Mass Media is all about, and only about, putting consumers in front of advertisers. Have a look at the 'loading' of ads in your local papers. If it's anything like ours it's averaging over 70% ads to news/editorial content per page.

The reader, viewer, listener, except those who cling to Public Broadcasting only, is just a cash cow for the advertisers.

And what they like and dislike weighs heavy on the minds of editors and media owners, believe me. Their opinions have equal (IMO) clout with the reader, viewer, listener. In fact, maybe more, because controversy can sell more papers, puts more viewers and listeners before programmes too which makes the advertisers very happy indeed.

So, if far too many people have the attention span of goldfish and the EQ of 6 year olds, expect lots of shock horror boohoo makeover CSI sex & violence titillators and don't expect to get any thoughtful analysis or any cognisance that on your last circuit of the goldfish bowl you saw something remarkably similar to what you're seeing now.

could be something you put in a bun, just as 'normal' is a setting on the washing machine gaye-belle

JUST HAPPENED !!!! YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Jail for Tami Iti and his mate

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10808057

Good one aye, wonder if he will be able to wear his top hat in the slammer.

Just saw that....TOP HOLE.

Cheers.

Girl takes siblings for a ride in Mums car. Do we underestimate our children? How did she reach the pedals, I am wondering

Police have spoken to the family of an 11-year-old girl after she took her four younger siblings - all under the age of four - for an afternoon joyride.

The girl took the children for a ride in her mother's car on Sunday and pulled back into the driveway of her Otara home a short time later as Counties Manukau East police were talking to her distraught mother.

This is not the first time I have heard of children taking a car for a joyride. Even a young chap took his fathers new (a week old) $200,000.00 truck for a run to visit his mother down the south island. I forget where Timaru I think?

Boils down to the old thing "Discipline" again, even if our generation had known how to drive we wouldn't have dared to. Thing is with Auto Gear boxes and Power Steering etc all they need to do is point it and push the go pedal.

Tama Iti demonstrated his dislike for New Zealanders when he shot our National flag. Tuhoe want to create their own principality. Those Maori who cry -Racism should look in their own backyard.Guns maybe ok, but Molotov Cocktails smacks of Anarchy.

Bryan, you might not have dared, but we were often entertained by a older friend who would be in his early 80s now had he not died, with tales from his childhood and youth.

And several of them began with him and half a dozen of his cousins and his friends waiting till our friend's father was asleep before meeting out at the farmshed where his family truck was housed. It was the only one in the neighbourhood and most were still relying on horses for transport and farm work. The boys would push it out and down the long drive to the road before they would start the engine (by a crank handle and a noisy old crate it was) and off they'd go. It didn't have headlights or they didn't work so one of them would sit on the bonnet and yell stop if he saw anything in the road. They had many near misses, of the accidental and parental varieties both, and the long push up the drive at the end of their night was knackering. The hidings they would all have got were terrifying but the fun they were having made it worth the risk.

They did it so regularly his father constantly complained about the cost of the petrol the truck used and swear he was going back to horses.

Bryan, my brother used to race out to meet Dad at the gate every night from when he was about 5 or 6 to drive the old Fargo up the drive, not very far admittedly You know what brother and his sons ended up doing

the RENA blokes got 7 months gaol
JEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZ any person that nicked a newspaper or robbed an orchard would get more than that !!

Some have gotten home detention for stripping millions from their investors.