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laurenprospectdublin · 3 years ago

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Around Labor Day 2021, I took a 2 week trip to visit my parents new house in Bloomfield, CT. I missed having the pool to lay out at with the dogs but they now have a community pool and a pool house with a gym and pool table which Hugo and I really enjoyed as well!

After Bloomfield, we headed to New York to visit my friends Megan and Joanna. Megan met us downtown in Chelsea market area because I wanted to show Hugo the high line and artichokes pizza since we didn’t get to try it last time. After walking around a bunch, Megan took us back to her mom’s new house in Long Island. It was soo nice and the neighborhood was beautiful as well. Megan’s mom cooked so much delicious food for us including homemade dumplings and fresh duck with this incredible sauce that I still crave sometimes. We met up with Joanna for a Yankees game and one of my old coworkers hooked us up with delta suite tickets so it was very fun to show them around that area that I used to frequent. Then we biked around Central Park before meeting up with Megan for dinner. The next night, we got hot pot in Joanna’s neighborhood of flushing and dropped Hugo at the airport. He headed home and I headed to stay with Joanna for a few days. It was great to see her neighborhood and I went to meet up with some work friends from thelab one day which was so much fun! At this point my trip was still not over!

On Friday, I headed downtown to catch a bus to Philadelphia where I was meeting up with the rest of the bridal party for Siennahs bachelorette. We met in Philly and then all drove to the poconos. We had a beautiful cabin on this cute pond. We got in late the first night so just cooked dinner that day, and the next day we had a party bus booked to take us around to several different vineyards. It was a fun day filled with lots of wine! I was able to squeeze in a run around the lake we were staying on and it was a very cute neighborhood in rural Pennsylvania! That night we went out to a nice dinner and the next day we went back to Philly for brunch on a ship. The restaurant was called moshulu and was a unique experience. Then we had some time to walk around downtown Philly on the water before heading to our flights! All around a successful trip but I was ready to get back home after a long time away!

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ladystylestores · 4 years ago

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How New Zealand’s media endangered public health | Coronavirus pandemic

New Zealand’s health minister, David Clark, has been forced to resign and the nation’s hyperactive media have claimed their latest scalp. In the middle of a pandemic, no less.

Unseemly as the media’s months-long hit on Clark was – a classic example of trial by media – it was consistent with the borderline misconduct that has defined much of the reporting throughout the COVID-19 crisis.

While the response to the pandemic threat from the national capital, Wellington, can be held aloft, for now, as a rare success story in a world of disarray, the machinations of much of the nation’s media leaves much to be desired.

Taken over time, New Zealand’s reporters have appeared focused on managing perceptions, berating and cajoling a fearful public on numerous fronts. In doing so, and from the earliest stages of a four-level alert system, public health concerns have been eclipsed by a clamouring commentariat, all seeking to score political points and undermine the government’s health-first priorities.

A case can be made that the nation’s media, laundering many of the opposition’s attack lines and big business talking points, have repeatedly endangered public health.

This was driven not only by the country’s clutch of prominent Fox News-style commentators – Mike Hosking, Heather du Plessis-Allan and Duncan Garner – each of whom hawks anger and division to drive ratings, but by senior reporters and editors.

Omission and the economy

New Zealand entered alert level four at midnight on March 25. Public fear had built throughout February, sharpening to a peak in the latter part of March.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her government had to rapidly scale up a response when it became clear in January that China had not contained the virus.

With multiple clusters across the country – a high school in Auckland, a wedding in the deep south, a bar in the tourist hub of Matamata – the government heeded the advice of leading epidemiologists.

They opted for an elimination strategy. That would mean a strict and prolonged lockdown, easing over time. New Zealanders overwhelmingly endorsed this approach, putting public health above all other considerations – specifically the economy.

Daily life ground to a halt.

The opposition, business elements and an instinctively conformist media moved quickly to set the agenda, artificially narrowing the parameters of public discourse.

There were, for example, no deep-dive stories into the state of the health system, eviscerated by aggressive neo-liberalism since the late 1980s, yielding the country acutely vulnerable to COVID-19.

Little was said about our hyper-globalised societies’ increasingly fraught relationship with nature, of which COVID-19 is a symptom.

Such discussions were omitted from the news agenda. Instead, economic considerations dominated media messaging.

Then-leader of the National Party, Simon Bridges, began imitating Donald Trump, claiming that “the medicine should not be worse than the cure.” Disinformation about a spike in suicides as a result of lockdown proliferated.

Trans-Tasman rivalry was cynically leveraged into the public domain, with claims that Australia was outperforming New Zealand on health and economic outcomes due to its less stringent lockdown.

An organisation called Plan B, a “cross-disciplinary group of academics”, became ubiquitous in the media. Its website read, “International health data and experience is showing that New Zealand’s lockdown may now be unnecessary, and even more harmful than the problem we’re trying to solve.”

The messaging was clear: the government had “overreacted” and it was time to get back to work.

With Ardern set to announce whether cabinet would move down alert levels on April 20, journalists and commentators brazenly agitated for a move to alert level three, which would allow for cafes and restaurants to offer contactless delivery and take away services, namedropping their favourite fast-food chains in a media-wide in-joke.

They showed little concern for the minimum-wage workers who would have to stand at open windows, handing food to thousands of people in the middle of a pandemic.

The health minister, Clark, became a target. With an election approaching – and the Labour Party’s popularity skyrocketing – the opposition needed to drive a wedge between the government and its popular health response.

The media obliged.

A flood of reports castigated Clark for breaking lockdown rules by driving 20km to a beach with his family.

Then, he carried some belongings from a former residence, used as an office, to his new home a few hundred metres away. This set off the reporters at Newshub, who argued that it constituted “moving homes” – forbidden under lockdown provisions.

“It speaks of one set of rules for the Health Minister and another set of rules for all other New Zealanders,” wrote Newshub’s Tova O’Brien.

Put simply, much of the media appeared to be conditioning the public. This approach continued as the country rushed through alert levels three and two.

Alert level one

The country moved to alert level one on June 8, having reported 1,504 COVID-19 cases and 22 deaths. It was the 17th-straight day that no new cases had been discovered.

The country was virus-free.

The New Zealand Herald’s front page that day, before Ardern announced her cabinet’s decision, smacked of Diktat – a propaganda technique – reading: “Only 1 Option.”

All domestic restrictions were lifted. New Zealanders were free to do as they wished. Meantime, the outside world was entering a period of pandemic acceleration.

Ardern and her reassuring director-general of health, Ashley Bloomfield, had delivered a world-leading health response. The government had additionally protected the economy, through massive government spending.

Yet political and media pressure had forced a number of concessions over several months. These included: allowing compassionate leave for relatives of the terminally ill; increasing the numbers of mourners at funerals during level two; and, most importantly, moving early into alert level one, which Bloomfield felt should not happen before June 22.

‘A national disgrace’

On June 16, National Party spokesman for health, Michael Woodhouse, told parliament that two returning New Zealanders, released early from managed isolation to visit a dying relative, had met with friends in Auckland and shared a “kiss and a cuddle” – after becoming lost on the city’s motorways.

The pair had driven some 650km to Wellington, where they tested positive for COVID-19. The implication was clear: they may have unwittingly reseeded the virus.

At around the same time, the media ran a number of stories about the nation’s managed isolation facilities, suggesting systemic failings. Woodhouse claimed that a homeless man had entered an isolation facility, spending two weeks living it up on taxpayer money.

Even worse, apparently, 1,359 people who were released after two weeks in managed isolation were not swabbed for COVID-19 under a new testing regime. That regime required tests on days three and 12 of isolation.

Media variously described the situation as a “shambles” and a “fiasco”, “chaos” and a “national disgrace”. The National Party’s new leader, Todd Muller, suggested that the country had undetected cases of community transmission.

The public’s fury was unbridled.

To his credit, Bloomfield, venerated by the public, took responsibility for any failures by local health officials to implement ministry protocols.

The media, unsatisfied, went scalp-hunting.

‘Thrown under the bus’

On June 25, press gallery reporters approached Clark and Bloomfield following a select committee meeting, pressing the health minister to accept blame for “border failures”.

“The director-general has accepted that protocols weren’t being followed, he has accepted responsibility for that and has set about putting it right,” said Clark.

A Newshub cameraman panned to focus on Bloomfield’s face.

Newshub’s story, written by O’Brien, was headlined: “Health Minister David Clark brutally throws Dr Ashley Bloomfield under the bus while standing right next to him”.

The media piled on, running probably hundreds of pieces riffing off the phrase “thrown under the bus”.

Clark, the country’s most effective health minister in decades, tendered his resignation.

Clickbait

The problem with all of this is, however, that the two women who drove to Wellington did not “kiss and cuddle” their friends; that was an incendiary exaggeration by the political opposition.

After reviewing CCTV footage and interviewing widely, authorities found no evidence that Woodhouse’s homeless man existed.

The media’s claims of systemic failings at managed isolation facilities began to look more like isolated instances, blown out of proportion. Numerous returning Kiwis said that the facilities were well run.

A month on, and with tens of thousands of tests conducted, there is no evidence that the virus has reseeded in, let alone spread throughout, the community.

The inescapable conclusion is that the media willingly colluded with the opposition’s attack lines, relying on the fear and scandal that generated to attract eyeballs – clickbait.

Dirty politics

On the first weekend of July, the personal details of COVID-19 patients at the country’s border facilities were leaked to multiple media organisations. The opposition leader, Muller, framed this serious breach of privacy as another example of government incompetence.

“It talks to a government that’s slipping off the side of a cliff, in terms of managing this issue, the border, the information pertaining to it,” said Muller.

“These guys need to step aside and let a competent government take over,” he added.

However, Muller’s party on Tuesday admitted that it was behind the leak.

National MP Hamish Walker had engineered it, using information allegedly obtained by a former party head, Michelle Boag. Walker had recently attempted to stir-up racist sentiment towards New Zealanders returning from India and Pakistan.

Will the media hold the National Party to account?

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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zarafoodrecipe · 7 years ago

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Equality at last: Mardi Gras marches to the sound of a new drum

Theres a very different vibe now that we have marriage equality, said Alex Greenwich, the state MP who played a pivotal role in the long campaign for marriage equality. People are marching with more confidence this year than ever before. But getting marriage equality across the line has also cleared the air for other queer issues to get the oxygen they deserve, Mr Greenwich said, such as rights and respect for transgender people. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who was cheered by fans as he watched the parade from outside the Courthouse Hotel, told the Herald he had received a very warm reception. You know, Im still the only Prime Minister to go to Mardi Gras, he said. I reckon therell be a few more. Mardi Gras has been about equality and respect for all of its 40 years. And theres been so much change in those 40 years, and there was the final issue of marriage equality, and we got it done, and we got it done as a nation, and we all had a say, and we said yes. The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in 2018. Photo: James BrickwoodMr Turnbull also noted it was 40 years since his first date with his wife Lucy. But amid the celebrations of marriage equality there was lingering resentment over last years divisive postal survey, which asked Australians to vote on whether same-sex relationships were of equal worth. The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in 2018. Photo: James BrickwoodPhilip Busfield, 56, marched with a group called Punk Livid - punk because it was big in 1978, and livid because of the plebiscite, he said. Im still angry. And Indigenous Australians, marching at the head of this years parade, were equally mindful of the challenges that lie ahead to achieve true equality. American singer Cher at the Sydney Mardi Gras. Photo: James BrickwoodIts a big honour ... just to get the message out there that its okay to be gay, said Nev Bloomfield, marching for the first time with his sister Bonita in the First Nations float. Steve Symonds, one of two hundred 78ers who marched in the parade this year, said he was thrilled at the progress made since that violent night when the police stopped the party. But of course, marriage isnt for everyone. Loading I think its great people can get married, says William Sergeant, in hot pink pants and a mesh shirt inside the 78ers bus. I must say, Im an unreconstructed 1970s gay liberationist. Gay liberation was about different ways of living and loving, not monotonous coupledom. Organisers estimated 300,000 spectators turned out to watch the 40th Sydney Mardi Gras parade, including septuagenarians Kay Lehmann and Ray Grimshaw, straight friends from the central coast, who have been coming to watch the parade since the early 1980s. They camped outside the Burdekin Hotel, their favourite spot, in the hot Sydney sun from 2pm. I think its important all age groups are represented here, said Ms Lehmann, 73. Its extremely important for those people who have been vilified for so many years. I just think this is one of the most happiest events that happens in this country. Comments disabled

Michael Koziol is the immigration and legal affairs reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based in Parliament House Morning & Afternoon NewsletterDelivered MonFri. https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/equality-at-last-mardi-gras-marches-to-the-sound-of-a-new-drum-20180303-p4z2ox.html?utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_national_nsw

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