Cathedrals and conspiracies
The news thisweekwas all about Catholics, corruption and PHILIP MATTHEWSsummarises.
cathedrals, that will be one heck of an architectural legacy. At a press conference on Thursday, the lowkey Bishop Barry Jones said: ‘‘I hope that you will realise how happy I amtoday to have this news to convey to the people of the church and Christchurch.’’
Kicker conspiracy
Could anything be more symbolic of corruption and rot at the heart of world football than the outrageous settings of the next two World Cups: Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022? With the arrest of nine of Fifa’s top lieutenants this week, that corruption may finally start to unravel. As Melbourne Age columnist Michael Lynch wrote, Fifa resembles ‘‘a kind of multinational racket where the good of the game is subordinated to the financial good of a handful of its controllers’’.
Leaving from a jet plane
Angry old man ejected off commercial flight. No big drama until the angry old man was revealed to be property mogul and outspoken critic of almost everything, Sir Bob Jones. ‘‘Why don’t you get a man’s job eh?’’ he hissed at the TV3 camera operator who filmed him storming through an airport on Wednesday. Maybe the best response to the Jones outrage came from Christchurch satirist Ben Uffindell at the Civilian website, who wrote an opinion piece in the cranky style of the man himself: ‘‘Have you ever been in a plane crash? No. You haven’t.’’ At the same time, is it really such a big deal to read through the airline safety message you have heard a thousand times before?
Dirty deeds done with sheep?
This is a weird one. Opposition MPs accused Foreign Minister Murray McCully of bribing influential Saudi businessman Hamood Al Khalaf with $4m of public money and a shipment of 900 pregnant ewes in a complicated political story about our efforts to placate Al Khalaf over threats to sue New Zealand after we stopped live sheep exports. That $4m was part of a $11.5m deal to establish a demonstration farm in the middle of the dry Saudi desert.
This is the end
Ten years of crusading, personable and often entertaining TV journalism came to an end when John Campbell uttered his final ‘‘ka kite ano’’ on the last episode of Campbell Live. Are some Campbell Live fans over-reacting? Isn’t current affairs still alive and well at TV3 under Mark Weldon and Julie Christie? No. It is easy to see the unnecessary demise of Campbell Live as marking a crucial moment in the history of commercial television in New Zealand: there will be before May 29, 2015 and after May 29, 2015. On that day, TV3’s owners, MediaWorks, gave up even the basic pretence of acting in the public interest. A reshaped show is weeks away. In the meantime TV3 has the cheap reality show Road Cops going on in Campbell Live’s place. Many thought the announcement was a parody. Would TV3 really sink that low? Surely not.