Russell Brown

@publicaddress.bsky.social

5808 Followers 780 Following

Journalist, rider of bikes, cooker of food, seeker of joy. Dad-DJ. Cosmopolitan.

The story I tell about my father takes place in 1976, the year I failed to make the Burnside Under 14 Open A team, and also my best year in rugby. Without the numbers to make up a B team that year, I was one of a group of stragglers bumped up to the Under 15 Under 8-Stone grade, which was in a similar position. Along with their stragglers, we made up a team. We were the only B team in an A competition and we didn’t win a game all season. For me personally, it was magnificent. Having laboured away in the front row every other season, I was made No 8 and captain. I roamed the field like one of my rugby heroes. But the one thing I couldn’t quite do was score a try. I’d be held up just short, or chase my own kick downfield only to see it take an off-break into touch.
The complainant said the comments had been “personal attacks”, “ridiculing” and “abusive”. The complainant - whose name cannot be published because of a court order - believed the posts had breached the Harmful Digital Communications Act. “Netsafe has completed their investigations and assessed the complaint against: (a) Principal 4 – a digital communication should not be indecent or obscene [and] (b) Principal 5 – a digital communication should not be used to harass an individual," said the judge. “Having read the posts complained of, it is clear that the applicant has established a breach of those communication principles on an interim basis.” The complainant had set out in their affidavit “the significant personal emotional distress” that they had suffered, said the judge in her interim decision.
We returned to the produce market for green chillis, beefsteak tomatoes, kiwifruit and curry leaves. The lanes were thronged and chaotic, but that's what you go there for. The pulse of the place is that of Auckland itself, in all its wild multiplicity. I hope the local board and the business association succeed in persuading the greater powers that the market must always have a home. I hope it doesn't all default to the risk-free banality of the same old comercial developer model. We need houses, but we also need spaces to gather, trade and see and hear each other. Anyway, to answer your question, no, I have no idea where I'm going to put all those plates.