7 posts tagged “ireland”

What if James Bond were an American?
   It’s happened before: the first screen Bond, Barry Nelson, was American, in Casino Royale on CBS:

It’s quite easy to work out the agenda of the mainstream media when it comes to an article like this, trying to harm Samantha Powell’s chances at Miss Universe tomorrow night.

• Personal aggrandizement of the journalist, or, if not the journalist, then the newspaper editors or management trying to look like they can set agenda. (The part about Val Lott hanging up the phone, I understand, is total fiction—so if something so minor is untrue, can we trust the rest?)
• Trying to cause a split between pākehā and Māori when in fact there is none. Fact: the photograph of Samantha Powell doing the pukana was actually published in mid-June—and even ran in a rival newspaper here! There were no complaints from anyone, Māori or any other group, until the Herald made it a race issue yesterday. Or the Herald is trying to play catch-up because it missed the photos a month ago and was desperate for a fresh angle.
• Racism: come on, the headline is clearly poking fun at Māori and the pukana. I don’t appreciate the newspaper doing that, and I would say my Māori friends would be more upset at that than the Herald’s false defence of the haka. Like a newspaper owned by Australians and the Irish really understands Māoridom.
• Implying that two beauty queens are at odds with one another. False. Samantha Powell is in communicado for the most part in Nha Trong, Vietnam, and I severely doubt Miss World New Zealand, Kahurangi Taylor, would risk criticizing another pageant for fear of damaging her own chances when she goes to Miss World.
• Tall-poppy syndrome. (The newspaper failed there: the judges decided their top 15 last week.)
• Lack of patriotism: you would never drag the All Blacks down a peg the day before a big international. And places like Venezuela treat Miss Universe with greater fervour than we treat a rugby match. But an absence of supporting New Zealand is understandable, since The New Zealand Herald is owned by a company listed on the Australian exchange and in turn owned in part by a company based in Dublin. Pity: their business pages are good, so it’s a shame some of these others are dragging them down.

   My views about the appropriateness of Samantha Powell’s haka are at the Lucire blog. I agree that Māori culture should be defended. But you couldn’t really call it a haka. She just did a few moves. It would be like a Caucasian donning a lion mask and moving two metres and calling that a Chinese New Year’s lion dance.
   As I said in Lucire: ‘I know of no Māori who, while rightly guarding against improper use of their culture, would deny a chance for it to be promoted or be rendered so “untouchable” to those who came later to Aotearoa. In fact, one kaumatua I spoke to says it is our duty, regardless of our ethnic origins, to be promoting Māori culture when we are abroad. 
   ‘Sometimes, because we have not been immersed in the culture, we err. It is to be expected. And, when the one who errs is not of our own race, we forgive and we educate, but we do not criticize.
   ‘All New Zealanders should be proud to propagate Māori culture as the alternative would be to ignore it and pretend we are mere facsimile of Great Britain, as many Kiwis did 50 years ago.’
   I’d hate to see us head back to those monocultural times—though it looks like the Herald wants that to happen by running a story like this.
   Since the newspaper has been shifting a lot of its work to Australia, I imagine an Anglicized monoculture makes it easier to take more editing work away from Kiwis.
   Any time you see a story about over-sensitive Māori getting upset about the way the culture has been portrayed, think again about the agenda.
   All the Māori I know put mana first and actually see this as an opportunity to reach out and educate in order to promote their culture. 
   A big fail for the Herald. Sam’s still going to wow the world tomorrow night.

It’s no secret that I hate the Daewoo Tosca (a.k.a. Chevrolet Epica or Holden Epica): a car that may be less safe relative to the competition and utterly outclassed even by a second-hand 2002 Japanese or European car. It has replaced the Australian-market Toyota Avalon in that part of my brain, and comes close to the Ssangyong Rodent Odious (Rodius for short; called Stavic in countries where they can work out the original two words).
  It seems the Irish press, as with the New Zealand Automobile Association, agrees with me, as I read this at RTÉ about the six-cylinder model:

Compared to the new Mondeo, Epica is years behind in the handling stakes. Chevrolet is quick to stress that Epica is targeted at a different buyer. Fans of the old V6 Nissan Maxima are in the sights of the multinational brand—I must rush and dust off the cardigan!
   Prices kick off at €26,995, which is way more than the entry level Ford Mondeo, which is a better car! …
   So is Epica, which was born out of the ashes of the incredibly dull Daewoo Leganza, worth the cash? 
   Eh... no.

   An Australian mechanic writes, saying caveat emptor:

Speaking from a mechanics point of view, nothing that came out of the Daewoo factory before 2005 looked like it would stand the test of time. I am not qualified to offer an opinion on post-2005 cars as I haven’t picked up a spanner in two years due to a back injury and shut-up shop in early 2006. Some of the common problems that we saw were timing belt failure due to a plastic tensioner pulley, twice in 30,000km on one vehicle and Holden refused a warranty claim as the car was older than three years but had travelled only 68,000km when the second belt failed. On both occasions the repairs were done at a Holden dealership yet they wouldn’t honour their repair guarantee. Admitting a design fault was out of the question I guess!
   Horribly soft brake rotors was another issue we encountered. It was not unusual for the rotors to need machining at every service due to being out of round causing pedal and steering wheel vibrations. Holden’s answer to this one—the car must have been driven through water when the discs were hot. More than likely this was the case, so what are you supposed to do? Not drive the car if there is any water on the road?! Disc rotors are not made as well as they used to be, but this is just ridiculous!

   I may be in the market for a Vectra D or a new Laguna, or even the new Mondeo. I now won’t automatically consider renting from Avis in case I get landed with a Tosca, despite being one of its Platinum customers. I just won’t jeopardize my life in a car that might not score better than three stars at NCAP (we don’t know yet, but its immediate predecessors were relatively unsafe cars). It is probably the dullest car on Earth, too, and I might be tempted to smash it to (a) get a thrill or (b) improve its looks.

Here’s one going around the blogosphere, courtesy of my friend and colleague Patrick Harris in London. The basic story: dude gets bad service from company. Blogs about it. Company decides to get revenge by signing him up to heterosexual and homosexual dating sites, including writing derogatory profiles about him. He blogs about that and manages to do a reverse DNS look-up to trace the sign-ups back to the company. Company sends lawyers’ letters demanding he take the blog posts down and threatens to sick the cops on him.
   The company is Sky Handling Partners. Read more at Damien Mulley’s blog about this sorry-ass case of bad customer relations. And bravo to Mr Mulley for his insistence in keeping his blog posts up.
   I hope the Gardai do get involved and haul this company over the rocks for fraud. Mr Mulley, I hope, will consider dragging Sky Handling to the Irish courts for libel.

070323 Letter from New Zealand no 6

[Cross-posted] I thought it was the fifth when I made the recording, but it’s actually the sixth. This is a long recording: 15 minutes long, but I think it is more enjoyable than a few of my earlier ones. Click at the left icon to stream.

0.00 Introduction
0.06 My blog-hating phase
0.53 SFist attacks Jennifer Siebel: America does not want transparency
2.40 Earlier today on Good Morning: what if your partner is gay?
4.24 Helen Clark goes to Washington
6.39 The free-trade agreement with the US
7.08 Helen Clark must know that our economy is shaky and visits Arlington National Cemetery
7.57 Irish company outsources editing and layout of its New Zealand publications
8.51 I buy Pam’s orange juice and not the foreign stuff
9.11 Marc Ellis is not the quintessential Kiwi bloke
10.04 Miss Universe New Zealand
10.25 Running into Lorraine Downes: her tips on who should win Miss New Zealand
12.00 Text and vote for Miss Universe New Zealand
14.24 Sponsors of Miss Universe New Zealand