Why you should write for Squidoo (If you enjoy ulcers)

In my last, rather aggrieved, post about Squidoo, I said: "don't put content there if you care about".

I figured it was worth expanding on that. I don't mean don't put anything there, but:

1. Don't expect to earn decent income. Earnings have crashed hugely, and for many, many reasons, I do not expect it to turn around (certainly no sooner than any other article writing site might manage to climb up). It has long passed the window of opportunity and good will, and has removed or driven off or generally discouraged most of it's more serious writers. Those still on the site have generally pulled back, or are actively diversifying (as I was last year). 

Squidoo is also increasingly focussing on farming enthusiastic newbies, and denigrating the 'work for money' aspect. They were started out as a place where you could theoretically earn a living, and now utterly deny those roots. This is clearly not a supportive, or transparent, environment for earning money, and they have been actively negative and obstructive when the question of earnings comes up. They have been encouraging the idea that people are lucky to write for them - at this rate, they'll be encouraging writing for charity, or paying for exposure.

Actually, at least one of their recent initiatives (from last time I paid any attention), did not earn any money at all, something which was carefully omitted when hyping it up. 

2. Don't put anything up if you are invested in getting it published, as you will run into problems and spend far too many hours trying to get one thing published, only to see it automatically locked for an unknown reason. This will be exhausting, emotionally draining, and not financially worth it. I saw so many people get caught up in the hamster wheel of these, and resolved just not to bother when it was my turn (I did hit a fair few filters that I usually just waited out, because I knew my content was either good, or not worth the effort. They usually ended up being adjusted eventually. This has happened less and less, though, as the filters get more unreasonable - they were generally of the 'can't republish' kind, not the 'locked!!' kind).

The support team is great - IF you ever get a reply. But mostly you won't, and if you do, it is often so late that it is no longer applicable. The only way to actually get help is to contact a named and known HQ member directly (something you are not supposed to, and should not have to, do). That can randomly get you instant help. Locked lenses, the worst scenario of all, generate the worst response rate - probably because they are locking SO MANY, and don't want to acknowledge that most are wrong. They would rather you frantically rewrite and republish until you trick it into working from your end (or delete and create a new page, which will get locked for duplicate content - many of the flags can be caused by things outside of your control (e.g. someone copying your content), or are unable to magically 'know' or are appropriate on a variable basis and not a reliable indication of good or bad content (such as keyword density!).

3. Don't put serious content there (e.g. major money makers, articles you care a lot about, stuff you want to link to and build on), or expect it to be somewhere you can invest a chunk of time into and then move on.

- Squidoo is now focussed on 'lite' content, and rewards churning that out. Write a pretty piece with gushing and 'personalisation', then move on. 

- Squidoo is hugely unreliable as a host now. So if you want to rely on your work a) earning, or b) remaining accessible and fully readable (entire chunks of content and code can vanish forever when they "improve" things. They do not seem to believe in beta testing, or warning people in advance).

- Squidoo is weighted towards constant engagement and hugely penalises disengaged writers. If you don't stay 'active', you will fall behind and your account will be penalised in various ways. It will become extremely difficult to catch up and fix everything that happens. Among other things, you have to update lenses regularly to get a freshness boost, and they have started shifting a lot of activity to Facebook and social media. Featured work tends to be from people who interact with the specific staff that feature things. That's not even touching on the vast rate of changes in the rules for content and behaviour, and the technical side of things.

- they have frequent 'Squidoo surprises' (sudden new initiatives, overhauls or 'fixes' that are rarely, or never pre-announced, and tend to have a very major, often unforeseen and negative, effect on existing content). They also tend to favour new projects over old, yet proven, approaches, often at the expense of existing content. These projects are frequently abandoned, so most people learn not to throw too much effort into them. In fact, Squidoo prefers to just move on from problems in general, rather than analysing what went wrong and investing the time and resources needed to make it work.

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To anyone wondering: Right Click > Save As is the best way to save any webpage (sadly a lot of the modules don’t load, or are outright broken, so I don’t get that content, but I can’t be bothered rescuing it all).

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A bit more ranting (a lot of it just covers the same points as above, but I've written it all so I WILL POST IT DAMNIT):

My ABOUT PAGE got locked too! That page, and my original ArtRage tutorial page, were my very first lenses on Squidoo, back in 2008. And both were locked in the last month. Meh. It’s just blatantly obvious that it’s completely automated and off the rails.

I’m also sad about the Amnesty posters page (free resources). And the Wear the Lilac (Alzheimer’s Disease/Pratchett day) lens, especially as that’s only a month away. I donated all the money from those and they were as far from spam or sales pages as you can get.

One of the most exasperating things is that it has no correlation at all to any of their many overly restrictive filters, warning systems and guides. I have been ignoring all those things for a year while people panic, because they DO NOT affect whether or not you will survive. And they won’t admit that and save everyone the stress, because then what is the point of all the rules and flags and warnings?

It is a completely 180 from the site ideal when I started: write stuff and we’ll leave you alone. Sure, they were inundated with spam (which was mostly dealt with by ignoring it, which didn’t work, but at least it wasn’t actively hurting the writers), but freedom to experiment, and the idea of your content being YOURS, was a major part of the site. And I did experiment, widely.

Now, everyone is being shoehorned into a very specific, rather vapid, feel good niche, based on either the preferences of the most active staff or a very rigid interpretation of their userbase/earnings stats. Plus a lot of blind panic over their Google status. Not only where there huge, mass, often badly decided, deletions (some were fair, but many were not, and most had little warning and no way of resolving issues) and a constantly changing churn of “fixed” modules, new rules, new filters, new “suggestions”, more new automated restrictions… 

...and no increase in support staff, and no acknowledgement that concerns were valid (let’s not even touch on closing the well used forums and banning people who asked questions on their blogs in anything they considered a ‘mean way’. Including me, and people who never even actually posted there. Anytime people start shutting out criticism that hard is a very, very clear sign that the ship is sinking. Or even if it isn’t, it will sooner or later, because the culture has become deeply unhealthy. Criticism doesn’t have to be LISTENED to, but trying to legislate and intimidate it away is a very, very, very bad sign). 

It can be literally impossible now to publish something without having to fight and research to figure out how to trick a filter (when I hit those, I just refused to publish something until the filter was relaxed). The site was becoming almost unusable. And unsurprisingly, earnings crashed. And along with that, the concept of ‘writing for money’ became increasingly vilified, encouraging endless content production for the sake of attention and temporary acknowledgement, and a steady stream of pointless awards and features. 

Another sign of bad design is the huge shift towards needing to be very active just to try and stay in place. There are too many broken things about the site to be able to leave it. And they decided to make that a ‘feature’, pushing for an involved fanbase (yes, fanbase. Not writers, or members. They want a fanbase).

…and I haven’t even looked at the site more than twice in the last four months, other than to visit a page I used to use as a bookmarks page. And it’s easy to see that it’s still doing all the same things.

Bah. I have a LOT of Stuff saved up. It may all come out as an analysis of What Went Wrong, along with the rant about Stuff In General (including the weird and unprofessional and incredibly rude message I got when I was banned from commenting there which I was too furious to write about at the time, and helped me decide to just walk away).

This is also why I haven't posted since mid-last year. Even when I was still around, I had too much to say and none of it good, so I didn't want to start. At least until I was sure. But now? Now all the stuff I was expecting has happened, and they haven't recovered and fixed things. NOW I CAN RANT.

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On the plus side, I now work in tech support and social media, and Squidoo has given me all these awesome lessons on What Not To Do. I get to pull out these tech/customer service horror stories to entertain my coworkers and I have insight into how it felt on the other side.

And finally... Damnit! This is why I was avoiding internet stuff! I knew I had all these thoughts and all this news to catch up on, and now I've started writing huge posts, and then I'll have to go catch up on other sites, and update content and see how many usernames I remember AND I WILL FALL INTO THE ETERNAL PIT OF DOOM.

Plus, my internet email is bursting. I'm a bad person >.>

Moving on from Squidoo

Apparently Squidoo has arbitrarily locked/deleted over a hundred of my articles, including most of my art 'gallery' pages, my art commissions page, pretty much all the LGBTQIA stuff, my zoo photography (one of which was once featured on their front page), my bird sketches article, most of my fandom pages (e.g. Mother Gothel - I had several lenses on her!), pretty much anything about a collectible, my lens rounding up Brony fandom songs, my Squidoo tutorials, my basic HTML tutorial, some of my how to costume lenses, pages on people like Dylan Moran, my huge page on Utena, my colouring page guides (to my own drawings), a cake recipe, some of my geeky gift guide stuff, and pretty much ALL my tutorials and pages about ArtRage. Some of them were dead pages, others got regular traffic and sales. And hey, I lose all the money from them! How nice!

I discovered some of this last time I logged in during Feb, sent them an email as per their instructions (after backing everything up!) and never received a reply. Looking at the dates, it appeared that someone came back a few days later and just kept locking stuff.

I don't have the energy to hunt through a hundred blog posts, comments and forum threads to piece together the exact latest glitch or filter or idealogy that caused me to lose my stuff. And to be honest, I shouldn't have to. 

Anyway, I assume that the stupid mess they made of things last year has FINALLY reached me (I think I was one of the only people with more than 50 pages who wasn't affected, so it's not as if I'm this crazy spammer who was writing outside the rules). I am SO GLAD I have been taking the last few months off to see if they sorted things out or not. Because obviously they haven't. They haven't fixed the automatic lockings based on unknown triggers (or else they locked my stuff on purpose?). They haven't fixed the system in which you try and get your stuff pardoned (no response. In over two months from that original email. I'm not even bothering this time - it's probably too late anyway). No solution for the fact it's impossible to "fix" 100+ pages in the week or two you are given (it doesn't always match the email warning either). And no clue whatsoever as to how to fix it other than the most generic things that I have not run into before in four plus years in the same old rote email.

I don't really care anymore. I'm actually glad my good writing isn't on their site, earning them money. The earnings from Squidoo have crashed and crashed and crashed, and writing for them and trusting them has gotten harder and harder, so I walked away emotionally a while a go. Now I just have to try and find time to repost stuff on my other sites (which are doing just fine, thank you, despite being mostly ignored as well. THEY don't have tantrums and randomly delete stuff to get my attention).

Anyway, if anyone out there is wondering why my pages have vanished or there is a message about how it got locked for something: Squidoo be inept and untrustworthy. Don't put content there if you care about it (expanded on here).

Most of my Squidoo stuff was being moved to the following sites anyway (all relatively neglected for a while, cause internet is not something I have had time for lately. Finishing off a qualification and starting my first full time job in the same week, then moving house, means I haven't really had a break for the last few months. And I still have carpal tunnel issues, so I'm avoiding any place I might end up accidentally typing giant essays. Like this post! Or have to edit lots of fiddly code, or go in and out of modules that I can't dictate at, like Squidoo was). 

Ahem. Anyway. Niche sites:

http://fandomfemslash.blogspot.com/
http://wearthelilac.blogspot.com/ (they deleted my Wear the Lilac Day lens! AARGH).
http://geeky-gifts.blogspot.com/
http://robinhoodfilms.blogspot.com/
http://rainbowreads.blogspot.com/
http://colouring-page-art.blogspot.com/

And with that, I finally move on to the next stage of internet life. In many ways, it was my student job. Now I have a real job, and I don't need somewhere to pour all my creativity and urge to research stuff, and I don't need the extra money. And my real job involves so many of the same skills that I don't feel like they're getting rusty anyway.


(to clarify: Over a hundred lenses is NOT my whole account. I had about 250 or so in total, I think. So I still have lenses up).

Squidoo Thoughts: Warning, Scary Criticism

I'm posting this as a response to this post on Squidoo, as my comment was deleted and I was banned* for it. As people wanted to read it, I am reposting (and thank you to all the comments and support, guys, it does mean a lot). I have not edited the following, not even for typos, though I would if it was "for" a blog post, rather than just as a record. 

Alright then. Let’s break this down. Because while this is acknowledgement, and that’s nice, there’s nothing here promising any kind of fix or solution. (Bonnie, we know you’re the spokesperson who gets all our flak, but I ultimately have no idea what decisions making power you have, and there’s nothing here that couldn’t have been written by someone with no power to change anything).

“Bugs happen. It’s the reality of working on a live site (we don’t have downtime) and even with testing (which we do) it’s not a perfect science. Our team does work very hard to communicate problems…”

Yes, bugs happen. We get that. But most of the problems aren’t bugs, they are major broken issues that simply don’t work on most lenses. That’s not a bug, that’s a *broken feature*. And considering the scale of the bugs that we have come to expect, that should probably indicate a serious deficiency when it comes to beta teasting.

And more practically, if it is known that new changes = vast numbers of bugs, it makes sense to communicate that there WILL BE problems (i.e. that there will be a change), not just that “we changed it already, and oops, there’s a problem”.

It doesn’t matter if you think you have the best developers in the world. The data on nearly every change ever indicates that they, or your testing process, are NOT the best they could be. So it makes sense to build a little room to move into the system.

“Q: I hate the new changes. Why don’t you listen to lensmsater suggestions about new features?
*lensmaster. ;P

“…we had a lot of requests for a Coffee theme which we implemented. We’re also reducing the size of the Amazon product when you have only one item in your Amazon Module based on your feedback. These changes should be live soon.”

*facepalm*
How on earth is a coffee theme on the same level as removing the ability to write content as before in certain parts of your lens and BREAKING CONTENT? A better analogy would be arbitrarily removing popular themes. Actually, no, it’s more like adding a bunch of flashing banners and a garish moving border on the DEFAULT theme.

The suggestions that everyone is screaming about aren’t ‘make a few cosmetic changes to pretty the site up’ or ‘add a fun new thing’. They’re “why did you break this thing nobody anywhere ever who actually uses Squidoo wanted you to break?” They’re ANTI-suggestions. And “please stop breaking things and give us warning if you are going to remove a bunch of options and BREAK OUR CONTENT” is feedback that is only sporadically being acknowledged and is generally being poorly implemented if acted on.

“Q: Are you trying to push veterans off of Squidoo? I’ve had a lot of my old lenses locked.
A: Absolutely not. Squidoo is a big place and there’s room for everyone. We value veterans and newbies alike. ”

I doubt many people seriously think Squidoo wants to kick off people who’ve been on here a certain amount of time, so addressing it as if it’s a serious question is fallacious. The real question is “why is Squidoo acting like this? Does it not realise it is completely alienating everyone? I know it can’t be doing this on purpose, but how can it not realise?”

“Q: Why should I make new lenses?
This is an easy question. Because new fresh content matters.”

Let’s rephrase that: Q: Why should I keep making new *articles on Squidoo* as opposed to elsewhere?
A: Because fresh content is good for Squidoo. That was a complete non-answer.

—-

Essentially, it’s not the ‘write better quality’ that most people are upset about. They’re upset about the functional stuff; the fact that the filters aren’t a good guide or easily fixed, the locks without warning, the content getting broken outright, the loss of perfectly handy options and arbitrary changes to lens structures and appearances at a time when they are already dealing with a bunch of other issues.

If Squidoo can’t cope with changing stuff, it shouldn’t be changing this much stuff. And who cares if larger spotlight images (which has been brought in and complained about ALREADY this year! Seriously, stop pushing the same thing and acting surprised at the getting the same reaction, and then ‘graciously’ undoing it again) bring 5% more clicks if it breaks 20% of lenses.

I have not had any locked lenses, and very few of my lenses have hit the filters. One was greenlighted instantly, as it clearly didn’t deserve it, I haven’t even bothered touching the others. I actually liked the black bar discovery bar (don’t like the floating one, though). I know the payout was scarily low (my worst in three years) but that we’re still riding out the massive changes from a couple of months ago.

I’ve come out of this stuff better than the vast majority of people – and I’m STILL considering leaving Squidoo, moving out of my comfort zone, because Squidoo has stopped offering the things I came here for.

Because I can’t trust Squidoo not to stuff my content with ads if I forget to fill in the discovery module. Because I can’t trust my content not to get flagged, and for it to get fixed if I do (and I really, really, really hate using the “special email” options, because 1) I HATE EMAILING PEOPLE and 2) it’s hugely unfair on the many non-Giants and non-comfortable-with-harassing-staff people). Because I can no longer trust the Amazon modules not to get changed on me again. Because I can’t trust all my content not to get broken or hidden or deleted when a module is ‘improved’ by limiting its options (e.g. poll module, Amazon module, my lenses module, About Me module). Because I enjoy the flexibility I had here, and that is being curtailed at every turn. And because I don’t know when these changes will come out, or why.

Stuff that helps? Asking “is this changing actually necessary?” not “can we do this? yes? awesome!”
Asking the actual community about the minor stuff that isn’t about massive sitewide spam removal.
Acknowledging issues in advance; such as “there WILL be bugs” and “payout’s going to be painful, sorry, here’s what the data looks like for the following month” instead of pretending you don’t even pay us and letting all that discussion be unofficial. Making sure you aren’t BREAKING PEOPLE’S CONTENT. Not running all over the place panicking like hubpages did when they got slapped making random changes and nofollowing stuff and deleting and breaking things.

I really, REALLy hate being one of those people who piles onto announcements complaining. But if *I have had enough* (who has not lost any lenses, who is looking forward to better sales this month and next, who DOES NOT DEPEND on my online income but does it largely for fun, at least in comparison to many here, who have a lot of patience with changes, who has so many different kinds of lenses that most changes will hurt AND help me….); when I realised that my reaction to the removal of *existing formatting* was “hmm, okay, were can I move this article/put this other article…WAIT, Squidoo just stopped being my default?”. That’s a sign that I’ve been pushed too far, and I’m following a lot of other people who were affected far more than me and snapped far sooner.

*Initially banned from both the blog and the forums. I can now post comments on the blog, but am still banned from the forums. Don't ask me what's going on there! 

If you want to read everything, including other people's deleted replies, I reposted it all to the forum here. If you're looking for that time I was banned from the old forums, that would be here.

Critique Competition for Article Writers in the SquidU Forum

I am running a contest over in http://squidu.yuku.com/ for the most best and awesome critique-giving person.

I am bribing people with prizes.

Basically, I want you to go critique three or more articles/pages/lenses/leafs/hubs and/or post your own stuff up for other people to critique and/or nominate (via a private message on the forum to me) your top picks.

You can get an overview of the forum here on this lens I wrote about it, and you can follow the thread with the full rules and discussion here.

Whether or not you're interested in taking part, this is a great chance to get your stuff critiqued if you're looking for useful feedback. There are prizes for the top two critiquers, and a random draw prizes for somebody who sends in a nomination.

Prizes are funded entirely from my art commissions, so thank all those nice people that have commissioned me at some point.

Dodger by Terry Pratchett

 A dark and historical dash through Victorian London

Dodger is an alternate historical story set in Victorian London. Written by the ever amazing Terry Pratchett, it features international plots, a dashing working class hero, strong minded women and many of the amazing people that inspired some of his most memorable Discworld characters.

You can buy Dodger here or read my full synopsis and learn about some of the real people that show up!

• Learn more about Dodger by Terry Pratchett 

Buy Dodger from...

• Amazon.co.uk
• Amazon.com

If you've never read anything by Terry Pratchett, then this is a good one to start with (if the genre is to your taste).

 Otherwise, check out:

• Never Start With The First Discworld Book
• The Discworld Series and Other Books By Terry Pratchett 
•  Terry Pratchett's Short Stories

Munchkin: The parody card game: Guides to the amazing silliness that is Munchkin

Munchkin is one of my favourite games - it's silly, full of backstabbing and co-operation and comes in a dozen different flavours! You can pick any of the variants to start playing and buy expansions for each - or mix them up! (If you've played Fluxx, it's like that... only more complicated and D'n'D flavoured).

Check out my shopping and playing guides to get started with an awesome game (or decide which version to pick up next).

There's the basic Munchkin Fantasy

Some guides by other people

• Munchkin the geeky role playing card game
• Munchkin, the game
• Munchkin - Insider Info Here!
• Munchkin Card Game
• Munchkin The Card Game
• Munchkins!

Some extra stuff by me

• My Top Tips to Play Munchkin, Stay Alive, Take Their Stuff and Not Become Public Enemy No. 1 in the Process!
• Munchkin Fantasy Expansions and Booster Packs
• Munchkin Dice and Collectable Game Accessories

And then there are all these awesome variant versions

• Munchkin Variants: Horror, adventure, and scifi versions of the hilarous parody game!
• Munchkin Science Fiction: Star Travel and Super Heroes
• Horror Munchkin Games: Zombies, Halloween and Lovecraft
• Munchkin Adventure Themed Games: Wild West, Spies, Pirates and Kung Fu
• Munchkin Media Tie-In Games: Conan, Webcomics and The Guild

Gerald Durrell, Writer and Animal Collector

The witty and wonderful Gerald Durrell dedicated his life to animal conservation 

 

Gerald Durrell was an amazing conservationist who collected and studied animals from childhood, went on collecting expeditions for zoos all over the world and finally established his own zoo dedicated to conservation on Jersey.

He was a bestselling author, writing wry, enchanting tales of his animal adventures and is probably best known for the autobiography of his childhood, the Corfu Trilogy.

I grew up reading his books and they had a huge impact on me; not only did they introduce me to so many strange and wonderful creatures but they instilled basic principles of conservation and animal care.

• Gerald Durrell's Books: A Complete List
• My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
• The Fantastic Flying Journey
• Books About Gerald Durrell and His Legacy of Conservation

Not So Stupid Squidoo Answers: How Does the Pending Money on Your Dashboard Work?

 I'm running an informal Stupid Questions thread over in the forum, for all those questions that start off "this is probably a stupid question, but...". The following answer is really long and something that confuses a lot of people, so I figured it was worth its own blog post.

GreekGeek (of this far more useful Squidoo SEO and Analytics blog) asked:

Explain how the $$ column works. When does money get listed there, and when is it removed?

The $ column on the dashboard shows a pending estimate of confirmed money earnt by each lens. Lensrank money doesn't go there because a) it's not 'confirmed' and b) it makes sense to have sales and ad earnings reported separately anyway.

This money shows up as soon as the third party site passes the information to Squidoo; so as soon as items ship for Amazon, once a month for eBay and Cafepress/CJ. It will then sit there until that money gets paid out, which can be up to two paydays/months later for Amazon (cause that shows up straight away), but is usually the next week for eBay (cause it doesn't show for so long) and I think Cafepress is the same as eBay.

We do get accurate sale and earning reports in the stats of each individual lens, but we didn't used to. The stats have improved, the dashboard hasn't changed in years. When I started, Squidoo still wasn't reliably in the top 8.5% Amazon tier; or people weren't sure it would be. These days it always is. The estimate on the dash dates back to (I assume) before Squidoo could guarantee a higher commission, whereas it knew it would get the lower one (e.g. 6%).

The actual amount is 67% of what is really sitting in the 'earnt' tab. Or really close to that. Which may be random chance, but it comes pretty close to the difference between 3% and 4.25% (i.e. our share of Amazon commissions under the 'easy' to get 6% and the current 8.5%). The other sites don't really count, because it was built around Amazon and Amazon is the one that reports reliably enough for it to matter. It doesn't entirely make sense, unless the estimate proportion changed historically (or they brought it in when Squidoo could guarantee 4% so people could be happily surprised by 6% (or rather, 2% and 3%) - which does exactly match). It's definitely built into the algorithm somewhere, because it does it for all money that is attributed to a lens. 

And any monies paid out on payday will disappear from the dash. So the only reliable estimate is noticing how much it drops by the next day, and deducing that the remainder is mostly the last months earnings that are still pending.

So, $$ column: 

• pending royalties that a) Squidoo knows about and b) have been confirmed/shipped/paid out by site to Squidoo
• does not include ad money cause that's calculated independently of your lens and won't happen for another month after this one anyway
• Amazon sales will sit there about two months, other monies will sit there about a week, depending on when payday is
• the actual time of sale/time of commission clearing may not match up perfectly to the payday times. Usually Squidoo's paydays are a little bit further apart than the 'clearance' times so you'll get the commission whether it was at the beginning of the month or the end, but it's a little messy. Also the payday month is not the same as the calendar month, cause it's 15th to 15thish rather than 1st to 1st.
• So, dash = rolling snapshot of current confirmed earnings that have not yet been paid out.
• Will include upcoming payday earnings which will disappear from the total (and the lenses) once paid.
• Will also include recently earnt monies that won't be paid until next payday. Checking your total right after payday will give you a good prediction of the following payday (and you know that if it goes up before that payday arrives, that money will be for the FOLLOWING payday yet again). 
• Prediction won't include the monthly reporting sites like eBay, but you could write the number down and then add however much it jumps by when the eBay update arrives and that's probably not worth tracking closely (cause you'll be about to get paid then anyway), but you can certainly estimate it in your head.
• Used to be the main way of tracking sales before updated stats tabs/points. The earnings column used to not show shipped earnings.
• Was built to track Amazon sales, doesn't work so well with the other sites, at least for our purposes. All monies get treated the same when they show on the dash.
• Estimate is based on either a random amount or the Amazon tiers and probably dates back to when Squidoo only got 6% (or only wanted to promise that, even though it was getting 7 or 7.5%)

So if you look at your pending total, you can know:

1. It's just Amazon (unless it's right after eBay updated and you had a bunch of new $$$ appear)

2. Half (or whatever) was earnt last month and will be paid out to you in the coming payday. Whatever is currently rolling in will be paid out the payday after.

3. That, barring returns and weird stuff, that money is confirmed, shipped, sales.

3. That you can add half again to the total for your actual earnings.

You Should Also Probably Read:

• Is It Better To Use Your Own Amazon Associate Account On Squidoo?
• Which is the best Squidoo earning module? From Amazon to iTunes!
• Squidoo Sales Lenses Are Of The Devil
• Affiliate Sales Are Awesome: On Amazon, Squidoo and SquidUtils  
•  A Quick Guide for Newbies: The basics of actually getting paid on Squidoo
• Amazon Referrals: Third Party and External Websites 
• Using Squidoo's Amazon Referral ID
•  How To Squidoo: I'm seeing points but no royalties!
  
  
  
  

Birdwatchers are out to get us, and Bird Drawings from Melanesia and Norfolk Island

While travelling I realised that birdwatchers are actually deadly assassins and I drew a lot of birds from my photos.

Both of these are now up as lenses, so if you like sketches of albatross and robins, or want to know why you should be wary of birders, check them out.

• Bird Sketches From Melanesia and Norfolk Island
• The Terrifying Truth About Birdwatchers

Beware of Coconuts

The most important thing I have learnt while travelling is just how dangerous the coconut actually is. Please. It's incredibly important that you read this article about how coconuts are trying to kill us all.

Day 1: A Mob of Mollymawks

Following my adventures across the pirate infested high seas of New Zealand, the terrifying unknown of Norfolk Island and the mysterious, sea serpent haunted waters of the Solomons.

 Day 1 At Sea: Tuesday 26th March

The ship left Port Lyttleton at 6.05 am, behind schedule. It was meant to leave at midnight, or preferably 6pm the day before, but had been having an engine inspection and there had been problems putting the engine back together. Most reassuring!

I nearly missed breakfast, but the staff found me something. The meal times are quite strict, as they feed the staff and visitors on a rota, and clean up in between. It feels a bit like a school camp.

Land ho!

The ship was moored a few miles out from land, close enough to see where the houses are. The sea was very calm, with little wind, which was both a joy for the sake of personal comfort, and a pity, as few birds were moving much.

Afterwards, I wandered outside, to find a few people avidly watching the first birds of the trip. I promptly dashed back inside for my camera, and returned. Four brown and white petrels floated off the starboard bow, speckled and piebald. You can tell petrels from gulls because they're just cuter, with rounder faces and beaks, like adorable seagulls. They tend not to have the sharp divisions in the distinctive above and below colouring divide that most seabirds have. These ones were Cape Petrels, and all they seemed to care about was floating around on the surface, moving around leisurely. The guide referred to them as “pintardos”, which I thought was a bad joke, but apparently is one of their names. 

Cape Petrels!

 After a bit, there was an announcement that something was happening off the stern (a lady next to me thought they were fishing off it – on making our way down narrow steps and around the stack Zodiacs, we discovered they were in fact throwing fish off it!). Everyone lined the railings or milled around behind; only about eight people could actually see anything. It turned out that there was a single Buller's Mollymawk (albatross species) bobbing lazily around, grabbing at the scraps being thrown down. The petrels wandered in on the starboard side, making desperate dashes in to grab bits of fish, often duckdiving their full bodylength under. There was very little wind, and the seas were calm, so the mollymawk had a lot of trouble getting out of the water. It was reduced to lazily wandering over and ducking its head under, or making flapping runs whenever it thought a petrel might get there first. By the end of it, the petrels were actively dashing away from the thrown fish, flapping to get up speed.

The Buller's Mollymawk chasing off a Cape Petrel

Nevertheless, everyone was pretty excited, these being the first birds of the trip, and hung around the whole time. I had to actually climb up and perch uncomfortably in a nook at the edge, just to see anything.

During this time, some Hector's dolphins were spotted, making their way towards us from the direction of land. Actually, they were more like Hector's Dots, as all we'd see was the dorsal fins occasionally, as they came up for air. We'd keep looking for them, but they veered off while still too far away to admire properly, leaving us with the lazy mollymawk and the now disinterested petrels. A couple of the dolphns did show up in front of the boat, giving me a chance to take a photograph,and possibly to see if we were worth investigating further, but apparently not, as they immediately swam back to join the rest.

Eventually the mollymawk tired of taunting us with maybe doing something interesting, and paddled lazily off. The only other birds around were about five ordinary gulls, which floated several hundred metres away. Occasionally, someone would say something like “can we get the gulls over here?” and tauntingly, a gull would actually fly over and continue past. The guide actively tried to encourage them, in the hope that they'd attract more birds over, but they just weren't interested.

Take off! The Buller's Mollymawk actually exerts itself for food.

After a while, the staff decided to try to tempt the birds in with a magic mixgture of rice crispies soaked in bright orange fish oil. They stirred it up in a bucket, to general amusement, then tossed it over the side. We all watched the little dots and the swirls of shining oil, as it floated slowly away over the waves, towards the birds. As if summoned by our hopes, a Giant Petrel came soaring in like a great dark albatross, stirring up the gulls. It tracked across our wake a couple of times, as if drawn by the delicious fish oil, then left.

Giving up on the sluggard local birds, the ship started moving, powering quietly and steadily away from land, as if the captain was hoping to spot something and pretend he'd been aiming for it all along. Every ten minutes or so, we'd pass a bird, bobbing around, or a bird would pass us, and the remaining hopefuls lining the sides would rush to get their cameras out. We passed an albatross, probably the same one that had paddled away and left us before. After we had left it behind, it came soaring past to catch us up and overtake us, followed by a storm of camera clicks. It gave us a wide enough berth that I doubt many of the photos were any good, even the ones from cameras with lenses as long as your arm.

We're heading to Kaikoura next, were there may be whales. The ship stays about twelve miles out from land, which you can see misty and low in the background.

After lunch, the boat kept grumbling steadily onwards, the quiet rumbling coming up through my feet everywhere I went. I'm the only person going barefoot at the moment – my feet were instantly stained black with grime. The crew washed the decks while we were eating, but too late for my stained soles.

Most people are hanging out quietly outside. Down the back is quiet and warm, with a good view of the birds coming up in our wake and overtaking us. They tend to sneak up on you, dipping low among the waves and then soaring past. If you can see them coming, you get time to train your camera on them and hope they'll fly near enough for a good photo. Most don't. The closest so far was a petrel, I turned from following a distant mollymawk to find it wheeling almost directly overheard. It took great delight in soaring around in circles from boat to sky to water, always too fast to capture, before flying away.

There's not much talking; a few anecdotes about birds, murmurs identifying a species, and the odd cry of warning as a bird is spotted. Everyone's just enjoying the sun or waiting for more birds.

There are a suprising number of birds coming past. Most are too far off to accurately identify, but you can tell that they're mollymawks, shearwaters and petrels, of various species. Someone thinks they saw a Royal Albatross. I don't think they're deliberately coming past the boat, with the excetion of the Cape Petrels which enjoy swooping around in looping aerial displays while checking us out, as looking off into the distance, you can usually spot more birds. I imagine a sort of giant net of birds, each racing over the ocean, or flirting amongst the wabes, keeping its distance from the next bird. They aren't all loners; we have had a couple of pairs swirling around each other. I couldn't tell if they were mollymawks or giant petrels, as one was quite dark. Off in the distance, occasional clouds of shearwaters could be seen. Sometimes one or two would come in close, but most stayed on the edge of sight.

We kept going straight through the Kaikoura Trench, in order to get back on schedules (and because there weren't many birds around). Towards evening, we spotted larger numbers of birds winging past, and soon saw they were heading to a boat pulling up its nets. Our staff decided to try and compete, and lure away the mob to our boat. It took awhile, with only a couple of White-capped Albatross paying somewhat desultory attention, but we managed to attract four or five by continually throwing lumps of fish over. And then, suddenly, the sea behind us was full of birds! And that was the next half an hour, lumps of fish being thrown behind, to be swooped upon by Sooty Shearwaters and albatross, while a great tail of birds floated out in a white and grey and brown gaggle behind. This really was a mob of albatrosses, with six species showing up.

White-capped Albatrosses coming in for fish

They were dominated by the Whitecapped Albatross, with a handful of Salvin's, and a few lone representatives from other species (Buller's, Northern and Southern Royal and Wanderer). The little cape petrels were back again, zigzagging about and dodging the camera lens with buoyant glee. They looked exceptionally tiny among the giant albatrosses, and didn't attempt many grabs for fish. 

Grrr! My fish! A Cape Petrel lunges ahead of a White-capped Albatross.

Sooty Shearwaters were much in evidence at the chumming, charging up the front and doing their best to snatch away tidbits before the albatrosses caught up. They were quite delightful to watch, as they would often dive right under the water, leaving you wondering if they would come back. They were middling sized amongst the birds.

An albatross dives after fish.

A solitary giant petrel turned up in the evening, keeping back out of the way and staying in the company of the albatrosses. A couple of the Buller's Albatrosses' turned up for the chumming, and were extremely noisy, squawking in a most indecorous fashion, attempting to intimidate the White-capped albatross away from the fish.

The Northern Giant Petrel, just landing.

There may have been a little white-fronted tern or two, further back; we could see it bobbing, and then flying away, silhouetted by the setting sun.

Eventually the light got a bit too low to continue, and the birds got too tired (or too full!) to bother keeping up anymore. 

Lots of birds following the boat!

We ended just in time for the evening bird list to carry on almost on time! (in which everyone more or less agrees on what was seen and how many of them; the staff generally have a good idea, and a few of the more experienced birdwatchers chip in with the rarer contributions or to round up numbers. There's a rule that three people need to see it (or have a photograph as evidence) for it to count, to the slight frustration of the more experienced birders!

Another White-capped Albatross

Unfortunately, I've discovered that my new little laptop – or possibly the Linux Mint 13 I've installed on it – doesn't notice my SD Cards. It can tell I've done something, as the lights change, it just doesn't read them. I'm going to see if the Ship Laptop will let me transfer photos to my USB stick, so I can sort them out as I go. The Ship Laptop is here for the sole purpose of satellite email, which is very pricy! I doubt I'll be using it for that, especially as every byte will count. There should be internet access in either Norfolk Island or at Port Noumea, New Caledonia, at which point I will submit my final assignment (on information technology, ironically) and reassure my ardent admirers and family that I am still alive.

That night, everyone headed to be pretty quickly after the evening recap wrapped up. I hung around upstairs drinking peppermint tea and reading bird books, then stepped outside briefly. Without the sun to take the edge off, it was blustery and cold, but the lovely full moon cast everything into stark silver and black shadow.

Some Species Highlights

• Buller's Mollymawk – Thlassarche bulleri
  The first albatross of the day, with a nicely distinctive striped beak. I got some great photos of the very first bird, which was turned into three or four drawings. It's a smaller albatross, at 80cm and is endemic to New Zealand. It tends to follow boats around and suffers heavy losses due to trawl/longline fishing

• White-capped Albatross: By far the most common bird towards the end of the day, it was bold and lively during the chumming, charging straight up the front and crashing into the water, head down after the food and wings raised awkwardly in akimbo Vs. 

• Salvin's Albatross: nice and bold, with distinctive grey heads, these competed with the White-capped for thrown fish.

• Southern & Northern Royal Albatross: We only saw a few of these, with one of each showing up for the chumming. Sadly, both were rather shy, and insisted on staying well back. They would come soaring up the wake occasionally in order to keep up, but always landing about ten metres away, and then just hobnobbing with the other birds until they'd floated out of sight, and then repeating the process.

• Gibson's Wandering Albatross (Toroa) :The biggest flying bird in the world, this one got everyone excited, but, like the Royal Albatross, it stayed back, serenely swooping back and forth across the wake in imperious solitude as it inspected the disturbace in its realm.

Other Birds

• White-Fronted Terns are lovely elegant things, especially compared to the albatross!

• Misc brown shearwaters that I can't tell apart: Fluttering Shearwater, Buller's Shearwater and Hutton's Shearwater
• The Sooty Shearwater is nice and dark, though!

• Skuas: We saw two Skua species, which the birders with the really good binoculars and giant cameras where quite excited about; an Arctic and two Long-tailed. Both stayed too far away for me to see much.

• Northern Giant Petrel: A couple of these soared past, one joining the chumming and staying back out of the way. It's a dirty brown bird, that looks like a cross between an albatross and a dodo
   
•  Gulls – Black-backed (Kelp) gulls were sitting around on the water in the morning, but were too wary of the albatross (and too lazy in the lack of wind) to come over to the boat.

• The Cape Petrels/Cape Pigeon/Pintado/Titore are adorable little things. They fly in rounded loops, and seem to like landing in the lee of the ship.They are very distinctive, mottled brown and white, little birds, very like seagoing pigeons. 

Non-flying marine life:

A Hector's Dolphin

•  Other than the small pod of Hector's Dolphins, there was a distant humpback whale, a little blue penguin, occasional New Zealand fur seals and Dusky Dolphins.

The New Greek-Zealand Riot Police and the Student Education Protest

There was a student protest at Auckland University on Friday the 1st of June, about the recent educational cuts, leading on from a protest the week before. However, unlike the first protest, this one attracted an incredible overreaction from the police, who turned up in overwhelming numbers, and violently arrested 43 people. This led to more students joining into an impromptu protest march against police tactics that ranged through the centre of the city all evening.

The first protest
The budget came out last week, and last Thursday they had a smallish sit down protest (in that it was contained spatially. There were 400-500 students) in the University grounds, on a road going through it (I saw the end of it) which lasted about five hours. It was against some of the recent, rather dreadful, cuts to education and student support, making it even harder to access - or even finish, for current students - University education, along with making repayments much higher, starting much sooner (and yes, this affects me too).

Blockade The Budget’s Statement of Intent

This is a call for a stop to the neoliberal attacks on New Zealand’s education sector. All over the world people are fighting against the commercialisation and privatisation of education. This current approach to education is only further preventing universal and equal access to education. Education should be accessible to everyone and be non-discriminatory; it should never become class based. Our current government views education as a business rather than a fundamental right of massive social significance.

The National government is attacking education on all fronts. Early childhood, primary, secondary and tertiary education are all on the chopping block, affecting both students and teaching staff. Early childhood subsidies are being frozen, primary and high schools are being subjected to dubious policies such as performance-based pay, larger class sizes and drastic decreases in teacher numbers. In the tertiary sector students are being penalised for trying to academically better themselves through higher education.

This government and the ruling elite are only prepared to cut funding from easily targeted public services to address debt. Such services are essential to the future growth of our nation. This government fails to acknowledge that the cost of National Superannuation is $9.58 billion while the cost of student loans is only $1.59 billion. There are other alternatives to this so-called ‘Zero Budget’ and its questionable projected outcomes. Rather than addressing the issue of debt head-on, the government is using education as a scapegoat to further delay its own action in regards to the growing inequalities in our education system.

This is a call to all students, teachers, and workers within the wider education sector to stand up and make a change. This budget will only further disadvantage our society. It is our duty to resist.

Scoop

 There were two police keeping an eye on things, a few annoyed motorists and not much else. The most notable response was from Bill English, the deputy prime minister in the current National government who said that

Speaking to a business audience in Wellington this morning, Mr English said of the students: "Yes, there's a protest movement out there but who's really listening to them?"

The comments were in response to a question from the audience.

"They get on TV and they can make a bit of a racket," said Mr English, "dragging a few rubbish bins around, they need some Greeks to show them how to do it.

"It gets reported, mainly because it blocked the traffic… [but] who's listening? Most people actually think the students got a pretty fair go and they should count themselves lucky that they've still got interest free loans and get on with it because, you know, get your training finished and get a job and start contributing."
Read more at 3news

So the students took him up on that - some wore togas to the nest protest, which happened on Friday 1st June about 3pm.

The second Protest


A group of students (allegedly about 100) from Auckland University went on a protest march up Symonds Street (the same one as before, through Uni, near the city centre), after politely notifying police in advance (as it fairly standard, though not required). They paused for lectures about Plato from a sociology lecturer and the police moved in straight away and started trying to move them off the road. The students responded by sitting down in a group and where surrounded by a ring of police.

At this point, and onwards, there were up to 80 police officers there (clear from the photos - some people claim 100, but 80 is probably accurate. The minimum in the initial response was about 40. It's hard to tell at what point they all arrived as they moved in gradually and were also in the surrounding streets). It was an instant over response and a clearly intentional, pre-planned strategy. They shut down this part of the protest by 4.30 - about an hour after it began, not including the time it took to walk up Symonds street. To reiterate: the police kept them in one place, blocking the road, for an hour, until they had arrested nearly everyone, using kettling and snatch arrests.


Most of the arrests started after what was apparently a different unit arrived, mostly younger male officers, who charged straight in and started dragging people out of the crowd and arresting them. Just about every arrest was violent - people were dragged, carried, thrown to the ground, had wrists and arms twisted, and were generally manhandled. NONE OF THESE PEOPLE SPECIFICALLY DID ANYTHING. It is one thing to single out protestors getting rowdy, but in this case that is not what happened.

A large number of people started videoing and taking photographs - apart from the dozens of videos on YouTube, you can see many people in many of the videos and photos taking their own recordings. They continued chanting and passively resisting (for example, going limp, holding on to each other - all entirely legal), including chants of 'Peaceful protest'. The protestors did not respond with violence or rioting.


After they had systematically arrested 43 people, the remainder were kettled in on a grassy area beside the road. One of the supposed ringleaders (i.e. a person with a microphone  - Omar Hamed, who has unfortunately been accused of sexual harassment. I say unfortunately, because it also delegitimises this protest, and as it wasn't 'his' protest, who he is doesn't matter) was suddenly arrested at this point. The protest reformed at about 4.40, with about 500 students marching down Symonds Street (possibly more, possibly as low as 300, but again, 500 looks most accurate.

 People joined in as they went, mostly people who had been watching the previous arrests and getting more upset at the police. The police continued attempting to kettle them in, managing to pen the group against the business school at one point, and make another arrest, but - apparently due to some quick thinking - the protestors dodged through the actual university and out the over side to Albert park, and from there down to Queen Street. They continued the constant movement tactic to stay out of reach of the police and police vehicles.

At this point, there were (allegedly) about 100 police officers on and around Queen street, but they couldn't keep up with the protestors. The protest headed to the police station at this point and surrounded it, calling for the release of the 43 people arrested without cause. After which they headed to Aotea square and then went home around 7pm (at about 6.45, the police said they'd be letting the arrestees go).

Of those 43 people, all but 4 people who didn't cooperate (i.e. probably wouldn't share their personal details) were released, and this was decided before 7pm. Less than three hours after most of them were even arrested.


Injuries, complaints and police behaviour


Recorded in videos/photos (also mentioned in comments from various witnesses, which prompted me to find evidence; see resources section until this is better organised)

• At least one officer has been recorded on video punching protestors on the ground (several videos, see resources section)
• A police officer or officers had removed their badges (photos)
• Police unnecessarily manhandling female protestors (Keyword: unnecessarily. They were definitely handling them roughly, and as the people had committed no crimes, did not resist arrest, and were not charged it was entirely unnecessary violence. The arresting officers were 95% young white males)
• Young women being dragged along the groun by their ankles (generally after being pulled out of the crowd)
• Police were strangling protestors on the ground (video)

Debatable (according to comments, but videos/photos are just ambiguous or confusing enough not to be sure)

• kicked people lying on the ground
• Police were laughing about their job
• Multiple officers without badges

Anecdotal (comments only, no photographic records yet found by me or possible in some cases)

• Groping of female protestors
• Were trying to provoke people in order to manhandle them further. 
• There were also officers who were not happy with the violence of their colleagues, 
• The initial unit that blockaded the students, mostly older men and women, were more restrained and professional. 

While most of this is anecdotal, it has come in from MANY sources, there is no contradictory evidence, and no statements from the police.

Injuries
There were numerous minor injuries, and a few more major ones, from bruises to a girl being strangled into unconsciousness (allegedly; there is a blurry video of police strangling protestors on the ground, though and it was apparently a standard tactic).

One student was apparently beaten up very badly while in the cells (not sure I should post his name, but he is seeking witnesses in order to lay charges. Note that I did not get this from him, but from concerned witnesses asking who was assaulted).

Students and the people organising the march are now collecting evidence in order to lay complaints about police brutality (on the Blockade the Budget FB page and reported on the Radio NZ site).

For a very interesting explanation of how police responses and protests generally work in New Zealand, and why it was a deliberate attempt to instigate a riot can be found at The Standard.

The only statement from the police is this very concise statement on their site.

June 1, 2012, 5:32 pm
43 arrests have been made by Police as a result of protest activity in down town Auckland this afternoon. The activity included a sit down protest on Symonds Street in the central business district soon after 3pm necessitating traffic diversions to ensure the safety of the protesters and alternate vehicle access for motorists. The road was cleared and opened by 5pm.

Superintendent Mike Clement
District Commander
Auckland City District

Negative Reactions Towards Protestors


Apart from the initial excitement, most of the major media follow up has a) ignored that the protestors didn't start the violence nor provoke it and b) focussed mostly on people being inconvenienced by the protest.

'It wasn't a student protest'
It has been claimed, in a fairly textbook attempt to legitimise the protest, that it wasn't really a student protest. It was. Even if it wasn't, that doesn't make the points invalid, or the reaction appropriate. Obviously there will always be a variety of opinions, especially in a body of people as large as the University of Auckland, so there are students who didn't approve. But - apart from people I knew there, most of them knew each other. The vast majority where students, and it was a protest about student issues.

Personally, I am considering very strongly going to the next one, and I am technically not a student anymore. But I would still consider it a student protest, even if I happened to be in it.

'Those crazy students are just running wild and want attention'
A. They weren't running a pointless protest. If you don't think the education cuts and changes matter, fine, but they (and I) consider them important. If you didn't realise there was a point, well, there was. Even if the media haven't always mentioned it.

B. Duh. Attention is the point of protest, otherwise it's a waste of time.

C. They weren't running wild. It was actually an incredibly well behaved protest, and the violence was incited by, and mostly on the part of, the police.


'They don't have the right to hold everyone up'
A. Yes, they do. The right to protest is enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Start slapping rules around 'how' one can protest, when and where, means that protesting suddenly becomes pointless. Protest is one of the only major ways for the general public, or specific groups, to actually make themselves enough of a problem to be listened to (assuming nobody wants to listen to them in the first place).

B. Besides, if they weren't in the middle of the road, who would have noticed them? What's the point of a protest that isn't noticed? Walking in the road says 'look, we are really serious about this, LOOK AT US'.

C. The student protest initially moved fairly quickly and would have been over equally quickly if the police hadn't blocked them in. Aside from that, the previous week, police cooperated with the protestors and redirected traffic for them.

D. It's not like traffic never happens. Plenty of events and problems can shut down a street for a while, and yes, people ALWAYS complain. That doesn't make it a big deal, it's just one of those common annoyances that everyone can emphasise with, and there isn't really a 'good' side to.


What was achieved? What was the point?

 The students
Could have not protested, but by doing so they have:

1. Raised awareness of the issue
2. Made it really obvious where they stood
3. Technically, it's not too late to reverse the budget, as it is a confidence & supply agreement, so IF National's coalition partners backed off the changes could be changed.
4. Some commuters were inconvenienced, which as a) a shame, but b) happens all the time in the middle of the city, and c) is perfectly legal.
5. They did not break any laws and remained peaceful (shouting is peaceful, disrupting traffic is peaceful. They didn't hurt anyone, scare anyone - at least, until the police started wading in, or damage anything). If you start regulating how people can protest, then you are preventing people from protesting. A reasonable institution isn't going to have much to worry about, and an unreasonable one is going to exploit everything they've got to make sure people don't protest.

Which leads me to...

The police
If they'd left the protest alone, it would have just gotten in the way of traffic for a little while and then gone. Instead, it turned into a major event and caused a great deal of outrage.

1. It is possible that this simply reflects 'new' (or old - Springbok riots, anyone?) people behind the scenes, ideologies and policies that demand a dramatic response shutting down dissension, or large gatherings of people. It is possible that students are seen as a safe target, or having two protests close together triggered some kind of tolerance limit. Perhaps it was seen as a straight forward practice run, an exercise in shutting down protests.

Which means that it will probably happen again, regardless of what is being protested, and that this was simply the first time it has happened recently. It may depend who is protesting, as an Old Granny March may be ignored, but they were hassling people with grey hair along with the students.

(Except it isn't the first time - the police response at the Glen Innes protests against the beneficiaries objecting to being evicted was also violent. Although it wasn't in front of as many witnesses, about an issue that affected a smaller group of people, and there were fewer people owning good cameras around. But again, they are considered a target/easily demonised group - beneficiaries, with a few social justice people mixed in to blame for starting it).

2. It looked like an attempt to start a riot.
This would have a) made it easy to demonise 'rowdy violent students' (because as soon as one gets recorded hitting a cop, or smashing a window, the entire protest is discredited), and b) has distracted from what they are actually protesting against, turning it from 'evil government destroys tertiary education in New Zealand for New Zealanders' into 'those students are protesting again!'.

 3. Someone WANTED people to pay attention to what the students were doing. But this seems like a pretty unpleasant way to do it.

So in summary: someone giving orders to the police are a) inexperienced or not that bright, b) politically motivated and c) insecure and reactionary. I'd pick the last two.



More reading (where I got my information from)


Apart from the below, I've spent several hours reading the many many comments from participants, bystanders and people who knew people there, and watching the videos.Some where helpful outlines, other bits I had to put together. Nothing contradicted the event outline each gave, except for the usual minor errors in numbers and identities that were made in news articles (some have since been corrected), but some were confusing.


What is kettling?
Kettling is forming a solid line and trapping a group of people inside that line, against a wall or similar. [See wikipedia]

It's a highly controversial tactic to shut down a protest. Great for containing crowds, not great if those crowds have a right to be where they are or if it's used to silence them. One of its problems is that it traps everyone in the vicinity, even innocent bystanders, and that police can prevent people from leaving for as long as they choose.

What are snatch arrests?
Snatch arrests are when a group of police dash in and try to snatch a target in order to arrest them. They are less effective when the police are outnumbered and the crowd is organised. They are best used for singling out troublemakers, but in the 1st June protest, they were being used to grab anyone and everyone.


Protestor Responses/ Public Commentary
Twitter #blockadethebudget 
A timeline on the Standard 
Blockade the Budget Facebook Group
Dealing with kettling and snatch arrests while remaining peaceful and legal: essentially, form a wedge to break open kettling lines and hold on to each other, out number the police, and separate police from target.

Photos
NZHerald
There are also many amazing photos, mostly findable through Blockade the Budget, but I'm not sure how public they are.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/61939712@N07/sets/72157630005737492/with/7317875846/
http://www.flickr.com//photos/12492550@N03/show/
Facebook photo album of five police wearing the same fake badge number Z557 at the Occupy protest about 4 months ago and news article.

News Articles
http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/local-news/7034457/Student-protester-grabbed-by-throat
http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/local-news/7031348/Arrests-at-student-protest
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/budget-2012/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503257&objectid=10810205
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10810121


Videos
How legit are these? Well, they cover a lot of recognisable moments (e.g. arrests of specific people) from very different directions, are uploaded by multiple users, vary hugely in quality and length, and all feature many people using cameras and phones in the crowd. Some are only fragments of the overall event, but can generally be pinned down to a timeline when compared to other videos. The soundtrack is quite distinctive as well, with quiet at the start, roaring and shouting when the police try to grab people, and chanting.


YouTube Videos from the Blockade the Budget protests 


Some specific ones

• You can see the initial sit down and first arrests in this one, the dramatic change from 'okay, we're being stopped' to 'WTF ARE THE POLICE DOING?', and a policeman punching someone at 2.06 - the same one who appears in several other videos)
• Start of the sit down speech and arrests over the rest of the sit down
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bQIlN86ZFs&feature=related - more general footage from other angles, including a policeman shoving a protestor for no reason at 6.46 (one of several occurrences throughout the videos). You also get to see a few togas. At 9.23, police charge into the line pushing the group of people back (from videos inside the corral at this point, their are people on the ground and unable to move, while they are told to move back and pushed).
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60Eq7G08v_Q picks up from the same point shown at 9.23 above, and shows clearly just how many police were there, along with the time between the initial sit down and the second march, with the students being kept off the road, as well as a few arrests with people being dragged out by their feet (e.g. a girl being pulled out and hustled off from 3.32)
• 3news video: students surround a police car later on in the march demanding they release someone they are trying to take away (a legal move to prevent an illegal arrest)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTHqbUemDys&feature=related - various moments throughout the entire protest

http://www.3news.co.nz/More-protests-to-come---students/tabid/309/articleID/256436/Default.aspx [Video]

http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/raw-video-police-clash-protesters-4906662 [Video]
http://www.3news.co.nz/Arrests-at-student-anti-Budget-protest/tabid/309/articleID/256395/Default.aspx [Video]

About the cuts and the protests on CloseUp (based on the first protest) http://tvnz.co.nz/close-up/tuesday-june-5-4912197/video

...there's a lot more, but there's no one definitive place to go. Which is good, actually, as it means you're getting a lot of viewpoints and getting a good overall picture.

Police Numbers
These were difficult to estimate, as videos and photos only showed small sections at a time, the point of the protest isn't always clear, and the people recording generally weren't free to move around to show different areas.

I've screencapped a couple of videos that actually pan around and counted the number of visible, distinct police shown, marking them with red dots. I marked the ones I hadn't counted before - if they aren't dotted, it's because I counted them in the screencap just before or after. I've left the times on the YouTube videos, so you can see for yourself if you wish.

This will not be all of them. There are people hidden behind each other, including police in groups, as well as others behind the camera person or down the street. But what I can see supports the initial estimate of 40 in the first response, with more police arriving afterwards.


Most photos and videos only show a small area and often feature the same people as that's where the action is, but you can see 15-20 in just about any given shot. The 'best' photo, taken from high up in a university building after the sit down and before the Queen Street dash, clearly shows 47 police (possibly more, it gets a little hard to distinguish individuals).

Credit 

Credit

Credit

So in summary; the students may not have taken lessons from the Greek riots, but the police sure did. And that was a major, major over reaction to a relatively mild protest.



Support groups and protests are now being planned at the other universities around New Zealand (Wellington seems to be the most organised so far. Hilariously, they're meeting on Tory Street for the initial planning session).