candela

another whirlwind weekend! saturday night i attended the radio awards in auckland. as i've mentioned before, community radio hamilton was nominated for three awards. unfortunately, two were competing each other in the same category. but congratulations to luis and mauricio, a couple of lovely latino guys who won the award for "best ethnic and access non-english non-maori award" (what an awful name for a category!) for their weekly show, candela. totally well deserved.

also glad to see mark bunting from the waikato win an award (best regional breakfast host i think). not that i ever listen to him, but hey, gotta support the locals! and i'm desperately hoping mr bunting will defeat gary mallett (president of ACT) for the WEL energy trust elections. mr mallett has consistently stood on a ticket of power rebates rather than grants to community organisations. while i appreciate the high cost of power, and that many families are hurting now and do need those discounts, on the other hand there are some amazing community service organisations out there who absolutely depend on grant money to provide crucial services. it is of course possible to do both ie provide rebates and community grants, but i think we need a better mix than is being provided now. WEL energy also should be putting money towards energy efficiency initiatives (which really will help get those power bills down), but that ain't gonna happen with mr mallett at the helm. so go bunty, you've got my support!

back to the awards, and i saw simon barnett walk past. i felt so sorely tempted to give him a good, hard slap on the cheek and say "that was a loving smack, darling. i do hope you feel disciplined". but no, i kept my itching palms under control, and let him walk past in peace. aren't i good?

and of course, mr "cheeky darky" himself got a special "services to broadcasting" award. i know it's wrong of me to judge a whole career on just one incident, and i know he apologised, but i really find it hard to drum up respect for mr holmes. and it sounded from his speech like he was one of the first people to bring talkback radio to this country. i'm not sure that it something we reall want to celebrate...


i then had three events on sunday, and have had a meeting and a late training session today, aside from work as well. and my daughter now has a full leg cast, just to make my life that much more interesting. but i'm planning to have a much quieter week, so hopefully will be blogging on more serious issues from tomorrow. but, if you're interested, here's something worth reading about muslim women scholars, which was sent to me today (hat tip: t farrath). it mirrors some research i was sent a few years ago, when i was preparing a speech for a conference. i'll do a separate post some day about women studying theology, because i think it's a crucially important issue.