frogblog

Rarely are so few asked to do so much with so little for the benefit of so many, who are ungrateful. That’s how I would describe Pharmac’s calling. Today’s Sunday Star Times spends an inordinate amount of column inches discussing the challenges Pharmac faces. Or does it?
The unattributed comment piece on A11, “Pharmac’s $635 million […]

A lovely story from the Telegraph to lighten your Friday:
When André Tchaíkowsky died of cancer in 1982 aged 46 he donated his body for medical science.
But he added the proviso that his skull “shall be offered by the institution receiving my body to the Royal Shakespeare Company for use in theatrical performance.”
Since then it has […]

The next 24 hours are everyone’s enforced break from New Zealand election news with the Melbourne Cup and the US election results likely to dominate the front pages of the newspapers.  Horses are of course an environmentally friendly form of transport but I must confess I don’t know a lot about racing them.  I see […]

I was going to comment on the Herald’s latest foray into unusually invalid polls (this time polling ‘the mood of the boardroom’) but it seems that 08wire has beaten me to it much more succinctly:
What a tremendously unbiased sample the Herald has chosen for their survey about our political leaders. I’ll look forward to […]

The increasing emergence of US style attack campaigning in recent years (John and John, Taxathon etc) is disappointing.
Mr Carson, who came up with Labour’s “Keep it Kiwi” and “This one’s about trust” campaigns, says the key to advertising a political party is to pit yourself against your opposition. In the commercial world, you want to […]

It’s unsurprising that ONE News Colmar Brunton poll should find that, when asked ’should the party with the most votes should get to lead the government’, nearly 80 percent of people agree.  It seems a reasonable sort of thing to suggest. I imagine you would get the same sort of support for the proposition that […]

The Green´s rangitoto girl billboard has won an award as best outdoor advertisement of the week on BestAdsonTv.com.
This week’s guest judge was Alan Russell, Chief Creative Officer, DDB Canada, Vancouver,who said:
First Choice goes to Green Party. It’s so damn simple I ask myself, as with all the best work, why didn’t someone think of […]

Because imitation is the sincerest form of flattery I thought I’d present my own version of the cartoon in today’s edition of New Zealand’s most widely read Australian newspaper:

Audrey Young called the Greens’ election campaign ‘singularly boring‘ and John Armstrong ‘unspectacular‘.  And yet, as they note without scandal, threats or bluster the Greens are the success package on this year’s election trail.
Part of it , is as Wendyl Nissen notes, that our time has come:
The Green Party’s reason for being has subtly changed […]

The news last night described this as the Greens ‘cannibalising’ Labour’s vote.  Well, it was more of a nibble than a large bite - there’s a lot more that we could bite off yet I think of Labour’s voters that know they now have a choice between Labour-NZ First and Labour-Green.
Actually in the last month […]