Written By:
notices and features - Date published:
5:30 pm, April 17th, 2015 - 31 comments
Categories: open mike -
Tags:
The current rise of populism challenges the way we think about people’s relationship to the economy.We seem to be entering an era of populism, in which leadership in a democracy is based on preferences of the population which do not seem entirely rational nor serving their longer interests. ...
The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.
Putin does his annual 3-4hr phone in/studio audience presser
He answers questions on issues ranging from cancelled commuter trains, the sale of milk in towns, expensive mortgages, providing S300 missiles to Iran, and the economic situation under sanctions. Also on whether or not a retired Russian Colonel should buy a dog his wife wants for her 40th birthday present.
Live on air. No teleprompter.
What’s your take on Putin? Is he good or bad? He seems to be demonised by the western media, but I don’t know how much of that is propaganda.
Putin is a sharp operator. But he runs a country riven with corruption and oligarchic power. He doesn’t have clean hands and he’s not an angel. But he’s done very well to steer his nation out of virtual collapse (2 extreme economic collapses in the 1990s) and to bring back a major increase in Russian life expectancy.
And to my mind he is a very capable statesman who thinks with the long term in mind – obviously more so than the likes of Obama, Cameron, Abbott and Harper.
Yep.
John Key could never ever match up to Putin. Same with the Aussie wanker Abbot who treated Putin rudely at the G20 summit. Putin showed the grace of an old and civilised people. Abbot showed the sledging and crude ways of the Australian neanderthal. Key same.
Putin is a man
Key and Abbot are just wankers.
I seem to remember Putin parking a dirty big war ship on Abbot’s back door. I laughed for a day over it.
Yep me too. Not just a warship though – it was a full blown nuclear attack fleet.
The look on abbots face “priceless”
You dont see Obama, Harper, Cameron, Abbott, Merkel, Hollande or Key doing that…
Unite needs help. If you can afford it, make a donation to help them recover some of what they have lost.
http://www.unite.org.nz/donate
I guess they weren’t insured then?
Don’t know if they had insurance. Doesn’t look like it and it wouldn’t cover everything they have lost anyway. They also need to get a better security system.
Chaos and Mayhem strike again(?).
On that UK Election debate last night on the BBC.
A survation poll came out saying that Miliband had won the debate – 35% and that Sturgeon had 31% and Farage 27%.
When the question was ‘who performed best’, Sturgeon was on 35% and Miliband on 29%.
Importantly, that’s asking people, the majority of whom can’t even vote for the SNP in the upcoming election.
But survation also did a poll of Scottish viewers.
Sturgeon – 67%. Miliband – 17%.
Labour in Scotland. History?
Labour in Scotland should consider it a “win” if they end up with more than 3 seats there. That’s how screwed they are.
John Campbell finished his programme tonight with “we hope you were entertained” – nice touch in response to the PM’s snide comment the other day.
I thought he was looking exhausted tonight. Not surprising given what he has had to endure. The MediaWorks bosses (and by that I refer to Mark Weldon and Julia Christie) have gone quiet. Don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.
I remember seeing Christie ridding around in a boat bullying and threatening locals back when she was making those stupid reality shows based in the islands .She was a horrible little thing back then I’m sure she hasn’t changed.
Re Mike Sabin’s new job announced a day or so; well this is interesting.
TVNZ (Helen Castles) broke the news about Mike Sabin becoming CEO/ general managerof Northland’s Peppers Carrington Estate on April 14 – three days ago.
https://twitter.com/helencastles/status/588182200459206656
Here is TVNZ’s report that night. http://t.co/SskAEe0mQn
Earlier today on Open Mike, I replied to a comment about the Sabin situation with a link to a NBR article dated 16 Oct stating that the resort were basically refusing to comment on the situation. ( I so wish I knew how to take screen shots – any education on this gratefully accepted).
http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/sabin-linked-luxury-resort-goes-ground-over-new-ceo-jb-171490
I rechecked this link a few minutes ago – and it has changed …..
The link now says that Sabin has not been appointed CEO of the Peppers Carrington Estate – but that he has been appointed as:
“.. . chief executive officer of Magnificent Jade, which oversees the New Zealand-based assets of Chinese real estate developer Shanghai CRED.
In 2013, Shanghai CRED bought Northland’s luxurious Peppers Carrington Resort for a sum understood to be almost $29 million. It was reported on NBR ONLINE and other media earlier this week that Mr Sabin had been appointed chief executive officer of the resort.
However, the Mantra Group, which operates the resort under the Peppers luxury resort brand, has since confirmed that Mr Sabin has not or is not an employee of Peppers, and that Peppers was not consulted on the appointment.
The former Northland MP is understood to have been under investigation by Waitemata police since late last year. He resigned from parliament on January 30 in mysterious circumstances that the National party described as “personal issues that were best dealt with outside Parliament.”
The Northland MP, 46, had been in Parliament since 2011 and served as a police officer in Northland before 2006. His resignation triggered a by-election that was won last month by NZ First leader Winston Peters.
According to its website, Peppers Carrington Resort is a “luxury 3000-acre estate on the Karikari Peninsula […] located on four breathtaking kilometres of secluded white sand coastline, with an oceanside 18-hole championship golf course and 900 acres of restored wetlands.”
In 2012, Peppers added the then Carrington Resort to its network.
According to a Shanghai CRED media release in 2013, its company was formed in 1999 and is one of the largest real estate developers in Shanghai. It intends to promote Peppers Carrington resort to high-income Chinese tourists, as well as other international tourists and New Zealanders.
It is understood that Shanghai CRED is planning to upscale Peppers Carrington Resort into the largest five star resort in New Zealand and Mr Sabin’s appointment as chief executive of Magnificent Jade is central to this development.
(note: this article has been updated to reflect that Mr Sabin is CEO of Magnificent Jade, and not Peppers Carrington Resort).”
Somewhat different to the original NBR article!
The resort website and other reports about it show that Simon Jones has been the CEO of the resort itself and has been involved with the resort and related wine estate for some years. His partner, Lian Jones has also been associated for a similar time period.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/…/northland/…/Chinese-company-buys-top-Northland-r..
media.nzherald.co.nz/webcontent/document/pdf/201345/Carrington.pdf
So, an interesting – and fluid – situation.
thx for post and update vv … bet it doesn’t last very long with Magnificent Jade. Loss of face is everything for Chinese, and happy they will not be.
Anatomy of a Hijack
People, especially people in helping roles, like to be helpful…
Well, it’s the classic security compromise – it needs to be safe, but it needs to be accessible in a timely manner.
I used to work in a role where I could remotely grant access, or deploy someone to saunter over there at their convenience, verify ID and enable access. It was a constant juggling of timely access vs the threat levels against what is being protected.
If nobody was available for the next half hour or hour, a choice had to be made.
The English Greens just made my day.
Not sure if people have put it up before now.
Simply very good.
And I don’t vote Green – so lets be clear on that.
http://metro.co.uk/2015/04/08/the-green-party-might-have-just-made-the-funniest-campaign-video-ever-5140734/
That is brilliant. So professional too. My word, if I was living in England the Greens would have my vote.
Who would have thought – Metro…
http://www.metromag.co.nz/editors-blog/where-do-nice-guys-finish/?utm_source=exacttarget&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=13772&utm_content=82462&user_id=0c91ae9221fdf3c5a87250c1f19988673cd40098
John Campbell piece – worth a look. Don’t agree – but worth a look
When consensus cannot be reached the majority view prevails.
We must never allow a small minority to be the dominant voice.
We have the technology to individualise & share any message.
The establishment continue to control the narrative with neither authority or ownership.
We focus on what we are able to control.
People don’t want to follow, they want to be lead.
further to the security thing, this just turned up on my FB.
An electronic voting system in Virginia is being ditched (after a dozen years in operation) because of a variety of blatant security holes (no shit: password hardcoded to “admin”, wifi key hardcoded to “abcde”) and zero logging ability to detect whether those holes had been exploited.
If a job can be done by computers, someone somewhere will do it so abysmally that abuse on a massive scale would be possible. One reason I’m not a fan of e-voting.
Such would come about because of a) incorrect testing regime and b) the drive to maximise profit resulting in cut corners.
Then we make sure that we don’t hire them to do the job.
These are good examples of why I don’t support voting machines or having private enterprise developing the software. You have it so that it’s online voting via any device and that the software is developed by the government.
Whereas I think that having a more democratic society that online voting can bring about is worth the added risk.
Oh, that’s probably the worst system out there, yes.
But the thing about adopting a new system is that it can be exploited in new ways, which aren’t always conceivable in the design and implementation phase.
And when that system is computerised, the damage can be massive. For what – a marginal increase in the convenience of voting over current systems?
If enough people watch Campbell live and keep on watching and also buy the advertisers products then the ratings will go up and advertisers will be happy and the show goes on.
How does that deal with the problem of a senior management team at Media Works intent on destroying good investigative journalism?
Oh yeah, it doesn’t, in fact it ignores it.
If there were more viewers watching Campbell there would be more advertising and they would charge higher fees for it. It’s all about money, if half the population was watching the show and the advertising dollar rolled in at 3 times the going rate then the management wouldn’t dream of cutting the show, they want the money. Advertising revenue = money.