Hard News: Dirty Politics
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simon g, in reply to
Another comparison that springs to mind is David Benson-Pope. He was in the wrong, was found to have "misled" (or whatever euphemism we prefer) and had to go.
Back then, people like Sean Plunkett thought their job was to hold the Minister to account. He doesn't seem to think so now.
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<thesighingpedant>
For some reason the adoption- eg in the Herald, last item on POA - of the PM's use of 'refute' to mean dispute or deny seems a symptom of the general decay of MSM news. I've met sub-editors who'd have made any journo who made that mistake want to crawl under a rock for a week.
And on TVNZ, someone appears to have failed the basics of Roman numerals.
Great subs also add long-term knowledge, news sense, and fact-checking. Makes me wonder how much of that slides through as well. -
And on TVNZ, someone appears to have failed the basics of Roman numerals.
I predicted disaster from day one when they introduced that new fangled whole numeral approach to learning Roman numbers. Back in my day, you were beaten for III weeks if you couldn't recite the year of first publication of Keat's poems in Latin before writing it flawlessly and without hesitation on the blackboard.
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Key says that Ede's job was briefing bloggers and that he txts or calls Slater 3 or 4 times a year to clarify something about story he didn't understand. This is apparently perfectly normal and widespread. So Russell, how many calls/txts have you received from Key and Ede? From other ministers?
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
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What did they do if you misplaced an apostrophe?
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Richard Aston, in reply to
It was satisfying to hear a proper grilling….
Yeah that was so satisfying to hear Guyon going hard trying to nail Key down.
I had been wondering if Espiner was a national apologist but this interview gave me hope.
Did it actually reveal anything new? Not sure and maybe the full frontal "yes or no" approach will never actually reveal anything. -
stephen clover, in reply to
Did it actually reveal anything new? Not sure and maybe the full frontal “yes or no” approach will never actually reveal anything.
Poor guy. It must be like a tight-rope act for him. On the one hand he has to try to run the official lines which are designed to insulate National & the govt from damage – but at the same time he has to dovetail those with the lines his private advisers are concocting in order to maintain sufficient distance so that when everything REALLY blows up he can claim ignorance / deception by his Ministers and staff and still walk away smiling.
The stress!
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Surely Ede's phone logs are FOIAable for the period of time he was paid by the public purse
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Richard Aston, in reply to
Hacker comes forward
Ok so the evil hacker kim.dot.com diversion is a dead duck what will be next ?
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Neil Graham, in reply to
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re @whaledump's details.
Flat 3b, 3 Hans Cresent is the Euadorian Embassy in London.
9284C4A9EB9268918E03313DCDAD5C12EFF3D467 is a hash of bitcoin address
1EMihuUXnttweLaARu83CW9i8V5c4d1r3t with (as yet) no transactions. -
+1 for Guyon Espiner - nice job!
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Listening to Key essentially saying "it's perfectly OK to take confidential stuff from a web site if the security is lax" just pisses me off - the is the guy responsible for the GCSB - if the minister for the GCSB has this attitude what can we expect from his department?
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Alfie, in reply to
Listening to Key saying "it's perfectly OK to take confidential stuff from a web site if the security is lax" just pisses me off
Surely Key's argument justifies any and all hacking? After all, no hacker would ever be able to access confidential information if the target site's security is solid. Perhaps anyone in NZ charged with breaching a computer system in the future will be able to rely upon "the Key Defense".
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John Farrell, in reply to
You could apply the same logic to the acquisition of Slater's emails. The fact they were accessible shows his system was insecure
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Let's remember that it's not just Slater. As well as Odgers and Hooton publicising Nicky Hager's address and smacking their lips over the prospect of harm - or worse - coming to him, we have the Penguin's mate, Jordan Williams issuing a threat to Helen Kelly as well: https://twitter.com/JordNZ/status/501113656784863232
"Be very careful", he says. Bluster or not, effective or not, there you have an insight into their personalities. Pure evil.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Laila Harre’s observation that Judith Collins was Minister for the Electoral Commission was thrillingly chilling.
No it really wasn't, Lucy. Know I'm on a hiding to nothing, but it might be a good idea if Laila Harre took a deep breath before passive-aggressively impugning the integrity and political independence of electoral agencies.
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Judith Collins has finally realised the implications of supplying a civil servant's name to Slater which resulted in death threats. And she's done a flip-flop!
Ms Collins last week confirmed she had given the man's name to Slater telling NewstalkZB: "What I was asked for was the name and the title of the guy and that's publicly available and I've simply given him that".
However, she yesterday changed her position telling the Herald she did not give Slater Mr Pleasants' name as Slater already had it.
She had not indicated to Slater she believed the man was responsible for leaking information to Labour she said.
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The hacker appears to have a sense of humour.
The Twitter handle carries the address 3 Hans Cres - the address of the Ecuadorian embassy in London where Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is exiled.
The handle also includes an encryption key which resolves to Winston Peter's email address.
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Lucy Telfar Barnard, in reply to
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Craig, for me there's a difference between impugning the integrity of the Electoral Commission, and pointing out that someone who's behaved in such an appalling way towards public servants (amongst other people) isn't a fit person to be in charge of the Electoral Commission.
As Minister, she has oversight over their work and budget. Lower voter turnout favours the right. So... if she's a bad egg, how much focus and budget is she going to put into, say, encouraging voter turnout? How well is she going to resource the department that works to get people to enroll/chases them if they don't?
In general, we rely on the Minister to act in good faith, and in ordinary circumstances I would be happy to do that. But her proven acts of bad faith make it harder to continue to do so. -
Michael Meyers, in reply to
it might be a good idea if Laila Harre took a deep breath before passive-aggressively impugning the integrity and political independence of electoral agencies.
For my sins, I was at the Internet Mana roadshow yesterday where Laila Harre was talking about the electoral commission and Judith Collins. Harre's point was that the electoral commission isn't getting enough money to properly do its job and get people voting. As a result voter turnout has been declining.
I have no idea if they have enough money to do their job or not but Harre was not questioning the integrity and independence of the agencies, just the independence of their budgets. This is a big difference.
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If National win the election, Key's in a real Catch-22 situation with Collins. If he grows a pair and demotes here, he then runs the risk of her spitting the dummy and attempting to replace him sooner or later. But if he doesn't demote here, then he'll have to carry on fobbing off questions over her integrity.
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As an aside, I suppose it's too early for me to nominate "dirty" as the PA word-of-the-year ?
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
I have no idea if they have enough money to do their job or not but Harre was not questioning the integrity and independence of the agencies, just the independence of their budgets. This is a big difference.
And that’s an entirely worthy sentiment, but she didn’t actually say any of that on Morning Report – and it was a underwhelming interview that only looked good by comparison with the preceding Key trainwreck. Judith Collins is a grown-up who can take whatever slings and arrows come her way, but I don’t see why the Electoral Commission had to be brought into it in any way, shape or form.
IMO, Harre was damn lucky Susie Ferguson didn’t ask the obvious follow up: “So, are you claiming Collins is politically interfering in the work of the Electoral Commission?” And she's actually going to have to learn to answer uncomfortable but legitimate questions without dismissing them as "dirty politics" and "amplifying Cameron Slater's agenda."
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Yet another piece of fall out. One story in Dirty Politics concerns the cleaning industry and lobbying by WO and co against a hard fought government agreement on some standards to protect workers (and eventually overturned by Simon Bridges this year). Now the head of the BSC wants some answers http://www.voxy.co.nz/politics/bsc-president-demands-answers-over-hager-book/5/199497?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
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