Posts by Dismal Soyanz
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A very thought-provoking post, Graeme.
After a short reflection, my recollection of MMP coming in was because there was a huge dissatisfaction with the way that a government which had a minority of votes in aggregate could push through policies that were quite high risk (thinking of the Muldoon government in the late 70s and early 80s) or ultimately very unpopular (wage freeze anyone?). While MMP (and possibly other forms of proportional representation - not really thought about it) reduces this possibility, the flip side is that government policies are going to be a composite of policy platforms from various parties.
Not only is there the risk of a government backtracking (which was quite possible under FPP) but adding to the uncertainty is that voters face a truckload of variations and permutations of potential policies depending on who forms the coalition.
I guess I am asking in a fairly long-winded manner whether the voting public in general has a clear understanding of what might eventuate or if not, does it simply apply some rule of thumb (voting as if it were a FPP election), hoping that the the likely coalition negotiations and subsequent policy agreements approximates what they are comfortable with (scuse the preposition)?
Winnie's quote (not that Winnie, the real one) that it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time sums it up really.
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In reply to FletcherB
Re the suspension by Paypal et al of payments to Wikileaks, I don’t believe that being a bank or not makes a difference in terms of whether they have the right to disallow a payment to some third party. Not the same issue but certainly as far as anti-money laundering goes, both Visa and Paypal would get caught by our s6 of our AML/CFT Act.
Certainly it would be hard to argue that they are discriminating against you, the customer initiating the payment.
The US most likely has quite different legal obligations of (quasi-)financial institutions compared to NZ. I know US organisations will “red flag” individuals who may only be subject to news reports of possible criminal, civil, or regulatory violations – pretty wide. I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if there was a legal obligation to at least report transactions if not prevent them where there was grounds to suspect criminal activity. Thus it could be that by not allowing the transactions they are staying within the law.
It would seem a fairly roundabout way of trying to prevent information on the financial industry being leaked and given the ease with which data can be leaked likely to fail. To me this is just butt-covering to avoid getting caught in the crossfire.
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Oh yes - read that yesterday and lol'ed.
Especially the line about knowing his place.
Is there sumwhr on the interweb I can goes 2 lurn teh nu social order?
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to Sacha,
Sacha - you aren't seriously suggesting that the news media is a means of education? What would the sponsors think....
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to Matthew Poole,
And really this is not rocket science. There are a few basic principles which needed to be explained and just about everything else flowed from there.
Apart from the initial CIMS/Rescue 101 stuff, it is not Knowles job to ensure that everyone keeps up. I've not spent time trawling through the history of articles but the impression I got over time was that media websites were lacking. In particular they could have had a link (writ large) to a page that explained these to Jo Public.
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Some of the cultures in the Chinese diaspora around East Asia also have a"public" component, particularly around the ceremonies/rituals. There may be an element of theatre in there though disentangling it from actual religious practice is beyond my limited anthropological skills. However, the actual moment of being informed of a death is not part of that and can't say I can recall ever having seen anything in Asia along the lines of what happened in Greymouth.
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Another explosion today.
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I'm a couple of days late, but the editorial on Scoop focused on the media and particularly the questions raised by the Australian media, mentioning the 9/11 comparison.
The editorial was generous to the Australian reporters (including skipping over the "country cop" comment) and saying that the 9/11 comparison was legitimate. While it may be legitimate when taken out of context, the writer of the editorial seems to have stopped watching the conference before Knowles responded by saying that this had been spoken about the day before by the head of the mine rescue team when he had said that a fire underground has no relevance (sic) to a burning building. Yet the editorial says it was a well thought out question.
I have no opinion on the other matters raised in the editorial about disclosure and certainly there are many questions that need to be answered.
I can't quite put my finger on it but there is something disturbing about the piece.
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to BenWilson,
Is it not possible that methane could build up extremely rapidly if it is under pressure and a hole is opened to it? Could it widen a small leak, rather like a crack in a dyke, so that a drip rapidly becomes a torrent?
Trevor Watts seems to think the build up after the first explosion was rapid.
The explosion ruptured the underground gas drainage line and it immediately began spewing 800 litres per second of methane into the mine, Watts said.
ETA; Which then raises the issue of how fast was it collecting methane to create this kind of pressure? I doubt that it would have been temporarily stored within the mine - that would be crazy.
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Mind you, I do like the tag "corporate psychopath".
"I proactively incentivised the go forward with some fava beans and a nice chianti."