ISSUE 27, 2010

NZ's #1 student mag

Issue 27 / october 11th / 2010

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FEATURES 16 scamming studylink 20 taking away of a nun 24 Dangerzone (dangerzone)

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CRITIQUE 38 - 49

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Disclaimer: the views presented within this publication do not necessarily represent the views of the Editor, Planet Media, or OUSA. Press Council: people with a complaint against a newspaper should first complain in writing to the Editor and then, if not satisfied with the response, complain to the Press Council. Complaints should be addressed to the Secretary, PO Box 10-879 The Terrace, Wellington.

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Critic – Te Arohi

So … last week we announced that VSM is pretty much a done deal. No surprises there.

The reaction has been met with barely a whimper on campus. We received heaps of letters this week. Like, heaps and heaps. Not one was about VSM. No pro-VSM letters, no OMG WE’RE ALL FUCKED letters. Nothing.

It’s hard to get passionate about something that a) was inevitable, b) you don’t care about, and c) involves student politicians. It remains to be seen how VSM will affect OUSA. There is no doubt that it will be crippling to many associations in the country – but OUSA seems to be fairly well placed to weather the storm. They’ve got properties, companies, and a fat bank account. They’ve got, like, contingency plans and stuff. That’s what they’re telling us anyway. And they’re already in talks with the big dogs in the Clock Tower (who incidentally are refusing to talk to Critic about it). Our colleagues at Salient in Wellington tell us that their students’ association is still focused on beating the bill and think they can win. Which is cute, coming from them.

VSM comes in at the start of 2012. And OUSA will be different then. It remains to be seen how different – and next year Critic will be closely covering what hopefully will not turn into a bloodbath.

When it comes to big national issues that affect all associations and their students, NZUSA takes the lead. The New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations is based in Wellington’s Lambton Quay and their job is to lobby the Government on behalf of students. $90 000 of OUSA money – that’s your money – gets paid to them each year. VSM has obviously been the biggest battle in its history. And they have now lost that battle.

At a conference in Palmerston North last week NZUSA elected new co-Presidents, did lots of workshops and, oh, they raised their levy. The week after getting pwnz0red by a Select Committee Report which will lead to the systematic dismantling of students associations nationwide, NZUSA start charging students associations more. Their one job this year has been to convince the Select Committee that VSM is a bad idea. After all, convincing politicians of stuff is what OUSA pays them to do.

The problem here is not only the fact that they didn’t stop VSM, which was always going to be an uphill battle. But NZUSA is not providing Otago students $90 000 worth of value. And they haven’t been for sometime. And they know it.

When VSM rolls around, OUSA will need to hang on to all the cash it can so that it can provide services and advocate for Otago students. They will not have $90 000 to set on fire, which is essentially what they are doing at the moment. All this year, at various NZUSA conferences, OUSA has tried to drop the notice period that an association has to give to NZUSA before it can withdraw from one year to three months. They have been unsuccessful in this bid. The fact that student associations around the country are pretty open in their hatred of Harriet Geoghegan will not have helped. Student politics is petty and Geoghegan has clearly failed to make other Presidents like her – which will, unfortunately, cost OUSA. OUSA now has to give one year’s notice before they can pull out. They should give that notice, like, right now. Tell them to do it in the referendum this week.

This is Critic’s Law & Order Issue, so Thomas Redford meets New Zealand’s hypocritical aristocracy – y’know, those rich kids who get the student allowance because of ‘creative accounting’. It’s fun listening to them try to justify it (p16). Then Caitlyn O’Fallon looks at ridiculous laws past and present (p20) and we also take a look at the most lawless places on earth (p24). Christchurch may get a mention. Sorry in advance.

A few weeks ago our profile writer Georgie Fenwicke spoke to Michael Laws mere days before news broke of his love affair with a P-addict ex-prostitute. Now this week we present you with Georgie’s interview with Paul Henry, conducted mere days before his implosion on live TV last week – we’re running the interview today. Note to New Zealand’s celebrities: stop granting us interviews.

PO Box 1436, Dunedin (03) 479 5335 critic@critic.co.nz www.critic.co.nz Editor in Chief:

Ben Thomson Designer in Chief:

Gala Hesson Features Writers:

Susan Smirk Caitlyn O’ Fallon Thomas Redford Creative Director:

Dreke Verkuylen News Editor:

Gregor Whyte News Reporters:

Rory MacDonald Julia Hollingsworth Sub Editor:

Marie Hodgkinson Feature ILLUSTRATOR:

Tom Garden Music Editor:

Sam Valentine Film Editor:

Max Segal Books Editor:

Jonathan Jong FOOD EDITOR

Tien-Yi Toh ART EDITOR

April Dell Performance Editor:

Jen Aitken And a substantial army of volunteers xoxo Advertising:

Kate Kidson Tim Couch Dave Eley Logan Valentine Ad. Designer:

Daniel Alexander PH: (03)4795361 kate@planetmedia.co.nz WWW. planetmedia.co.nz

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In a somewhat bizarre story a woman was arrested for throwing her dog’s shit at a passing motorist whom she believed was speeding. To top it off she then rang police to report the driver, fully believing that police would arrest him. She was wrong.

An Australian publisher is planning to sell an atlas measuring six by nine feet for a cool $100 000. The atlas, which has some pretty colour pictures and a ton of big-fuck-off-maps, will have a print run of just 31, so best get in quick to secure your copy.

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An American woman has been arrested after plastering her neighbourhood with flyers advertising that she was selling weed. The advertisements handily included her address, meaning the cops didn’t have to work to hard for this one.

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Heading to Central Library: Guy 1: Bro you know how sometimes when you poo it bleeds?

Guy 2: Ummm...Nah mate I actually don’t know!

– From the Overheard @ Uni of Otago Facebook page

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A team of Indian journalists investigating 11 elephant-related deaths decided the best angle for their story involved going into the jungle, tracking down the elephants on foot, and taking close-up photographs of them. Turns out elephants don’t like flash photography, but amazingly only one journalist was killed.

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ri Yuri Struchkov, an author for the Institute of Organoelement Compounds, produced 48 scientific papers between 1981 and 1990. That’s an average of one every four days.

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Ever wondered why Glenn Beck says such weird shit? It’s because he’s talking in code to Mormons! A Washington Post columnist believes she has decoded a secret message Beck has been passing onto fellow Mormons through his Fox News show. Apparently he is encouraging them to rise up and violently overthrow the current White House administration. Seriously.

A clown has won the most votes of any candidate in Brazil’s congressional elections. The clown ran on a campaign slogan of “It can’t get any worse,” and received more than double the votes of any other candidate.

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18th: of October, the day when Paul Henry is expected back at work. 600: complaints the broadcaster had received about Paul Henry by Thursday last week. 1960: the year Paul Henry was born 1944: the year Sir Anand Satyanand was born … in New Zealand

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Apparently beer froth obeys the mathematical law of exponential decay. Handy fact to slip into the conversation next time you’re chatting up a member of the opposite sex at the Cook.

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Monday “Motor, Cognitive, and Biochemical Effects of the Environmental Pollutants NDL-PCBs in Rats” 1pm, Hercus d’Ath Lecture Theatre

Tuesday “Surviving Guns, Germs and Steel: Sexuality and Disease Transmission in the Age of Empire” 5.15pm, Archway 2

Wednesday “Perspectives on PostWar Reconstruction and Development in Sierra Leone” 12pm, St David Seminar Room

Thursday “Put Me Back On My Bike” 4pm, Room 033 Adams Building

Friday “Instrument vs Target Rules under CPI Inflation Targeting: An Appraisal” 3pm, Room C05.20 Commerce Building

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The New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations (NZUSA) conference has ended with OUSA unable to secure enough votes to amend the notice period required to withdraw from the body.

OUSA attended the last two days of the four-day conference, participating in only a single workshop before voting on the NZUSA Presidents for next year, and the various motions put to the body. By virtue of having the largest number of students OUSA has the most votes of any member organisation, controlling 14 of the total of 86 votes.

OUSA President Harriet Geoghegan told Critic “there was only one workshop that we saw any value in attending, and that was the one concerned with the internal review we requested this year. Unfortunately when we got there NZUSA hadn’t even drafted terms of reference for the issue.”

The most important part of the conference from OUSA’s standpoint came during the final day when motions, which must be circulated a month prior to the conference, were voted on. OUSA had introduced a motion to amend the notice period required to withdraw from NZUSA from twelve months to three. The motion failed to pass, falling 14 votes short of the required 44.

Geoghegan had argued that since “our membership levies pay for the organisation we should be able to withdraw without this onerous notice period.” However many smaller associations were against the change, on the grounds that it would create the possibility of financial instability.

It was indicated that there might have been sufficient support to change to a sixmonth period, however due to the rule that motions affecting the constitution must be circulated one month prior to the conference no vote could be taken.

Geoghegan said that this was because “smaller associations get disproportionate benefits from NZUSA. We are paying over $90 000 and effectively getting less out of membership than some who are paying only $7000.” The lack of vote on the six-month suggestion, which Geoghegan said was

“substantively the same,” could be seen as the protection of entrenched interests.

When Geoghegan suggested that NZUSA move to a flat fee structure, rather than the student numbers-based structure currently employed, the meeting got tense.

It was even argued that this would be a breach of the NZUSA Constitution, though this claim was ultimately discovered to be unfounded. The idea did however “get other Presidents to start to realise where we were coming from,” Geoghegan said.

One of the two candidates supported

by OUSA, Max Hardy, the President of Victoria University of Wellington Student’s Association (VUWSA) was elected to coPresident of NZUSA. Current NZUSA CoPresident David Do was re-elected to serve a second term, despite not being supported

by OUSA. The unsuccessful candidate who received OUSA’s support was Jo Hymers of the Association of Students at UCOL. Geoghegan told Critic, “We supported Max because he has a good idea how an organisation like OUSA runs, given his involvement with VUWSA, and he seems receptive to new ideas.” In contrast, when asked what she thought of Do’s successful re-election bid, Geoghegan was much less complimentary, sating “we asked him what he planned to do about VSM and he said that he hadn’t really thought about it – that’s not a good sign.”

When asked about her feelings on the conference as a whole Geoghegan was frank, telling Critic that “we all felt like we hadn’t achieved much and that really there wasn’t much point to it.”

On Thursday last week, a Student Forum was held to discuss the motions that will be put to an online referendum this week.

Students will be asked to vote on 13 motions, including motions on NZUSA, the OUSA Budget and GST. The crowd at the Student Forum was comprised mostly of Exec members and miscellaneous OUSA geeks. For many, this will be a cause for concern, given that the Exec must meet a five percent threshold for the referendum to reach quorum.

Finance and Services Representative James Meager spoke to the proposed OUSA Budget, stating that it is “sufficient to see OUSA through to 2011.” Although he endorsed the proposed levies, he spoke against the increase, calling it “hypocritical” and a “bad political move.” He then asked how OUSA could oppose the University’s fee increases with a clean conscience, and joked that perhaps OUSA would just have to support them, as former President Edwin Darlow notoriously did. Meager said that instead, OUSA should have focused on core services, and looked to downscale OUSA. Meager also spoke to the proposed amendments to the OUSA Constitution and rules, which he admitted “reflect what I want, because I did it.” Meager said that the changes in the constitution had left it in a “shambolic mess” and called it “unworkable.”

The new format will reinstate SGMs to vote on administrative functions, and to send motions on external issues to an online vote. Says Meager, “this enables any member with internet access to have their say.”

Both Clubs and Socs Rep Dan Stride and OUSA President Harriet Geoghegan spoke in support of the change. “It also removes the Exec’s so-called veto,” said Dan. “It’s a gigantic improvement over what we have at the moment.”

One of the biggest issues at the forum was NZUSA, which had commandeered five of the motions. Geoghegan spoke for withdrawing from NZUSA, saying that the funding goes to conferences and training that we don’t really need, and for expensive offices. Crazed OPSA President Megan Cloughley then continued her recent trend

and hijacked the meeting, attacking NZUSA and at one point asserting that NZUSA didn’t believe that the South Island was part of New Zealand. Playing the devils’ advocate, General Rep Imogen Roth spoke against withdrawing, saying that it is unproductive to withdraw from NZUSA when OUSA is the main association pushing for changes, and stating that it should be up to students to decide on whether to withdraw.

Some members of the audience seemed very confused as to the function of NZUSA, with one particularly talkative member asking what effect withdrawing from NZUSA would have on Clubs and Socs.

Motions 10 to 13 were all put forward

by Stride. Discussions on motion 12, which opposed the GST increase, quickly disintegrated into a battle of political ideology between Meager and Stride. Said MC Mike Bridges, “You come to these things, have fun, and learn.”

Online voting will open from midday today, and closes Thursday 14 October at 4pm. To vote go to ousa.org.nz or follow the link from our Facebook page – facebook.com/critictearohi

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Apart from being incredibly fashionable, wearing socks over shoes to prevent blowing out on the icier parts of Dunedin terrain had been thought to be a practice with little justification. That was until a three-person team of researchers from the University embarked on a scientific endeavour to prove that it was also very practical.

Researchers Dr. Lianne Parkin, Dr. Patricia Priest, and Associate Prof Sheila Williams conducted the shoes-over-socks research last year by getting study participants to gather on a winter morning.

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Half of them put socks over their shoes and walked down Dunedin’s Queen Street, and the other half were left to walk down in their regular footwear As you may have guessed, those who had the socks over their shoes had less trouble traversing the traction-less pavement. The study’s findings were published in the New Zealand Medical Journal last year.

Dr. Parkin told the Otago Daily Times the “light-hearted” research was carried out independently by the group, who got the idea over morning tea. The research has

attracted international attention, and the group has now been honoured with a coveted Ig Nobel.

The Ig Nobel awards, handed out by the Annals of Improbable Research in a ceremony at Harvard University, are a 20-year-old tradition awarding scientific achievements that “first make people laugh, then make them think.” The group won the prize in the Physics category.

Past winners have been toasted for research which demonstrated that toast would more often fall on the buttered side, the discovery of a link between overexposure to country music and suicide, and publication of proof that trained pigeons can discriminate between the paintings of Picasso and the works of Monet.

But the awards are not entirely devoid of scientific merit or effort. The winners of the 2000 Award for Physics, who won for using magnets to levitate a frog, went on to win a real Nobel Prize in Physics this year for their work with Graphene.

This year was the 20th anniversary of the Awards, which are handed out by real Nobel Prize laureates.

A charitable Foundation to honour the memory of murdered University of Otago student Sophie Elliot was launched last week at the Auckland University of Technology campus.

Lesley Elliot, Sophie’s mother, was the driving force behind the creation of the foundation, and is one of its five trustees.

Since Sophie’s death Lesley has worked to ensure that the issue of domestic violence in New Zealand gains greater prominence.

The Foundation aims to educate young women to help prevent violence and abuse in relationships. Current statistics show that on average 14 women are murdered by their partner or ex-partner each year in New Zealand, and the Foundation is designed to raise awareness about the existence of

domestic abuse and what can be done to support women who find themselves in abusive relationships.

Foundation chairman Neville Caird said in a media release “If we don’t teach our young people to recognise the warning signs and risk factors we put them at great risk of harm. What happened to Sophie Elliot could have happened to anyone.”

Kirsten Dunne-Powell, the former partner of disgraced TV3 presenter Tony Veitch, is also a trustee of the Foundation.

Dunne-Powell and Lesley Elliot recognised a gap in the resources available to educate young women about domestic violence, which led to their working together to create the Sophie Elliot Foundation.

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Exams are closing in, and the impending tests have taken their inevitable toll on the first-years and their antics, making this week’s installment a little hard to produce. But never fear we’ve managed to dig up enough dish to make this another quality piece in the country’s Best Student Magazine.

We start with a survey of the damage from UMAT results. UMAT, for the uninitiated, is the Undergraduate Medical and Health Science Admission Test, and it is fucking important if you want to be worth anything in life and not spend most of your late twenties at the local WINZ office.

Basically, bad UMAT = no Med School.

One devastated diva who didn’t make the grade stayed in her room for two days, refusing food through extended sobs and loud questioning along the lines of “Why

me?” Eventually her friends managed to drag her out for a feed, but didn’t make it past the bottle store. Apparently the self-loathing bender continued for days.

Another male fail was so gutted that he trashed his room, ripping all of his study posters of his wall, getting drunk, and then pissing all over them. He is currently under strict prohibition at his Hall, which wishes to remain unnamed.

The last UMAT story goes to a student who got their marks back, and thought they had done really well. The poor (dumb) fresher found out at dinner that they had actually read their results wrong and they had done spectacularly shit, prompting them to run from the room wailing hysterically.

We’re actually quite glad this one won’t be getting into Med because we could see some

possible issues with the whole reading charts thing.

In other, unrelated first-year hijinks, two Unicol residents are suffering after being walked in on by friends performing a standing 69. Whilst the positioning was not specified, for the purpose of a funny mental image Critic speculates that the boy was the 9. This story is nicely complemented by a little piece from Arana involving two boys, one girl, the Botanic Gardens, and thrusting.

Lots of thrusting.

And lastly, residents from a Hall near to the hospital were bored of the practice of shelving (rectally absorbing drugs), and have entrepreneurially extended their anal acrobatics to the imbibing of beer through a purpose-made funnel. Nice.

Dunedin has a reputation for being damp and cold because university students are usually only here for the damp, cold part of the year; Dunedin’s shortish summers, falling between December and February, are actually quite pleasant. Every few years, however, they arrive pleasantly early, and so it was during our last meeting with the Proctor for the year, wherein he had the following news: End-of-year parties are already getting underway, which sadly has meant a couple of guys have already been admitted to hospital after passing out in the course of being red-carded (i.e. kidnapped by flatmates and forced to drink to excess). Please don’t buy into this system, and never drink more than you can lift.

Campus Watch is offering to keep an eye on flats as an anti-burglary measure during the holidays. This is going to have to be an ‘all care, no responsibility’ type of arrangement, but if you’re planning on leaving some furniture or whatever behind over the break, drop into their office and ask them about this fine service.

Proctology was founded to capitalise on all the zany, imaginative, hard-case behavior that this institution’s student body are famous for, and has, over the years, mostly demonstrated how ill-deserved that reputation is. Consequently it’s something of a relief to tell you how several staff at Knox College recently arrived at work to find that someone had built a cinderblock wall across one of the access roads. As a rare example of

students acting out with a degree of planning, magnanimous foresight (the wall was constructed so that it could be taken apart easily), commitment of time and resources, a lively sense of collegial partisanship, and no alcohol whatsoever, the Proctor couldn’t bring himself to condemn it.

People are once again using their laptops to reserve their seats in the library during coffee breaks, pit stops, and booty-calls, with predictable results; three have walked in the last fortnight. Of special note was the girl who blew up at the Campus Cop, insisting that her computer’s disappearance was the fault of the University and that she should be compensated for it. It’s not, so she wasn’t.

Last week Act’s superstar MP Heather Roy, champion of the VSM bill, was in town, so Critic sent Julia Hollingsworth to grill her about students’ associations and VSM. Should the change to compulsory membership have come from the students?

I think that when you look at the voting patterns on the university, many students don’t really grasp the issues or they’re not interested in them. I think that, from my opinion, students are the only members of society that have to belong to an organisation in order to study. I think students should be able to study without paying the organisation fee. It’s about freedom of association, it’s about wanting to choose whether you belong to a student association.

What is the role of a student association?

The role of the association is to represent their student population. What we see at the moment is a representation of a small minority within student bodies, not of students across the board. And so the student representations, and possibly the councils, are going to have to make a majority decision about what the students want.

What do you think the associations will look like post-VSM? I think it’s difficult to say, I think that if associations are providing services that students want then they still will sign up.

Also, the bill provides for contracting out of services, and so the smart associations will chose to contract out.

How do you think that students will be able to afford fees?

There will be no change to the way things are funded at the moment, students will still be able to use their student loan to pay their student association fees. They won’t have to find money out of their own pockets if they want to use their student loan to pay for the association fee.

Many of the submissions were opposed to the bill. Do you think it is fair to still go through with the bill?

There were between four and five thousand submissions in total, but most of those were form submissions, and so they essentially look a bit like a petition. So an association or an organisation has put together a one pager and students pick up a form and sign it, sometimes without reading it. I have looked at the 300 submissions that were comprehensive submissions, and so they looked very carefully at the clauses in the bill, they commented on those, and those 300 were much more informative in terms of giving proper feedback about the bill itself.

Those 300 were from across the board.

Students have had the ability to change compulsory membership to an association for years, merely by holding a referendum.

If they wanted VSM, wouldn’t they have held a referendum to that effect?

Ah no, I don’t think that they would. I think that there’s a large degree of ignorance I think, just not a huge awareness or a great interest. What’s been traditionally happen is a few people with a vested interest have been making decisions for the majority, but I don’t think that that decision has necessarily been what the majority would have wanted had they voted.

Auckland University and Universities in Australia currently have VSM but are finding it expensive and difficult. Why will it be different at other NZ universities if VSM comes in?

I don’t think that we can predict exactly what’s going to happen. We’ve got some examples of how things can operate differently. I’ve actually got quite a lot of confidence in the student associations to find new ways of doing things. I think that they’ll be able to rise to the challenge and be able to do that. I don’t buy into the doom and gloom side of the story, that this is death to the student associations. I think if they’re providing services and facilities that students want then they’ll still be supported.

In a situation where the associations contract out to the universities, so services are provided out of university levies, students lose their check and balance on how money is spent. Is this a problem?

The difficulty I have with the Auckland association at the moment is that there’s not a lot of accountability there either from the [university] council to the public to provide information on what they’re providing. There’s not the transparency and accountability that there needs to be.

And I understand that the Government are trying to tackle that issue separately from the provisions in my bill.

Student associations tend to be breeding grounds for left-wing socialists. Some may perceive your actions as a conspiracy against the left wing. Any truth in this?

No, no that’s not true at all. I can’t speak for the National Party, but from an ACT Party perspective, it’s about freedom of association and the compulsion to join in order to be able to study.

What are your views on the alcohol law reform bill?

I’m with the keep it 18 people, I think it should be kept as is. I think 18 has become the designated age of adulthood if you like.

You can vote at 18 (people can vote at 18, that’s something which people overlook), you can get married at 18, you can go to war at 18, and so to be able to do those really important things in life but be able to have a glass of wine or beer makes absolutely no sense to me. Which is why I will be advocating for and voting for keeping the law the same.

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Blood Donations This Week New Zealand’s aging population and busier lifestyles may lead to a deficiency in blood supplies in the future, making current recruitment of younger donors particularly important.

Leita Mackay of the New Zealand Blood Service (NZBS) says people lead busier lives these days, and that there are misunderstandings about giving blood that are hampering efforts to recruit donors. “People think that if they are on a medication or have travelled overseas they can’t donate, and this is not necessarily true because rules change.”

Recruiting new donors is the major aim of the NZBS’s latest round of collections in Dunedin. Active recruitment of the student population in Dunedin is especially important, Mackay tells Critic.

“There is a high student population in Dunedin and therefore a high turnover of donors.” Recruiting students is crucial as “in twenty years we will have quite a significant drop in donors due to the aging population.”

Currently less than five percent of the national population are blood donors, with the most common reason cited for not donating being a phobia of needles (trypanophobia). Mackay said that while “nobody loves needles, in this short process you will be saving three lives. What if you needed blood? You would be more then happy to have a needle in your arm.”

Donations are used in a huge variety of medical operations, including those for cancer. “Not everyone thinks about the fact that they would know at least someone who has needed a blood transfusion,” Mackay explains.

The NZBS will be collecting on campus this week and they are hoping to get a good turnout. Mackay warns there are usually big queues on the hour due to the lecture timetable. “We encourage people to make time to donate between the hours if they don’t want to wait too long.”

Campus collection dates are Wednesday 13 October 12-4pm and Thursday 14 October 10-3pm in the Gazebo Room.

For more information on the NZBS, to book an appointment, or to read up on recipients’ experiences go to nzblood.co.nz or visit their Facebook page.

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Otago Researcher Appointed Royal Fellow University of Otago Professor Richie Poulton, who heads the internationally recognised Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, was last week elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand.

The Chair of the Academy, Otago’s Pro-Vice Chancellor of the Science Division Professor Keith Hunter, told the Otago Daily Times that “being elected as a Fellow is an honour given to our top researchers for showing distinction in research or in the advancement of science, technology or the humanities.”

Exhibition Proves to be a Shit Show Melbourne-based student artist Georgie Mattingley has caused controversy with her art exhibition Life is Delicious, which features artworks that are made from painted samples of her poo. The show opened last Thursday at the Kingston Arts Centre, following a decision by the Kingston Council that Mattingley’s three excrement artworks would be allowed to be shown with the rest of her work.

The three works show brightly coloured samples of her faeces enclosed with flowers, leaves, and crystals in resin spheres. The 21-year-old says she became interested in changing the colour of her number twos when she was just 13. “I’ve done everything I can to turn something so vulgar and repulsive into something so beautiful and spiritual.”

Mattingley was pleased the Council had allowed her to include the contentious pieces in the exhibition. “Hopefully now people can come along and contemplate the pieces for themselves. They can make a personal decision on whether it’s vulgar or not.”

Talk about timing? Paul Henry hit the headlines last week and will return to work, all things going well, next Monday. It seems like just yesterday (indeed, it probably was) that Henry was riding the wave of success following his speech at the Qantas Media Awards. My, isn’t fame fickle? A controversial man, Henry has made a name for himself “expressing those things that we are all thinking,” but many think he went one step too far with his comments about Sir Anand Satyanand last week. Georgie Fenwicke spoke to him a few days before his infamous interview with the Prime Minister.

Can you describe a typical day in the life of Paul Henry? i.e. what time you have to get up and go into the office this morning?

Well, you get up and you’re tired; you go to work and you’re tired; you finish work, you’re tired and you go home exhausted.

Were you surprised by the overwhelming response to your speech at the Qantas Media Awards?

I suppose I didn’t really think about it. If I had thought about it I could have imagined that there would be an element of feedback based on the fact that I said the word ‘cunt’ – to hear that word in the public forum is quite unusual.

Why use that letter in particular?

To be honest, I get letters in a similar vein every day, but that was at the extreme end. It was so funny to think of someone sitting in their house or squalid little campervan penning that down on a piece of paper and imagining ... did they get a huge amount of satisfaction buying a stamp and sending that off, I don’t know?

I’m surprised that they haven’t come out of the woodwork, to be honest.

Well, they would be pissed off wouldn’t they? Because it had exactly the wrong result. I mean obviously, they were intending to offend me and clearly, they just entertained me. They were intending to imply that I was an appalling broadcaster and yet, I used it to the opposite end and got kudos from it.

Over the course of your career, you have also travelled around the world reporting on world events, famines and disparate situations.

Do you have any ambitions to go back to that type of reporting?

No, no. Sometimes, I watch it and I very briefly think, God, I would like to be there and I would like to do it that way and it should be shot like [this] and if I was there I would be doing that. But I would never go and do it because it was a phase I went through in my life, it was brilliant doing it and I was good at it. But you know – you are living in horrible, horrible conditions. It wasn’t the danger that particularly bothered me; it was the lack of plumbing. You know the lack of sanitation. You are sleeping in the jungle and you are wet and dirty and you can’t go to the toilet and at the end of the day, my threshold for that has reduced dramatically.

You told Jim Morar recently that you don’t read many books. Is this the plight of the modern man or do you just not enjoy them?

I get bored very, very easily. The question is what you are interested in and I am interested in facts. You don’t need to write 40 000 words to get some facts across, 3000 is fine so I read a huge amount, but I don’t start a book and finish it. I read, I like feature writing, I like reading papers, but to actually sit down and read an entire book, I just don’t have a threshold for it.

What are your plans for 2011?

I am thinking about that now, you don’t want to get stuck in a rut do you?

Georgie Fenwicke

Would you ever consider taking your political knowledge and running for Parliament again?

No, not again. I have given it a go. I have had a few opportunities actually, a couple of parties have indicated that they would like me to have me stand and have offered me very safe seats in the last election and the one before. It is not something that you ever say, that’s it, I will never do it, but I can say that I have been offered some very safe seats and have turned them down.

You started out working with Sir David Attenborough. Do you still keep in touch?

No, I never even kept in touch with him then. When I say that I worked with him I was in a very junior capacity and he was quite often shooting overseas and things like that. Even though I worked with him and I was working with him on a daily basis, most of the time I was working with what he was sending back from the field. The actual amount of time I spent with him was not very significant.

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alph grew up in a $7m beachfront house in Auckland’s affluent Cheltenham. His Dad made “serious coin” working as a partner in a prominent law firm for 14 years, enough to retire when Ralph was in fifth form.

Ralph has spent the last four years studying physiotherapy at AUT. Throughout those four years he has received a $170 a week student allowance because his parents’ joint income is below the $80 000 a year threshold.

This was an easy threshold for Ralph’s family to fall under, considering that his Dad had a reported income of $0 a year for the previous two years. Ralph does not have a student loan, but even without the allowance, money from his parents would have meant that he remained debt-free. He is obviously not the type of student whose time at university the Government intended to generously fund through the student allowance system.

Why benefit bludging is only illegal if you're poor But Ralph’s case provides just one relatively tame variation on the student allowance scam that is alarmingly common in New Zealand universities. Creative accounting allows many self-employed parents to present a low-income front, funnelling most of their money back into their business, into family trusts, or both.

In another variation, students with separated parents can gain false declarations that they receive no support from and have no contact with one parent, their low income-earning other parent thus qualifying them for the allowance. Ironically it is often only the most privileged families that are able to hide much of their actual income and undeservedly gain a student allowance.

The common defense for this practice is that you are simply making the most of a poorly designed system. If you can do it, and it’s not illegal, you should do it. Inherent in this reasoning is the assumption that Studylink has simply failed to remove the loopholes in its eligibility criteria. But is shutting out these less worthy recipients possible, or will the loopholes always exist?

Leo is a fifth-year student from central North Island currently finishing a double degree at the University of Otago. While in a hall of residence in his first year Leo found out about friends receiving a student allowance because it appeared that their parents had low joint incomes. After doing some calculations Leo realised that he too might be eligible, so applied the next year, and has received an allowance of $160 to $170 ever since.

“They ask how much your parents earn.

My Mum’s a nurse and only works two days a week, so she doesn’t earn that much, and my Dad owns a business so a lot of his money gets hidden away. You’ve got to submit IRD records, he employs himself, he writes his own salary, so writes his salary as $24 000 a year. Which is fucked, but yeah, so that’s primarily how I get it.”

If not for the student allowance, Leo would have been given a weekly sum by his parents instead and would still have graduated debt-free. He finds it “kind of ratshit ripping them off like that, but I never really feel any guilt, because it’s gone through all the taxes and stuff so it seems legit.” His Dad had already structured his accounts to pay himself a small salary, for the obvious tax benefits. Leo cannot see how Studylink could change their processes to make him ineligible: “it’s just accountants, if they’re good enough they’ll sort something out.”

Emerald is a fourth-year finalist in Otago and was educated at a private school in the North Island. She has received an allowance of around $170 a week for every year of her university career. Her Mum works as a nurse for a couple of days a week, and her Dad is a farmer and property developer. She receives the allowance because her parents’ joint income falls below the $80 000 threshold.

This is because “a lot of money is put into farm trusts, so you can’t really see it. All the money that’s involved is put straight back into the business; it’s a bit of a sham. I don’t think my Dad planned for it to be like that, 17

he’s sort of embarrassed we can do it. I know they’re not trying to dodge it; it just works out that it can happen.

“I know plenty of people who do it. All the people I know that get it but shouldn’t actually get it, it’s just trusts, so it doesn’t show … I don’t actually feel any guilt. I kind of know that for the rest of my life I’m going to be paying tax, probably the highest tax level, because I’ve got a degree, so I’m probably going to be earning good money.”

Martin is a fifth-year Law/Commerce student who has compiled a student loan of around $45 000 in his time at Otago, but in the last two years followed the example of his older siblings to receive a student allowance of around $180 a week. “I get it because my old man got made redundant several years back and decided to go into business himself.

His income, which he pays himself out, is low because he purposely puts all his money back into the business. I’ve heard of others putting it into trusts – think he may do that also.

The result is that my parents’ joint income is really low, although my old man holds a shitload of assets.

“What steps should Studylink take? Well to be honest I think that no one is actually doing anything that they are not entitled to do, so it’s not Studylink’s fault it’s rather a policy one. I think that it’s not worth spending the money policing the current system for those cheating it. The money is better spent on other students who actually need it, and moving towards universal student allowances.

“I don’t feel any guilt about it, if all goes well then there is a real chance I will be at the higher end of the tax bracket as most students should be aiming for, so I will be paying for it eventually. I think we have to remember here that not so long ago tertiary education was free and now we as students are going to be coming out of university paying a large debt as well as paying higher taxes to cover that same growing elderly generation who got free education. No guilt at all.”

Nelson is in his last year of a Law/ Commerce double degree. Raised on a farm, he has received a student allowance of $120-$180 during his five years in Dunedin.

During the years in which he received a smaller allowance, he received the surplus as a student loan. “People from farms can get student allowances easier, because their real income is probably a lot higher, but a lot of their spending on the farm is before tax rather than after tax, so things like petrol costs, if you need a new laptop, then you put it through the farm’s books, get it taxfree and also it’s before tax, tax deductible.

It’s legal and stuff, it’s not illegal at all, but I 18

suppose it is taking advantage of the system, but you’re always going to have that when you have a means-tested allowance, there’s always going to be loopholes.

“I can see why other people get pissed off about it, I used to try not to talk about that much, because they may come from a background where maybe the two parents are both teachers, so they might be worse off in real terms than us, but because they’re employed, they can’t really hide things like us.

“The area I come from, it’s a rural area, so a lot of people do it. I’m not from a wealthy background at all, at all, pretty middle class or whatever. I’ve heard of people from far wealthier backgrounds then me doing it. I’d be just over the threshold, whereas I know people from pretty wealthy backgrounds who have managed to do it; it’s just the way their businesses are operating. It can get quite messy with people a lot more wealthy, when you have trusts and everything, so what’s taxable income becomes quite a grey area … You’ve still obviously got to encourage people from poorer backgrounds to go to uni. I think they should keep the system and keep it means-tested. There are some people who are bending the rules a bit, but the overall cost probably outweighs the benefit of cutting them off.”

The question of how common these cases are is a crucial but unanswerable one. It’s perhaps telling that it wasn’t that hard to find the above five people for this article, though, and each of them knows plenty of other people who have received a student allowance in a similar way. This would suggest that the problem is certainly prevalent enough to warrant serious concern on Studylink’s behalf.

Studylink were not keen for a phone interview, but sent through some answers to be attributed to Rachel Bruce, Head of Studylink: “Our message to everyone who receives financial support is that the Ministry of Social Development has a zero tolerance policy to fraud. In every case where we find planned or deliberate fraud, we will prosecute. Any student who attempts to obtain a Student Allowance by deliberately providing false or misleading information is committing fraud … Students who apply for a Student Allowance or a Student Loan must answer questions about their circumstances to enable us to assess their eligibility and entitlement. A false statement, or failure to advise of a change in circumstances resulting in overpayment, may result in prosecution … You have indicated you are aware of individuals who you believe are defrauding the Crown. If you do have information you are able to provide

about specific students then we will look into it, as we do for all allegations.”

Bruce is clearly quite eager to get across Studylink’s willingness to prosecute those who defraud the student allowance system, and cites their recent prosecution statistics: “in the last financial year the Ministry investigated 375 cases of fraud by students and established fraud debts of $536 806. Of these, 284 were for Student Allowance fraud and 91 for the living costs component of a student loan.” This is perhaps not such an astronomical figure when you consider that the five students mentioned in this story have between them received around $122 000 in student allowance payments during their time at university. Most people would agree that they are not the types of students for whom the student allowance is intended, but none of these students or their parents have really “deliberately provided false or misleading information” and thus made themselves candidates for fraud investigation. In most cases, they have simply provided Studylink with reports of their income; reports which have proved consistent after Studylink matched the data with figures held by Inland Revenue, Customs, Housing New Zealand, the Department of Internal Affairs, and the Department of Corrections.

None of the students Critic spoke to could offer any ideas on how Studylink could change the system to make students like themselves ineligible for a student allowance. Many of these families were already structuring their finances to receive greater tax benefits, so whether these cases are even within Studylink’s scope of policing is also questionable. In some of the provided examples, the $7000-a-year in student allowance payments would be less of a concern to the Government’s revenue collectors than the more straightforward cases of tax evasion.

With all real family income declared, the students spoken to for this story would not be eligible for the student allowance. But rather than policy changes, it seems that the only thing that could stop families in such situations receiving the payments is a moral belief that to do so would be wrong.

Many families counter this with their argument that it will all even out eventually: the students’ degrees will soon have them earning in a tax bracket that will mean they ultimately pay back the allowance they once received and more. However, these convictions may prove empty if the students’ approach to paying taxes is the same as their parents’.

Cheating the system was a hot topic way back in the nineties – so much so that a storyline found its way onto Shortland Street. On the soap, Nick’s best friend Rachel convinced Nick to take part in a wedding scheme designed to alert people to the unfairness of the studentallowance system. Nick and Rachel married, and while it was a marriage of convenience, Nick’s girlfriend Waverley was incensed and humiliated and decided to leave for Australia. Nick tried to go after her, but was stopped when airport authorities found marijuana in his backpack. Nick was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing with drug possession and gave up on Waverley.

The flipside to having rich parents who cheat the system to get their kids an allowance are the rich parents (or, well, any parents over the threshold) who could help their kids out by paying for some of their tuition, but don’t. Many students are known to complain that they don’t qualify for an allowance because their parents are over the threshold – but are independent from them financially. This is especially prevalant in Otago, where most students are not living with their folks. After all, the way the system is, it is as if parents are expected to help their kids out at uni until they’re 25 years old.

Australia has recognised the injustice of it all and has a different approach to the allowance scheme. If a student can prove they are financially independent from their parents by working full time and earning at least $18 000 in 18 months, they are entitled to an allowance for the remainder of their studies. As a result, many Aussie students take gap years and earn the cash before embarking on tertiary study a year later.

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Most people would agree that politicians are capable of some entertainingly stupid actions.

It’s one of the redeeming qualities of politics in general. But according to the lists of stupid laws that do the rounds on the internet or, in earlier times, in book form, sometimes lawmakers just go nuts and outlaw something totally bizarre.

Some of these laws are probably urban legends. Others are centuries out of date.

Still more have been taken out of context or misquoted to the point where they no longer make sense. But there are a few, even in New Zealand, that are surprisingly odd or antiquated.

One common “law” that falls under the category of urban legend is the story that Donald Duck was banned in Finland because he doesn’t wear any pants. Amazingly, this legend seems to have sprung from an incident in which a city council decided to save money by no longer purchasing Donald Duck comics for youth centres in the city.

During a following election, it was claimed by his opponents that the incumbent had banned them because Donald wore no pants and cavorted with an unmarried ‘woman’.

From there, the myth just kept growing until the poor duck was allegedly banned from the entire country.

England is particularly bad for having laws that are so out of date that they no longer make sense. In fact, it’s only fairly recently that some of these laws have been cleared out from New Zealand’s statutes, as well. Often, however, laws that are long gone are repeated today as if they’re still standing. For example, it’s apparently legal to urinate on the street in New Zealand “provided that you maintain one hand on the rump of the horse while you leak, and you aim for the ground where the horse would leak onto.” Well, maybe that was true a hundred years ago. Today, the Summary Offences Act 1981 makes it pretty clear that horse or no horse, you’re getting a fine. The only possible excuse is for the offender to have “reasonable grounds for believing he would not be observed.”

Some laws make a lot more sense than a quick glance would give them credit for.

One example that often makes it onto top 25 lists of stupid laws is that “in Ohio, it is illegal to get fish drunk.” On the face of it, that seems like a law that is, if not entirely crazy, hopefully unnecessary. But a little more information makes a big difference; alcohol has a paralytic effect on fish, so pouring alcohol into an enclosed waterway makes them float up to the surface where they can be easily caught. Prohibiting this could only be good for making sure people can keep on fishing into the future.

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Sometimes laws seem crazy just because of the way they’ve been quoted. Ohio has another good one here. It’s said that in Athens-Clarke County, “Goldfish may not be given away to entice someone to enter a game of bingo.” It sounds ridiculous, yes, it’s true. But the whole law isn’t really funny at all (so if you actually thought that was hilarious, don’t read the next bit).

“Sec. 4-1-9. Animal giveaway. No person in Athens-Clarke County shall give away any live animal, fish, reptile or bird as a prize for, or as an inducement to enter, any contest, game, or other competition, or as an inducement to enter a place of amusement, or offer such animal as an incentive to enter into any business agreement whereby the offer was for the purpose of attracting trade. (Ord. Of 12-1-98, § 1)” In reality, the law just says you shouldn’t give away animals as freebies, which seems like a pretty good idea. Just because someone

wins an animal doesn’t mean they want to care for it for the rest of their life. It would be just as valid to say that iguanas may not be given away as an incentive to purchase real estate. But if you pick a very specific example and presenting it as a law of its own, the law sounds dumb.

Although these are all examples of laws that are a lot less stupid than they seem, odd laws do exist, even in New Zealand. By international standards, our books are kept pretty tidily, and there are ongoing efforts by the Law Commission to trim off any excess legislation. We used to have a large number of Imperial Laws in place, carried over from the age of the British Empire, which included England’s wackier offerings like the fact that all swans belong to the monarchy. But with legislation like the Imperial Laws Application Act in 1988, we’ve wiped the slate clean.

Earlier, in with the Crimes Act 1961, we got rid of this article’s titular law – an imperial law

making it an offence to “carry off” a nun, and a capital offence to sleep with her.

One of the few Imperial Laws we’ve hung on to is the Act of Settlement 1700. This is the act that outlines who can inherit the throne.

It was created during a succession crisis when Princess Anne, the only remaining heir to the throne, failed to produce any children who survived to maturity. To make matters worse, the majority of candidates to follow her reign were Catholics, which was clearly unacceptable to society at the time.

The Act of Settlement stirs up controversy occasionally for two reasons: firstly, it prefers male heirs over female ones; and secondly, it doesn’t allow any person who “shall profess the Popish religion or shall marry a Papist” to ascend to the throne. It seems outdated for this somewhat bigoted law to remain in place, and yet it has remained unchanged for over two hundred years.

New Zealand has outdated laws of its 21

was becoming popular in other parts of the world. It heavily regulated the production and packaging of margarine, effectively preventing it from being a viable competitor for butter.

It also banned using yellow dye in margarine to make it look more palatable (margarine is naturally a greyish-white colour. Gross).

Margarine remained marginalised until 1980 when the act was finally repealed. The dairy industry, terrified of losing market share, tried to force through legislation to make it compulsory for all margarine manufacturers to dye their product blue. Imagine that ...

own. The Mercantile Law Act of 1908 is full of sensible rules on how trading of goods and services should occur. It also contains an oddly specific command for booksellers, outlining the agreement that must be made between the seller and purchaser. Apparently, if your agreement is not written in red capital letters, it’s void.

Some of the outlandish laws present in New Zealand are the result of plans that were never followed through or circumstances that never arose. In Dunedin, one such law is the Otago Harbour Bridge Act 1886. Since 1866, there had been plans to build a dramatic arch spanning the Otago Harbour. The Bridge act in 1886 laid down how the 1140-metre structure should be constructed, who would own it and what tolls could be collected. Oh, and if it ever does get built? By law, it must be a drawbridge.

Another failed engineering project led to the Auckland and Manukau Canal Act 1908.

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This act has a similar purpose to the Otago Harbour Bridge Act in terms of describing how a canal would be built to connect the Waitemata and Manukau Harbours.

Alarmingly, it also allows the Government to compulsorily obtain land for the canal.

Landowners up North, watch out.

Land to build canals isn’t the only thing the Government has a right to grab.

According to the Atomic Energy Act of 1945, if you find uranium in New Zealand and don’t report it to the authorities within three months, you’re committing a crime.

And although the sections that made all raw uranium the property of the Crown have been repealed, the Government can still control how it’s mined.

One of the weirdest laws, which is thankfully now history, is the Margarine Act of 1908. This was brought in to protect New Zealand’s dairy industry from the threat of the much cheaper spread, margarine, which

Strangest laws still (technically) in action around the world • It is illegal to die in the British Houses of Parliament. This law was apparently put in place because anyone who died in Parliament could be technically entitled to a state funeral.

• In Massachusetts it’s illegal to make exploding golf balls. Although this seems sensible, it’s not clear why it was necessary to write a law about it.

• As of 1954, it became an offense for a flying saucer to fly over, land, or take off from the French town of Châteauneufdu-Pape.

• It could be regarded an act of treason to place a postage stamp bearing the British king or queen’s image upside-down.

• In Arkansas, atheists may not hold civil office or testify in court.

• In South Carolina, it’s a crime for unmarried men and women to have sexual intercourse.

• Eating mince pies on Christmas Day is banned in England; this law was put in place by Cromwell in the seventeenth century as part of an attempt to move Christmas away from a holiday of gluttony and other sin and towards a more Puritan religious celebration.

• In the UK, a pregnant woman can legally relieve herself anywhere she wants.

• In several countries, for example Nigeria and Iran, adultery can be punished by death by stoning.

• In Georgia, it’s a misdemeanour to sell or give away a child under 12 to become a circus performer.

• The head of any dead whale found on the British coast automatically becomes the property of the King, and the tail the property of the Queen.

• In several states in the USA, sex toys are illegal.

• It is illegal to enter the British Houses of Parliament wearing a suit of armour.

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Schmack OPINIONS AND STUFF...

27 SOAP BOX

28 COLUMNS

28 left / right 29 DEBATABLE 30 ODT 31 THIS WEEK / SPORT 32 APOCALYPSE / TOP 5 33 OUSA / TE ROOPU

poohead

34 LETTERS

37 BOFS

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The Ethnicity Question It’s generally accepted that Paul Henry is a bit of a wanker. Even his fans admit he’s crude and blunt, and his ‘un-PC’ statements seem to be part of his appeal.

But his recent comments about Sir Anand Satyanand last week crossed a line, even by his standards.

For those of you who rely on Critic to tell you what’s going on in the world around you, the outrage was caused by the questions Henry put to John Key on the Breakfast programme. Discussing the appointment of a new Governor General, Henry asked the Prime Minister, “Are we going to go for someone who’s more like a New Zealander this time?”

Sir Anand is an Aucklander with Fijian-Indian parents. Given that Henry himself is the son of a British immigrant who calls himself a Kiwi, his issue with our Governor-General could hardly be that Sir Anand is a first-generation New Zealander.

It’s hard to escape the conclusion that Sir Anand doesn’t qualify because he’s the wrong shade of brown.

It would be easy to write off Henry’s comments, as we so often do, as the ramblings of a demented shock-jock. But sadly, he is vocalising an attitude that is terribly widespread within New Zealand.

It’s even an attitude that is visible in every single official document we have to fill out. It seems like an innocuous question, and for most people it probably doesn’t set off any alarm bells. But for many others it’s a very loaded question.

To quote the form I really should fill out to get my community services card: “To what ethnic group do you believe you belong?”

The problem isn’t so much the question as it is the multi-choice answers available: New Zealand Maori, New Zealand European, Niuean, Samoan, Indian, Other European, Tokelauan, Tongan, Chinese, Cook Island Maori, or Other. As soon as you see it, it’s obvious. There are only two options that allow for someone to be a New Zealander, and that is if they are of European or Maori ancestry.

My flatmate has one Iranian parent and one New Zealand European parent.

She gets past the issue of her heritage, like 11 percent of people in the last census, by ticking the ‘other’ box and writing ‘New Zealander’. There’s no New Zealand Asian box to tick. Some of my other friends, like many New Zealanders, find themselves checking the ‘Indian’ or ‘Chinese’ boxes, even though China or India are foreign countries to them.

I tick the New Zealand European box.

But I am as much of a New Zealander, measured by where my parents are from, as my flatmate. My mum’s a Canadian who immigrated here as a student. I don’t declare this on the forms; I’ve never felt the need to. It seems irrelevant to me how recently my ancestors moved to Aotearoa. Both my parents are typical colonial-era mongrels, and it’s hard to say exactly which corner of the world all my genes have come from, but European is a good enough approximation.

So why is it that my ‘New Zealand-ness’ goes unquestioned, while my flattie has to make up a new label because her identity is not on the form? To me, it seems to reflect a particularly racist view of what constitutes a New Zealander.

To me, the solution to what amounts to institutionalised racism is simple. We need to drop the ‘New Zealand European’ tag. The label ‘New Zealander’ would do just as well.

In fact, my personal preference is for ‘Pakeha’: it is a label that is unique to my country, and could easily be applied to any New Zealander who is not of primarily Maori heritage. And no, it isn’t a derogatory term.

Whatever the answer is, New Zealand has got to get over our xenophobia. I have little cousins who are half-Sri Lankan, and another who is half-Filipino. They have as much right to call themselves New Zealanders as Paul Henry, Sir Anand, my flatmate, or I do. I don’t want to see them grow up into a country where they are treated as half the Kiwi their classmates are, just because twats like Paul Henry don’t think they look enough like New Zealanders.

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Over and Out. Part 1: Over...

The Green Finger was, for me at least, born from a frustration about hippies holding down the environmental fort. It was a reaction to last year’s Green Fingers, which I skimmed frequently although it never pulled me in. It was a reaction to my experience in a 350 meeting in which I was the only one advocating a strong, adversarial, in-your-face approach to our environmentally inept government. But as one lone, angry-sounding voice I was drowned out by people who wanted to take a positive approach.

The saying that you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar is not the case in politics. Popular anger directed at politicians will get you further than hugs and love. You’ve got to hit them where they are sensitive – popular opinions are the political gonads.

Not all environmentalists are pussies (sorry). Respecting the environment is quite another thing to fighting for it. Hopefully everyone paid attention this year when popular outrage showed National, and Gerry Brownlee in particular, who is boss in a democracy. That’s why Brownlee backed down from his plans to mine protected conservation land. Saying pretty please doesn’t cut it, hence the Finger.

But I’m to sign out. And with so many topics left to vent!

The Labour/National, Coke/Pepsi sound bite: admittedly they both aim more than anything to plant their flag on top of Mainstream Mountain but it’s a simplistic line. Judge them on two major issues, climate change and the recession. So far National has dodged environmental responsibility, made us look like a cynical joke at Copenhagen, eroded workers’ rights, pursued regressive tax policies, done jack to address inequality and have not created jobs.

On all of these counts Labour would have differed appreciably.

The big “pah” that was the Emissions Trading Scheme: didn’t even destroy the economy like the Greens wanted. It was enabled by the Maori Party who will never let Labour forget it exists because of “betrayal, betrayal,” which is fair. What is not fair is being complicit in National’s spineless legislation. It’s unjust for us to pay for pollution caused by business and farmers. And our grandchildren won’t thank them for it. Its intergenerational “betrayal.”

The comical downfall of Act: which is also incredibly frustrating because the left-right debate is a valid one. Even crazily extreme right wingers deserve better representation than the hypocritical, brazen, insincere, undemocratic, shambolic farce that are the loons called ACT. Take one of your symbolic coffins, Garret, and lie in your political grave. ACT doesn’t deserve to be buried next to Alliance.

And finally, recycling in the Link: meaning trash is discerned from materials we can use again. Given the helpful symbols even an illiterate but savvy monkey could figure it out. But not all students.

Anyway, hurray for progress! Perhaps the momentum could continue with a good university wide recycling policy or wastepaper baskets for the library or double-sided printers. Just imagine, a beautiful and sustainable campus ...

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T

he future of our political system, and the way our Parliament works, is going to depend on the outcome of the 2011 referendum on MMP. In the first round, we are being asked whether we support MMP and what we would change it to. The options we are given are First Past the Post (FPP), Preferential Vote (PV), Supplementary Member (SM), and Single Transferable Vote (STV). FPP was our previous system, and would send us back to a future that would see electorates voting for one candidate for their electorate. While this gave clear Parliamentary majorities, it has the tendency to marginalise smaller parties (though not necessarily, as seen in the UK election). Voters are also faced with a problem of having to support useless candidates to support their preferred party. PV could see a single electorate again, but voters rank the candidates in order of preference. With similar problems to FPP, this does however give smaller parties more of a chance, and gives voters more than one choice, which may prevent two right-wing candidates splitting the vote to let a left-wing candidate win. STV is a type of proportional voting system, and it has been suggested to allow multiple seats representing each electorate.

In SM voters elect MPs in for electorates, like in MMP. An additional number of MPs are elected from a party list based on a proportion of votes the party gains nationally. This is kind of like MMP, but has the potential to be less representative overall if a party wins a large number of electorates but a small proportion of the national vote. The current system sees plenty of opposition from those who deride list MPs as answerable to no one. The illogical basis for that statement suggests that such opponents are too dim to work out that political parties put out lists, they can read these lists, and they represent everyone who votes for that party with their party vote. So every MP is voted for by the public. MMP and SM both come with list MPs, and give a measure of proportionality to the national feeling, as well as allowing a voter to support their party but not a local candidate they dislike.

FPP’s clear parliamentary majorities were both a blessing and a curse: the Government was able to legislate clearly with none of this messy cobbling together with assorted support parties. This can be seen as allowing the Government to make the big decisions the majority wants, or giving them free reign to do what they want.

Preventing the big decisions can also be considered to be checks and balances, and better representation for the entire country.

The debate over the Maori seats will also inevitably arise from this consideration of our electoral system, especially if the system changes we will need to take a look at how, and if, they should be implemented in the new system.

If the referendum supports MMP, changes to the system have been suggested. The threshold for a party to gain representation could be lowered, and the party list could possibly be opened to direct selection by the voters (though this may lead to local councilstyle problems, where people rank without knowing much about the 100+ candidates for each party).

Rebecca: Rhetoric is nice.

It gets hearts pounding and imaginations fired up. But here, on this side of the column, we look at what Palin has actually done.

Palin loves some things, like her family, shooting wolves from helicopters, and lying about her ideology. Some things she does not care about. Like a good education and victims of sexual assault.

Palin’s speeches say she is a fiscal conservative.

A Mayor who puts a town $20 million in debt is many things, but ‘fiscally conservative’ is not one of them. While she was Governor, she spent tax payer money on extra oil pipelines, as though oil companies were unable to afford them.

Palin apparently supports freedom of speech.

Except for when she doesn’t like what is being said.

Like that time she tried to fire a librarian for refusing to ban books in a public library. Sounds pretty bloody similar to censorship to me. Another founding value she lies about supporting is freedom of religion. Sarah, freedom of religion means the freedom to live your life according to the values of whatever religion you choose to follow. It does not mean that the majority get to force their religion down the throats of others via the law.

American high school students come 43rd in the world for academic achievement, and are even further behind in science. Palin would have creationism in the classroom alongside evolution, despite the fact that there is no scientific evidence to support creationism. Another facet of education is sex education. Rather then giving teenagers the facts, and letting them make educated decisions, Palin supports limited and misleading abstinence programs that just don’t work. Palin does not care about rape victims. Big call, but here is the evidence. Palin thinks that a woman should be forced to carry, birth, and be legally responsible for a foetus caused by rape or incest. When she was Mayor, she passed a budget which made Wasilla the only town in America where victims of rape have to pay for their post-rape medical exam.

When she was Governor, Palin cut finding for a programme to reduce Alaska’s high sexual assault rate.

There is another country that does not care about budgets, freedoms, good educations and rape victims; it’s called Iran. If that’s what you want America to turn into, sure, Palin’s a good idea. The rest of us feel otherwise.

is sar ah pa lin go americ od fo a's fu r ture?

John: Let’s get one thing clear first: what is good for America may not be good for the rest of the world. Good. Cleared that up.

Sarah Palin is good for the USA because she advocates two things (whether she intends to or not): a tried and tested value system and personal liberty.

Palin is a conservative Republican, and so her value system is ingrained in more fundamental readings of the Bible – this has been the value system to which America has been beholden since its establishment. It is the value system which has been tried, tested, and found sound, and the liberty she advocates is the same liberty and freedom America fought for to remove the threat of communism and fascism from the world.

Palin is the embodiment of all the things America stands for and wants to be. She wants to see a mighty America that makes her foes tremble. She wants an America which can provide the basic securities for its people and if this comes at the price of the Government listening to what you say, so what, it’s only the guilty who should fear. This is how America has been successfully governed for over 100 years, why stop just because Europe is becoming more liberal?

Palin embodies all things American: she is antiabortion, pro-gun, anti-explicit sex ed, pro-gun, anti-gay, pro-gun, and wants to see massive increases in military spending. On the other hand she is also a strong female figure in politics inspiring many women in the States; she supports information about condoms (doing better than the Pope) and is very pro-freedom of speech (and pro-freedom of recoding it all as well). Is it a bad thing to see a well-armed and well-informed American nation?

In the long term, the values and freedoms Palin offers America are the fundamental values America was founded on and should live by.

Debatable is a column written by the Otago University Debating Society. They meet every Tuesday at 7pm in Commerce 2.20.

29

As always, ODT began last week with a bang. Monday’s front page headline broke the cutting news Otago wanted to hear.

No kidding. But wait, what are “fire-sale logs”? Why would hundred queue for them? According to ODT, “fire-sale logs” are “logs salvaged from the 800ha ravaged by fire in February”. The hundred came, not just for cheap firewood, but also to have a bloody good time with their mates. Said one heat pump owning fire-sale logs buyer; “We’ve got a good Sunday outing out of it.”

Maybe it was a newsworthy story after all.

ODT was all over this shit. They even did a follow up story on the second page of Tuesday’s paper.

Luckily ODT have their priorities straight. The now infamous firesale log story was ahead of Paul Henry-gate and the DCC elections.

Well, if ODT deems it yesterday’s news, then it probably is.

And our final offering from ODT this week is a letter from dear old Dunedinite J. I. Gager.

Some may perceive this letter as old fashioned and uncultured. But we here at Critic know constructive criticism when we see it.

30

I

THE GC (GOOD CUNT)

n every group of friends, there’s always one person that prompts you to say, “Wow, he’s such a GC.” The guy that you know has always got your back, the dude that always makes people laugh; the bloke who does shit no one else would dare to and still manages to get away with it somehow. It’s not easy being a GC but there is a rare breed of person out there that somehow manages to pull it off. If the world had a few more of these guys around, then it would be a far happier, more enjoyable, and less fucked up place to live in. Yep, this week, Matthew, I’m going to be a Good Cunt.

The first thing you need to realise is that there are actually two different types of GC. There is the ‘good Samaritan’ GC, who would give you the shirt off his back and carry you home if he had to; then there is the ‘absolute-fucking-legend’ GC who exhibits such frequent displays of awesomeness that you can’t help but say “That boy is a Good Cunt.” If you are one of the very few people that manage to pull off both variations at the same time, then you are promoted from the rank of ‘Good Cunt’ to ‘Top Cunt’, one of the highest accolades a modern gentleman can receive. Obviously the critical aspect of being the ‘Samaritan’ is generosity: if your friend has an empty hand, put a beer in it; if he is feeling lonely, loan him your girlfriend. If you see yourself more as ‘the legend’, then you need to focus on performing gratuitous acts of awesomeness: footpaths are boring, get into town at night by jumping from roof to roof. Campus Watch won’t nab you for it; they love a decent Spiderman impression.

I can’t give you any advice on how to look like a GC; they come in all forms and styles. Being a GC is about attitude and personality rather than fashion sense. You’ll find that most Good Cunts are in direct defiance of social norm. A GC doesn’t go to South in jeans and a dress shirt, he gets in wearing jandals and a wife-beater, and still manages to pull regardless! When confronted by authority, most people would stop what they’re doing and retreat like little bitches; a Good Cunt just puts a smile on his face and talks his way back into the good books. A friend of mine once got in a scuffle with the police whilst destroying a washing machine at the Hyde Street keg party; rather than beating a retreat, he just gave the Cops a grin and offered to clean up his mess. (Ladies, if you’re interested, his name’s Jason Williams and he’s hung like Chuck Norris.) Being a GC is about being a good mate, but being good value at the same time; and if you successfully become a GC, I guarantee you’ll be rewarded with copious amounts of GC, if you catch my meaning.

W

hat will become of the sporting experience in the years to come? How dramatically will the whole idea of sport and how we take part in it and watch it change? If you think back as far as you can to your earliest sporting memories things have almost defiantly changed. The uniforms look far flasher, and the changes that are made to them are eagerly awaited by a swarm of fans every year.

Professionalism has made sport into a career rather than a pastime, which in turn has made athletes much stronger and faster and maybe made the athletes themselves into commodities.

There was a time when sporting codes didn’t have to try to allure young minds and bodies to play; they would be lining up to join in the local club team. Now with so many other options in both sport and socially, sports struggle to get kids away from the Playstation or from outside Time Zone. Sports teas and organisations now spend bucketloads of cash on trying to market their sport to the new generation. An example of this is cricket using Lily Allen to attract both young prepubescent boys and notso-young boys who should know better. So in the future expect a lot more specific sport promotion, along with celebrity cross overs. Imagine Megan Fox in a cross over with curling; she would defiantly bring some sex appeal to the self proclaimed ‘Coolest Sport on Ice’.

Technology will become increasingly prevalent throughout all sport, not that we will have robot athletes battling it out to the death in some sort of computer nerds wet dream. But you can be sure that we will be seeing more heart-rate monitors and player microphones. And maybe we will all be watching it in 3D which I always thought we were doing in the first place, but what do I know I’m just a simple columnist.

What about sponsorship? A rather large amount of the money that is poured into sport comes from the dreaded devil water; with a crackdown on alcohol in society in general it is more than likely that the sponsorship of sporting teams or events by alcohol companies will go the way of tobacco. And with the increasing popularity of watching television on the internet advertising money may also dry upThough it’s been said before and sports doing just fine.

Sport has always been changing and always will, just as anything else in our society sport is subject to the same changes in technology and culture. It will never be the same as you remembered, and in twenty years’ time you’ll be one of those annoying old guys who brings up games he saw when he was 20 and talks about how they were just so much better than what you see today. And just like everything else you really can’t predict what’s going to happen, so it’s probably best you just disregard everything I’ve just discussed.

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Annoying People at the Library

t he r a pt ur e

It’s getting to that point in the year where everyone is freaking out. Procrastination levels are rapidly rising, causing soaring levels of masturbation, Facebook stalking, and room cleaning. You know it’s exam time. But there are some people who just deserve a firm kick in the genitals for their library edacity.

“... and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air.”

– 1 Thessalonians, 4:15-17.

5. People who bring nice food: So you’re sitting there

studying away and feeling a bit peckish. Suddenly you get a whiff of something delicious and there goes your ability to get anything done. When you turn to see who it is, you realise that it’s some knobfairy having a goddamn three-course meal in the middle of the library. I hate you. At least if you’re going to eat something nice, get something that’s nice but doesn’t smell. Like chocolate mousse or something.

4. Music enthusiasts: Why do some people have their music up so loud?! No one wants to hear it, and nine times out of ten it’s probably shit anyway. Also, I know you like to have a sing-along sometimes – but save that horrid noise for Singstar please.

3. Loud cellphone users: You know, the correct thing to say

when someone rings you in the library is “Sorry, can you please call me back, I’m in the library” not “HEEEEEEEEYYYYYYY, OMG WHAT’S UP??!?!!” Please, turn your phone to silent. It’s really not that hard.

2. The socialites: AKA the people who won’t shut the fuck up and have to ensure they have a five-minute conversation with every single person they see, which is as contrived and trivial as the entire Next Top Model series. Sure, we all like to have a whine and a yarn every now and then but you could at least fucking whisper! I don’t really care that Sally got so drunk last weekend that she vomited on a guy while giving him a BJ, go to the Link if you want to talk about that crap.

1. People who leave their stuff on desks but are never around: You little fucks are the people I hate the most.

Like I’d go all Russell Crowe on yo’ ass if I caught you doing it!

It’s shit enough that there aren’t enough seats in the library, let alone you fuckers who come in early, do an hour of ‘studying’ (if Facebook stalking counts) and then go off for an extended coffee break. One day, you’re going to come to back to find all your stuff gone with a little note left in its place saying that all your notes have been hidden in various locations around Dunedin while giving you a list of riddles to find out where they are. Of course, this is probably a good thing for people like you as it sounds more fun than actually doing study, right?

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I know you’re a bit worried about it. I’m a bit worried about it.

As much as we would like to ignore it, the fact remains that at any moment, any time of day or night, Jesus is going to show up and bring all good Christians up to join him in heaven, leaving behind all the filthy non-believers in an event known as The Rapture. And while the thought of being able to walk through the Link without being accosted by some dude with a painted-on smile telling you that you’re going to hell may sound appealing, I can assure you that the post-Rapture world will not be all sunshine and roses.

You see, after The Rapture will come The Tribulation, a time in which the non-believing scum left on Earth will suffer though untold hardships, war, poverty, and natural disasters. Great plagues of indestructible locusts will cause endless pain. Seas and rivers will turn to blood, nicely complementing the fire and blood falling from the sky. Massive earthquakes will push mountains into the sea, the sun will burn people alive and our good pals The Four Horsemen of the ... Apocalypse – better known to us as the Black Eyed Peas – will turn up to the party as well. Yes, it will be a time of intense suffering for all the non-Christians of the world, even the babies. Especially the babies.

Of course, this is assuming that The Rapture will occur before The Tribulation – that we will experience a Pre-Trib Rapture, as those in the know call it. (Really.) However, there are some who believe that the Rapture will occur some time during The Tribulation, while others go even further and suggest that The Tribulation has already begun, in which case shit is about to go bad very soon. It makes a lot of sense when you think about it: there’s no shortage of war, poverty or natural disasters going around at the moment, and if Dane Rumble isn’t a sign of the End Times then I don’t know what is.

Sure, you may scoff at all this, but then the Bible says that “there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts and saying, Where is the promise of his coming?” You fool! Can’t you see that your scoffing only confirms that the end is near? So stop wondering why a benevolent God would want to kill two-thirds of the world’s population and start getting pious before it’s too late, lest you be left behind will all the other damned non-believers. Go get a Bible, pick a verse at random and do what it says, now! Here, I’ll start it off: “Esther had not disclosed her race or country, because Mardochaeus had forbidden her to do so.” Yeah, I can get down with that.

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THE FOLLOWING COLUMN ARE THE PERSONAL VIEWS OF HARRIET GEOGHEGAN AND ARE NOT ENDORSED BY THE OTAGO UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ ASSOCIATION, ITS EXECUTIVE OR WHOLLY OWNED SUBSIDIARIES INCLUDING PLANET MEDIA DUNEDIN LIMITED. You are a member of the New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations (NZUSA). Didn’t know that? Neither did I - until I was a member of the OUSA Executive. When I was average Joe student doing a BCom and enjoying the finer things the Otago University lifestyle has to offer I had never heard of it and it had no noticeable impact on my life.

My first encounter with NZUSA was going to a conference with other Executive members up in Auckland shortly after winning the Commerce Rep by-election. Only a small contingent of the exec went, as most had been to the first conference of the year and found it pretty useless. All I’d heard about it was that one of them got naked in Cuba street and stood on a car and everyone thought it was pretty funny.

I have since had a number of encounters with NZUSA and would rate every single one of them far lower than seeing my Education Officer naked on the hood of a car. At least you know what you are getting.

Now don’t get me wrong, National representation of the views of students is really important when we are at the whim of the Government. But the model we have for it is completely ineffectual. If your National Body can’t even defeat VSM, what is it achieving? It certainly isn’t making it clear to the government that hey, it’s not OK to remove our student loans based on grades and DEFINITELY not OK to make that law retrospective. Your national student union is instead organising three conferences a year (flights, accommodation and food on the students’ dollar), for exec members, who then struggle to report back what they got out of it.

But the part that really grinds my gears, is that membership of this National Union is costing OUSA $90,000 per year. For that money you could have a full time political lobbying expert meeting weekly with MPs and telling them what Otago Students want, without filtering it across all Universities and Polytechnics who have a multitude of different issues. We could spend far less than that by creating a committee of national student presidents who meet (or even just skype eachother) when there is an issue that affects us all and contracts a professional (or delegates one President to be Chair) for a far smaller price to meet with MPs, run campaigns and lobby on issues. (My preferred option, that I have discussed setting up with Canterbury, and Otago Polytech who have already pulled out and the others soon to follow).

This, among other issues, is being put to the student body in this week’s referendum. I’ll be voting to withdraw from NZUSA, I hope you’ll go to www.ousa.org.nz and have your say too.

Holy heck. 2010, what a year! It’s our second to last article so we’d better make it a goodie.

I’m proud to say Te Roopu Maori has had a successful year. We recruited some lovely new faces, sounded superb after many kapa haka practices, shared many a story over a few beers, made our mark in the capital city (Tapu Te Ranga), rocked Christchurch (literally), managed to acquire a new whare, successfully made changes to our constitution and budget after a few umms and ahhhs, and filled all our positions for Te Rito 2011. But like all successful organisations this would not have been possible without the help of many people. So, Te Roopu Maori would like to thank the following people and organisations: • The OUSA Rowing Club/ Aquatic Centre • Starters Bar and staff • The Uni Print Shop • Jennifer Duff and Amber Bridgeman • Central and Amalgamated Foods • Uptown Art • Divisional Roopu • Te Roopu Whai Putake • Nga Mokai o Nga Whetu • Te Oranga ki Otakou • Te Tai Tuara • PEMA • Kapa Haka Tutors: Marama KainamuWheeler, Hauauru Rae, and all those who helped put actions to songs and make poi (curse the humans that put rocks in them resulting in a haematoma to the right forearm ha).

• Te Tumu Staff: KP – we would have been breaking bread for hours and Suz for your kapa haka accountmanaging skills.

• The Union staff • David Richardson – Managing Director of Student Services • The University of Otago Space Allocation Committee, in particular Diana Reid • The University Council • Property Services • OUSA – Donna Jones • Our OUSA Maori Rep, Ari • Te Huka Matauraka – especially Tammi for her extra spell check abilities • Matt Tucker • Te Huinga Tauira 2010 Crew: too much fullaz, another successful huinga that will never be forgotten.

Te Rito 2010 Nga kaiwhakahaere; Rewiri Newton, Khan Murray, Rimutere Wharakura. Te Kaituhi; Heramaahina Eketone and Te Kaitiaki Putea; Jared Mathieson-Hiakita. Many thanks to you all for the mahi you’ve done over the year, the events, the hui, the 2011 budget (too soon...? my bad sorry J’rad), the failed communication, office hours (if you showed up, Teme???), the laughs . ..the list could go on. But without these people you would not reap the benefits Te Roopu Maori offer and we would not be as strong as we are today. Words cannot express how thankful I am, so simply Nga mihi mahana, nga mihi maioha, nga mihi aroha kia koutou.

And finally THANK YOU, nga tauira Maori. You make up Te Roopu Maori, you are the reason we why we function, your academic success, your feelings of belonging, your feelings of whanaungatanga are the reason why we do what we do and the reason why Te Roopu Maori succeeds. We’d also like to take the opportunity to congratulate those students who will be graduating at the end of this year or next year – you’ve successfully closed this chapter of your life and made your whanau, iwi, and hapu proud.

The world is your oyster; whenever you’re feeling lost remember who you are, where you come from and that you are my Maori.

33

Letter of the Week wins a $30 book voucher YOU WIN BECAUSE WE DON’T KNOW IF YOU’RE JOKING AND, WOW

Dearest Critic, Well done on winning big at the ASPA awards. You fully deserve it as you produce a fantastic magazine that reflects students’ lives at Otago. Your issue last week about Dunedin made me nostalgic, so I thought I’d give my thanks in a soppy letter.

I’m a typical fresher who happily accepted my role at the bottom of the university food chain and endeavoured to fulfil the fresher clichés. To ensure I never forget this spectacular year, I have religiously collected Critic which has educated me on what being an Otago student involves. I remember falling into a happy state of shock in O-Week as I unwittingly wandered down Castle Street with fellow freshers in pursuit of Gardies, dodging flying fireworks, bottles and eggs. Good times.

Fun, friendliness, and laughter constantly runs here, with a strong caring student atmosphere that cannot be found anywhere else in the country. Critic has preserved memories of the special place we live in. I’m sad that my fresher time is over. Thanks for the ride people; it’s been great, I loved it - the best year of my life.

Yours with love, Forever Fresh CHEERS BRO

34

Hi Ben and all staff and volunteers at Critic Congratulations on being awarded Best Editorial Writer, Best Student Publication, Best Paid News Reporter, Best Illustrator and Best Series at the ASPA Awards in Auckland last week.

I’ve enjoyed and appreciated reading Critic this year.

There have been some excellent articles and book reviews.

Well done Greg Hughson University Chaplain

THAT’S TENSE

THE HARD YARDS

Critic, Man am I pissed.

I wait at uni three, THREE extra hours than necessary to meet my flatmate for grocery shopping, ring him when he is ten minutes late, and find out he isn’t coming because he has “double booked”! And the worst of it? Thanks to him I am going to miss Shortland Street! You fucker, I am going to train my cat to eat your eyeballs as you sleep.

Love Katie.

dear south dunedin haters ive BEEN to palmerston north and hamilton you know. and i’ll tell you what, its a much longer fucking walk from there to lawyers head. yours, cheap-jugs@st.kilda.tavern.on.sundays

GET OVER IT!

Dear Critic, I am sick and fucking tired of The Critic giving Dunedin shit. Dunedin is a nice place without all the idiots from up north. The students that are actually from Dunedin, like the place. Most of reasons listed in your article “why dunedin is shit”, are symptoms of every other small city in New Zealand.

If Dunedin is such a hole and Peter Chin is such an asshole why do people like you come here in the first place? Oh thats right, you were awkward back at highschool so you came down here to try reinvent your self as a pisshead “scarfie” and shit on our city (e.g Toga parade 2009) so you could go back up to your “high culture” megafuckofftropilis after finishing your degree, show off your superchad longboarding skills and tell all your other pretentious buddies how you “lived it ghetto” as a scarfie for a few years.

Nice!

Yours sincerely, Dunedinisallright GET OVER IT! < GET IT?

Hi Critic, I was very amused with your piece ‘Shit Things About Dunedin’, however I feel you missed out the shittest element - the ‘Take Your Place In World’ ad. After three years of Dunedin I’m packing it in and finishing at Canterbury, the shit factor effect. But no matter where I escape to in NZ this ad will follow. Makes me want to smash things.

But over all good job (especially the fatties at the 24)

WHAT?

Dear Critic I notice that since the Christchurch earthquake and the Commonwealth games became newsworthy, we have stopped drinking excessively. Hooray to this whole country for such a great feat. However, I fear that once these matters pass, we will start committing that horrible sin again. Shame on us all!

OH, NOW WE GET IT

Hi Please refrain from publishing the letter sent from this address on Sunday morning.

Thanks, NOTED

Hi there Critic, What was reported about the Young Labour Club being affiliated to OUSA in this week’s Execrable column was not quite correct.

1) The Club is open to anybody and everybody that is interested in the Labour movement and the like. Membership is not restricted by age as was reported.

It is true that the Club is not an official branch of the Labour Party - there are two reasons for this. The first is that the branch which is based at the University is a Youth branch and is therefore technically restricted to those under 26 years of age (not that the branch enforces this). The second being that we want to get people involved with the Labour movement, political involvement and debate without them having to join a party, which some people are reluctant to do.

Thanks :) Timothy Grigg President Dunedin Youth Branch (and also of the OUSA Young Labour Club).

Dearest Freddy Frog Lover, You are obviously a miserable fuckwit. The chatty lady at the campus shop is absolutely lovely and brightens my otherwise dull, depressing day at the library. If it weren’t for her, I would have started slitting my wrists ages ago. She’s a better a pick-me-up than the Whittaker’s Sante Bars (and they are pretty fucking good, better than fucking Freddos, you freak). She’s an angel sent from shopkeeper heaven; the lovable, quirky auntie I never had. Chatty campus shop lady, please never change. You are amazing.

Hugs not drugs, The Whittaker Bitchez

Sometimes we get tricks right and sometimes they go wrong, and usually we laugh about it, but how does that in any way shape or form really impact on you in your day to day life?

We don’t feel shame for making a mistake because; thats life, we’re having fun and who really cares apart from haters like you?

I’m asking too many rhetorical questions so I’ll just finish on this.

We have fun and we don’t care about who sees us get things right or wrong, and if that bothers you then look the other way,,, its really not that hard, even for a hater.

Regards Keir and the Firebugs

SLAPITTY SLAP

CARNIES

Dear Ass-Slapper at South, I would like to apologise for throwing my drink on you last Saturday.

I’m truly sorry that I am not the type of girl who appreciates a good smack to the bum. Nor the piece of ass that most beer-clogged lads seem to believe girls are.

According to your friend you were “quite the catch” however next time please refrain from body violation and try using your vocabulary.

You’ll be surprised with the results. And by surprised I’m not referring to anything nasty like your t-shirt being on the receiving end of someone’s drink, I’m talking about the pleasant, although slightly tipsy, reply to your use of words.

Apologies, Drink tosser

Dear Hater of Carnies Thank you for your justified overwhelming blanket disdain for people learning circus arts. I’d say it’s because it’s a nice sunny open area, and they really don’t care about fucktards like you looking. Although those who practice on union lawn aren’t representative of the whole population of carnies in Dunedin, it’s just that they are more noticeable. Many of us aren’t noticeable, we could be anyone, a girl at 3 dollar lunch, the guy twirling his pen in lectures...We are everywhere... Be Afraid...

Da King of the Carnies?

P.s. Definitely not for money. Dunedins crap for most busking, bloody drunk students steal all your shit. Prob why the only decent buskers Dunedin gets is the violinists.

CARNIES

WELL, WHERE DID YOU LAST REMEMBER HAVING IT?

OBVIOUSLY

To the Circus hater So where is a nice central spot where people can get together from around campus to have fun on nice grass? .. oh yea, union lawn.

‘Circus freaks’ like to get together and spin and throw things around without getting in anyone’s way.. so who cares about where or why we do what we do?

Have you ever been asked for money from anyone?

Does it worry you seeing people have fun in ways that you’re not used to?

Dear Critic/Editor, Recently I noticed a new trend; people write letters to the editor to claim that they have lost an item, and then they ask if the finder of this item could kindly return it to its rightful owner.

So I will attempt to follow this trend...

To, The stranger that I met three years ago late one Saturday night, I would like my virginity back as I now have better purposes for it.

Yours sincerely, Lost without it.

SORRY FAT PEOPLE!

Hey, I was wondering what the the deal is with these dumb fat shits that sit here in the uni occupying space, using oxygen while spending the entire day playing cards??? -I have clearly been miss led into thinking that this is an institute of tertiary education...

Fk off and go play with yourselves at your parents house and stop wasting government funding, student loans and desk space... misinformed YEAH! FIGHT BACK!

Dear ‘Fat Hater’ So if fat people are dumb and lazy, would it be safe to say that people who cant spell the word ‘people’ correctly are wanks?

You’r a dick.

From ya Mum. MORE SHIT ABOUT LOST SHIT

Dear Adam aka Ranter about his gf losing her ring, Before you start giving the private function goers a hard time about their willingness to take your girlfriend’s ring, you should get all the fact straight. I personally, even though being extremely intoxication that night was attending that private function, did indeed find your girlfriend’s ring in the bathroom.

Immediately I stumbled to a girl who was working behind the bar at South and handed it in. So maybe those dodgy bartenders you were joking about really do exist!

Lots of love, Private function goer WE LIKE YOUR ANGER

While there is no denying that the library is a somewhat impressive structure, I’m afraid to point out that the creatures who inhabit it are for the most part retarded. I can’t decide who is more annoying, the Auckland girls who go there with their MacBooks simply to show off their latest Ruby sweater or the douchebags who hike up to the third floor simply to whisper for three hours. At least the Auckland girls don’t talk, probably because they’re too busy eyeing up other Auckland girls topknots. Although neither of these > 35

GIVE BLOOD

: We need you to come and save lives ing Build n Unio y ersit Univ , Room bo Gaze pm Wed 13 October 12.00pm – 4.30 pm Thurs 14 October 10.00am - 3.00 www. visit nt intme appo an To make nzblood.co.nz , or ph 0800 GIVE on BLOOD. Or just come and see us the day. Many thanks for your help.

STUDENTSOUL

Cafe-style church for students. Sunday Service 17 October 7pm at George Street School Hall. Theme: End of year celebration.

Contact Helen on 027 473 0042.

SEMAPHORE MAGAZINE

This award-winning Dunedin-based publication is seeking speculative fiction short stories, poetry, and artwork for its upcoming 2010 and 2011 issues. Submissions guidelines are at semaphoremagazine.com or email semaphoremagazine@gmail. com for more information.

$3 lunch.

Weekday lunchtimes at Clubs and Socs

NOTICES POLICY

Notices must be fewer than 50 words in length and must be submitted to Critic by 5pm on Tuesday before you want it to run. You can get notices to us by emailing critic@critic.co.nz or bringing them to the Critic office. We accept up to five notices a week from non-profit organisations and other student-related groups that aren’t looking to make a bit of dosh.

36

> groups of people are as bad as the fuckwits who type too loud, or the fat bitch who unplugged my computer so that she could play solitaire. Oh, and I was particularly fond of that one girl who started playing her music as she studied REALLY HARD for her commerce paper.

Lastly, I would like to shit on the worst kind of library dweller there is - the library dweller who doesn’t dwell at all in the library.

Instead they just scatter their things across three spaces and fuck off to the beach. I just love trawling the seats for a spot and when the majority of spaces are filled up with your crap and NOT YOU. I think there should be a compulsory LIBR191 course for first years, on correct library etiquette.

P.S. thanks a fucking bunch to the link cafe for upping your coffee prices twenty cents. Like you weren’t overpriced enough.

FROM THE CRITIC BOOKS EDITOR

Dear Florian, Thanks, I’m glad you enjoyed the review.

Unfortunately, Theism and Explanation is priced at ~US$100, and there is no indication that a cheaper paperback edition will be made available soon. If you like, you may borrow my copy; just get in touch with Critic.

Jon FROM A CRITIC CARTOONIST

Dear Fan of the Female Gaze, First of all, I appreciate your comments on my cartooning skills and how I draw expressions, I’ll add that one to the ego bank to boost me up later.

Im assuming you’ve read most, or every comic that has come out, most likely desperately searching for that female gaze you are so fond of, but I can assure you, none will be found. As your facebook stalking skills have proved that I am indeed a female, this does not mean I think like one. On the contrary, I find my enjoyment in the most ‘boyish’ of things, including, but not limited to, video games, Star Wars, drinking beer, being a general dickhead for the amusement of others, and of course the male-gaze ‘stereotypical’ web-comics most of us internet nerds all love and adore, I just dress up my tomboy mind with girly clothes and an

ample supply of makeup and jewelry.

However I do find it interesting that my portrayal of the characters comes off as from a male mind, seeing as most of the conversations between Jess and Daniel have been experienced first hand by yours truly. The whole point of drawing the comic was for me to make the shitty relationships I had to endure and suffer through, worth it, by laughing at them. This includes the shitty things I have done or said, because even in all my male-minded thoughts, I too can be a superbitch like Jess (and any other female for that matter.)

All in all, I suggest you don’t read too much into the comic. Throw away your ideas of gender stereotypes, because it definitely is not a ironic deconstruction of anything. I apologize for bursting your bubble, and maybe I should claim that this comic really is deep and meaningful if you look into it, but its not. It’s short for a reason.

Just for others to laugh at a crappy couple, and for me to vent my laughable past relationships. All of them. And not to mention, just because laughing at other people is fun.

Thanks for your input F.F.G. But I gotta get back to copying and pasting my comic panels. xoxo Austen LETTERS POLICY

Letters should be 200 words or less.

The deadline is Tuesday at 5pm. Get them to us by putting them in the mailbox under the Union stairs, emailing us at critic@critic.co.nz, or posting them to us at PO Box 1436, Dunedin.

All letters must include full contact details (name, street address and phone number), even if you don’t want these details printed.

Letters of a serious nature addressing a specific group or individual will not be published under a pseudonym, except in extraordinary circumstances as negotiated with the Editor.

Critic reserves the right to edit, abridge, or decline letters without explanation. We don’t fix the spelling or grammar in letters. If the letter writer looks stupid, it’s because they are.

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Critique Analyse this...

39 games

40 BOOKS

42 MUSIC

45 performance

46 FILM

48 art

49 food

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mafia II

PS3/Xbox360/PC

Mafia II is a heavily story-based game that focuses around how the player character, the Sicilian Vito Scaletta, is drawn into the New York Mafia by the easy money, fancy cars, and sex.

The first time you control Vito is as a soldier in World War II, where he first glimpses the power of the Italian Mafia. This is an unusual opening for mob-oriented games; however, it is a very nice change from the usual. It throws you directly into action and teaches you how to shoot and take cover, something that games like Grand Theft Auto are painfully slow to introduce. Upon his return home to New York Vito is pulled into the Mafia and begins to work his way up in status.

Mafia II is beautifully made, bringing 1940s New York to life. The mechanics of the game are well designed, with a great driving system that keeps everything easy to control and moving smoothly as well as a good cover-based shooting mechanic. Driving through the city in a classic car with music from the 1940s playing over the radio is brilliant.

This game is great to sit back and enjoy; however, it does take patience and a willingness to just appreciate the beautifully rendered city. The game is slow-paced with lots of driving from point A to B, and there are several boring and repetitive missions. It makes being in the mob comparable to a normal job. Mafia II has an open-world environment, but is based on a streamlined story, making the open world basically pointless.

I highly suggest this game for casual exploration and a fun story line combined with good graphic and mechanics. However, it does take patience and if you want non-stop shoot-â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;em-up action, look elsewhere.

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I The Grand Design

Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow Bantam Books

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n The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow demonstrate their impressive philosophical ignorance, but not before they announce that “philosophy is dead.” They then proceed to make contradictory claims about the history of philosophy, confused musings about “laws of nature,” patchy arguments for their (quasi-)anti-realist philosophy of science, and straw men out of arguments in philosophy of religion. And I think there’s some science in the middle chapters, but it’s hard to know what to think about M-theory. I’m certainly not qualified to evaluate such things.

Let’s begin with their model-dependent realism. It’s unclear what exactly this amounts to, but it’s at least a denial that we can talk about what actually exists or what’s actually true. At best, we can talk about propositions being true or entities existing within a model; furthermore, there may be many different but equally good models. That’s fine: such anti-realist or instrumentalist or perspectivist philosophies of science are not uncommon in the history of ideas, as Hawking and Mlodinow recognise. However, they seem to think that model-independent realism falls out of quantum theory, which is “an accurate description of nature.” But this claim about quantum theory seems to be an absolute claim about what the world is actually like, and this is anathema to model-dependent realism.

Otherwise, quantum theory (rather, this particular interpretation of quantum theory) is just an accurate description of nature from within a particular model, but if so, why should this model be privileged in building a philosophy of science? Perhaps it’s privileged because it’s the best model or the only empirically adequate model we have, but Hawking and Mlodinow don’t bother to make their case here.

Now, their central claim: M-theory is the complete theory of the universe, the elusive unified theory, science’s positive response to cosmological arguments for theism. M-theory is a meta-law of nature (whatever a “law of nature” is; they vacillate between saying laws of nature are just descriptions of regularities and saying that they are causal entities), which consists of many different models. These models sometimes describe (or explain, depending on what mood Hawking and Mlodinow are in) the same phenomena but, in Hawking and Mlodinow’s view, their empirical equivalence makes then equally true. The models also describe/explain far more universes than just our own. Indeed, critics point out that M-theory is very much like theism: it explains everything, and therefore explains nothing. I don’t know if this argument holds any water (remember, I’m no theoretical physicist), but M-theorists seem to attempt to escape this charge by positing the existence of all the universes covered by M-theory. They posit a multiverse, of which our universe with its particular set of laws is merely one of many, many members. (Wait ... so does the multiverse actually exist? How does model-dependent realism work here? It’s not clear.) Either way, however, it’s unclear how M-theory is the silver bullet in God’s head that Hawking and Mlodinow seem to think it is. The existence of our universe with its particular laws might be entailed by M-theory, in which case, perhaps we don’t need God to explain “why there is this particular universe rather than nothing.” However, the truth of M-theory or the existence of the multiverse is left unexplained. Is M-theory necessarily true? Is the existence of the multiverse a brute fact? Perhaps, but here we’re back to good old-fashioned analytic philosophy of religion. Alas, these important questions are left unanswered, but then Hawking and Mlodinow’s explicit disavowal of philosophy has left them without the conceptual tools to answer them anyway.

There’s a lot more to complain about. Hawking and Mlodinow constantly pontificate about all sorts of things; The Grand Design is replete with one-liners about whether or not we have free will and why religion emerged and other such provocative (and therefore marketable) topics. Their simplistic assertions on these and other matters once again reveals their naiveté and, dare I say it, their intellectual arrogance and laziness. After all these criticisms, I want to be able to say that at least it was a well-written book, but I can’t. The Grand Design tries to be light and witty, but ends up being lame and more than a little patronising. Perhaps its treatment of physics is its saving grace, but I can’t adjudicate on the matter; I can, however, say that I’ve certainly read more eloquent and accessible popular books on modern physics and cosmology. In short, The Grand Design is a dud. Hawking should’ve quit while he was ahead.

Words Chosen Carefully:

New Zealand Writers in Discussion

Siobhan Harvey Cape Catley Ltd

Tredoku

Penguin Books

I confess: I’m an author-interview junkie. When I visit the States I inevitably end up in a bookstore buying issues of the literary journal The Paris Review, purely because of its famous interviews with renowned authors. So when I saw Words Chosen Carefully on Critic’s bookshelves, I jumped at the chance to review a book entirely comprised of ParisReview-style interviews with some of New Zealand’s most well-known and critically acclaimed authors and poets.

The writers interviewed for this collection range from the well-established old guard (C. K. Stead, Owen Marshall) to the more recent critical darlings (Elizabeth Knox, Charlotte Grimshaw), and include some indigenous writers (Witi Ihimaera, James George) and some not-so-indigenous writers (Kapka Kassabova). What’s more, the writers were interviewed by people also intimately involved in literature; the interviewers are themselves writers (for example, David Eggleton), academics (Prof Lawrence Jones), or journalists well known for bringing lit to the public eye (Finlay Macdonald). In fact, editor Siobhan Harvey consciously tried to bring the interviewers to the fore, allowing their personalities to shine through.

Because of this, these author ‘interviews’ often seem more like conversations. On occasion it’s like eavesdropping on two pretty smart literary types having a wee chat over a beer. When it works, it’s delightful. The interview between Elizabeth Smither and David Hill is a highlight for that reason: there’s friendly rapport without sacrificing a sense of sharpness of questioning and genuine engagement with the writer’s work. In comparison, the (very few) interviews that don’t quite achieve that easy rapport sound a little awkward and staid. That dryness, though, is only occasional, and I found it pretty easy to gobble this book down quickly. The best way to read this collection, though, is probably to linger over each interview, savouring these tasters of these writers’ complex minds. I mean, let’s face it: it’s the writers that we’re really interested in. And it’s things like hearing Grimshaw talk about creating threedimensional structures in her work, or Ihimaera expound on indigenous politics and literature, or George describe scenes in terms of colours and musical chords (“if I see a yellow scene, well, I know it’s a major seventh chord in music.” Um, what?!) — it’s these things that make this book worth your time. If you’re interested in literature and writing in general, this book will feed your habit. And make you want to write.

Tredoku claims to be the latest puzzle craze sweeping the world. While I’m a little sceptical of that, it does have its charm. No doubt an attempt to cash in on the worldwide success of regular Sudoku, Tredoku adds the additional confusion of three dimensions to get your head in a bend. Straight lines are not-so-straight and the boxes are not quite square. I found this more than a little annoying. If you get frustrated by regular Sudoku or are spatially challenged, steer clear. Trying to think around corners adds another layer of discombobulation that will get you hitting your head against a wall much quicker than classic Sudoku. I found myself giving up and cursing the inventor of this terrible game after spending half an hour and barely making a dent in the first puzzle.

Having said this, after a little perseverance, I did find myself enjoying the Tredoku puzzles. They have more variety, and although they don’t quite live up to the book’s self-description of a fusion of architecture, graphic design, and art, they are nicer to look at than Sudoku. While the new dimension will probably take a little bit to get used to, a bit more effort to solve the puzzles means a bit more exercise for your brain – and we all know that exercise is a good thing, right?

The instructions on how to complete the puzzles are not detailed. They assume that you have a comprehensive understanding of how normal Sudoku works. If you don’t, just walk away (and learn Sudoku first). The book features 100 Tredoku puzzles ranging from easy to hard to keep you entertained for hours. Be warned: hard means hard. It is very easy to make mistakes without noticing, right from the easiest puzzle, but if you’re stuck, just look in the back. The answers are all there.

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Gin Wigmore will play at Dunedin’s Regent Theatre on Sunday 17 of October, and Critic has two tickets for Gin’s Dunedin show to giveaway.

Email music@critic.co.nz to be in the draw.

OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER

III

HONEYBONE

Soul on Fire

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I’ve always been a little jealous of the name Invercargill brothers Adam and Rob Falconer decided on for their band.

It’s been said elsewhere plenty of times, but Operation Rolling Thunder is a near-perfect synergy of title and content.

Those huge swathes of distorted chords from Adam on guitar, wrapping and swelling around his younger brother Rob’s scalpel/sledgehammer/back-to-scalpel drumming bursts. Strange, disembodied samples, triggered by audiophile Rob add an extra dimension to a band whose ratio of band members to dimensions is already daunting.

The two lads from down south have finally got their collective arses into gear and released album number one, called III, following on from their first release, an untitled EP. III has been released on pressed black vinyl through Monkey Killer Records, owned and run solely by Radio 1 DJ David Ager.

It’s taken roughly ten years to get to this point, and three years since the actual recording of the album (which was recorded by local genius Dale Cotton out at Port Chalmers). Reason being? A mixed bag of real life events and occurrences seems to be the theme: kids, jobs, lack of finances. Certain plans involving Auckland’s Midium Records (Jakob, Kerretta, Kahu) were discussed, but those plans came and went with the passage of time. It wasn’t until August 2009 that some more solid plans were. The band passed along a copy to Ager – which in itself is fairly fortuitous as they both claim to not have copies of their own previous recordings. Monkey Killer originally had plans for the album to be available in March, with the plates being pressed in the States. But as is the wont of intercontinental business dealings on shoestring budgets – not to mention both the label’s and the brothers’ insistence on nothing but a perfect pressing and sound – things seemed to continue to go awry. The band doesn’t seem fazed in the slightest by these setbacks. Adam: “We were just happy that someone was going to put it out.

Don’t really care what format [it is], to be honest.”

There’s a charmingly laissez-faire approach taken by the brothers Falconer when it comes to what Operation Rolling Thunder’s plans are for the future. There’s a bit of mumbling when this question is asked, some jokes about doing a European tour. They do, however, have plans for some shows around the country over the next few months, into the new year, as well as writing more songs. Don’t mistake having only released one album in 10-plus years as being lazy. On the contrary, the band has written a large amount of material but a lot gets binned on its way through the quality-filtering process. Says Rob: “I think when you work within the limitations of a two-piece, it can be a lot harder to craft something which is worthy of listening to in the public domain.” Which brings us to that confusing album title. The band has recorded three separate albums, III, of course, being the third. Over the course of the last few years these other recordings have fallen away into obscurity and may never see the light of day.

Best you get your hands on III before you have regrets. It’s not too often that quality Dunedin music is released on thick slabs of vinyl these days, after all.

Soul on Fire is Dunedin band Honeybone’s debut E.P. As a first release, it definitely sounds as though this band rushed into recording. The E.P. comes through the speakers well thanks to the wise choice of having it mastered

by Dale Cotton. This said, it falls down due to the key elements of Honeybone’s musical style and, unfortunately, their musicality.

Soul on Fire is evidence that Honeybone are still struggling to distil their influences. There are many songs on the E.P. that give you a feeling of déjà vu as if you’ve heard them before. Time and time again the influence of the Datsuns and the White Stripes can be heard. In fact, it sounds like the members of those bands procreated to result in the song ‘Vagabond’.

Honeybone is let down musically on two levels. Firstly and most disappointingly, there are blatantly out-of-tune vocals evident on the recording. This is inexcusable as when recording you get 1001 takes if you need them to get the music right. Listeners will be horrified when hearing the chorus of ‘Happy’ as the two vocalists clash repeatedly.

To make matters worse the same mistakes are evident every time the chorus comes back, suggesting some copy and pasting went on during production.

Soul on Fire also lacked creativity in the organisation of its songs. The song structures themselves are predictable.

Riff, verse, chorus, riff, verse, chorus, solo, etc. Some of the riffs had potential to grow into good songs but they were often only constructed on one musical idea. ‘Free Your Soul’ is an example of a song where a riff was dragged out to the extreme. This song is three minutes too long and only based on the main chords of the key (I, IV and V). It leaves musicians begging for more complexity and the everyday listener begging for the end.

Honeybone is a young band and its members play their instruments well. Although Soul on Fire is not a release of the year, there is a possibility that future endeavours could be worth a listen if they find something to differentiate themselves from the ‘generic’ label

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LTT Review: Voyager Pharmaceuticals

Created by THEA152 Technology Students

Voyager Pharmaceuticals bore striking resemblances to an earlier Voyager incarnation; perhaps this is because the promenade style of theatre is an obvious one given the versatility of the Allen Hall space and perhaps it was just due to the fact it is a very good and interesting concept. We, the audience, all took a ‘pill’ and were ushered through the spaces the students had created. It was suggested by the ‘doctors’ executing this ‘drug trial’ that we, the participants, would experience paranoia along with a plethora of other sensations familiar to any clichéd drugtaking experience.

As with any other Voyager this piece was a slap-bash assemblage of lighting, sound, props, actors, and set. There were some original and excellent ideas and some clearly last-minute fill-in pieces. Ideas from the former category include a suspended actor hanging from the grid. His legs were crossed and he slowly swung in the space holding a lighter over one knee; we could not see his face. Another stunning and original idea was forcing the audience (limited to 10 attendees at once) into a tiny space delineated by black book-flats. We were squashed in and the lights went out, we were encouraged to relax and experience the sensuality (perhaps not meant in the sense any familiar ecstasy taker would identify it with). Ideas from the latter category included a room dedicated to the past’ the brightly sunlight room illuminated all the familiar props scrambled together from around the building and the placement of a figure not at all dissimilar to the Fat Controller plonked himself arbitrarily on the fringes of the space.

I always wish for these Voyager pieces to have more consistency and fluidity within the ideas and images the students choose to present us with. Perhaps my expectations are too high given these pieces are created in little to no time and they rely on the collaboration of 20+ students. It’s hard to say, I just have a feeling that if ideas were kept simple and small more could be achieved. Less is more, I have said it before and I will probably say it again. I am waiting to be impressed.

This being said the students did succeed in invoking feelings of paranoia in me, particularly in the dressing room where caged creatures/students moved slowly within the space as our sight was impeded by the incessant flashing of a strobe light. I was paranoid squashed up like a sardine in the dark as they crinkled, popped, and ripped tin foil around me and I was terrified when I could see the hanging figure of a human being suspended in a tunnel behind a piece of bubble wrap knowing I had to enter the space and manoeuvre my way around him to get out the other side.

The students succeeded at their task and I’m sure they achieved the reactions in their audiences they intended to invoke. Although my personal enjoyment of these pieces is limited I can absolutely appreciate the management, cooperation and enthusiasm that goes into them. This was, by all accounts, a successful Voyager creation.

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To celebrate the Law & Order Issue, Critic and Hoyts is giving away three double passes. To enter, comment on the link on our Facebook page to tell us who your favourite crime fighter in film is.

Facebook.com/critictearohi

Plots with a View

Directed by Nick Hurran

If you like British humour, then go and see this movie. Just as good as Saving Grace, Waking Ned Divine and Keeping Mum, Plots with a View is full of laugh-out-loud moments. It stars Brenda Blethyn and Alfred Molina as almost-teenagesweethearts who decide to run away together thirty years later. Separated by unfortunate timing and a now unhappy marriage, they both have a love of ballroom dancing and each own a cat, one called Fred and the other Ginger. Plots with a View delivers all the quirky and somewhat dark and twisted comedy you could expect. Betty (Blethyn) and Boris (Molina) decide the only way they can be together is to fake Betty’s death, as Boris is conveniently one of the town’s undertakers. The other and rather overzealous undertaker is played to a tee by Christopher Walken, whose memorial ‘philosophy’ is based on the root word of funeral = fun. In the small and old-fashioned (fictional) Welsh town of Wrottin Powys however, this is not so well received as he would like. Surprisingly enough Naomi Watts also has a role, as the secretary Betty’s husband is having a sordid affair with. Although originally released in 2002, it is definitely still worth a watch. films.

There’s none of that junk in The Expendables; they are cold-hearted, kick-ass, tough-as-nails mercenaries with balls..

The Other Guys

Directed by Adam McKay Rialto

Adam McKay has been churning out comedies for ages: Anchorman, Talladaga Nights, Step Brothers … you get the picture. The Other Guys, written and directed by McKay, is another blockbuster comedy/action flick in the same vein.

Neurotic and nerdy optimist Allen Gamble (Will Ferrell) and angry and hotheaded Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg) are detective partners at the New York City Police Department. When the top detectives at the department are tragically killed, the two misfits awkwardly step up to the plate in an attempt to fill their shoes. And when billionaire David Ershon (Steve Coogan) hatches an evil money-laundering scheme, the two haphazard detectives jump on the case. Hilarity, epic car chases, and shoe-stealing ensue.

The film starts strong with the jokes, but it begins to wear down as the movie progresses. After a while, the jokes get recycled. And they become more forced. Plus, the storyline is certainly nothing new. But the interplay between Ferrell and Wahlberg is quite amusing, which more than makes up for the weak parts of the film. The polished cinematography and over-the-top action sequences help as well. And Eva Mendes, as Gamble’s wife, is always a welcome addition. Michael Keaton (as Captain Gene Mauch) is not so welcome. He simply isn’t funny.

In the end, although it delivers a good helping of laughs, The Other Guys is too disjointed between action and comedy. It can’t decide whether it wants to be a comedy, a detective movie, or a not-so-subtle critique of the aftermath of the 2008 U.S. financial collapse. But, all else aside, the film is funny.

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Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole

Directed by Zack Snyder Hoyts, Rialto

It used to be that in order to make a film about owls, you had to sit in a tree in a wooden box for days just waiting for them to do something cute, or kill a rodent, or do some mating. Nowadays I guess you can make them do whatever you want, as long as you have a Macbook Pro with some killer professional software. This film was directed by Zack Snyder, who also did such slow-mo films as 300 and Watchmen, which were both based on popular comic books. In that case, maybe Legend of the Guardians is his first film that adults can enjoy also?

From watching the previews I thought that Legend of the Guardians was going to be kind of like Lord of the Rings but with owls instead of hobbits, but it is so much less than that. How would an owl wear a ring? Soren is the Elijah Wood of this story: he’s a young barn owl who gets kidnapped by the radical fundamentalist owls of St Aggies, who train killing machine owl soldiers. Soren doesn’t want to be a brainwashed soldier, so he and his mates escape from the Owl’Qaeda and fly to the island of Ga’Hoole where the more chill owls hang out, and fight back against the evil owls.

So, visually, Legend of the Owls is pretty amazing. There’s lots of cool flying around and slow-mo 3D. And let’s keep it 100 percent – the owls are pretty cute. I’m feeling like some kid who sees this film might try to trap an owl in his backyard and name him Soren. But after all, aren’t owls the ‘guardians’ of nature? They stay up late, they have sweet eyesight, and perfectly engineered stereoscopic hearing systems, what’s not to like?

Exit Through the Gift Shop

Directed by Banksy Rialto

Thierry Guetta, our main character, is an eccentric artist with an insatiable obsession with recording hour after hour of useless footage. His obsession began with filming his family and daily life in general – but that soon changed. His French cousin is a prolific street artist and for Guetta, seeing and filming his cousin hit walls and bomb buildings was a rush he’d never before experienced. His drive to document street art all the time, even in the most daring and dangerous situations, led him to some of the most notorious and prolific street artists in the US and Britain. Thierry Guetta was now in the midst of something special. But something seems awry.

His obsession, coupled with his being in the right place at the right time meant, he was in possession of hundreds of hours of mad insider footage. He had all he needed to make the ultimate street art documentary. Only one thing was missing – Banksy.

As luck would have it, Guetta teams up with Banksy and he becomes the man’s camera handy accomplice, filming all his big jobs. Banksy is eventually fed up and tells Guetta, who is now loaded with knowledge and brimming with connections, to go make some art of his own. The end result is an LA exhibition with so much hype and so much anticipation that Guetta, while making a documentary about Banksy, becomes more famous and more notorious for his own strangely familiar style. Or does he?

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Turangawaewae: A Place to Stand

Deano Sherrifs, Lars Preisser and Jimi Bellaney Modak’s Café Until October 24

Pursing my lips across the edge of another black coffee at Modaks cafe I am bewitched by the appearance of Turangawaewae: A Place to Stand. Each work at this exhibition was stimulated by the Maori concept of turangawaewae, which literally translates to turanga (standing place) waewae (feet), and is commonly translated as ‘a place to stand’. The show features works by Deano Sherrifs, Lars Preisser, and Jimi Bellaney. These turangawaewae are the places that the artists have distinctive connections to, their place in the world or their home.

Lars Preisser’s drawings suggest the ambivalence of being at home. This coexistence of opposing attitudes or feelings towards people and objects is evident in darkly rendered worlds of seemingly unrelated imagery, which makes his drawings appear both surrealist and expressionistic. Estrangement and Landing in particular creepily depict moments of ambivalence toward the familiarity of domestic life. Deano Sherrifs’ works consist of bold geometric shapes (reminiscent of Kandinsky) unifying into complex, multi-faceted forms. Gravity and Magnetics and A New Dawn are particularly engaging. Sherrifs playfully explores volume and proportion through the use of bold line and colour, describing forms that appear both mathematical and organic. His works seem to serve as a commentary on feeling oversaturated by the ever-developing need for new technology.

Jimi Bellaney’s Restricted appears to be a stylistic departure to those of his previous works I have seen. Although he is still using the same conflicting materials (oil- and water-based paints) to create a small organism, Restricted seems more minimalist, though it is still textural. This textural quality makes his image appear like flesh, with a blood red paint emerging and bleeding across the canvas. Restricted evokes a stir of trauma; perhaps the place Bellaney feels at home is when he is processing emotions through painting. Bellaney’s second piece, Untitled, distorts the relation between viewer and object. Though the colours have merged together in a rhythmic chaos, it is clear that Untitled was rendered vigilantly. This chaos intoxicates the viewer into hypnosis, which evokes an explosive image of tension. This explosion is met with messy brushstrokes that seem to reveal the rough detail of a house, perhaps representing a refuge from the chaos outside.

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paasha

31 St Andrew Street

W

hen I am in the mood for a little treat, Paasha Turkish Cafe (31 St Andrew Street) is one of my preferred places to go to for a nice meal. The service is always friendly and attentive and the overall ambience is pleasant and comfortable for relaxing and catching up with friends. The primary draw, of course, is the good food. Being a creature of habit, I tried a few things on the menu, struck gold after one or two visits, and have been ordering the same thing ever since – the hummus starter and the Shaslik main. The hummus (chickpea and tahini paste, infused with lemon juice, garlic, and oil) deserves a special mention because it is really tasty, goes with everything on the menu, and is the best hummus that I’ve had thus far. There is something incredibly satisfying about stuffing yourself with big mouthfuls of the excellent hummus and hot pita bread. My favourite main, the Shaslik, consists of two skewers of beautifully char-grilled, marinated lamb cubes, bell peppers and onions, accompanied with cous cous, pasta salad, salad, hummus, hot pita bread, and sauces of your choice (I always ask for the Paasha’s Special, Garlic and Halep sauces). The cubes of lambs are tasty and the fresh, tangy sauces complement them particularly well. My only gripe is that the meat is a little tougher than I would prefer, but the overall experience is such an enjoyable one that it’s one of those things you can just ignore.

I know that this next place is actually already pretty well known for their pizzas and kebabs but I only visited it for the first time this week. I was pleased that they lived up to their reputation, even though I did not get to try their pizzas. Yilmaz (906 George Street) is a quaint little place with a lot of character and heart. Customers are greeted with big, warm smiles, the portions are large, the prices reasonable and best of all, they keep student hours, i.e.

11am – 10:30pm, seven days a week! What better way to warm up on the way home from the library than tucking into a good ol’ beef kebab? I tried the chicken on rice, which is marinated chicken served with rice, fresh mixed salad, hummus, and your choice of sauces. Unfortunately, on my plate, the hummus was MIA, so I couldn’t, as originally intended, compare it to Paasha’s. The chicken was a little fibrous because they used lean chicken breast, but it and all its accompaniments still made a very good meal. About halfway through it, I didn’t even mind the leanness anymore. I have no complaints, however about the Beef Roll. The roll was large, well filled with salad, hummus, tender, deliciously flavoured meat, and sauces and well toasted. Absolutely scrumptious, and at $9.50, a really good bang for your buck. I’ve also heard good things about the garlic bread and already have a plan of attack for their pizzas.

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