Posts by George Darroch
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
About half of the Greens ICT policy is about FOSS. However, their policy includes acknowledgement that
– Open Source products may not fulfill all of an organisation’s ICT needs
It's true. I'm involved with the Greens, and we've taken a foreign platform for something important. The alternative would involve a lot of building and complexity, and ain't nobody got time for that (in an election year).
Recruitment is difficult. I can see why it's outsourced, or given to professional HR folks, but their incentive structure is about minimising risk. It's much easier to discern a terrible candidate than an excellent one, and the rewards to a HR professional for performance are less than the costs of failure. Overstating experience requirements are a way of buffering against that potential failure, as is hiring boring candidates who tick requisite boxes.
-
Hard News: Friday Music: Going Large, in reply to Peter Darlington,
We don’t have enough Skrillex on the PAS music pages.
Thank you for filling the 2011-2015 PAS Skrillrex quota.
ETA: perhaps Skrillrex sounds better in lossless formats.
-
I do like the idea of that machine, and the design doesn't both me - presumably it's handbag portable, rather than pocket portable. However the limited memory will be a problem. We're used to large libraries. We're used to low quality, and we're no longer used to the tradeoff.
Sayonara Nick. As a listener, I find him to be the nicest person on radio. I'll often tune in to George to hear him, even when the music isn't quite what I'm after. It's a testament to his lifelong openness and ability to commit to other languages and cultures that he's heading to Japan in this capacity.
-
Hard News: Spring Timing, in reply to Russell Brown,
I’ve now been told by two people that the timing has been influenced by a sharp dip in National’s (and Key’s) internal polling. It’s sure not showing in the public polls.
My rule of thumb is that (outside the three months preceding an election) it takes about a month for any change to show up in the polls. People take a while to digest news and shift preferences, and to talk to the people they know. The most important determinant of a person's vote is the other people in their life.
Key is National's brand, in the same way as Clark and Muldoon were to their parties, and as a result they are extraordinarily vulnerable. That they haven't decoupled by now is testament to a lack of any 'big' policy achievements they can point to and be proud of, and the lack of other high-profile performers.
-
Mr Craig is actually a huge threat - to the Government. National won the last election and the one previous on the back of a lot of soft support, with a high concentration of votes from young women. They are just one group whose support declines the more that Craig's Conservatives are linked to Key's National. It's a toxic brew, and the PM is well aware of it, which is why he is gently criticising Craig in order to maintain a distance (which may later be bridged, as necessary).
-
Speaker: The changing world of drug policy, in reply to Ross Bell,
We had a crack at that here: The Wellington Declaration
It's a very good one. Where is the PSA showing evidence that it's meeting some of those objectives, and where is it falling short? (Leaving aside that it covers only a section of the drug landscape.)
-
I’m a bit slow to this one. Having looked from the sidelines of the drug policy landscape, it’s far from clear what elements a successful drug policy would have.
Most broadly defined, the preferred outcome would be a dramatic reduction in the harm experienced by the community, but this is open to considerable interpretation. For some, temporary intoxication caused by drugs (pleasure, in other words) is a form of harm. So, how do we define successful policy outcomes?
I’m going to throw out a few possibilities from the top of my head;
less involvement in criminal justice system of those not actively creating harm to others
less long term harm to those using drugs
less medium and long-term harm to those around them
less access to the most harmful drugs
greater community awareness of the relative harms of drugs
greater access to treatment and greater resolution of addictions
Am I missing anything?How does the PSA, a few months after implementation, measure against any of these standards? And how might a MDA (Misuse…) aligned with the PSA fulfil these objectives?
-
Excellent stuff. I'm glad to hear of some success in a sea of sorrow.
The destruction of Afghanistan's opium crop is a legitimate human tragedy. We take it for granted that if we suffer a medical emergency, when we reach medical attention we will be given appropriate pain relief and we won't suffer in extreme pain. Yet most of the world lacks sufficient supply, and in many countries pain relief is almost non-existent. Pain relief is a human right. Given that there are only four families of pain relieving drugs, and the opiates are by far the most effective, expanding access to supply through appropriate channels should be an urgent priority. Thus far it hasn't been.
-
I like how Golden Pony's remix forgets about Eminem, and lets Dre soak in his own goodness. He was always the steak in that song, now with a different marinade. (It's now 15 years since this was blasting from garages and school fields in Mangere and Onehunga...)
Connan Mockasin should be heard across the airwaves and on every device in the country. We've got so much going on right now, and such a slivver of it ever survives commercial programming.
-
And Odd Future have been blocked from entering New Zealand, at the behest of an anti-violence group. It seems a little strange.