Posts by Stephen Judd
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Hard News: Everybody's Machiavelli, in reply to Russell Brown,
Sure. I agree with your comments, in fact. However I think those are all legitimate issues of public interest to canvas in a newspaper. It would be ideal in many ways if Cook and Slater hadn't been the ones to break the story and done it in the way they did, but once they had, all these things need reporting on.
Apologies for replaying my comment on the Dimpost tonight, but this is basically my position...
I think Brown should resign if he proves to have pulled strings for Chuang, or intimidated people, or something of that nature. Merely shagging your illicit sex partner at work is something that hundreds of New Zealanders will be doing around the country as the office party season kicks in.
In principle I too share Danyl’s view that if Slater is for it, I’m against it, whatever it is. Also, I’m a lefty, and I would prefer Brown to be mayor, and this is majorly inconvenient for the cause. But keeping your dick in your pants when necessary IS an important political skill and it disappoints me that Brown hasn’t mastered it. Further, abuse of power relations by an office holder is a no no.
My prediction is that Brown will tough it out, and by next election, he’ll be fine, and the more pious Christian part of his constituency will love a repentant sinner even more than they love a saint. We’ll see.
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Hard News: Everybody's Machiavelli, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
what part of “do your own fucking legwork, and make sure you’ve got all your facts straight before going to press” is obscure?
What is "legwork" in this context? I understand that the Herald's reporters are seeking their own sources and writing their own stories since Slater broke it. Likewise, what facts did they not get straight?
I don’t think there was any legitimate public interest in Len Brown’s private life.
What are the boundaries of private life? I think when you hold yourself to the electorate out as a caring Christian family man in an attempt to get people to vote for you and your values, and yet don't live up to those values, when you write references for people you are in a covert relationship with, when you may as an older authority figure have abused your role and influence in a sexual relationship, that there is a public interest there.
There is also public interest in an orchestrated campaign to destabilise a mayoralty, and it's hard to report on that without reporting on the substance of the campaign.
The challenge for the Herald is to find a way to report the facts without prurience, and they may well have failed at that, and all I ask is that you say how, which you evidently don't want to do.
I sure as fuck don’t think there was any legitimate public interest in the leering slut-shaming and casual racism Bevan Cheung is still being subjected to.
From the Herald? Again, example please?
I sure find it interesting how the New Zealand Herald is trying to distance itself from the very sleazebomb they’ve been running hard with for most of a week
Columnists are not reporters. I know you know that.
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Hard News: Everybody's Machiavelli, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I don’t apologize for expecting slightly higher editorial standards
What are those standards though? Could you please clarify:
- whether they should have covered it
- and if so, what aspects were legitimate to coverI do appreciate your love of rhetorical figures, but between the hyperbole and the litotes I really cannot understand what you do and don't find acceptable.
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Hard News: Everybody's Machiavelli, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
And I think it’s perfectly fair comment to ask whether Rudman’s going to grow a spine and turn that “brutal” invective on his own employers. I’m far from impressed by the sight of The Herald’s “Auckland issues” columnist posturing atop a moral high horse choking in its own shit.
Really? No news establishment, commercial or public, could have left this story alone once Slater broke it. There are angles of abuse of power, abuse of office, morality, politics, and dirty tricks conspiracy that are both entertaining and of public interest. As it is, the Herald seems largely to have left the nastiest details to Slater.
What did you expect? I imagine the Ranapia standard would require a paragraph on A10 saying "It has been reported on the internet that a public office-holder has been indiscreet but modesty forbids this paper sullying its pages further."
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I think "hand-made Frankenstein" is a marvellous insult to pere et fils, hilarious invective, and well-deserved.
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Hard News: The non-binary council, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Verifiability by the laity is desirable, but it is sufficient for many people if external auditors can be appointed from outside the government to attest to the security of the system.
I don't think so, because online opens up the possibility of systematic and thorough-going problems. We have to think about not just the case of a few booths or one electorate race being suspect, but the entire election. If people grasped the potential scale they'd not be so complacent.
Also "done properly" is a rabbit hole. Every layer is suspect from the firmware up. Much larger states than ours have problems securing crucial online systems from foreign interference.
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I really need to pull finger on finishing the massive piece about online voting that I’m working on.
We can’t have online for local elections, because people will then want to use it for general elections, and in general elections the stakes are high enough that online’s serious flaws will kick in.
Bear in mind that an election system should be more or less beyond reproach, verifiable, inspectable, and trusted.
Online suffers from these problems among others:
- compared to a paper system, it can’t be validated by lay people, only by a few experts
- this really comes into play when you want to have a secret ballot
- it’s easy to cast suspicion on the outcome even with a sound system. Eg, a phishing attack here, a DDOS there, an Anonymous disruption for shits and giggles, and then we have to run it again.
- it’s actually hard to validate even by experts – code needs to be inspected, it needs to be shown that the inspected code is what’s actually running, the hardware needs to be inspected, the chain of custody of data needs to be validated and even then, the fact you found no problems doesn’t mean no problems are there. This is somewhat true of paper, but online allows massive scale easily, whereas problems in a paper system are very difficult to do at scale and still be non-obvious.
- past form on large public sector IT projects does not encourage
- unlike, say, a payroll system, you can’t limp along in damage mode while the problems get fixed. There’s only one election every three years, so either you have to have another (with the same, now untrusted system? or with the paper one you just wound down?) or you have to wait and let the elected members suffer claims against their legitimacy.The other thing is, even if online were free of objections, where is the evidence that people don’t vote because it’s too hard?
My understanding is that voting in Western democracies has declined in the last few decades because older voters who vote out of duty/habit are dying off, and younger ones believe less and less that their votes make a difference. Online voting isn’t going to fix that. We know that when people actually care, they move heaven and earth to exercise their franchise. Eg, in the last US presidential elections, African-American voters turned out in record numbers in Ohio to vote for Obama, despite the GOP’s best efforts at voter suppression. I am not persuaded that online voting solves engagement problems at all.
("Puddleglum" argues that NZ's local body woes stem from the 1989 local body reforms).
On the weekend I was talking to an employee of a large national member-based organisation with low turnout in its official elections. They’ve tried moving to online. Hasn’t made a bit of difference. (Although, in fairness, it’s made the administration simpler).
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Yes, I am happy with the idea that People's Choice could act as a collective. What is the point of having a platform, policies and values, and campaigning on them, if you don't then try to implement the policies and act on the values?
I'm reluctant to attribute any intention to "the people", since the people are a diverse bunch who all had their own conflicting reasons to vote, but the electorate put in a council that's 50% candidates who ran on an explicit ticket, and put out the candidates who ran on "no party politics". Sure, if People's Choice use power badly, then we will deserve to be caned next time. But merely voting together to achieve platform aims is not bad, or dysfunctional. It's politics.
Having said that, looking at the rest of the council, I see potential for a progressive and effective council that goes beyond People's Choice and with some mayoral smarts a broad coalition is perfectly possible.
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Yep, Heather might yet squeak in. It would be nice to see Keown out of public office altogether.
On the whole I think People’s Choice can be well pleased. Doubling the number of councillors on the ticket is a significant achievement. Two community boards have solid majorities, and if the People’s Choice councillors can maintain unity our bloc will be able to exercise considerable power on council as they are only one vote away from a majority on any given vote. I’m sad now that we didn’t contest Fendalton-Waimairi. I am also sad to see our hard-working and competent candidates (Tracey McLellan, Robyn Nuthall, Mike Mora) all run solid thirds but not get over the top.
The phrase "People's Republic of Christchurch" was on many people's lips last night. I hope we haven't jinxed it.
(caveat: an assumption is that special votes will favour Andrew Turner, which is not a forgone conclusion).
It’s also great to have such a clean out of the incumbents who ran again. It turns out that running on their record and lack of affiliation to any principled platform wasn’t such a great idea for Keown and Button.
Disclosure: I was campaign manager for the Riccarton Wigram People’s Choice campaign. And what an educational experience that was.
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I note the timeline on Stuff claims "tears streamed down his face" at the funeral.