Moving boxes again!?!

February 12, 2013 By

006This is just a quick note to let you know what is happening in my life and the life of my family this year which may be a shock to some of you especially if you know us personally.

It all started in November last year when a group my business was contracting to decided to not renew my contract. This has left me without a serious percentage of our income for 2013. Now I have already explained that this is how radio works, I don’t have a problem with the decision but the downstream effects on my family are financially severe to say the least.

We went from losing perhaps 80% of our company income to spending a lot of money finishing and launching our new venture elephantTV in the space of just a few weeks. This has left us with a fantastic product (which you can download from here), but scarce reserves.

So as of last Sunday we have decided, or maybe I should say it has been decided for us, that we need to leave Auckland as we cannot service our mortgage currently. Luckily we have access to a family bach down country (with no phone or internet!!!!!) and friends who live locally who need a place for 3 or 4 months while their house gets renovated.

I had a friend say to me today that I appear to be taking this very lightly, well there is a silver lining with most clouds and with this one the upside would appear to be Idoya has come to the realisation that this will be a perfect time to finish her first novel, and given the minimum time frame we will be away, in a place with no distractions, we have decided to reverse roles somewhat where I become a bit of a house husband and her new job of ‘X’ hours per day will be writing.

So that’s us, for those of you who know me personally I have no idea what my contact details come next Monday, what and how we will be contactable…but I’ll let you know. And for those of you who don’t know me personally but have been a part of my life through Facebook, radio, this blog or ‘other’ I’ll be around from time-to-time, and am sure I’ll be able to use my phone to access twitter and facebook if nothing else.

So we are off on a bit of a forced adventure, we may look back at the upcoming few months and realise that it was the best thing for us, we may not, but as I said this morning when a certainty is thrust upon you there is no real reason to fight it, or get angry…it’s called life and you roll with the punches.

If not before I hope to see you all in June…for my 40th ;o)

Filed Under: My Life Tagged With:

Public Statement about leaving Rhema

November 30, 2012 By

On Wednesday of last week I was informed that the Rhema Broadcasting Group would not be renewing Pat Brittenden Mornings for 2013. I was also informed that I personally would not be required for the new incarnation of the 9am to midday show.

From the outset I have always said that as a contractor to RBG that I may, or may not be required at the end of my current contract.

It has been clear since new radio management took over in the last few months that a talk product was not the desired direction in 2013 and last week the decision to move away from talk and back to a yet-to-be-finalised music product aimed at the Christian market was made official.

In the period leading up to that official decision I made it clear to management that I was prepared to look at working with RBG on a music format radio show as many of my 15,000 plus hours on New Zealand airwaves have been working in music along with, in later years, focusing on talk-radio but this offer was not accepted.

I want you to know that this is not a mutual decision, I made it clear that I was available in 2013 should RBG want to use me either in the current form, or in a new style show. They did not.

I hold no hard feelings about the decision, I made the offer to be a contractor at the start of the year, I negotiated the idea of being a contractor rather than an employee and this is one of the pitfalls of that decision.

I also want to state publicly that I am saddened that Rhema has decided to move away from the talk product, I think moving back towards a music product will make for a weaker overall station and will somewhat silence, good intelligent debate and challenging conversations and opinions that not only the church, but society needs to hear. The idea of steel sharpening steel has always been my desire no matter where I was working, it was no different at Rhema. In saying that I again acknowledge that it is RBG’s prerogative to do so, and accept the decision with no animosity and I do genuinely desire to see RBG succeed in everything she does.

I have potentially some very exciting opportunities lining up for 2013 including the television series I have been working on, elephantTV, the media and marketing business that my wife and I run and a couple of other things that need to remain a little more ‘under the radar’ at the moment. I will say as of today I have no other radio opportunities lined up and don’t know if you’ll hear me somewhere else in NZ…or not.

I wanted to put this in writing so as to dismiss any rumour or confusion as to why I have moved on from Rhema. There is nothing worse than the listener of a radio station not knowing what has happened to the host they built a relationship with over a period of time. You may hear rumours of survey results or money, I do not believe these are the main reason for the non-renewal. I believe it simply comes down to not fitting in with the picture or future direction of the station that the new radio management has, a bit of a square peg in a round hole, and that’s okay for those who haven’t worked in radio that’s what happens. A new style comes with a new management and you either fit, or you don’t.

I want to acknowledge the RBG Executive and Board for taking a risk on an announcer who was ‘the most complained about host on Newstalk ZB‘ and pay special credit to Terry Cobham who fought to have me in the building. Also to my executive producer, the back bone of the show, the woman whom I call the ‘CEO’ of Pat Brittenden Mornings, Nerida Ashcroft, what can I say other than “thanks…it’s been a blast!“

My expectation as of today is to work out my contract which finishes on December 21st, I look forward to a fun three weeks of broadcasting as we lead up to Christmas and I wish New Zealand’s Rhema all the best for 2013 and hope that I can be involved with her at some stage again on some level.

I would very much like to hear from you if you are a listener of Rhema in the next three weeks, we will be doing a lot of Christmas talkback so hopefully you can join in.

If you would like to keep up with my exciting life in 2013 you can follow me here (I promise to get back into writing), or my facebook page, or twitter account.

Pat

UPDATE, Friday 30/11, 3.18pm

I am now at home after a brief chat with my boss. I need to amend part of the above post to say that I am now finished at Rhema. When I was told last week that the show would not be renewed I immediately asked for what the radio industry calls ‘gardening leave’ which basically means you wrap up on air immediately but are technically still employed by the business. I asked my immediate manager, and a manager higher up the food chain and was declined, but today I have been told that that option is where Rhema wants to go.

I am sorry to miss you people who listen to me and not to be able to wrap up the year together, but this is a standard way to finish a contract not being renewed and it means I can look to 2013 and figure out how to ‘pay the bills’ etc…

I have been told by a manager that there are some inaccuracies in the above post, and have offered to change those inaccuracies if they are pointed out to me. My offer was declined and when I asked what was wrong in the post I was told, “it doesn’t matter now, it’s done.” I still make the offer that if I have made an inaccurate statement in the above post, please let me know and I am happy to correct it.

Again let me finish by saying that I am not upset, angry or annoyed with this outcome. I accept that RBG has the right to change direction, and whilst mine, and many other opinions may not agree with the directional change, it’s the right of the group to do so.

Again I say all the best to my colleagues at Rhema, and I do wish all the best for 2013 and beyond.

Filed Under: 2013, elephantTV, Employment, Radio, Rhema Tagged With: , ,

No wonder he was so grumpy today

March 16, 2012 By

I was at Car-fe today, if you are not aware it’s Matthew Ridge’s business and c an I say from a business model it is an awesome investment. I counted I think 40 cars that had either been cleaned, were being cleaned or were waiting to be cleaned…and that was only over an hour or so, Cha-ching!

I paid $60 for what the call ‘New Car’ and I have to say the outside looked great, probably about as good as you could get it looking…however the inside certainly did not look ‘new car’. There was plenty of vacuum-able grit/dirt left under the seats which was visible and the surfaces were only lightly wiped over. Outside great…inside average so maybe a ‘B’ grade…but probably not worth $60…if it was done to ‘New Car’ standard then it definitely would be worth the money.

Matthew was there rushing around the vehicles huffing and puffing, seeming a little gruff. I don’t know whether this is his usual business practice or if he was having a bad day and then I saw this article on stuff.co.nz.

It would appear sadly that his little girl and sporting superstar SBW have called it quits. As a dad it must be hard to have your little girl’s relationship splashed all over the papers…sheesh I wouldn’t want it.

I just wonder now if he was a little more distracted than he would be on any other day.

Filed Under: Car-fe, Matthew Ridge, Vehicle Tagged With: , ,

Ideology versus intelligent debate

March 16, 2012 By

It’s been fascinating to watch the small (let’s be honest…very small) ripple of the Cameron Slater/Helen Kelly post I wrote yesterday and I’ve be really interested in how people have pigeon holed me and cast aspersions on my character and decided what kind of person I am.

I think it’s a case of ideology versus intelligent debate.

If you are an ideologue, I think the chances of reasoned debate is diminished as all you can see is the conversation from your side…now that makes sense but any intelligent person will tell you that ‘your side’ is not always going to be right…logic dictates that sometimes it will be in the wrong. Therefore if you support ‘your side’ 100%, you are sometimes supporting the side who is wrong.

Let me take a step backwards.

I have written several posts about Union issues in the past couple of years, sometimes supporting them as in the NZEI case for National Standards (so much so that the NZEI put my post on their website for others to read) and sometimes not supportive of them as in the Ports dispute right now. After the NZEI post I was called a ‘Socialist’, ‘a leftie loon’ and ‘the mouth piece of Helen Clarke’, after the Ports piece I have been called a…well lets have a look at that.

On Kiwiblog in and amongst the comments here are some thoughts…apparently I am “not the brightest light on the Xmas tree” or thoughts that maybe I was “dishonest”. I also started my last post with a statement of not being anti-union, that has been compared to someone saying “I am not racist…but I hate Maori”

So far my favourite response has come from one time colleague Martyn ‘Bomber’ Bradbury. You see I am a microscopic fish in the world of blogging so sometimes when I write a post I also send an email to some ‘colleagues’ to let them know what I have just posted about. It’s kind of like prostituting myself looking for more hits as a pay off. I did this last night after my most recent post and got these responses from Martyn via email.

actually after reading this, I defriended you from Facebook, having an opinion is one thing Pat, being cameron slaters bitch is another thing. What a load of anti-union hysterical bullshit. You are well on your way to being a rednecked talkback host. Congratulations.

Followed 60 seconds later by this one.

when you do evil Pat, people tend to notice. Giving slater time after he’s being paid by PoA is pretty dirty though isn’t it?

I email him to wish him well for the future seeing as we were no longer ‘friends’ and may have just mentioned that it was a shame that the week before when we asked him to come on and put his perspective to one of these issues he wouldn’t respond to us to which he again responded.

I would have zero interest in being on right wing christian radio Patty and my advice to the Union movement would be to bypass it as well.

Again followed 60 seconds later by this one.

Oh and btw – stop sending me this unsolicited right wing Christian crap.

When I supported Martyn over his fallout with Radio NZ he was happy to receive my ‘crap’, when I wrote the piece about the NZEI he was happy to receive my ‘crap’, when he saw me on TVNZ talking politics he was happy to send me ‘crap’ congratulating me on the show and when he heard me on ZB and facebooked me congratulating me on my content one can only assume he was happy to allow my ‘crap’ to flow in his ears…but not now. Not now that my latest ‘crap’ doesn’t all of a sudden fit with his ideological narrative…now we cannot be FB friends

I don’t mean to pick on Bomber in this, I like him, always have, still do and probably always will, my wife knows him a little bit from University days and she likes him too but it’s a good example of how ideology gets in the way of intelligent debate, I am not anti-union…I am anti how this union is handling this one industrial action, period.

Today on my talkback show I stood up for the PSA…wait for it…a union. I back them in their claims that John Key has broken his promise about job losses. I agree, he is in the wrong and I support them in that. I support the Rest Home Workers Union…you guys should be getting paid ten times what you are for the work you do.

But an ideologue cannot see the wood for the trees, an ideologue cannot reason that an intelligent person can look at an issue and make an independent assessment of that issue…which may, or may not be parallel to whom they supported last time and I think this is what gets debate de-railed 90% of the time in NZ as it’s the ideologues who write the blogs, who comment on the radio, who write the speeches, who tell you what to think.

I like ‘em all, I have no beef with anyone of them, it just saddens me that those of us that you could justifiably call centrist are not the ones pulling the big audiences on air, in print, or on telly as we are not controversial enough…until we disagree with an ideologue.

UPDATE: A response from WhaleOil to Bombers emails

Pat, a point of clarification. I know you didn’t say it but Bomber has done so.

I am not, nor have ever been paid by POAL or anyone associated with them in any manner, either in kind or in cash for my posts about the Ports dispute.

I have simply verified and reported facts as they came to light. I in no way hold you responsible for Martyn Bradbury’s defamation. I certainly do not wish you to take it down.

I want people to see it, together with my outright rejection of his lies.

My apologies to Cameron to not have already putting some kind of disclaimer in amongst Bombers email

Filed Under: Cameron Slater, David Farrar, Debate, Ideology, Kiwiblog, Union, WhaleOil Tagged With: , ,

The greatest invention in the history of mankind!

January 13, 2012 By

So who is it?

Have you heard of Leonardo Da Vinci, Alexander Graham Bell,  Thomas Edison and Archimedes? All morons compared to the inventor of what I saw the other day!

I don’t know the name of the person, or people, who are responsible for this invention but they should get some kind of ‘greatest inventor ever’ award.

If you haven’t seen these yet, when you see them and use them…you will agree with me.

I’m talking about the indicator lights at Auckland’s Civic Carpark, if the light is red, there is a car in the spot, if it is green, it’s free.

The greatest invention ever...car park indicator lights

Now for those people who do not frequent large parking buildings you’ll be wondering what all the hubbub is all about, trust me, to be able to look down a line of parked  cars and see one free space before turning in…is orgasmic.

Just see how easy it is here to spot a free park by the green lights.

I can see a spare park or two!

Whoever you are that thought of this idea, I salute you!

And for you green eyed parkers who are out there now thinking, “Why don’t I have these at my parking building?” I can only say “nah-nah-na-nah-nahh!”

Filed Under: Parking, Traffic Tagged With:

A New Year, A New Life, A New Blog…part deux

January 10, 2012 By

Well one week ago I started this new blog and just wanted to say thanks to all those who have jumped on and had a look, who have made comments and who have started following my writings.

In the first seven days I have nearly 4,000 visits which is very small compared to places like Kiwiblog and Whaleoil, but it’s a start and I am hoping together we can make something of this community and continue the conversations that some of us have been having on Newstalk ZB for the last 5 years.

My objective for the blog is to make it more interactive with more opinion by you than perhaps other blogs, this will hopefully be more of a conversation between many people, rather than you coming here and reading just my ramblings.

I hope you participate and thanks again for visiting :)

Pat

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With:

One clever pussy

January 9, 2012 By

Never really seen the need for pets, but if the cat can keep catching these pests we’ll keep her on

Luckily the girls are not home as the ‘screaming’ by the rabbit as the cat ‘choked him out’ on the kitchen floor may have disturbed them :)

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With:

What’s in a blog?

January 6, 2012 By

Since my post yesterday about people leaving Christchurch I have been thinking long and hard about what I want in this blog…and I’d like your thoughts.

One thing I find hugely annoying about blogs is that 99% of those that reply to the notions set before them, those that comment on the blogs, seem more to be fans than contributors, I’d love this place to be somewhere we can discuss different points of view, and disagree with each other. As long as it’s respectful I don’t have a problem with opposing positions.

I enjoyed all the comments from yesterdays post, when I was doing talkback it was the differing opinions that made the show interesting…there’d be nothing worse than people agreeing with each other all the time.

If you listened to me on Newstalk ZB you’ll already know this, but for those who have found me subsequently to my departure I love politics, religion and issues that are unique to NZ. I imagine I’ll be writing about those things frequently here and I hope you participate, both if you agree…and disagree with me and others who reply.

Please feel free to write anything that comes to mind in the comments section of this post about what you’d like to read about to make you a regular visitor…I’d like to know.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With:

The Internet…a human right?

January 3, 2012 By

Someone asked me the question once which was if internet access was a ‘human right’…I thought then that it probably wasn’t…yet…but within a very short space of time, when everything has gone digital, newspapers no longer exist and all our ‘television’ comes through a fibre optic cable to our front door…then it probably will be.

Having made the decision that currently internet isn’t a human right it still leaves me in an interesting situation. You see I am in one of those areas of Auckland that doesn’t get broadband. Yes I have internet (if you can call it that), it’s a local Wireless signal that someone looking for a solution from dial-up basically sorted themselves. I really appreciate it, but it’s the equivalent of less than a one meg line. It is far superior to dial-up…but way inferior to cable based broadband so we are looking forward to the day that we get plain old broadband to our front door. And that’s where my saga begins.

We had some telephone lines installed into our new property, the guy from Chorus was really helpful and friendly, he actually told us about how the fibre optic ‘thrusting’ was going. We were told that it needed to be at the settlement past us, which is about 5 – 10 kms away, but the end of the year or else Chorus would face a $250,000 penalty for a breach of contractual agreement. We were pretty happy to hear this, we thought we may only have to have this below-average internet connection until the end of the year.

So come October/November I started to make some enquires to get ready to have our broadband finally come into the 21st century.

I phoned Chorus, but they couldn’t confirm where each of their teams were, and how long they had to go on a job. Chorus also told me that the only people who could tell me if the upgrade had been complete was my own ISP. Apparently Chorus head office doesn’t communicate with their teams as to when they are finished jobs…or so I was led to believe…I guess the other possibility is that they are full of it, and didn’t want to help this minor consumer of their product…but I’m sure that wouldn’t be the case.

“Alright,” I thought,  I phoned my ISP. In other words I phoned an ISP looking for a new connection…well to be truthful, I phoned a couple of ISP’s to see if they could tell me if the job was complete and that broadband was on. If the connection was active, then I’d like to get a connection. See that’s how I thought this would work…logically…you tell me if you have the product, then I will decide if I want to buy it from you…but ‘No!’

What happens in the world of ISPs is that you need to sign up for a package, then they will check to see if the exchange is ready for you to receive broadband.

I phoned Telecom, Vodafone, Orcon and others, and they all told me the same thing…“you sign on the bottom line, then we’ll tell you if we can help you.”

To be honest I hadn’t decided with whom I wanted to go last year so I left it…until yesterday.

I phoned back Telecom, thinking that at least they are connected with Chorus, and maybe they can now give me some more information…alas I was wrong. When I heard the accent straight out of the Philippines I knew I was in trouble straight away, no local knowledge, and certainly no way to speak with someone on a one-to-one level. Speaking with an international call centre when it comes to the responses one receives and ability to relate to an average Kiwi is only one step above speaking to an automated answer machine. I don’t mean that in a derogatory way to the lovely lady at the end of the phone, but sometimes you need someone in your region to be able to understand that you need to go outside the script to answer this question. We came to the same answer where if I chose a plan they would go and check and again I declined mostly because the Telecom plans seemed quite expensive to me. About an hour later the same delightful lady phoned me back just to check that I didn’t want to sign up…because if I didn’t I might miss out. Again I declined…she asked me if I wanted her to phone back when I’d had more of a chance to think about it, so I asked, “You want to phone me back, and when you do I’ll need to select a plan so you can then go and check if the exchange can service me”, to which the reply was “Yes!”…”then no thank you, I don’t want you to phone me back.”

I don’t know when we will get broadband into our property, when we do I’ll let you know but having to use this frightfully slow wireless connection, that doesn’t play video, that won’t let our phones or tablet connect to APP stores, and that cuts out in bad weather I have to say after six months I know think that internet is, and should be a human right…well at least this human’s right.

Filed Under: Internet, Orcon, Technology, Telecom, Vodafone Tagged With: ,
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