The Biz could not imagine an individual less likely to flirt with political revolutionary chic. But there she was, Telecom head Theresa Gattung doing the opening spiel for a movie on that well-known Communist and guerilla leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara.
The film was The Motorcycle Diaries, the story of a mind-expanding
trip by Che and Alberto Granado through Latin America in 1952.
The goody bag for guests at the opening of the Telecom-sponsored International Film Festival in Auckland on Friday included a notebook with a motorcycle design on the cover, presumably for guests to record their very own revolutionary thoughts.
Alas, poor Che. His image has survived T-shirts, posters, coffee mugs and baseball caps - but adoption as a Telecom poodle?
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Why the long face, John? Auckland mayor John Banks remained resolutely grim during a junket to San Francisco. At a dinner in the salubrious Victor's Palace on floor 32 of the Westin St Francis Hotel, comedian Darryl Lovegrove prompted guests to wave their napkins in the air. All did, bar Banksie. And when Lovegrove's cheeky operatic routine involved getting cosy with Banks' pate ... not even the slightest hint of a smile.
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The Biz is always glad to get tips from the top. So we were delighted when NZX chief Mark Weldon pointed out an anomaly in the Weekend Herald sharemarket tables: the use of the term "Alternative Market".
He said the NZAX had "never been called the Alternative Market" and he did not know where the name had come from.
Er ... maybe from the explicit branding by NZX that sees the NZAX logo accompanied by precisely those words?
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The European Union knows how many cows graze its fields but not the number of citizens in the 25 member states, according to the chief statistician. Reuters reports comments from Michel Vanden Abeele, director-general of statistics agency Eurostat, to Belgian newspaper L'Echo.
"Because of the mad cow disease crisis, we know the exact number of cattle in Europe. By contrast we can't give the precise number of people who live in the European Union." In case you're wondering: at last count, 80,587,601 cows.
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