Posts by izogi
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Hard News: That escalated quickly ..., in reply to simon g,
Yes you're probably right that it's just a shallow media and I thought she did as well as could reasonably be expected in politely shutting it down when asked...
But even RNZ Checkpoint, this evening, spent around 50% of its Labour leadership change coverage time (about half of 6.5 minutes) talking about appropriateness of asking her that question, and that's only an abbreviation of everything I've seen around the major media sites and social media today. Much of that Checkpoint coverage was spent giving soundbite space to probably every MP they could get their hands on.
It's as if it only takes some dumbell to ask a particular stupid question and suddenly the only thing worth covering by media in politics...at least until something else comes along... is the superficial nature of whether it's okay to ask that question... And by the way let's poll all our readers and listeners to broadcast all their opinions and comments about it, and try to to get our own opinion pieces to spread virally.
Hopefully she can see it through and give it the general ignoring that it deserves.
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Hard News: That escalated quickly ..., in reply to Pete Sime,
Paragraph B12 on p.150 in the appendices
Thanks, Pete.
Also (unrelated), watching today's media, ugh. Hopefully Labour doesn't get too bogged down in the conversation about having a conversation about whether politicians can have babies. I bet that's exactly the type of distracting discussion that government campaign strategists would like to see it in the news for. -
A quick question for Labour Party experts: Where's the constitution clause that describes the adjusted leadership election process leading up to an election?
I found the 2015 constitution on the Elections website at http://www.elections.org.nz/sites/default/files/parties/rules/labour_party_constitution_2015.pdf (pdf) and linked from the part's website at the end of http://www.labour.org.nz/party_resources .
On page 145 it states "The process outlined in Appendix E shall apply during a Leadership Election." but I cannot see appendix E in the document.
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Hard News: That escalated quickly ..., in reply to Rich of Observationz,
If Jacinda loses and (as is conventional) resigns the next day, she'll take the record for the shortest term of a Labour leader.
Surely that's only going to happen if the election result turns out even lower than the current polls.
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Hard News: That escalated quickly ..., in reply to Mikaere Curtis,
I would really like to see Jacinda develop a more succinct way of a) pointing out National's hopelessness and b) saying what Labour would do differently.
(b) seems like a critical thing to me. For the past so many years I've felt as if Labour has, at most, been pointing at faults in the government but rarely if ever expressing why and how it'd be any better. The unofficial National Party narrative through most of Dirty Politics was "but all politicians are like that so keep voting for us". It wasn't seriously challenged and it worked.
If it's too late for the government to change this election, I hope we're at least heading into a period of credible, charismatic and effective opposition. Nobody wins when the opposition's too ineffective to provide a credible alternative to the government.
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Hard News: Blockchain, what is it?, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Yes that'd be virtually impossible if you were to consider, for example, a person taking a video of themselves voting on their phone.
For comparison though I wonder if there does seem to be a shortcoming in existing electoral law around this.
Last election I recall the publicity around people photographing their completed ballot papers and posting to facebook, and being told they were breaking the law. From memory, though, the law which prevented it seemed to be more obscurely about forging or replicating ballot papers than about producing evidence of who you'd voted for. (I can't recall the reference. Maybe it was 201(1)(a) of the Electoral Act?) IMHO the latter is a much more significant issue in an election than taking a photo which couldn't be passed off as a genuine ballot paper anyway.
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Hard News: Blockchain, what is it?, in reply to Thomas Lumley,
it's the interfaces between blockchains and the rest of the world that are messy
I suppose it's a similar thing with voting. (Sign of the audience: I also zeroed in on those few words before I scrolled down and saw so much talking about it.)
I can accept how blockchains have potential to solve some, maybe all, of the technical security issues of electronic voting. That's fine and there are plenty of voting-related applications. At the same time, though, I tend to think the much more interesting issues with electronic voting, and the issues which often get ignored by people who campaign for electronic voting, are the social aspects that occur on the other side of the interface -- between real people in the real world.
If the main benefit is supposed to be to let people vote without going to a public polling station (like voting with your phone or whatever) then how does one deal with the potential for all that voter manipulation that can occur in un-monitored places? (eg. An abusive spouse, or even just general peers, watching you cast your vote with the expectation that you'll vote as they do.) If a person's vote can be verified afterwards, as the linked article seems to boast about, then what's to stop someone else from offering an incentive, or threat, to those who can or cannot prove afterwards that they voted a certain way?
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Hard News: Barclay and arrogance, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
...and I notice that the Herald's new site annoyingly now has autoplay on videos, thanks for nothing NZME.
If you're using Chrome then I highly recommend AutoMute. (It's possible to white-list sites you visit lots and trust.) There are probably similar add-ins for other browsers.
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Hard News: Barclay and arrogance, in reply to andin,
That's why when it comes to governing others, we came up with them pesky checks and balances
Absolutely. What I'd really like to hear, but also really wanted to hear in 2014, is Labour's view on the current checks and balances, how they're failing (assuming it thinks they are) and what it intends to do to fix them.
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At the risk of bringing up a tired question (sorry!), how do people think Labour is doing with its response to this, given it's the primary opposition party and the election's approaching?
I've just listened to Andrew Little's stint on Morning Report (from 6m30s), where he was given a good 5 minutes to talk about it. He made plenty of clear points about how bad this is for the government, said the usual stuff like how Todd Barclay should be resigning, and then told people they needed to seriously consider how much they could trust Bill English.... and by the way he didn't trust Bill English.
IMHO he's getting better at interviews, but what I didn't hear him talk about was how Labour would provide a better alternative. That seems significant to me because, especially after 2014, I don't really see how scandals like this have much effect in changing the government --- at least unless people can see a credible alternative. Check out how people are reacting in Gore -- they're just excusing the whole thing as typical of all politicians, and that it's okay because the Police decided they weren't interested. Everyone wants to excuse the behaviour so they can continue to vote for a National candidate with a clear conscience.
If they want to change the government, shouldn't opposition parties, Labour in particular, be out there telling people, both in that electorate and everywhere else, that they can provide Clutha-Southland with a much better candidate than Todd Barclay? In all of this coverage, I've seen zero mention of Cherie Chapman, let alone messages about how she has more integrity as an alternative to Todd Barclay. Shouldn't parties be explaining to voters how they're going to make it so their MPs and Ministers can't get away with the kind of stuff that Barclay's being accused of? What's the benefit of focusing so much on "government = bad" if you're not going to tell people how you're better?
Guyon Espiner even gave Andrew Little an opening, at the end, to comment on common views that all polticians are untrustworthy. I don't think Little really capitalised on it at all as an opportunity to spread a positive message about how Labour would ensure its own MPs and Ministers were held to a high standard. It's almost like he only expected to be talking about National, and wasn't expecting nor prepared to talk positively about the integrity of his own party.