Posts by Andrew E
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Alternatively, you could just argue that Conservatives see aid funding as just another pot of taxpayer money to loot for lining the pockets of their friends and donors. But that would be truly cynical...
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Speaker: Bad Aid: How Murray McCully is…, in reply to Lilith __,
Why is it that so many Ministers in the current government seem allergic to expert advice or evidence? (Anne Tolley and National Standards springs immediately to mind, but there are plenty of other examples) They think that some uninformed idea they happen to randomly think up will be better than the ideas of experts in the field.
While keeping Terence's caveat above in mind, and subject to someone intelligent coming along to point out my misconceptions and biases, I'd offer the following explanation:
'Expert knowledge' and 'professionalisation' can be seen by the ill-informed as inherently 'progressive'. Ergo, if you're against 'progressives' as a politician, you're likely to be sceptical, if not outright opposed to 'expert knowledge' and 'professionals'. It's why conservatives are so opposed to the teaching of civics and politics in schools: they don't want the poor plebs to understand how the system works.
Or as John Stuart Mill put it (according to Wikiquote):
I never meant to say that the conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.
John Stuart Mill, in a letter to the Conservative MP, John Pakington (March 1866)
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Speaker: Bad Aid: How Murray McCully is…, in reply to George Darroch,
Just what I was about to say. NZ's Transparency International rating comes from the 'Corruption Perceptions Index', not from asking ordinary people about their experience with bribery and corruption.
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OnPoint: Budget 2011: Radioactive Space Donut, in reply to Keith Ng,
You poor saps can view the IE compatible one I made
Thanks.
To be honest, I made this one only because I was sick of having to make shit work in IE. The fix invariably involves disabling AWESOME.
Understandable. Now imagine having to use tools that disable awesome every working day because your office can't stop glugging the M$ kool aid.
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OnPoint: Budget 2011: Radioactive Space Donut, in reply to James Butler,
I have reluctantly moved to Chrome despite my geek misgivings about privacy
I understand there's an open source version (called Chromium) which doesn't report all your browsing back to the googleplex. Haven't got around to installing it though.
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OnPoint: Budget 2011: Radioactive Space Donut, in reply to Keith Ng,
Dear People: Chrome is superfast. Kicks the pants off Firefox 4
Dear Keith: Chrome sends lots of lovely usage data to Google, so isn't very privacy friendly.
Plus, some people working in buildings not too far from Parliament might be stuck on IE8 and, heaven help them, XP, although not from choice.
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Just back from the demonstration outside Parliament. Decent turnout to protest against the expected cuts to public services in the Budget. But I have to say that Phil Goff's speech was absolutely woeful. If that's the best he can do in front of a favourably disposed audience then heaven help us come November. I don't recall him stating a single specific policy that Labour would introduce to help fix the problems caused by the current government. Metiria Turei spoke about 5 minutes later and proceeded to give two specific policy changes that would boost the incomes of the low-paid and reduce the gaping holes in government coffers: an increase in the minimum wage and cutting ETS subsidies to polluters. Big cheers from the crowd.
The point at which Labour stops keeping its powder dry (assuming that's their excuse at the moment) better be immediately after Bill English sits down this afternoon. Otherwise, I dread to think what the state of this country will be at the end of the next 3 years.
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6) Facilitate access to a wide range of safe and effective dietary supplements
Oh dear. So much of that is just snake oil.
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Hard News: Some Lines for Labour, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I can, and it's at the root of why Labour are failing.
They're a pro-capitalist party. Sure, they want a nicer kinder capitalism, with 3.142% Kiwisaver contributions, Working for Families and Rob Fyfe/Don Elder "responsible" to a silent state shareholder. But they're basically just a few degrees left of National, just as ACT are a few degrees right.Labour should be paying close attention to the slaughter of the Liberal Party in Canada's recent general election, and the significant breakthrough of the New Democratic Party.
While MMP means it is unlikely to be repeated on the same scale here as it was in Canada, Labour's failure to competently articulate a real alternative will end up with a lot more people than just Che looking where else to place their 'x' on the ballot paper. Competent MPs like Grant Robertson and David Cunliffe will suffer from this just as much as the incompetents like Goff.
The current government is presenting so many open goals for Labour to score into, that the leadership's inability to put the ball into the back of the net is rivalling useless English football teams in a World Cup match.
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Legal Beagle: Adventures in the OIA or:…, in reply to izogi,
The system you're describing is pretty similar to that used in Canada for quite a while, known by its acronym, CAIRS. I think the Harper government got rid of CAIRS though. There are reasons to be in favour of a system like that, but it can also be used as an instrument of control and manipulation.
A country with a more advanced request-making, tracking and appeals mechanism - which enables the stats to be produced as you go - is that developed in Mexico. Originally known as SISI, it's on to its second version already, and is now called InfoMex. It is basically a big database of requests, with 3 types of user: people making requests, agencies responding to requests, and the Information Commission adjudicating appeals. Requesters can lodge their request in the system, the agency officials check the system 'inbox' for their agency each day, responses are sent back out via the system (as are requests for clarification of the request etc) and if the requester is unhappy with the response, they can file their appeal to the Information Commissioners via the same system. Nothing can get 'lost in the post', all delays are systematically recorded, and so on, and so on.
It has less of a downside in terms of potential for control and manipulation as the system has been developed, and is hosted by, the Information Commission (which plays the role equivalent to our Ombudsmen). Whether government agencies there have developed their own parallel systems for ensuring coordination between themselves (and that their responses are from the same hymn sheet) is something I don't know.
As far as I know, the Mexicans are willing to give the software to other jurisdictions for free (they've done this with other Latin American countries), so - as you suggested, and with most things needed to make the OIA work - all that's needed is the political willpower.
ETA - the Mexicans have also tied this in to what is known as a 'disclosure log', that they call 'Zoom', which contains the agency responses to previous requests.