Kiwi TV as we once knew it – Part 4
“There’s nothing to watch on TV,” many people moan. And so it may be timely to remember what TVNZ used to be:
Paul Holmes: a victim of his own fame.
Jennie Goodwin: The first female network newsreader.
Category archive: Viewpoint
High noon
High Noon, informally, is the when time the sun reaches its highest point in the sky. It is traditionally regarded as a time for high drama, as in the 1952 movie High Noon. At High Noon in New Zealand on Saturday, 1st February 2020, it will be 23:00 GMT. It will be the moment the UK inflicts upon itself, perhaps the greatest self-harm in its long history. It will break its 46 year membership of the EU.
Indian Cinderellas
Understanding India from a distance, or even close-up, is not easy. The variety of warring ethnic groups, tribes, languages, religions, casts, class and political grouping complications is bewildering. Just one of those factors, social class, makes 1920’s England look like a classless society.
The future is now
It took the devastating Australian bushfires to bring home to the country’s politicians that perhaps, maybe, they had to update their thinking on climate change. Perhaps, because that thinking remains dominated by an ideology which increasingly looks untethered to present day realities. Below are some of those realities:
A Christmas beer with a beard
Credit: BBC
Had a beer with a beard the other day to celebrate the relentless commercial onset of Christmas. The beard was my old friend’s familiar trademark and I told him once more how much it suited him.
In the secure ward
We sat on a wide verandah and looked out on a backyard. Backyard? This one was huge, park-like and its green flowed past crimson flowered jacarandas on both sides for more than an acre. Finally it gave way to a to a lily-covered billabong under the shade of towering ghost gums.
‘The next time you see it will be when you die…’
He boarded the outbound 737 from Auckland looking out of place and time.
He was a Buddhist monk, replete with flowing brown robes, practical sandals and on his left wrist, corded bangles. Not a sober sort, he joked with other passengers as he settled into his seat. One asked him what religion he belonged to. A pause.
Bye Blossoms, G’day Geckos…
In South Auckland’s Ihumatao, a peaceful group of Maori activists continues the campaign it began in 2015. Their aim? To stop Fletchers building 480 homes on what they believe is sacred land.
And a few miles away in the leafy suburb of Mt Albert early last month, middle-class Pakeha began their protest.
A nation of landlords…
We do not have a housing crisis. The housing market works perfectly for those it was designed to serve. Landlords are now protesting because the precarious position of renters has (finally) been acknowledged.
But who knows how long it will it take before the talk ends and the watered down action begins? And even then if the result resembles the government’s affordable housing fiasco where do we go from there? But we are not alone.