Posts by slarty
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May I just say how bloody awesome this discussion is? Imagine if our parliament were so erudite, intelligent and plain polite.
I particularly like the Wicked Problems. Dworkin humanised.
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Roughan unfortunately summarises the view of the uneducated... perhaps he should simply watch The Wire?
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the cops knew that Thomas had done it but couldn’t pin it on him.
I have trouble understanding how you can *know* something and yet not be able muster the evidence that substantiates it.
Sounds amazingly similar to Marlborough a few years back...
In my experience... because you get brownie points (and maybe a nice DC job) for tidying the big ones up quickly. And those points evaporate if you lose at trial.
I do take great solace from how much better the investigations have become since the Sounds case. It was a huge wake-up call for NZP.
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This is not a partisan issue, it’s a parliamentary services issue – it just so happens that the speaker is a Nat.
With all due respect, this is an old white man issue. PS have just gone through a shared service consolidation which will have failed to deliver the "economies of scale" etc. So they are under the gun.
Lockwood is invested in the OMG we're about to go broke party line. All the budget holders are all terrified of being the one who breaks ranks and asks English for more money.
We aren't broke, we're actually in better shape than most. Our national debt would be easily manageable if we would drop dated ideological policies and tackle the fundamental imbalances and anti-growth policies. But that can never be, so we're back to shaving piffling amounts of state sector budgets and keeping our fingers cross.
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Speaker: Properly Public: It's our information, in reply to nzlemming,
Except that draft documents are OIA-able, as are hand-written meeting notes, audio recordings, photographs, even making officials reconstruct discussions and thought processes. Not a lot of people realise that.
Exactly. And in the agency I'm thinking of, this was the way information was gathered for OIA's:
1. Receive and interpret request
2. email request to line managers who you think may have something relevent in their purview
3. Line manager forwards on to relevent staff
4. Staff and manager have received no guidance beyond "if it has draft on it etc. you don't have to 'fess up" so they ignore all those and respond in the negative
5. Formal response issued that says "nothing to see here"
6. Person who made the request throws hands in air and generally gives up because it's all too hardI witnessed this with a local agency - I saw the document, handed it back, made the request then was told it didn't exist...
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I suspect it is a sign of a truly sad mind, but this made me laugh out loud [cos it's interesting and well written]
Amazing how many agencies whisper to their staff that "stamp it with draft so it can't be released under the OIA"...
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Anybody fancy having a NZ version of Fullfact? A bunch of students would be great! Maybe analysing the drug driving stuff ("hey, we fought for this legislation and funding, we'd better use it or we'll look stoopid") would be an interesting start.
Even from here, it's a daily vindication of my decision years ago to stop reading papers / watching TV. NZ is a bit better, but not that much.
The only problem is I now spend my life puzzled by how people have such skewed worldviews :)
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An interesting nuance... how does the basis of the prosecution reconcile with the Sixth Amendment?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicinage_Clause
Personally I woudl cancel the residency on the grounds of naughtiness and deport him back to Germany. Let a nice MMP parliament which includes the Pirate party deal with it...
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OnPoint: Spending "Cap" is Fiscal Anorexia, in reply to Chris Waugh,
Lol
I was thinking more of the consistent denial of the last 10 years...
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Let me see if I can cause some apoplexy (what me, stir?): there is one aspect of the Boomers thinking that I do like to adhere to: that of personal responsibility.
e.g. I was there when Thatcher introduced the poll tax. And I considered it, and decided it was fundamentally wrong. And went of marches and didn't pay it and railed against my mates and eventually... she put up GST instead.
Most of my friends did nothing. In fact one of my Aunts had the temerity to say "see Slarty, you didn't need to get all upset, they took it away".
My point being that if you don't actively resist, then you are culpable.
So, yes I do blame my parents generation as a whole, but not every member of it specifically. We have had a cohort of voters passing through the system that collectively have outnumbered the generations preceding and following. They are not identical, but they have reflected life-stage tendencies (yes, this is a real thing, as any marketing professional will tell you) as they have passed along.
In the sixties it was free love and drugs. When they had kids things got more conservative. We saw policies in the 80's that were all about greed as they moved into their high-earning phase. It's not a coincidence. And it's not about the individuals, but their collective propensities. Because much as we like to think we're all self-actualising individuals, humans have a depressing tendency to follow the herd.
We must remember that the great legacy of that generation was the excellent education we (Gen X) received in the 70's and 80's. We are smarter than them, but we are still outnumbered. We can't blame them for having suffered what we would now regard as a very poor education in the 50's and 60's.
But neither can we ignore the systemic dumbness and self-interest.
It has led to delights such as oil shocks, two global recessions, a number of pointless and expensive wars (and for those who like patterns, think of Thatchers Falklands alongside Bush's Iraq), climate change, the train wreck that will be our health and pension systems in the coming years, the banking system (still in denial), what we laughingly call a "Corrections" system in NZ, Child Poverty and inequality that should make every person who has voted since 1985 hang their heads in shame....
Frankly, if it didn't offend my basic sensibilities so much, I'd suggest that many people over the age of 60 should stop voting in acknowledgement of their ignorance.
Hows that, not too passive? ;)