Posts by Ben McNicoll
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I just hope someone somewhere has still got the cover your ass email/memo where they pointed this lack of security out years ago but were told the solutions were too expensive.
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Hard News: "Because we can", in reply to Sacha,
Taylor Fry uses a sum of all beneficiaries within a benefit quarter instead of the numbers at a point time within the quarter
Thus artifically inflating the numbers as there will be some who were on and off within that time.
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Which is also what I thought of the Campbell Live vox pops… the NOs seemed embarrased by their position and were out of there quick, and you got the sense they knew the culture had moved on.
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I think given most of the probable “NO, but I’m not going to say it out loud” pollies are at least feeling embarrassed enough by their positions to dissemble and equivocate, we may have won the argument, but perhaps not until a few more of this lot have trotte(re)d off into retirement.
ETA: by which I mean, I suspect it will get through the first reading, but that a few crucial votes might find some semantic reason why they can't vote for it in it's current form once it comes back from committee.
I hope to be proved wrong.
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Hard News: Media Mathematics, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
reality-adjacent
I'm stealing that.
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Oh, and I’ll chime in with the “great panel & show” crowd, Russell.
I thought you handled the dual role of moderator/interested party incredibly well – especially when you volunteered information about the listings issue.
It just made me realise how pissed off I am with the whole host-as-every-man-stand-in-for-uninformed-audience approach in current affairs shows, as exemplified by (but not restricted to) “Walrus” Sainsbury on Closeup.
When did it become so unusual for a host to demonstrate knowledge/research of the subject in an interview? I feel like we’re frogs that have been sitting in a pot of slowly boiling cluelessness.
I blame 60 Minutes et al.
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We hear "if not" more, because most questions are asking if the minister agrees/supports a previous position that the questioner believes is false, with the intention of getting the minister to admit they were previously wrong/lying. The "if not, why?" invites them to dig their hole a little deeper.
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Hard News: Media Mathematics, in reply to Sacha,
question for parliamentary junkies: why do Questions always say “if not, why not” rather than this positive construction?
Because otherwise they could just say "no" and have answered the question adequately?
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Oh yeah, and pilot the thing in commercial vehicles first perhaps.
ETA: Steven Joyce would LOVE that.
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Seeing as we’ve veered into driver enforcement/education etc… here’s my modest proposal:
A compulsory device for vehicles (phased in) that:
- Disables ignition until insertion of valid smart card license.
- Uses GPS to track local speed limit, warns if exceeded, and imposes instant fines for exceeding tolerance after the warning period. Fines are lowish at first, but increase over time. More effective at modifiying behaviour because it happens every single time.
- Possibly require breath screening if flagged for previous drink driving on licenseSeems like the base technology is available and a device could be developed for a quite reasonable couple of hundred bucks per device, based on price of my android smart phone. Spread the cost over a couple of countries etc.
Device cost could be heavily subsidised by fine take. License design so compliant devices can be built in by car manufacturers.
Yep, would be some issues around surveillance and privacy to take care of, but most arguments against this that I anticipate come down to people arguing for the right to break the law if they think they won’t get caught.
Doesn’t stop people from being dicks to cyclists etc, but could potentially be of use as a black box in case of car accidents too.
ETA: Within a few years, I expect to see more technology with awareness of other cars on the road anyway, so the specs of these things would evolve to include other dangerous/dickish behaviour such as tailgating, excessive acceleration.
Seems to me that the enforcement isn't keeping up with tech with potential to be fence at top of cliff, rather than holding out threat of possibly being caught as ambulance (literally) at bottom.