many of which make a real point. It joins protests and organises meetings. Labour is not silent.

Who but a political journalist would think that voters might rate a political party on the basis of how many press releases it produces or how “innovative” its website is? Who but a political journalist would even look at a political party’s website?

All of us outside the beltway detest the expression “inside the beltway”, but that paragraph is so inside the beltway.

The Stratford theory of numbers confirmed

Cactus Kate comments on the hoo-ha about Rodney Hide taking his girlfriend on overseas trips. The original Herald story begins:

Former perkbuster Rodney Hide has used his MP’s travel privileges to take his girlfriend on an overseas tour, leaving the taxpayer with a $25,163 bill for her flights.

The parliamentary data disclosing members’ expenses is here.

The numerate Cactus Kate fisks:

But isn’t the Herald’s math a little off? If Hide’s part of the trip cost $26k then there is no way having a partner accompany him cost $25k unless their expenses mirrored each other’s and they stayed in separate rooms.

Not bloody likely.

She continues:

Actually the $25k included flights domestically from July to September, well apparently. The NZ Herald once again reaches for the bucket headline. Having the partner on this trip could not have cost $25k. The $25,163 referred to was actually from the Members expense disclosure and includes Hide's own travel which considering his electorate is in Epsom it is reasonable he has to travel back to.

In short, the journalists got it wrong. I do wish that sub-editors would check numbers as carefully as they do spelling, punctuation and grammar – as so often happens, these numbers simply do not mean what we are told they mean. As my theory of media numbers holds.

Pink Floyd in the garden

The November issue of NZ Gardener arrived today. On page 10 it announces the latest varieties of flowers, fruit and vegetables. They include Pink Floyd, a new amaryllis, as well as a carrot called Purple Haze (a 1967 single by Jimi Hendrix) and a sunflower called King Kong (a Frank Zappa tune from the 1969 album Uncle Meat). It can’t be long before we see a capsicum called Sergeant Pepper.

Here is Zappa and the original Mothers performing “King Kong” live for the BBC in 1968. It’s a bit different from most pop music of the day. It’s in 3/8, for a start. Maybe it's a bit different from most pop music, full stop.

Australia, climate change and uranium

Peter van Onselen writes in the Australian about the Labor government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme:

The Australian energy sector as it stands is far too dependent on dirty coal. The concept of clean coal technology is exactly that, nothing more than a concept. It is not achievable at the moment and there are no indicators that it will be achievable any time soon (if ever). That, of course, hasn't stopped us pumping millions of dollars into trialling the technology. Research and development spending is crucial, to be sure, but not without tandem investment in proven technology such as nuclear power.

The most internationally proven way to address energy needs in an environmental and sustainable way is to go nuclear. [Kevin] Rudd likes to extol the virtues of the Group of 20 nations, but I can't recall hearing him comment on their overwhelming dependence on nuclear power as a means of carbon pollution reduction. Nineteen of the G20 nations already have nuclear power in their energy mix or are planning the construction of reactors; 15 and four nation-states respectively.

The one non-nuclear member of the G20 is Australia, which just happens to have the world’s largest reserves of uranium and is the third-biggest exporter of the stuff.

Nick Smith and Sam Mahon

Sam Mahon has made the papers again:

Environment Minister Nick Smith has been immortalised – in cow dung.
Canterbury artist and campaigner Sam Mahon created the manure sculpture as a protest against water pollution in the region. He is selling the artwork on auction website Trade Me.
Mahon said the cow manure was the perfect medium for a sculpture of Smith, who he believed was doing too little to protect New Zealand’s waterways from dairy farm pollution. [. . . ]
Dry cowpats were collected from an organic dairy farm in Waikari, ground through a coffee blender, mixed with a polymer resin, and pressed into a mould to set. The finishing touch was a beeswax polish.

Yes, of course, they would have to be organic cowpats, as opposed to the other kind. But let’s not have coffee at Sam’s any time soon.

Trevor Mallard and Chris Finlayson

I was in a meeting some years ago that Chris Finlayson chaired and was hugely impressed by him. Even if I hadn’t been, even if I’d thought he was as big a dick as Trevor Mallard is, I’d still be appalled by what David Farrar reports:

Labour MPs – especially Trevor Mallard – yell out Tinkerbell at the Attorney-General constantly in the House [. . .]

Now I think everyone knows Chris is gay. He doesn’t make a big fuss about it, it is just the way things are. But Labour seem obsessed with the fact an openly gay politician is a front bench National Minister. The so called party of tolerance and equality call him Tinkerbell. Maybe Rainbow Labour would like to show some balls, and point out to their own Caucus why this is a bad and stupid thing to do.

It’s not just bad and stupid. It is all of that, but also one wonders: if this is offensive to me, a straight man, how offensive can it be to the gay Labour MPs, male and female? And if it isn’t offensive to them, it should be. And to all Labour MPs. Actually, to everyone.

Imagine if a National MP called out homophobic epithets in Parliament – the Opposition would (rightly) be down on them like a ton of bricks, as would the newspaper columnists.

Well, maybe not Garth George.

My first dictionary

That’s today’s new entry. Here is another recent one:


Yes, they are all like this. Collect the set of My First Dictionary here.

Happy birthday, Hank Marvin

Home Paddock reminds us that it is the great Hank Marvin’s 68th birthday. (His real name is – whisper it – Brian Rankin.)

She chooses to show him performing “Apache”. Hah. In August I chose to showcase him playing on Sir Cliff’s great 1969 single, “Throw Down a Line”. It’s as close as Cliff ever got to Donovan with Jeff Beck.

But wait, there’s more: the great “Devil Woman” from 1976. Cliff sings, “She’s gonna get you from behind.” Sadly there is no vid of Cliff and Hank performing this that I can find, so this Cliff-only version will have to do, though that is definitely Hank/Brian on guitar:

Silliness in North & South

In the November issue of North & South there is a profile (not online) of Judith Collins, billed as “MP for Clevedon, Minister of Police, Corrections and Veterans Affairs”. No apostrophe for Veterans’, though there is on her website and also Parliament’s. Perhaps, like the Herald, North & South has outsourced its sub-editing and proofreading to the Australian barbarians.

But who these days cares about punctuation? No, the issue is content. So let’s check the content. The article says:

Yes, her parents were dairy farmers but they were not Daimler-driving, gin-swilling plutocrats.

The original North & South was aimed at readers in the provinces. Perhaps the demographic target has changed. Why else would the magazine now want to annoy every reader who knows anything about dairy farming or, indeed, life in the provinces?

Collins was a child in the 1960s, and her parents’ farm was near Walton, which is outside Matamata. It’s lovely country and good dairy country, but in the 1960s no dairy farmer there would have driven a Daimler, and none was a plutocrat. None is even today. Cactus Kate, whose family farm is not a million miles away from Walton, may back me up on this.

(UPDATE: Cactus Kate obliges: “What the fuck is a Daimler?” she begins. See her full response in the comments.)

I wonder if the journalist who wrote this could name a single dairy farmer of his acquaintance.

He also notes that:

One of the few previous profiles of her was in student newspaper Critic, which took the time to note that she had “one of the few decent racks in Parliament”.

Perhaps that is true. But if the writer thought so, why not say so himself? Using a sexist quote in this way does not absolve one of being sexist oneself.

Silliness in Cuisine

The pleasingly plump – 188 pages! – latest issue of Cuisine arrives in the mailbox. Excellent. But what’s this? On page 45 the normally sensible wine columnist John Saker writes:

Watch Delegat’s share price in the wake of the news that Oyster Bay Chardonnay was Sir Howard Morrison’s favourite tipple.

That must be the silliest comment ever made in any New Zealand magazine that isn’t called Investigate.