I’m a big believer that youth wings of political parties should from time to time disagree with their parties. They are not doing their job if they do not. Their role isn’t just to sell their party to young people, but to represent the views of young people to their party. Sycophancy does neither side a favour.
So I was pleased to see the Young Nationals come out this week with this release:
The Young Nats oppose the Government’s assault on freedom and responsibility as it moves to introduce plain packaging.
“This is just plain populism and nanny state interference all over again. We can’t see how this will actually reduce the harm of smoking” says Young Nats Policy Officer, Megan Hands.
The Young Nats champion individual freedom and personal responsibility.
“All companies should have the right to package their goods as they choose. Buyers should also have the right to exercise their power of consumer choice and absorb the responsibilities that come with such choices” says Hands.
Plain packaging sends a message that it’s acceptable for the Government to interfere wherever and whenever they like.
The Young Nats urge the Government in the strongest terms to consider the values of our party before blindly supporting nanny state antics.
Again, this is a good thing – not a bad thing. Of course, you don’t want your youth wing disagreeing with the parliamentary party constantly – that then becomes destabilising and marginalises you. But sycophancy is just as unhelpful.
So well done Young Nats on speaking up. I don’t agree with everything that have said, but it is good to see them prepared to criticise the Government when they think it has made a wrong decision.
Young Labour are having to bribe people with the chance of a week’s worth of cash, to join the Labour Party.
Oh dear. I didn’t realise things were that bad.
But an interesting contrast considering how often Labour goes on about the evils of gambling and pokie machines and the like – and they use a gambling device as a recruitment device.
Hamish Fletcher at NZ Herald reports:
The Government says it will not set aside any spectrum for Maori when it auctions it off later this year.
In third quarter of this year the Government hopes to allocate parts of the radio spectrum, which will become available after the switchover to digital television.
The allocation of this spectrum will allow telecommunications companies to build fourth generation (4G) mobile networks that provide much faster mobile broadband speeds.
“Indications are that by using the spectrum for 4G mobile networks, we can expect economic benefits for New Zealand of up to $2.4 billion over the next twenty years,” Minister for Communications and Information Technology Amy Adams said today.
I’m pleased to see this decision. It is stretching credibility to say that the electromagnetic spectrum was what people had in mind as a taonga when the Treaty was signed in 1840.
Equally difficult to claim there was customary usage of it under the common law!
Shane Cowlishaw at Stuff reports:
Gareth Morgan has shown his claws in a public catfight with an SPCA board member.
The philanthropist and economist held a public meeting in the Wellington suburb if Karori last night, where he put his case for creating the first “confined cat” suburb, to protect native birds in the Zealandia sanctuary.
As part of his presentation, he produced a “Wanted” poster naming Wellington SPCA board members, accusing them of being ill-equipped to deal with the cat catastrophe.
But one of the wanted men was in the audience, and took issue with Dr Morgan.
Emanuel Kalafatelis said he had been prepared to listen until things got personal. He pleaded: “For God’s sake, let’s not jump into this. Let’s at least get all the facts. Let’s get New Zealand-based facts. Not global facts.”
Dr Morgan responded: “I’m not going to support any organisation which in effect is attacking New Zealand’s wildlife . . . these people have no ethical compass.
Pathetic and puerile. Also a degree of bullying.
He stressed he was not campaigning for the eradication of all cats, but simply restrictions on where they could roam.
“This is not an assault on indoor cats. I don’t care how many confined cats you have – what I care about is where they wander.”
But that is not true. His website is called “Cats to Go“. It has a section on how nice NZ would be with no cats at all. He advocates no one has a cat at all, rather than just keep them inside.
There is room to debate the SPCA policy on cat colonies. There is also room to have an education campaign on keeping cats indoor, putting a bell on them etc. A debate on those issues would be good.
But you can’t both have a sober sensible debate on that, and also be the hysterical person launching websites calling for all cats to go, and personally vilifying SPCA board members.
You can choose the option that gets lots of publicity for yourself, and achieves nothing but pisses people off. Or you can choose the harder option of trying to have a sensible sober debate on responsible cat ownership. It is a shame Morgan has chosen the former and goes for headlines over effectiveness.
The Economist reports:
CLAIRE MCCASKILL, a Democratic senator from Missouri, is perhaps best known for beating Todd Akin, a Republican with a bizarre theory about pregnancy and rape, at the 2012 election. That may soon change. If Ms McCaskill succeeds in her latest quest, she stands a chance of becoming a patron saint of business travellers for getting the ban on using in-flight portable electronic devices lifted.
Ms McCaskill, a member of the Senate’s transportation committee, is fed up with the slow pace of change at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). She has warned the agency in a letter that she is “prepared to pursue legislative solutions should progress be made too slowly” on allowing the use of electronic devices throughout a flight. The FAA, which has given various evasive explanations for the ban, is under the jurisdiction of the committee and so has reason to take this seriously.
There is no evidence that electronic devices such as phones and iPads cause a problem on aeroplanes. If there were, they would be banned on board. In any case, many people leave their phones on, or simply defy the rules. According to a recent survey cited in The Week,around 40% of passengers said they never turn off their phones during a flight, and a small number knowingly break the regulations by using their phones to talk or text.
The restrictions are silly. There is no technical necessity to switch an iPad off during take off, or even to have it in flight mode during the trip.
Labour Party official “Mickey Savage” blogs:
The Green’s increase in support is significant and is having a fundamental effect on Labour. Many of those changing their allegiance are activists and/or well resourced, the sorts of people who you want not only as voters but also as supporters and members.
To get over the line Labour/Greens/Mana will need to further improve their collective support. The only alternative is to countenance a coalition with New Zealand First.
The events of the past few months ought to have put Labour and the Greens completely off such a proposition. New Zealand First has been conclusively shown, if conclusive proof had ever been required, to be a one man band, a personality cult based around the prodigious personality that is Winston Peters. All the other MPs that are there are just there for padding.
How could a Labour Green Coalition include New Zealand First? The simple answer is that it could not. It would be inherently unstable, its policy goals would be shackled by the strange world view NZF has about issues such as climate change. The desire to create a more tolerant and ethically diverse New Zealand would be an anathema to Peters’ mob.
That is why Labour and/or the Greens need to push on and more support. The alternative is not worth contemplating.
Taking a short break from annoying the odd NGO ahead of CITES, here’s a pic of one of our local predators 🙂
Click for larger, higher res image
Fwiw, this has had the magnification boosted to a high enough level that the shot hasn’t needed any cropping.
Radio NZ reports:
High-profile convicted sex offender Stewart Murray Wilson has been recalled to jail following allegations he phoned someone he had been directed not to associate with.
The Department of Corrections successfully applied to the Parole Board on Thursday afternoon for an interim recall of Wilson to prison.
The 66-year-old served 16 years in jail for multiple rapes of women, assault, drugging, ill-treating children and bestiality, which he denies.
The Parole Board will consider whether or not a final order is made to keep Wilson in prison at a hearing before the end of March.
I said at the time that I thought it was just a matter of time before he broke his conditions.
If the person he contacted is a former victim, then I suspect that will be more than reason enough to put him back inside.
Very funny – and probably true.
Went to see Django Unchained at the Empire Theatre in Island Bay. A great little theatre, which was well patronised. A nice place to see a movie, and then dinner afterwards at Original Thai just down the road.
Anyway – to the movie.
It is classic Quentin Tarantino. The corny music, the oversized text, the blood and splatter, the lethal protagonist.
If you liked Kill Bill, you’ll like Django Unchained.
Jamie Foxx stars as Django, but my favourite character was Dr King Schulz played by Christoph Walz. An elderly softly spoken German who surprises often.
Leonardo DiCaprio excels as a charming but nasty slave owner. And Samuel L Jackson is unrecognisable as the “house nigger” who hates Django.
There are heaps of scenes where you will laugh out loud, and a large number of great gun battles.
It is a wonderful spaghetti western. Highly recommended if you like Tarantino’s work.
My only complaint was no strong female character.
This graphic from Vanity Fear shows the death toll and method for each film.
Stuff reports:
The depth of Solid Energy’s financial woes have been laid bare with the Government confirming the company is in talks with bankers over its debt levels.
The Solid Energy board was working with Treasury, advisors and the banks about further restructuring options, with the aim of returning the company to a sustainable financial position, Finance Minister Bill English said.
“Despite restructuring, Solid Energy’s financial position has continued to deteriorate. It is in constructive discussion with banks,” English told a media briefing this afternoon.
He confirmed there had been differences of opinion for some time over the direction of the company.
“There will be the opportunity for us to go back and look pretty hard at the governance and the monitoring.”
The Government would not let the company go into receivership, English said. He would not directly answer questions about a taxpayer-funded bailout, but would not rule it out. …
State-owned Enterprises Minister Tony Ryall said a number of factors had weighed against the company, in particular world coal prices dropping by 40 per cent.
We should have sold Solid Energy years ago. Taxpayers should not be forced to be investors in risky commercial enterprises such as mining. There is no strategic need for the Government to own a mining and power company – just as we also don’t need to own companies that run hydro-dams.
Labour and Greens go on about all the dividends from these companies, and overlook the risk – as we have seen with Solid Energy.
We shouldn’t own a loss making rail company either.
Governments should focus on what they are good at – passing laws, developing policy, regulation etc. The private sector should run companies, receiving both the benefits of them when successful – but also having to foot the losses when not sucessful.
Sadly this means Solid Energy will probably never be sold, and potentially remain a taxpayer liability for some time.
I just hope the Supreme Court upholds the High Court decision, so the Government can get on with at least reducing its shareholding in these competitive commercial companies.
A guest post by barrister Nikki Pender.
Brian Rudman’s column in the NZ Herald today, A Charade of Heirs and Graces, made me think.
An obviously devout republican, Rudman says:
How a liberal-minded modern politician can see any form of inherited monarchy as 21st century is beyond me. Especially one living in a realm on the other side of the globe from the home of said royal head of state. Suggesting this law change is a victory for human rights is a joke as far as ordinary Britons and New Zealanders are concerned. It doesn’t help any one of us becoming head of state of the democracy we live in.
But don’t we in fact enjoy a meritocratic constitutional monarchy?
No one forces us to remain part of the Commonwealth nor to retain the Queen (and her descendants) as Head of State. If there was general, popular support for a change it could be effected relatively swiftly. But there is no popular support. Which is another way of saying that the majority of Kiwis consider that the Queen deserves her position. And those who succeed her know that they too have to meet the same high standard – and ward off any competition – otherwise they’ll be dumped.
And frankly, who else on the planet has been trained from birth to fulfil what is a lifelong tour of public duty?
It works for me.
The Herald reports:
The days of tiny “shoebox” apartments in Auckland could come back if a new rule in the unitary plan is passed.
The Auckland Council draft unitary plan is proposing to reduce the minimum apartment size from 35 square metres to 30sq m plus a minimum balcony space of 8sq m.
This must be what Labour has in mind for under $300,000!
Katie Chapman at Dom Post reports:
Cabbies may have to pay to use taxi ranks as Wellington City Council looks to save ratepayers’ money.
But taxis warn that the cost would just end up being passed to passengers.
A proposal to charge taxis for using city stands is among ideas mooted by council officers for inclusion in the draft Annual Plan, which sets the city’s budget and rates take.
Councillors will debate the draft next month before the final version is sent out for public consultation.
I use taxis a fair bit, but despite that I think there is some merit to this idea. Central city space is at a premium. Those who use it for parking or for taxi stands should pay for the economic cost of that space. Basically it should be user-pays. I’m not sure ratepayers should subsidise taxi users.
Parliament has announced:
The House’s Order Paper has a refreshed format. The changes are designed to enhance the function of the Order Paper, which is similar to an agenda—it lists the business before the House on a sitting day. One of the helpful new features is the insertion of hyperlinks from each bill title listed on the Order Paper to the text of the bill. This will provide easier and faster electronic access to the business before the House.
This is a useful initiative. It was silly that you couldn’t click on a bill’s name to view it.
One of the reasons why I started my daily Parliament posts was because there was no one page where you could see everything scheduled for Parliament that day, with links for more info.
But we’ll keep them up, as the posts on Kiwiblog include the oral questions for each day, plus a brief background on each bill due for debate.
James Dann is a Christchurch local body politician and blogs on the Christchurch rebuild etc. His latest blog post is on the Nielsen survey for CERA which has upset a few people because in fact it found not everyone was unhappy.
James has said the survey is unrepresentative:
The key to this survey is in the methodology. It was undertaken between August 29 and October 15 last year. 2381 people responded to the survey. 1156 of them were from Christchurch City, 618 from Selwyn District and 607 from Waimakariri District. So that means that of the people who did respond, more than half (1225) AREN’T ACTUALLY FROM CHRISTCHURCH. I mean no disrespect to the people of Rolleston, Lincoln, Rangiora, Kaiapoi etc. I am sure they have had a hard time. But they don’t have the same issues that people who actually live in the city do. They haven’t had to deal with a lack of services, portaloos, red zoning, TC3 land, roadworks to the same extent that people who live in the city do. …
Yet the survey then merges these three population groups, and continues to extrapolate from the combined population for another 100 pages. If you get to the end of the report, you’ll find the populations of Christchurch, Selwyn and Waimakariri. They are 289,000, 30,000 and 36,000 respectively. More than 80% of the adult population lives in Christchurch, and yet more than 50% of respondents come from less than 20% of the population, a section of the population that the survey shows have a more positive response in this survey.
Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Now the Herald has gone and reprinted his blog post in the Herald.
James has made a fatal mistake. He has not read the survey results.
He is correct that the raw sample is not reflective of the overall population. That 80% live in Christchurch but only half the responses were from Christchurch people.
But what he has either deliberately or accidentally omitted, is that the results are weighted so that the results do precisely match the area, gender and age of the local population. Nielsen say in their report:
The sample design over-sampled residents of the two districts with smaller populations to ensure that the sample size within each district was sufficient to allow reliable and robust analysis.
At the analysis stage, the data was adjusted by a process called weighting. This process adjusts for discrepancies between the profile of people who completed the survey and the known profile of residents of greater Christchurch.
Population statistics are obtained from Statistics New Zealand data and is based on the latest population projections.
Weighting increases the influence of some observations and reduces the influence of others. So, for example, while 618 or 26% of completed interviews came from Selwyn District, the population of Selwyn actually represents about 8% of greater Christchurch. Thus, the data was adjusted so that 8% of any ‘greater Christchurch’ result reported is based on the responses of Selwyn residents.
So the criticism of Dann are entirely invalid, and worse the Herald has repeated them on their website. This is not a matter of opinion. His failure to mention that the results are weighted by area totally invalidate his criticism. The Herald was aware of this also, as one of their editorial staff tweeted his blog post and I pointed out this failing in a response (which they retweeted).
Appendix 5 of the poll results on page 103 details their weighting matrix with precise quotas for area, gender and age. It is a model of transparency.
Incidentally how significant were the differences in responses from those in Christchurch itself, and the two neighbouring districts? Here’s the figures for overall quality of life – good vs poor.
So the results for Greater Christchurch are almost identical to Christchurch City.
The only question I have is whether Mr Dann knew the survey was weighted and decided not to mention that fact, or whether he just failed to read the results in full.
UPDATE: He has amended his original blog post to now mention the weighting, but note that the version picked up by the Herald doesn’t include this.
UPDATE 2: Dann was a Labour Party candidate at the last local body elections. Yet the Herald didn’t think to mention this. Shocking.
Bernard Orsman at NZ Herald reported:
Blogger David Farrar has questioned whether ratepayers are funding Mr Brown’s re-election campaign.
In a post on his Kiwiblog site titled “Len’s gaggle of spin doctors”, Mr Farrar said Mr Brown’s hiring of Dan Lambert took his tally of spin doctors to six – more than the entire parliamentary Labour Party.
Labour has five parliamentary press secretaries and a part-time speech writer for 34 MPs. Prime Minister John Key has four press secretaries and one media assistant.
Mr Brown refused to answer questions about communications staffing under his leadership.
Mr Lambert blocked repeated requests by the Herald to speak to the mayor, saying: “I think it’s reasonable the mayor wouldn’t want to go on record on a matter like this.”
I don’t think it is unreasonable for the Mayor to front on why he needs six communications staff. I do think it is unreasonable for those staff to block access to the Mayor.
In Parliament leaders can’t do that. They have weekly press conferences or run the media gauntlet when the House is sitting. A Mayor should be more open to the media, not less open.
Maybe there really is a need for six staff. But it would be good to hear what it is.
Shane Cowlishaw at Stuff reports:
Concerns have been raised about the plans to investigate people without their knowledge as the Government introduces measures to prosecute the partners of benefit fraudsters.
Announcing the changes yesterday, Associate Social Development Minister Chester Borrows said a new offence would be created to allow the partner or spouse of a person wrongly collecting a benefit to be charged.
It would mean partners could face a fine of up to $5000 or 12 months in jail, as well as their share of the repayments.
Last year more than $20 million was lost because of relationship fraud, making up one-third of welfare fraud cases. …
Beneficiary Advocacy Federation spokeswoman Kay Brereton said she was supportive of the move to target partners.
Currently the majority of people being punished for relationship fraud were women, who were often pressured into the crime. While there would be situations where a partner was not aware of the fraud, this would be the minority, she said.
“I’d love to think that this would discourage men, and I know I’m being very sexist but what we see is mostly men, to discourage them from pressuring their partner into doing this.”
I agree that in the majority of cases it is a joint decision to commit benefit fraud, so the ability to prosecute both is a useful change.
Cristina Odone blogs at the Telegraph:
John O’Farrell, Labour’s candidate in the Eastleigh by-election, used to contribute amusing articles to the New Statesman when I was the magazine’s deputy editor. The comedian was unfailingly polite in his dealings with me. Our contact was by telephone only and I remember picturing a mild-mannered soul clad in regulation socks and sandals.
But mention Margaret Thatcher and gentle O’Farrell starts foaming at the mouth and spewing bile. In a book he wrote about his support for Labour, he revealed his “disappointment” when the IRA failed to kill the then prime minister in Brighton, in 1984. “Why did she have to leave the bathroom two minutes earlier?” he asked himself when Mrs Thatcher survived the bomb blast that destroyed her bathroom in the Grand Hotel.
So Labour’s candidate is someone who supported the IRA attempted assassination of the UK Prime Minister. Charming, and not surprising.
Given the venom with which Labour supporters attack the former PM, you’d think that when their party finally came to power in 1997, it reversed every one of her hateful policies. In fact, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown guarded the Thatcher legacy as lovingly as if she’d been a grocer’s daughter born and bred in Islington. Her successors kept the privatisation and kept at bay the trade unions.
Smart men.
This makes me suspicious. If Labour can live with Margaret Thatcher’s policies, what is it about her that they find so unacceptable? …
Secondly, she’s a woman. The party that pays lip service to equality and feminism is, behind the scenes, deeply misogynist. Labour historians like to claim that Barbara Castle could have beaten Thatcher to be the first woman prime minister. But Castle was only allowed to rise to Cabinet ministerial level; and her biography, Red Queen, revealed that Wilson, Healey, Jenkins and Crosland kept her firmly in her place by reminding her that her female brain had scraped a third‑class degree. …
Harriet Harman and Diane Abbott are tolerated as noisy sisters; but the minute they aspire to higher office, the sniping starts. Labour women must not get ideas above their station. A woman who climbs to the very top wrongfoots the party’s apparatchiks. Working mothers are fine, as long as they are drones who contribute to the economy. Tokenism in the board room is also acceptable, as a female non-exec has little real bearing on what happens in the company.
But don’t let some uppity woman start bossing everyone about. Margaret Thatcher, née Roberts, did. Her extraordinary career has exposed Labour as the party of men.
Will the UK Labour Party ever have a female leader? I doubt it. The unions are so male dominated, and now get a third of the vote for leader.
Stuff reports:
Anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd claims two of its boats were deliberately rammed by a Japanese whaling ship in the Southern Ocean.
They probably wrote their statements weeks ago.
Sea Shepherd lie. Paul Watson is a pathological liar. This comes from no less a source than his former acolyte Pete Bethune.
I’m all for protesting against the so called scientific whaling which is a farcical exploitation of a loophole in international agreements. I support WWF and even Greenpeace campaigns in this area.
But Sea Shepherd are pathological liars who believe the ends justify the means and they have a long history of violence and aggression.
Eddie at The Standard blogged:
It’s well known that 10 or 11 members of caucus did not give confidence to David Shearer as leader. He might be tempted to punish them in the upcoming reshuffle.
Shearer should go with his instinct and do the opposite. …
To win, Labour must unify. To win Labour must use the best talent caucus has. Shearer should promote some of those capable members even if they have been part of the group pushing for change. Even if that means dislodging some of his own lieutenants. Because that is real leadership.
A couple of hours later chief Cunliffe lieutenant Charles Chauvel resigned from Parliament, with reports emerging he had been told he had no role in a future Labour Government.
But I agree that the smart strategy for Shearer is to unify the caucus. I blogged on 5 February:
I think that Shearer should give Cunliffe a meaningful portfolio in the reshuffle, and offer him a path back the front bench.
So what other changes should Shearer be looking at. Some thoughts:
It will be interesting to see what Shearer does.
The Privacy Commissioner has published a guide for users of cloud computing. It’s a very useful resource.
Their checklist for small business is:
I just wish data caps were higher so I could backup my stuff to the cloud in real time.
Bob Jones writes in the NZ Herald regard the Coroner saying coke should have warning labels:
We read this sort of coroner guff frequently following unusual deaths in which, not content to simply do their job and officially state the cause of death, they instead ignore the extreme oddity of the circumstances and ascribe them to the community at large.
A circus elephant escapes, runs amok and tramples someone to death and the coroner will urge that the government makes us all build elephant-proof fences. A 158kg woman rolls over in bed in a drunken stupor and crushes to death her ex-jockey husband. This actually happened in Tasmania in the late 1980s.
Coroner Crear presumably would urge the government to ban jockeys and other small males sleeping with fat women, or alternatively, that fat women have a warning sign tattooed on their buttocks. In short, coroners too often fail to recognise freak accidents as simply that, namely freak.
Heh, so true.
Older readers will remember George Wilder who delighted us all with his prison escapes. Who can forget his escape from a Taranaki prison when the army was called in from Waiouru to assist prison officers and police searching for him on the central plateau where he had been spotted. Because they occasionally ran across hikers, at day’s end the searchers were shown a photo of George. “That bugger was here all day in the search party”, they all shouted, but too late, George had slipped off into the night.
George wasn’t publicly perceived as a villain, rather he was viewed as an addiction victim for his obsession with taking cars, riding about in them for half an hour then leaving them unharmed. He simply couldn’t stop himself despite endless court warnings. Coroner Crear would doubtless blame the car manufacturers and Professor Sellman would want cars added to the addictive substances list.
Highly likely! They always blame the company.