Bad taste creates many more millionaires than good taste

It was only a matter of time.

And in this case, time is the essential item.

I can already hear my socialist friends chanting "slash and burn, slash and burn", because the man with the manifesto to slash red tape in the health bureaucracy has now begun his role as Minister of State Services.

Sitting at my school PC (that's what baby reporters do), I noted a scoop e-mail alert titled "Government Shared Network to be discontinued" pop through at 5.13pm.

The fact that the State Services Minister Tony Ryall is cutting the GSN ("a secure network linking government agencies with high-speed Internet and telecommunications services) is not, in and of itself, overly surprising.

Nor is the fact that the "[p]articipating government agencies will be moved to a new provider in the private sector."

The thing's losing money, and has done since its inception in 2007 (don't ask me why it was supposed to make money), so it was obviously going to be a candidate for slashing under our auspicious minister.

But 5.13pm for the press release?!? After the layout of most morning papers have been drawn up and TV's putting on the finishing touches to its 6pm bulletin?!? Hoping against hope that it gets lost in the avalanche of press releases accompanying the return of the politicians?!?

Puh-leeze - that's just plain stupid.

It looks suspicious and it draws attention to the move when it could have been sneaked through earlier in the day while all the media focus was on the RMA changes.

This is a senior minister with experienced PR professionals in his office, and it's not something that they saw at 3.30pm this afternoon, decided upon at 4.45pm, and wrote up a press release at 5.12pm.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Will the media fall for it and ignore a potential follow-up for something that looks, sounds, and smells like scuttling public sector jobs? Probably.

But it shouldn't - and touch wood, someone will pick it up and ask Mr Ryall what else is on the agenda for the slash and burn treatment.

This baby journalist would, but afterschool care's closing up, and I've got a ton of stuff to do.

Maybe I'll leave it to the professionals.... maybe...

PB.

Blood, most certainly, is thicker than water

I like to think that I can be a productive kind of guy, but honestly, I don't know how some people are able to maintain a viable social life, keep on top of work, and keep a blog that's interesting and relevant. Mine most certainly hasn't been for quite some time.

Check out what I've been up to at NewsWire and Scoop - I've got a reason for being a tardy blogger... honestly. (Actually I don't - I'm just lazy - which you would be aware of had you delved back many many months.)

Since this is an effort to ease myself into the fine art of blogging, I wanted go to my favourite lobby group... Family First.

Today they put out this press release on the BSA ruling upholding a complaint about a gay sex scene on Shorters.

I'm going to leave the actual issue to far better minds than mine in explaining the problems with both of these pieces of literature.

I have but one problem facing me that one could possibly construe as a Monday night rant.

Go up to the Family First press release, scroll down to the fifth paragraph and read this stupid, stupid line:

"Television viewing is an integral part of family life"

There is something tragically wrong when an organisation that proclaims itself as putting the family before anything else, makes a statement like this.

It's reminiscent of Newmarket Business Association GM Cameron Brewer's wonderful phrase: "shopping these days is a favourite family leisure activity."

Bob McCroskie and Mr Brewer are not unintelligent people - why they believe such drivel will be bought by a media savvy public I do not know. Perhaps that's why they're earning the dark dollars of public relations, and I'm pursuing the relative hardship of journalism...

Anyways, when a lobbyist can convince me that watching television or exchanging currency for goods or services (most likely goods) makes an integral family leisure activity, please inform my nearest and dearest that they may need to have me committed.

If you can drag them away from the telly or the mall that is...

PB.