Posts by Idiot Savant
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There is one MP placed to write to the Speaker: ACT’s David Seymour. Would he be of a mind to put pen to paper?
If Steven Joyce tells him to.
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Apparently the SOP is being withdrawn. Huzzah!
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Legal Beagle: Update on the Former MP's…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Also, if the former MP is prevented from foreign travel by virtue of their enforced residence in one of Her Majesties Prisons, do they get to roll up the free flights for their eventual release? I think this should be clarified in the light of recent events?
They lose it on conviction.
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OnPoint: Leviathan, in reply to Steve Bell,
After all, "we" (Parliament on the people's behalf) passed the GCSB Bill, didn't we? & the Search & Surveillance Bill (after a struggle) and we all got the opportunity to comment through the Select Committee process.
Though in the case of the most recent anti-terror legislation, the one they rammed through under urgency immediately after the election so the SIS could get a funding increase, our submissions weren't even read.
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OnPoint: Leviathan, in reply to Russell Brown,
This is important. Don't be a crank. Be measured and correct.
The problem, of course, is that those in power like to paint anyone who doesn't like the way things are as a crank. Hager, for example, is nothing but measured and correct. And he is spun as a liar, a thief, and a conspiracy theorist for taking what the government says in its own documents at face value.
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I want a smaller Leviathan, one which is less hungry for my freedoms and less likely to run amok by e.g. giving false data to the PM's office to smear the leader of the opposition, or by spying on whole countries, or by conducting massive "incidental" spying on kiwis. As for how to get it: I'll vote for any party which goes after our spies with a red-hot castration tool.
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On Stuff, Michael Field does a useful job of explaining why we might want to eavesdrop on our Pacific neighbours
I read it - and John Hayes view - as being more an argument that this is entirely the wrong sort of intelligence gathering. Its not focused, its not targeted, it lacks context. And it seems largely to be being done not because we need to - our needs would clearly be better served by embassy staff reading the papers and talking to people - but so that we have something to trade to "the club".
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Hard News: Haphazardly to war, in reply to Russell Brown,
Do you think the Greens would pull the plug on their first term in government?
Yes, I think they would if it came down to war. Or at the very minimum say publicly "we won't vote for it, we won't vote to fund it, and we have to ask our membership whether we can continue to work with you" - effectively putting the survival of the government to a vote of Green members. And that prospect should deter Labour from making such a stupid move.
(OTOH, the regularity with which the US wages war and their expectation of NZ support means it is also extremely perilous for the Greens to actually enter government without an explicit "no wars" provision, because its basicly asking to become Alliance 2.0. Absent such a provision, it is safer for the party as an institution to stay out of government, hold Labour hostage and demand concessions for every single vote. But that of course is up to its members).
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Hard News: Haphazardly to war, in reply to Mike O'Connell,
Danyl Mclauchlan's latest Dim Post blog Off to Iraq argues that 'if Labour were in government our commitment to the latest US/UK adventure in Iraq would be pretty much identical' but 'the marketing would be different.'
I think that ignores the elephant in the room: under MMP, with its most likely coalition partner, Labour would immediately cease to be in government if it tried to do anything of the sort. And better marketing wouldn't work, because the Greens' supporters aren't fooled by it.
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And how's it working it? Today's Manawatu Standard headline is Meth use on rise after legal high ban.
What a tremendous public health success.