We Need A Hero

It cannot reasonably be disputed that the right continues to dominate mainstream political discourse and commentary in this country.

The success of the right can be put down in part to the success of some of the right's leading bloggers. Those bloggers have become columnists and editors, and are regularly called upon by radio stations to provide punditry.

When Less Is More

If you are a regular visitor to this blog, you will have noticed my decreased output of late.

This is partly a result of my holiday mindset, as well as the absence of much meaty political fare on offer.

But I have also been thinking about the time I spend blogging. It is a hobby, something that I do in my spare time. But my spare time is valuable, and there are many other things I could be doing with it.

So for a little while at least I am going to try posting less often. Blogging can be addictive, particularly once you start to attract a following and get the attention of the news media and other bloggers. As a result of this attention I have often felt the need to post at least something every day, and this pressure has sometimes let to the publication of material that should have been killed before birth.

It's not exactly a New Years resolution, but I am going to try posting more infrequently, rather than once or twice a day. With a bit of luck this might mean that what I do post is of a higher quality.

And if the lure of daily blogging proves too much for me after a couple of weeks of this, then so be it.

In Response To John Pagani

No it's not.

About Your Comments

One of my regulars has emailed me to say he has had trouble trying to comment on my blog. He asked if he'd be banned.

I'll let you in on a secret: I don't have the power to ban anyone. I can delete comments to my heart's content (though I could count on one hand the number of comments I've ever actually deleted), but I can't stop them being posted.

So if you're struggling to post a comment, rest assured that it is not me exercising editorial discretion and deciding you're a prick who must be silenced. It could be your cookies settings, or it could be the software on the Blogger.com platform I use, or it could be a bug, or it could be... Hell, I don't know, I'm a Luddite when it comes to these things.

If you're having trouble with a comment that you really have to make (e.g. "God this is an awesome blog, you're so amazing at keeping it real" etc etc), email it to me and I'll post it, albeit under my name, but attributed to you. My email address is on the "About this Blog" tab.

New Zealand Lawyers Who Blog - Updated

I am trying to compile a list of New Zealand lawyers who blog. I am one such person of course, even if a lot (in fact most) of my blogging does not relate strictly to the law.

Anyway, I thought it would be a useful exercise to find out who in the legal profession is out there in the blogosphere. I might even include a list as a sidebar.

Here are the ones I know about (in no particular order). (I'll update this list as I get more recommendations)

Steven Price

His blog is Media Law Journal.  A barrister, lecturer and all-round media law expert. His blog posts cover a wide range of media law issues.

Andrew Geddis

Geddis is a Professor at Otago University. His specialty is public law. He contributes to the Pundit blog, and his posts cover a range of public law and constitutional issues.

Dean Knight

His blog is called Laws 179: Elephants and the Law.  Knight is a senior law lecturer at Victoria University, and his specialty is public law. He blogs mostly about public law and constitutional issues.

Guy Burgess

Burgess is an Associate at Clendons, lawyers. Burgess’ blog is called Law and Technology and his blog posts cover a range of mostly IT law issues.

Cathy Odgers

Her Cactus Kate blog is well-known within the political blogosphere. Odgers is Hong Kong based and specialises in tax. Her blogging style is aggressive and forthright and she delights in furiously attacking people who don’t share her strongly-held opinions, which are firmly on the right side of the political spectrum. She blogs mainly on political and business issues. I’ve included her since most of her posts relate to New Zealand matters, even though she’s not NZ based.

Stephen Franks

Franks is the eponymous owner of this blog. Franks was the 2008 National Party candidate for Wellington Central, and is a former ACT Party MP. He has now returned to commercial law. He blogs mainly on politics and law and order issues, and has been an advisor to the Sensible Sentencing Trust. As you would expect from his political background, he brings a notably right-wing perspective to many of his posts.

Graeme Edgeler

Graeme is a regular contributor to the Legal Beagle section of the Public Address blog. He’s a Wellington-based barrister. His posts relate mostly to constitutional issues, and they reveal a deep knowledge of electoral law and our electoral system.

Carwyn Jones

Jones' blog is Ahi-kā-roa. It focuses on issues in the law relating to Māori and other Indigenous Peoples. Jones is a lecturer at Victoria University, focusing on Maori and indigenous legal issues. 

John Edwards

Edwards' blog is jcelaw's posterous. Edwards is a privacy and media lawyer. His blog is pretty new, and only has a few posts so far. Hopefully we'll see more from him soon.

Various Victoria University Staff

Wellington seems to be leading the way with lawyer bloggers. Victoria University has a blogsite called 15 Lambton Quay, which is contributed to by a number of law staff. It covers law, policy and government, and some of the bloggers aren't lawyers, but, hey, I'll include it.

Gordon Anderson

Anderson is a Victoria University law professor (is blogging obligatory there or something?). He specialises in employment law, and his blog entitled New Zealand Employment Law covers, not surprisingly, employment law issues. 

Rik Shera

Shera is an IP lawyer working at Lowndes Jordan. His blogsite law.geek.nz focuses mainly on internet law and copyright issues. 

Me

You know about this blog. In my day job I’m a commercial lawyer working in the field of IP and technology for a major New Zealand IP practice. I mean to blog more about IP issues, but usually end up venting over the political issues of the day.


I didn't consider politicians who also happen to be lawyers, since they are really blogging as politicians.

I have also not included lawyers who blog under the banner of their law firm, since arguably they are not really blogging in their own right.

Is there anyone else you know of? Let me know.

Why I Don't Write

Please forgive this hack if the quality of my work takes a hit over the next week or two (yes, it could actually get worse), but I really am unable at present to summon the enthusiasm to write very much.

My disinclination to write may have something to do with being on holiday and doing pretty much nothing. Nothingness can quickly multiply into more nothingness, until there is so much nothingness in my world that I am at risk of being sucked into a vacuum.

The other contributing factor towards my general post-Christmas laziness is the lack of anything interesting going on in the world to get cross over. Oh, sure, there is stuff actually going on. Like earthquakes, murders and car crashes. But my general reaction to such tragedies is pretty much the same as anyone else's. Whether it is sadness, moral outrage or shock, it doesn't make for good blogging material unless it is something I have a particular view on.

This time of year provides us with the very worst in TV entertainment, together with numerous "best of" and "worst of" articles in the newspapers. I can only speculate that these articles become so predominant at this time of year because most of the journalists and politicians are on holiday, and these things can be written in advance. I can't be bothered right now compiling my own "best of" or "worst of" list because, well, that would require effort. And there's no way I could come up with anything as stupid as this.

I imagine that a few more days of sun, the beach and good food and wine might move me to actually engage my brain, but don't count on it.

"Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds"

The Qantas Media Awards are now the Canon Media Awards (hat tip Homepaddock blog). It could be that Qantas would rather stay well away from the media at this time.

The thing many bloggers found most irritating about the Qantas awards was the awarding of best blogger prizes to newspaper bloggers. I've always considered newspaper blogging to be cheating. Isn't it just the same as being a columnist?

The response by one group of bloggers was a blogging award sponsored by Air New Zealand (except that Air NZ had nothing to do with it). That was also a bit of a flop, and the self-nominating criteria meant that only a couple of actually good bloggers entered.

Me, I don't really care about blog awards, although if I won one I should probably find myself boasting until my head exploded.

However, I do care about this: the New Zealander of the Year Award.

Look, I'm sure there are lots of worthy people out there who've done good work: cancer researchers, brave firefighters who've rescued trapped llamas from burning castles, one-legged dyslexic depressed comics who we have both laughed and cried with, yada yada...

But who has entertained you and uplifted you with incisive political commentary, an occasional satirical piece, and big fish?

If they don't nominate me as a finalist there will be trouble. In fact I WILL RAIN HELL UPON THEM ALL!

Join Us

Are you tired of being ignored?

Are you being bullied at work? Or maybe you don't have a job and live with your Mum.

You're probably about to explode, but don't do what that guy in Cumbria did. because I have a much more elegant solution, and it involves no shedding of blood.

Become a blogger.

You may scoff, but if you're not already a blogger you're half-way there. You're reading blogs. It may be just a matter of time before you dive in.

But blogging may not be for everyone, so I've devised a simple test to help you determine whether blogging is the answer to your problems. Though, wow, you sure do have some problems. And I'm not just talking about your chafing rash that's got so bad it's started blistering. Yes, you can try to cover it up, but Imperator Fish is all-knowing.

If you answer yes to any of the following questions, your destiny in the blogosphere awaits:

• do you foam at the mouth on regular intervals?
• are you accustomed to using terms that end in "ist" to describe people who disagree with you?
• is the carpet at your home damaged from all your chewing?
• have you little to no actual experience of being around other people (online interactions don't count)?
• has your country gone to the dogs but only you can see it?
• do you have a visceral hatred for certain other bloggers, and would like nothing better than to denounce them online?

Of course, for a small number of people, none of these things apply, and yet they may still find themselves blogging. Moderate, well-adjusted and tolerant bloggers make us look bad. These people are dangerous, and we must watch them carefully. Better still, drive them out!

As one of the commenters on this site so elegantly stated: "bloggers are ugly". Don't let decent ordinary people ruin it for the rest of us.

Look At Me

This site hit something of a milestone late last night. According to Sitemeter I've now had over 10,000 visitors.

This is not intended to be one of those awful "haven't I done well" posts that make the reader want to puke up their stomach contents. Just a quiet reflection on how weird this blogging thing is.

I'd been a blogosphere lurker for a few years, but never bothered to post comments on any of the main sites, and I never dreamed of having my own blog. I don't recall exactly why that changed in April. I had been growing frustrated, however, with the scarcity of blogs in New Zealand that discussed topical matters without being highly partisan*. At the time I thought "this will last a week, then I'll get bored." I'm still going.

Most of my blogging is done early in the morning or in the evening. My day job (evicting orphans, helping evil corporates destroy the little people, sucking the wealth from the poor, and helping clients commercialise their inventions) keeps me pretty busy. And my family also demands attention. Which is why so many of my posts are short and (if I'm to be honest) usually quite shallow. Hey if you don't like 'em you don't have to be here...

Anyway, not a bad effort for a site that's only been going since April. Although that sounded like shameless self praise. Oops, sorry.

* That doesn't mean I don't have strong opinions on some matters. But my starting point is never "the Nats are all righhtwing bastards" or "that's what you'd expect from a pack of dumb socialists". Still, what would you expect from such a wishy-washy confused liberal-conservative-social-democrat-fascist-commie?