Meltdown with Fiji

Tuesday, December 16th, 2008 at 10:52 am

Commodore Bainimarama seems to be very misguided if he thinks he is in a position to demand NZ issue visas to various family members of Fijian officials.

Such a demand would guarantee the Government won’t issue a waiver. If he wants waivers, then you have to make concessions, not threats. Such as a firm timetable for elections.

The threat is very lame – expelling our Acting High Commissioner. So what? It hurts Fiji far more not having NZ diplomatic presence, than it does NZ.

And this morning, they have expelled TVNZ’s Barbara Dreaver. Again, the Commodore is getting bad advice if he thinks this upset the Government at all.

I’m open to persuasion that the Commodore has good motives – his planned reforms to get rid of race based voting are laduable. But the longer he remains the self-appointed ruler, without taking concrete steps towards elections, the longer sanctions will remain. The way ahead lies with him.

Tags: , ,

Posted in International Politics | 60 Comments »

The new and improved journalist test

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 at 1:00 pm

David Cohen at NBR has done a new and improved test of whether you are a journalist, and it even tells you what sort of journalist you are. Extracts:

1) You are walking down the road and you come across the scene of a recent mass shooting.  The dead and dying are scattered all over the place.  You:
a.     Give first aid to the injured yourself
b.     Call an ambulance
c.     Call Jim Tucker to figure out the most culturally appropriate course of action
d.     Take photos on your mobile phone and post them on Scoop

4) A “death knock” is:
a.  When an undertaker comes to your house
b.  The noise your car makes when it is 100,000km overdue for its service
c.  An unfortunate practice whereby journalists inflict themselves in an intrusive and callous manner upon the relatives of people who have recently died in tragic and/or brutal circumstances
d.  The noise inside our head the morning after drinking far too many flaming maitais

And the scoring system:

Mostly As:  you are Barbara Dreaver.
Mostly Bs:  you are so overwhelmingly boring people could actually be killed by the dreariness of your writing and it would be a major public health hazard if you ever became a journalist.
Mostly Cs:  You are Keith Ng.
Mostly Ds:  You are Duncan Garner.

Heh heh heh.

Tags: , , , , ,

Posted in New Zealand | 2 Comments »