frogblog

I see John Key launched a crusade for literacy yesterday. Isn’t a crusade when a bunch of blood thirsty religious zealots go marauding across Europe pillaging and burning villages in the name of god? If something like that arrived in your local school all armoured and brandishing swords and it didn’t inspire kids to read […]

A bit more from Lizzie Gillett, as she checks out what London ex-pats miss about New Zealand:

NZ Inspired, a British magazine for NZ ex-pats, has an article this month on Kiwi film maker and Green Party candidate Lizzie Gillett. Lizzie has just finished creating the climate change blockbuster, The Age of Stupid. The film features Pete Postlethwaite in the year 2055:
watching archive footage from 2007 (documentary footage of six characters […]

There is a vibrant food debate going on between New Zealand blogs Object Dart and In a Strange Land on the politics of food.
It began last week when No Right Turn pointed to this Guardian article about Jamie Oliver’s latest television show, where Oliver attempts to teach people to cook and eat healthy food.
Beginning with […]

National wants to spend a $300 million dollars building a new prison to lock up more criminals.  10 more criminals to be precise.  I could see why it would want to do that because it would be the first to admit that Labour’s three extra prisons so far have bought an end to violent crime.
But […]

Another sign that spring is springing and summer is on the way has been seeing the grounds-keepers preparing the pitch at the Basin Reserve over the last two mornings on my way to work.  I bet they’re glad they work at one of the cricket grounds in New Zealand that does not require them to […]

The September-October issue of the ArchitectureNZ magazine asks each political party leader to nominate a building which they admire or is significant to them.  And what it found was:
The Left’s traditional, the Right’s radical, the Greens are right–on, the Maori look in and the Centre looks back.
Russel chose the Ataturk Memorial, which stands at the […]

A bit more on music.  The Herald yesterday asked political party leaders ‘Dub, hip hop or techno?’ Ok, it’s a silly question and hardly what you’d expect from a paper taking its fourth estate role seriously. But it did highlight something of the fact that our politicians place so little value on youth culture.  Jeanette […]

The song that plays during the Green Party television commercials and at the start of the Greens’ campaign launch has got a lot of positive feedback so I thought it was worth commenting on.  The song is ‘Island’ by Jess Chambers and the Firefly Orchestra.  You can listen to the full song at her MySpace […]

“Don’t vote for the lesser of two evils vote, vote for what is good.”