h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

am curious to know, from the how you got your name thread, who is this pro-smacking etc janet? she must be stopped! i'm sure it's someone really obvious and i'm just being stupid


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Janet Wilson, on Radio Pacific - I listen to it when I am walking around town and can't get good reception on BBC WS.... She's Bill Ralston's wife, she's as dim as a 40 watt bulb, and just takes the line on each issue that most of the callers favour!
She's very anti-feminist, anti-the-present Government - she comes across as a raving loony conservative. She'd be a Bushie in the USA!

oh god janet wilson! i thought you might mean her, but to date i've not had to brush up against her political views, just avoid that ghastly target show.

my bf rang leighton smith the other day about the supreme court and didn't get very far - smith immediately started yelling "you're from margaret wilson's electoral office aren't you! tell me you're not!" to which bf answered, honestly, no i'm not. Leighton says, "you're a labour party member though!" bf says, honestly, yes. Leighton says, "and i bet you're a union official too!" bf says, honestly, yes, and gets cut off. hah hah hah. bf was rather sheepish about telling me this and was rather worried that my father not find out (dad's quite right wing) but silly thing didn't remember that leighton is what dad listens to, so he heard him live and then told mum about it too - dad graciously said that although he disagrees with bf over the issue he made some good points before leighton got stuck in.

it's worrying that the media in nz is so small - bill married to janet, jane clifton and murray mccully, carol hirshfield and finlay mcdonald, etc

also, i just finished jennifer govt and it wasn't that bad, i quite enjoyed it, although the ending was a bit pat.

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Oh, you've read Jennifer Government? I haven't yet, but I'll take a look, if it isn't that bad... Iain Sharp in the SST didn't like it, but I should have learned by now that reviewers don't know everything! (I was a book reviewer in the 1980s... )
I've been listening to Leighton Smith scream at people and cut them off, on the issue of Ahmed Zaoui and Islam. Sickening! Why do I do it to myself?

am yes poor mr Zaoui - his lawyer (the woman) i knew at university - she will one day be labour MP for te atatu i have little doubt

yes i don't understand why my parents insist on watching holmes every night despite the fact they admit it is terrible journalism (if that!)

my bf's grandfather can't stand holmes so he watches it but mutes it whenever holmes is talking. makes for some very interesting viewing, only because you can never work out what's going on!

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I am proud to say that we have *never* watched Holmes. I listen to talkback when I am travelling, I walk everywhere, and I have a little walkie radio. I prefer the BBC WS, but the reception is bad, and very directional. So, then I switch to talkback, as much as I can stand, to find out "what ordinary NZers think" - or so they say.

do you not like NatRad? i listen to that in the mornings, the switch to some music station (i don't really like any of them) in the afternoon, after Midday Report, as I don't like Wayne's show - nothing against him, i'm just not that interested in the kind of stuff he covers and i don't like his music (and he plays so much!). Am a bit annoyed they got rid of Cadenza actually.

In the car (jap import) i listen to Nat Rad, BBC WS or (geekalert) Parliament - recently i have tuned in 1080 too, but every time i can't find anything better to listen to they seem to have sportstalk on, so i just play a tape.

i could never listen to pacific in case i ran into Ritchie Watson, who i knew at university (although he was before my time he came back on special occassions), which would be a very very bad thing - almost as bad as the other watson man they used to have - urgh!

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To be honest, no, I have never listened to Nat Rad, or rather I did when I was a child - we got television late, and my parents treated the radio like TV - the evening's listening was planned and would go everywhere!
Then in the 1980s, my pseud sister put me off, by being all hoity toity and denigrating me for listening to commercial stations - at all. She and her hubby listened only to worthwhile improving Nat Rad. (Boy she's changed - she's a singleminded libertarian and Radio Pacific listener now...)
I reacted by defiantly vowing to avoid Nat Rad. Yeah, childish I know...I have given it a go once in a while, though, when someone recommended a programme.

NatRad has been one of the main contributors to my sanity during a stupid illness that has left me with not much to do for almost three years. now that i am able to get up and work and do stuff it's not so crucial to my life, but some intelligent conversation, albeit me evesdropping (sp?) on it, has been essential, along with the internet and a very patient partner, to my being able to actually talk to people who have lives.

that said it's far from perfect, but it's not nearly as highbrow as people claim. One of the things i liked about Kim Hill, when she was on every morning, was that while she would ask intelligent questions she would also ask stupid ones, and say "look i know this is a stupid question but what does x mean?" and frequently it would be one of those things that everyone says they know but nobody actually does, and so it would be rather illuminating.

there are shows i don't like, and i tend not to take the Listener approach, as in i don't actually know what's on, beyond the long programmes, and so i tend to stumble across the great stuff, because i happened to be in the car at that time usually. and they've just changed the format a bit too, which has confused me, just when i was starting to get on top of when things were!

i find Today in Parliament absolutely hilarious, generally, but that's probably because my party is no longer in parliament, and thus we are not humiliated in the house anymore, so i get to laugh at the people i don't like (and national has been so hapless for months it's great!).

When i was a kid - probably from 8 to about 13, i didn't really understand there were other radio stations besides 1ZB, as that was what my parents listened to and my sister (who's 12 years older) had left home when i was 5. So I used to wake up to mr holmes every single morning, with my pink clock/radio, and womble off to school and not get that everyone else was listening to music, and to silly breakfast shows. i didn't understand why they hadn't heard today in history and so didn't know this really interesting stuff! so music stations were a bit of a revelation when someone put me on to them. i've listened to many different ones over the years, i used to be a bfm breakfast addict, but having been sick and bored for so long i really need something newsie to give me my RL fix. plus i love knowing everything straight away, and music radio sometimes doesn't even tell you the time very often!

I generally feel i have to apologise a bit for being NatRad and BBC WS listeners because people assume you are a psued and will get hoity toity!

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You have my sympathy for the upbringing on 1ZB! (Although I don't know if it was like it is now, then.) We lived in Rotorua, our 'local' was 1YZ or 1ZC. When we came home from school, Mum would be listening to 'The Archers,' one of her favourite soaps. Another was 'Dr Paul! A Grace Gibson Production.' When I was about 9-11, my parents got a transistor radio, and I was allowed to take it to bed (I was a child insomniac.) I listened to radio comedies and plays. My parents got TV around then... When I was 16 I listened to something called Hits in Germany, with a guy called Brook Denning, so I was always on about Johnny Halliday, who was *the* big star in Europe then (1970) Johnny Halliday just made the Herald the other day, he's quite old now, and a young woman has charged him with molesting her. The Herald was neutral. (He's French by the way, the stage name was rather ill-chosen to be very American!)
I didn't know then that 'Hits in Germany' was a Radio Free Europe/CIA production, if I had, I would have been appalled! But I used to baffle my schoolfriends by drooling over French, German and Swiss stars I had never seen, only heard. I must have seem a Pseud myself!
Now, it's commercial radio in the morning, whatever I can get clearest on my Walkie during the day, and TV/CD or DVD at night (occasionally BBC WS *late* at night on a non schoolnight.