Are you so enamoured with lovely Kate’s idiosyncratic pronunciation that you’d like to be able to speak just like her? Remember, this is no mere regional dialect, it’s a practised skill. But no problem: here at the Hawkesby School of Elocution we can teach you everything you need to know in order to be fluent in ‘Tawkesby’. Let’s face it, with all the ructions at TVNZ, there’s likely to be a huge demand for relief newsreaders in the very near future. And everyone seems to love Kate — even if they aren’t quite sure how to spell her name. You are going to need some accessories before we can start on the vocal exercises: first of all, get yourself some very shiny lip-gloss and a nice old photograph of Barbra Streisand. And then you’re good to go. More...

Thanks God for bloggers keeping their sceptical eyes on the mainstream media! Following what seems to be an erroneous report by the Economist, which identified a company mentioned in the UN oil-for-food report as based in New Zealand, several blogs published not just the name of a New Zealand company and links to its web site, but detailed company searches of it and its staff address book!

The frenzy appears to have started at Sagenz and then spread to Sir Humphrey's and Whoar. Sagenz published a Company's Office search on the company and asked:

It looks as though somebody has their shares in their wives names. How do the wives feel about the fact their money has been made from a corrupt oil for food scheme? I bet they feel good dropping the kids off at school. Sir humps as their email addresses published if you would like to ask them yourselves.

Needless to say the New Zealand media were chastised for not picking the story up. This from Sir Humphrey's:

From Sagenz comes this gem, hitherto unreported by our magnificent mainstream media who are more interested in running second hand articles from BBC, Reuters and the Indepenbent. (What an excellent spelling error!)

Sir Humphrey's shortly afterwards deleted the company staff list, but left the address up, while the others posted updates. If the Economist is indeed wrong, I think these bloggers owe this company and its staff a huge apology.

NZBC flagged the possibility of a Kiwi connection last Thursday and updated on Friday concluding there was none.

Update: Sir Humphrey's and Whoar have apologised.

Update 2: The Economist has quietly changed its story removing the country identification as New Zealand from Taurus Group. No correction published yet. Meanwhile, Fonterra is not in the clear yet as the government investigates shipments to Iraq via Vietnam. And the Australian Wheat Board (AWB) is in deep sh*t.

Newspapers have what’s known as a “dead box”. It contains the obituaries of those who haven’t died yet but who may do soon. Some journalists reckon George Best has been languishing in the dead box for at least 10 years. But whatever you think of him, Best isn’t a quitter — which is part of the problem. He was born in Belfast on 22 May 1946; so if you were born after 1980 you may not know he was one of soccer’s all-time greats. Now aged 59, he joined Manchester United ground staff in 1961, at 15, after being spotted by a scout. Current Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson — who could use some of Best’s 1960s skills now — said on Friday: “Everyone has their own opinion about football and their favourite players but, in terms of British players, you would find it difficult to think of anyone better than George Best.” However, it’s arguable that drinking, gambling and womanising have contributed to his fame as much as soccer superstardom, which sadly in Best’s case was even more short-lived than usual (his final League match for United was a 0-3 defeat against Queens Park Rangers on New Year’s Day 1974). Long past his on-pitch prime, he was given a liver transplant in 2002, following years of hard drinking, but was back on the booze within a year. He was admitted to hospital four weeks ago, after contracting a chest infection that spread to his kidneys and affected other organs. His condition deteriorated suddenly on Thursday, when he began bleeding internally. But since then, although his condition remains serious, he has improved slightly. More…

Following intense discussions with the government where, regretably, the NZBC's future funding was tied to the successful execution of a "cultural change program", the board has unanimously agreed to hire a Token Maori Chick (TMC). Welcome aboard Andrea Malcolm, Director of Lifestyle Programming and HR, who has already contributed.

Yes, the foul winds of political correctness are blowing, gentle readers. Helen wasn't too happy about our muse either, but we stood firm. Scarlett is safe, for now. Aren't you my lovely?

But enough of our troubles. The media has been under attack for years, and not just from bloggers - from accountants, consultants and managers. Chris offers this on panicked old media management. While there are signs of a market backlash against media cost cutting. On the same topic from Mark, this piece on the dire state of the LA Times:

Baquet also believes that “newspapers run the risk of cutting themselves to death. At some point, we’re going to have to stop.”

Of course it's happening closer to home as well, with David Kirk in the thick of it.

Mark also notes this piece on global warming, with experts noting that sceptics who use the uncertainties of global warming research to justify delaying carbon-reducing actions "forget that uncertainty cuts both ways, and things could be far worse than forecast".

Chris notes Wikipedia's founder admitting some of the encyclopedia's entries are a "horrific embarrassment" while other experts make their own assessment. He also likes, as smoking is rooted out of our bars and pubs, this piece on Judge Dredd's smokatoriums and this piece on blogging by Scott Adams, via Dunedinite:

The blogger's philosophy goes something like this: Everything that I think about is more fascinating than the crap in your head.

Former dot com analyst Henry Blodgett asks whether we are heading for another bust.

Chris also points out that the best of John Crace's satirical Digested Reads for The Guardian are now available in book form.

Ciao, hombres.

So King Kong’s going to be three hours.

This will bring it into the company of films like Titanic, that bloated, vapid wreck of a movie beloved by millions. It’s a big risk: long films are harder to sell to today’s fidgety audiences (I include myself in that group), and cinemas can schedule fewer screenings in a day.

But I reckon Jackson will pull it off. He can tell a story like few others, but it’s the sly humour he sneaks in that really gets me.

The first of Rings the other night on TV proved a surprisingly watchable experience. It had held up well. Not being a LOTR loony — a well-meaning teacher tried to get me interested in Form 3 by lending me a copy, which naturally ensured I’ve never read more than two pages — I find long, windy epics with long, windy monologues from people with long, straggly hair generally do nothing for my dyspepsia.

For Kong, the studio, Universal, was clearly expecting something around the two-hour-forty mark, like Fellowship of the Ring, and the price has gone up a third, to $US207m.

The increased length adds $US32m of the cost, which the studio says it’s splitting with Jackson, who’s getting $US20m to direct it (for my $13, he’s worth every penny, and more).

The NY Times says that Jackson appears to disagree; in an email he said he would pay the additional costs, mainly associated with extra digital-effects shots, himself. “Since Fran and I believed in the three-hour cut and wanted to take responsibility for the extra length, we offered to pay for these extra shots ourselves. That’s what we’re doing.” He did not say how much that would be, but said the extra effects shot would cost “considerably below $US32 million”. You say tomato …

Let’s hope people like me start spouting like people like Marc Shmuger, vice chairman of Universal Pictures.

“This is a three-hour feast of an event,” said Shmuger, who described the film as a tragic love story between the ape and Naomi Watts, who plays Ann Darrow, an actress. “I’ve never come close to seeing an artist working at this level.”

According to the New York Times, companies in 60 countries involved in the oil-for-food scandal are to be named tomorrow New Zealand time. There were 4,500 companies involved in the program, which is fine, but over half paid illegal kick-backs to Saddam Hussein's government.

It will be interesting to watch the local angle on this. Fonterra was involved in the program, according to this Aljazeera report, and maybe some others. No doubt a bunch of Australian companies were involved too.

Update: The report is here. No sign of Kiwis on a very quick review of a very long document. However, the Australian Wheat Board gets a savaging.

New Zealand's best business weekly has some interesting political items this week, with trouble brewing in the Labour camp.

Colleagues of "Paintstripper" Pettis, who lost her Whanganui seat to National's Chester Borrows, say she erupted last week when Prime Minister Helen Clark failed to meet her Cabinet aspirations.

"The word went round the caucus like a cyclone when Jill spat the dummy," one Labour MP told The Independent.

Tim Barnett has already moved his stuff into her office.

And Chris Trotter has Winston looking less like a kingmaker and more like a hunted man.

Meanwhile, Russell Brown covers Don Brash's understanding, or lack of understanding, of Wayne Mapp's new job as "political correctness eradicator".

There may be nothing in it, but The Washington Note reports an "uber-insider" source plus another source saying between one and five indictments will be issued in the Valerie Plame case. That isn't really saying much, except the source feels it will be towards the "higher end", putting "Scooter" Libby and Karl Rove (pictured, or rather Photoshopped) in peril. The indictments, they say, will be filed tomorrow.

Possibly more telling, if you are into parsing every word for meaning, is this.

Update: This seems to be firming up. Rove and Libby picked to be indicted on perjury and obstruction of justice charges and Libby maybe for knowingly outing a covert operative.

Will H5N1 spell the end of the world as we know it? Remembering a visit to a Wanganui cemetery, new mum Andrea Malcolm finds a site that keeps her up-to-date with the latest in fast-breaking bird flu action.

This is what you might call “a found object”. There are many excellent and creative examples of “Engrish” on the internet. But Elisa Bowman’s recent discovery of Jinc Piao Chinese shower gel in an Auckland two-dollar shop sounds a note of caution for companies planning to launch products into English-speaking markets. Services such as Google’s Beta “automatic translation” or Babel Fish may be fun, but they don’t really cut the mustard for business use — or “slice the spicy ketchup”, as automatic translation tools might have it. And, if you do insist on automatic translating, don’t bother with your postal address — at least, not if you expect to receive any mail. To learn about Jinc Piao’s extraordinary shower gel you’re really going to have to do something other than read the packaging (although, judging by its arresting, er, fragrance, it really does “suck abundant milk nutrition quintessence”). On the other hand, if you want to experience more Engrish like this: “the milk whitens the shower juice moistly”, depress your wired rodent’s sinister knob now...

The "women are no good at science" debate lost it legs when Harvard President Lawrence Summers wimped out. But now ad guru Neil French has weighed in saying they are no good at advertising either (to quote, he said "they're crap"). The last paragraph is missing off the Yahoo! story. It reads:

The executive told Adweek that his main female critic had got her "knickers in a twist", adding that if the audience "wanted Martin Luther King, they went to the wrong gig".

And then chef Gordon Ramsay came out and said they're no good in the kitchen either.

Goodness. So what are they good at (no, don't answer ...)?

Meanwhile, if there is any silver lining here for the gentle sex, it seems feminists have more fun. And Saatchi & Saatchi's Kate Stanners replies to French here.

I feel we need a different take on this. Where's Mistress Vile when you need her?

Disillusioned soldier-blogger Daniel Goetz in Iraq has received some special attention. In this, his brilliant final post titled Double Plus Ungood, he "recants" everything he's written:

For the record, I am officially a supporter of the administration and of her policies. I am a proponent for the war against terror and I believe in the mission in Iraq. I understand my role in that mission, and I accept it. I understand that I signed the contract which makes stop loss legal, and I retract any statements I made in the past that contradict this one. Furthermore, I have the utmost confidence in the leadership of my chain of command, including (but not limited to) the president George Bush and the honorable secretary of defense Rumsfeld.

If I have ever written anything on this site or on others that lead the reader to believe otherwise, please consider this a full and complete retraction.I apologize for any misunderstandings that might understandably arise from this. Should you continue to have questions, please feel free to contact me through e-mail. I promise to respond personally to each, but it may take some time; my internet access has become restricted.

On the 8th of October he backed a "no" vote in the Iraqi referendum. (Via this report on AlterNet.)

Meanwhile, more cracks appear as former Colin Powell staffer Colonel Larry Wilkerson let's fly:

He said the vice president and the secretary of defense created a "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" that hijacked U.S. foreign policy. He said of former defense undersecretary Douglas Feith: "Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man." Addressing scholars, journalists and others at the New America Foundation, Wilkerson accused Bush of "cowboyism" and said he had viewed Condoleezza Rice as "extremely weak."

Fact: Ninety-nine point nine percent of journalists are honest and ethical, says the Otago Daily Times.

Funny things happen when your punctuation disappears ...

And Herald on Sunday editor Shayne Currie give his take on John Manukia's fabrication:

Inevitably there will be questions over the checks and balances around news stories and these are under review. However, I do believe they are robust - they are virtually the same as any other newsroom in the country - and it's difficult to see how Manukia's deceit could have been picked up before publication.

It was elaborate to the point where senior editors were provided times and locations of the so-called meetings with Mr Solomona - and the news editor was provided a full transcript of written quotes.

Astoundingly, they had all been made up. Manukia neither met nor spoke to Mr Solomona, and was at a loss to explain how he thought he might get away with it.

The New York Times is struggling with issues of its own, as reporter Judith Miller's relationships and her reporting of the Miller/Plame story come under scrutiny. And here's an alternative take, accusing the paper of a cover-up.

Our Director-General is high-level lunching, discussing Stage One of our “cultural change” programme with senior government officials, so lolly duties and muse worship fall to me this week.

NZBC reader Chris Keall kindly alerts us to the American Society of Magazine Editors’ ambitious selection of the “Top 40 Magazine Covers Of The Past 40 Years”. As Mark notes, just one (The Economist) is from a non-US publisher; another example of “World Series” cultural imperialism? And Raygun, Mondo 2000, Brill’s Content and all those other dotcom-era darlings are notable by their absence.

London reader Richard Cooper draws our attention to a competition sponsored by print-on-demand company Lulu.com, dubbed “the Blooker Prize”, for books that originated as blogs. There’s no entry fee, but you must submit three copies of a bound “blook”. It’s not obligatory to publish them through Lulu, but their links are all over the blooking place. “Draw your own conclusions,” says Richard.

Stephen offers this article in counterpoint to Rob’s recent post about private health care and wasted money: as a percentage of overall US health care spending, the spending for the last year of life amounts to just 7 per cent, Tech Central Station claims.

Mark points out how Wired’s cover story zooms in on Peter Jackson’s understanding of the internet’s power to subvert the industrial-publicity complex. He also likes Clive Thompson’s New York Times article about people who suffer “an endless stream of interruptions” at work. Is he trying to tell me something? Says Mary Czerwinski, one of the world’s leading experts in interruption science: “When someone is interrupted, it takes 25 minutes to cycle back to the original task.”

Fortunately, as we’ve discovered at NZBC, blogging offers the cure, in the form of occupational amnesia. “What original task…?” While I was supposed to be doing something, I discovered this, at the Guardian website. I’m one of about two million people who’ve read Audrey Niffenegger’s extraordinary novel, The Time Traveller’s Wife. Her first book, The Three Incestuous Sisters, took her 14 years to complete because she made the entire print run of 10 copies — including the paper — herself. She then sold them for $10,000 each. It’s just been republished by Jonathan Cape in the UK, for a more affordable sixteen quid.

The ever-fascinating Boing Boing led me to FlapArt, which asks: “When was the last time you played with a stranger’s mind?” It offers alternative book covers to freak out nosy people on public transport.

Finally, in spite of Rob’s current high-level negotiations, he has had time for some more Tory-baiting over at what we NZBCers affectionately call Sir Humpty’s place; indeed, you’ll find him wherever there's an MSM guy being stiffed, eager to find the culprits on the back foot, with their front foot lodged firmly in their mouths.

Have a good weekend — and if you’re worried that you’ll forget your original task, just write it down on a piece of paper and keep it under your NZBC trucker’s cap to protect it from the rain.

From the newsroom:

According to our usual impeccable sources, when Bill Ralston announced to the team at Fair Go that their new executive producer was Ewart Barnsley, he asked if there were any objections. "Well yes," came the reply. Ralston went off, at high volume, and ended by slamming the door so hard that plaster fell from the ceiling.

He really should get his own show.

FILM REVIEW: Tim Burton's Corpse Bride
* * * 1/2
Victor Van Dort's parents have money from fish-canning but no breeding (and are shaped like Jack Sprat and his wife), whereas Victoria Everglots's parents (think a suited Humpty Dumpty and a bitter, peanut-faced Marge Simpson) are all plum but no cash. More

Energy traders who can shut down power plants and export electricity during a power crisis give a whole new meaning to the term "free market". Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is a surprisingly funny documentary which opens the lid on the whole sorry Enron mess and makes you wonder how it could possibly have gone on so long.

If you were wondering how Labour could start so far behind National on election night and still pull ahead at the end you should look at the scrutineering. Andrea Malcolm describes her big day in at a Mount Roskill booth.

A Kiwi who is running a semi-satirical site on Tom Cruise and Scientology is to feature on One News tonight in a debate with the Church of Scientology.

The Scientologists have taken exception to the ScienTOMology website and are trying to shut it down.

FILM REVIEW: In Her Shoes

* * * *
In which Cameron Diaz manages a little acting, but helpfully stays in her tiny little bikini; Toni Collette again carries the emoting burden but also has a little fun; and Shirley MacLaine shows how to do a fair bit doing very little.

There's been some comment on the angst of the "sorry" Greens over the form of the new government, but check out the fury on the right. National fucked up, says The Whig. Blair Mullholland resigns from ACT. Peter Dunne is a wanker - but we should be in coalition with him "cos he's our wanker, not their's!" And my fave:

The gurly-men of the right need to either grow some balls, or join the Labour party if they want them to be in government so much. Losers.

Speaking my language, Whig!

Meanwhile, best comment on Winston so far? Adam Gifford here:

In a world where John Bolton can become the US ambassador to the United Nations, having Winston Peters as New Zealand's foreign affairs minister makes perfect sense.

It does, but what a world ...

I’m buzzing, on the strength of an email just in from Vinyl Revolution, confirming a CD I ordered on 16 August has shipped. What differentiates a Vinyl Revolution order from those made through other online music stores is that it sources rare vinyl for you and transfers it to CD, digitally remastered, supplies original artwork and inserts, and ships you the vinyl as well as the CD. And these guys don’t mess around: “We ended up sending the vinyl we got from our supplier back to them, as it arrived with a crack in it,” they wrote on 1 October when I queried my order. Perhaps to circumvent charges they’re breaching copyright by format-shifting recordings, the website states, “By archiving your vinyl records on CD you’re helping preserve our musical heritage.” Good enough for me. I paid a grand total of US$83.74 including express shipping — NZ$122.93 damage to my credit card, and I don’t care: I haven’t heard this album in original condition since it was released in 1980. It’s Doll By Doll, by the band of the same name, fronted by the legendary Jackie Leven (pictured here). And I’ll be reviewing it in all of its heavenly glory on NZBC, in our occasional series ‘Overlooked and underplayed’, very soon. Watch this space.

When, in 2001, Michael Glading, then MD of Sony Music New Zealand, presented the recording industry’s rare lifetime achievement award to a man with a 25-year career as a musician and songwriter, he didn’t start by announcing the artist’s name but instead read out: “Beside You, Be Mine Tonight, Language, Outlook for Thursday, Loyal, Whaling, Kingdom Come, It Dawned On Me, Guilty, Devil You Know, Slice of Heaven, Magic What She Do, Oughta Be in Love…” That list of classic Kiwi songs goes on for quite a while, so we decided to catch up with this national treasure for a virtual macchiato before he embarks on the ‘You Got Heart’ tour. And when we’d finished drinking cyber coffee with Dave, that list of songs was still going… More

REALITY TV WATCH: Project Runway

There's going to be an awful lot of wank spoken in this clothes-design reality show (Sunday, 7.30, TV3), suitably launched just before our Fashion Week. Blather about art and love and “being true” from the 12 wannabes. And tears, bitterness and general bitchiness.

But I suspect it will be a winner for many fashion victims and their abusers, if for nothing but because of the snippy honesty of the fashionista judges and the teutonic briskness of host-model Heidi Klum, along with her delightfully delivered and presumably trademarked send-off to each week's loser. “Auf wiedersehen!” Klum snips, in that decisive way that enabled her country to borrow Austria and France and Poland for a while.

Austin, who showed flair from his flouncing, eye-rolling arrival in the guise of Quentin Crisp's love child to Yves Saint-Laurent, and talent, despite the shrivelling of the impressive corn dress he fashioned, seemed a deserving first-episode winner, to my fashion-impaired eyes at least.

Just try to – again – stop yourself going to the internet to see who won the right to show at NY Fashion Week and other goodies (it screened last year in the US). A better bet for the same demographic might have been Australian Princess, which is torturing the likes of farmgirl Wendy across the ditch right now.

According to the brilliant UK music magazine for, er, older listeners, Word, Ian McCulloch of Echo and the Bunnymen has long wished to record an album of Sinatra songs for the dyslexic, but has only got as far as ‘I’ve got you under my sink’. Suggestions for more titles please. I’ve only got as far as:

‘Come Iran or come shine’
‘My funny Levantine’
‘Eno for my baby (and one for the road)’
‘Don’t take your vole from me’
‘(Love is) the rented trap’
‘Three icons in the fountain’
and
‘Luke be a lady tonight’

We're thin on the ground at the NZBC. The bloody government keeps cutting our budget until we implement a "cultural change" programme, but more on that later ...

Anyway as usual Chris has come through with some suggestions for your long lonely weekends. He liked this piece on mosquitos with fluorescent testicles, and this from The Guardian's archives on the passing of Chairman Che on October 11, 1967.

He also noted this Salon piece about how the US toll in Iraq is about to hit 2000.

Vietnam analogies can be dubious or prescient, depending on whom you ask. The 2,000th GI fell in Vietnam sometime during 1965, six years after the first two Americans were killed in a guerrilla attack. The final death count from Vietnam was 58,209.

There is, as always, much bitterness about the Booker. And some guy found a new lizard.

Me? Well I like it when the Aussies have a good ol' cultural cringe. But look! They're having one about New Zealand!

The politics of race and separatism - in language, funding, in parliamentary seats - is spoken about as just that. There is no euphemism, no pussyfooting around. The debate is sophisticated, upfront, and Maori are omnipresent: visible, powerful, intellectually combative and yet profoundly civil in their rhetoric.

It seems they, or at least Sydneysiders may have something to worry about, says The Sextator. And, speaking of cultural cringes, we get a nod:

Teddy Tahu Rhodes, who sings the title role, is destined to follow his compatriot Kiri Te Kanawa to international greatness. A former accountant, his display of virile energy prompted my companion to volunteer that he could fiddle her books any time.

And here:

What do Australians think about New Zealand? Not very much and not very often. ‘We think about New Zealand like we think about Tasmania,’ one Australian tells me with unaccustomed tact. Another notes that if New Zealand were, God forbid, to be carried away by a huge tidal wave, no one would notice the difference. Not-so-nuanced Australian newspapers refer to New Zealand as ‘Helengrad’, an unkind reference to the Stalinesque prime minister, Helen Clark.

Oh and The Whig has just posted a goodie here. Ohh, and here. Now if National and ACT really looked like that even I'd vote for them.

On that subject, this just in. Molesworth and Featherston mention John Howard's industrial reforms, but don't mention this. They also add, to the Winston goss:

Winston Peters was the first to grasp the present under the tree, although it is not clear howclosely he is cooperating with United Future yet. On Wednesday he jumped off the fence intothe same position he occupied in 1996 – negotiating with both sides exploiting their need forpower to get the best deal for himself.

Our sources tell us his price has steadily ratcheted up (with some pressure from Labour helping him along – they now need his positive, not just passive support) and at time of writing it seems he will not only get major policy concessions but also a senior role outside Cabinet, thus fulfilling his promise not to go into full coalition but equally gaining a whole lot of influence.

The crown car speeding him to and from meetings with Helen Clark was a potent symbol of his new power and reminiscent – for those who care to remember it – of 1996 when a state limo was humming outside the door waiting to whisk him away once he made public his decision to back National.

Happy birthday Maggie!

Just a little note to say "hi" and "how's it going?" I also thought you might like to know that society exists. I know you said it didn't but, just FYI, US scientists researching neural and behavioural economics trying to understand how humans can trust complete strangers while our closest relatives (chimps) can't, have made some startling findings.

They have found the centre of the brain where trust resides and identified a hormone that makes us more trusting. But even more interesting, they have found the brain alternates between concern for self interest and concern for the interests of others.

I'm not a scientist, Maggie, but you can read about it here.

Cheers
Rob

PS, go easy on Tony and don't drink too much, you old rager!

As you’ll have heard, the British playwright and author Harold Pinter has won the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature, confounding the pundits. In its citation the academy said: “Pinter restored theatre to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue where people are at the mercy of each other and pretence crumbles.” More…

Long Way Round, which has just finished its first New Zealand screening, hidden away at 22:30 on Wednesday nights on TV2, chronicled actor Ewan McGregor’s four-month transcontinental motorcycle jaunt with friend and fellow actor Charley Boorman. The seven, hour-long programmes covered 115 days, 12 countries, 20,000 miles and approximately 7000 ad breaks, but it still made for exceptional television. Find out why...

One of the pet projects of the right is to make sure you can only get healthcare if you can afford it. They argue the private sector can give better service and wastes less money on needless bureaucracy. Well check this out from the NY Times. Apparently 30 per cent of every dollar spent on health in the US goes to administration ("administration" is the private sector word for bureaucracy).

But become a patient, and you enter a world of paperwork so surreal that it belongs in one of Kafka's tales of the triumph of faceless bureaucracies. And although some insurers and hospitals are trying to streamline and simplify bills, the efforts have been piecemeal.

Medical paperwork is a world of co-payments and co-insurers, deductibles, exclusions and contracted fees. Nothing is as it seems: patients receive statements that often do not reflect what is actually owed; telephone calls to customer service agents are at best time-consuming and at worst fruitless. The explanations of benefits that insurers send out - known as E.O.B.'s - are filled with unintelligible codes.

The right also says the private sector provides more choice. Well, not in the US:

Dr. Brailer said he often used an analogy to describe the current state of medical billing.

"Suppose you walk into a restaurant," he said, "and you don't get a menu, you don't get any choice of what food you'll eat, they don't tell you what it is when they're serving it to you, they don't tell you what it's going to cost."

"Then, weeks or months later, you get a bill that tells you all the food you ate and the drinks you had, some of which you remember and some you don't, and although you get the bill, you still can't figure out what you really owe," Dr. Brailer said.

Sure sounds like free market heaven to me! I think keeping these barbarians away from our public health system is the strongest single reason why I'm happy the centre-left won.

Having seriously antagonised the ratbag right, the Keep Left crew is off to the bar.

Keepleftnz leaves the Kiwi blogosphere, at least for now, safe in the knowledge that Russell Brown and his Public Address collaborators, Jordan Carter of Just Left, the Greens’ Flogblog, and Idiot/Savant of No Right Turn are more than capable of dealing with the motley crew of right-wing bloggers crawling around the web.

“These other left bloggers’ hearts are in the right place. Sure, they’re all worthy and serious and such, and they don’t make with the gags or the slander or the cutting-edge vids or the competitions that we have, but they’ll learn. They’ll lighten up” said John.

Bye John, Paul, George, Ringo and Yoko. It was fun. See you in three years time.

It's great to see John Howard PM still on the blog. Try this trip, sorry trup, down memory lane from 2003:

I had to spend my weekend hanging in New Zealand, and it was pretty lame. That country's a poor-man's Australia. Like, instead of Aboriginals who steal all the positions in the AFL from real Australians, they have these Ma...mao...mayo... these other foreigners that steal all the rugby jobs. Or like how we have a cricket team, and so do they, only theirs is crap. Or like how Australia has me, and New Zealand has a woman.

It was also lame 'cause for some reason, everywhere I went, there happened to be an anti-war protest going on at the same time. Like talk about bad timing! I just hope they didn't realise who I was. At least that's one thing that Australia and New Zealand has in common, though: The lefties in both countries suck. Though ours say, "No war in Iraq!", and theirs say "No war un Uruq!" It's still just as annoying, though.

National MPs apparently unhappy with Murray McCully's influence over Don Brash:

One source said Mr McCully, who is MP for East Coast Bays, had been part of several strategy teams that had presided over election losses. His abilities were overrated and had at times played a role in poor decisions, the source claimed. "Plenty of us are unhappy with his influence," the source said. "He has a huge influence over Brash and we still can't understand why. If Brash doesn't start to listen to the broader caucus then he won't survive."

Others reckon he's about to form a (highly unstable) government.

US Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte has released a 6,000 word letter from Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda number two, to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, head of the insurgency in Iraq. Among other things it urges Zarqawi to abandon beheadings and seek popular support, cut attacks on Shiites and be ready for rapid political developments.

"Things may develop faster than we imagine. The aftermath of the collapse of American power in Vietnam - and how they ran and left their agents - is noteworthy. Because of that, we must be ready starting now, before events overtake us, and before we are surprised by the conspiracies of the Americans and the United Nations and their plans to fill the void behind them."

NY Times report, and (Word) document.

You could, if you are a one-eyed supporter of the war, read it that the insurgents are in trouble and changing strategy. Or you could, as a one-eyed opponent of the war, read it they are ramping up. Take your pick.

When I popped into Sydney a few weeks ago the customs officer asked me if it was snowing in New Zealand. Snowing? I'm from Auckland, I replied. No, it's not snowing. Ah, he said. About halfway through this exchange I realised that he was making a joke. A customs officer, for goodness' sake.

Like the taxi driver, at another time, another month, near the Opera House, who said that the best he ever did was buy a NZ-made Navman GPS thingy. How could such a piece of magic come out of NZ, he wondered. I sputtered, in my having-been-drinking-all-day insulted way, that ... then I realised he was joshing me. Having a bit of a joke.

Aussies think this passes for benevolent humour. They love us like a little brother, or sister, as a recent survey attested. They love us more than any other nationality. So they make fun of us, verbally tousling our hair. We're all so serious over on the North and South Islands. Hilarious.

Anyway, I am here again, cataloguing a few differences between our two peoples - biculturalism indeed - that may make it into a post one day. Oh, and escaping the drizzle and upping my future skin cancer bill. I am in Surfer's, enduring the sweat running into my eye, the endless golden weather, the balmy breezes, the barmy surfer-bogans who veer madly towards attractive women runners in their car and yell or toot.

A women we got talking to here noted it was 9 degrees over in NZ; we pointed out politely that was Dunedin, where it may well have been snowing. In Auckland it was a respectable 19. Well, respectable until it's a record-breaking October temperature of 37. Almost. They had their hopes up. And I wonder whether the joke really is on us.

The NZBC's occasional wine critic Phil Parker says wine writers are often seen as total wankers, walking the thin line between oenology and onanology. However, he's found a handy tool to help keep the balance right. More

John Howard, leading by example by working on a Sunday, has just held a press conference in Australia announcing changes to his controversial proposals to deregulate industrial relations. He said the unemployment rate is a strong indicator of the success of labour markets and cited the United States, New Zealand and Britain as examples of countries with low unemployment rates.

Howard went on to say that even after his proposed reforms Australia would be more heavily regulated than New Zealand or the UK.

There have been a few interesting developments today worthy of note. Firstly, David Frost has signed with Al-Jazeera:

The veteran British broadcaster David Frost is to present a live weekly current affairs program for Al-Jazeera International, the English-language version of the controversial Arab broadcaster, early next year.

Secondly British official David Hendon announced the EU had decided to end US control of the internet:

Representatives from Britain and the US sat near each other but looked straight ahead as Mr Hendon said the EU had decided to end the US government's unilateral control of the internet and put in place a new body.

Finally, a US court has backed the right of bloggers to remain anonymous, no matter how cowardly their behaviour:

In a series of obscenity-laced tirades, the bloggers, among other things, pointed to Cahill's "obvious mental deterioration," and made several sexual references about him and his wife, including using the name "Gahill" to suggest that Cahill, who has publicly feuded with Smyrna Mayor Mark Schaeffer, is homosexual.

I left Sydney in a minor heat-wave on Monday to spend a week 'neath the long white cloud so haven't got a lot to contribute here, but me bloggies have come to the party as always.

First some serious stuff from Chris about the failure of the US war on drugs, or its success in creating an incarceration industry. In just thirty years prison populations have multiplied eightfold. Also The Guardian interviews Martine Wright, the last person to be pulled out of the wreckage at Aldegate after the London bombings:

It was a tube then all of a sudden it wasn't a tube, it's just devastation, black, black devastation and I'm thinking, 'Where has the carriage gone, I mean where has it gone?'

More fun is The Independent on a new book, The Meaning of Tingo, about the world's weirdest and most wonderful words. Did you know a Koshatnik was a Russian dealer in stolen cats? In the just plain dumbass category, here's a christian porn site. Yes, Christian porn. A porn site without the pornography. What?

Mark offers this on how the marketers of a truly deadful film still manage to find someone who'll say something good about it for the poster - a page three girl, no less. Also this with Washington Post columnist Gene Wiengarten stretching for intellectual depth:

What if there were a doomsday Web site, where if any-one logged on, it would instantly annihilate the world in a fiery inferno? And what if the url were published in a news-paper? You know, something like "Log on to www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/mmedia/endofworld.html and the world will end?" How long would it take some irresponsible jackass to do that?

And finally this (scroll down to Oct 4) on how both of George W. Bush's S