Posts by Kyle Matthews
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From memory, that was about the 1984 currency crisis, when some journalists agreed not to report what they knew, for the public good. I don't have a problem with that.
I don't think I do either.
But given that the normal role of the media is to take information that the public would like to know and put it before the public, and in this instance journalists have clearly chosen not to... who knew anyway? Did anyone or any group of people benefit by having time to get their money out of things before the general public became aware? What were the implications for people of journalists not reporting what they know?
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Okay, perhaps my interpretation was uncharitable, but the passages I cited (and there are others) did seem to indicate that Bollard was repeatedly relieved that journalists didn't ask questions he didn't want to have to answer.
Either way it says something interesting - either our financial journalists aren't very good at asking the right questions, OR they knew stuff but chose not report it or report it in full (I think on Media 7 once you had a guy who stated the second answer as a financial reporter Russell).
The second leads to intereresting questions about who knew about impeding trouble and was able to get their money out of things, and who didn't. Who are the people that have that information independent of the financial media? Was it, as Andre claims, beneficial to the old boys network richer people?
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"Newly-minted member of Grey Power"
That seems inherently oxymoronic.
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There's also the select committee meeting where he admits to being worried about journalists being in the room, and thus arranged with chair Craig Foss that the committee wouldn't ask certain questions he didn't want to answer. That's fairly interesting.
Fairly interesting indeed. I wonder if all the members bought into that, or if there was some serious arm twisting going on.
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This is all getting out of hand!
Hand to mouth surely?
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That second venn makes no sense. Overlapping circles share both qualities, in this case good and bad. And including the entirety of Nazis in a circle called "good people" is just wrong.
I could see an argument for 'good people' and 'bad people' overlapping, if it's taken to mean "people are sometimes good and sometimes bad, very rarely is a person a complete saint or a complete sinner".
Having all Nazis inside the good circle is hard work however.
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Andrew Geddis on Pundit exposes the National and Act Party members of the Law and Order select committee for the chumps they are, noting not only that their support for Paul Quinn's Electoral (Disqualification of Convicted Prisoners) Amendment Bill is unprincipled, but that their recommendations inadvertently extend the right to vote to the very worst criminals currently in our jails.
"They are not only moral pygmies, but they are really, really dumb," he writes.
Andrew normally is much more restrained in his blog posts, given that he's now a respectable academic and probably this country's leading expert on electoral law.
You know it's a fuckup of fucked up proportions when he's come out so strong.
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The great pity here is I can't see how there will be enough money to save and restore all the damaged buildings. I believe the Government will stump up to 10 million dollars to match what is raised locally. However 20 million won't be enough. Fixing the old St John Church at Horarata alone has an estimated cost of $5 million.
Presumably a significant amount of repair will be covered by earthquake commission and insurance. I would have thought additional money would be required to do anything additional to buildings, ie. earthquake strengthening.
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Presuming the death of ACT, does that mean National will cover the right wing?
If they do, will they leave the all impotent Central position?
Or will we move to the left as a country, the death of free market policies everdent for all to see?
Strategically, from national's point of view, there's a lot of value in having a party to the right of it for many reasons.
Whether or not the past few months will kill ACT and prevent it from doing that... It wouldn't surprise me if there's further moves in the party to return it to its ideological base and turf out the SST types.
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It just seems to me the whole "democratic" process has developed fatal flaws along the way. It is no longer representative.
In terms of being a reflection of the general population, since MMP it's been the most representative ever. Certainly a lot more representative than it was 100 years ago, when our members of parliament were largely independently wealthy, and all white males.