Posts by SteveH
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Hard News: Moving right along?, in reply to martinb,
All these potentials for unethical behaviour in my opinion fall well short of the the threshold for resignation from a position. This would be an over reaction.
Absolutely agree.
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Hard News: Moving right along?, in reply to martinb,
It is unethical as the nature of the relationship isn’t clear, ... Brown didn’t give her a job, or create a job for her, he gave her his support through the correct channels.
Whether it was unethical depends on the nature of the reference IMO. If it was essentially a character reference then I don't think it was unethical at all. Character referees are assumed to have a personal relationship with the applicant and I don't believe it's necessary to know the full extent of that relationship. If the reference was more along the lines of "do you think she could do this job", then it could be argued that it was unethical as Brown had little experience working with her.
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Hard News: Moving right along?, in reply to Craig Young,
The problem is not that Brown dipped his wick, it is that he allegedly may have interfered in a council employment decision to get Ms Chuang appointed somewhere, which is more serious.
"... allegedly may ..." Your choice of qualifications there reveals how uncertain you are that anything improper occurred. So I don't see a lot of justification for concern.
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Hard News: Moving right along?, in reply to Alan Moore,
When I last looked having an extra marital affair could hardly be described as....
"an error in action, calculation, opinion, or judgment caused by poor reasoning, carelessness, insufficient knowledge, etc."You don't think getting into that situation can be described as an error in judgment? I think that's exactly what it is.
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The fact that Wewege seems to have attended one of the political training courses run by the self-styled svengali Simon Lusk introduces an internal narrative party leaders with whch party leaders are deeply unconfortable.
That first "party leaders" shouldn't be there, I think. Also there's a typo in uncomfortable that I only noticed when spell check highlighted it in this post.
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Hard News: Everybody's Machiavelli, in reply to nzlemming,
Interestingly, Slater follows it up with a tidbit that is interesting:
I guess he's seeing a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy after all.
Actually I thought it was pretty amusing that they tried using that talking point at all: I don't think anyone was suggesting it was more than 5 guys so no one on the left ever thought it was vast, and it quite clearly was a conspiracy. Maybe he just doesn't know what the word means.
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Can someone confirm I have my scorecard right?:
Liars
Cameron Slater and/or Stephen Cook - apparently fabricated quotes for Chaung calling for Brown to resign
Luigi Wewege - denied having a relationship with Chaung
John Palino - denied any knowledge of the affair prior to Whale Oil's story
John Slater (probably) - denied any knowledge of the affair prior to Whale Oil's story, seems unlikely to be in the dark given that Palino knewNot known to be liars
Len Brown -
Hard News: Everybody's Machiavelli, in reply to Russell Brown,
Colin Espiner’s column making a comparison with Anthony Weiner ... was also fairly annoying.
Oh yeah, that struck me as ridiculous as well. I pretty much wrote off his opinion after he said that.
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Hard News: Everybody's Machiavelli, in reply to Russell Brown,
It was unnecessary for Rudman to imply that Whaleoil’s behaviour is his father’s responsibility – it clearly is not – but I don’t think it’s at all unfair to consider John Slater’s role as the manager of a campaign that is starting to look like it was knee-deep in this whole business.
Didn't Whale Oil state that he and his father had received threatening texts along with Bevan? Am I supposed to believe that John Slater got a threatening text days before the election and made no effort to find out what it was about?
We don’t really know the context in which she said, how strongly she felt it, whether it was offhand, in response to a question, or what.Given the striking difference between her reported words on Whaleoil and in the Herald, I’d say it was largely there to heap as much humiliation as possible on Brown.
Yes I have trouble believing anything attributed to her on Whale Oil that isn't in the affidavit, and even that probably has a different tone to how it would if it were her own words.
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Hard News: Everybody's Machiavelli, in reply to Chris Waugh,
but if Slater and the Herald are so keen to get rid of Brown, then why not focus on his record? I would’ve thought that reminding everybody of that credit card thing and weaving that into a narrative of “Brown the untrustworthy abuser of mayoral privilege”, with a seasoning of “crazy bugger slaps himself live on TV” (or whatever it was that happened) would be a much better strategy for getting him out of office than focussing on Chuang.
Slater is only interested in muck raking. The Herald did mention the credit card thing, but I'm not convinced they are as dedicated to removing Brown as some have claimed. I think they're interested in perpetuating the story and dragging up Brown's history doesn't do that because it's not news. I think you'll find it'll refocus pretty quickly on Brown if there is any hint of other impropriety by him.