Author Archive

TPPA: Kelsey vs Mapp debating

Written By: - Date published: 11:48 am, October 7th, 2013 - 55 comments

My current view is that the TPPA will provide intergovernmental welfare for Fonterra and farmers while destroying our rapidly expanding technical export industry.  It just leaves us as a farm for the world just as we we used to be the farm for the UK. We remain susceptible to policy changes from outside destroying our economy. But maybe this public debate on Wednesday evening in Auckland will provide more information.

Rob Gilchrist on Sunday

Written By: - Date published: 10:58 am, October 6th, 2013 - 28 comments

The Sunday programme this evening has Rob Gilchrist, police spy and provocateur, breaking his silence about the decade he spent amongst mostly peaceful activists. He was one amongst the very many sworn officers and informants that the police, spy agencies, and their civilian detective agencies use to monitor and often to disrupt democratic change. At […]

13,000 (and a bit) posts

Written By: - Date published: 3:22 pm, October 1st, 2013 - 14 comments

I’ve managed to miss a milestone on this site (again). As you can see, we’ve passed 13,000  published posts over the weekend. That really isn’t bad for a voluntary coop over a 6 year period with no particular publishing schedule beyond “put something up if and when you feel like it”. Looking back, I see […]

IPCC AR5: Thank the oceans

Written By: - Date published: 9:53 am, September 28th, 2013 - 101 comments

The levels of agreement in IPCC AR5 preliminary report on oceans are no longer ambiguous. Enough data has (finally) been collected.

Ocean warming dominates the increase in energy stored in the climate system, accounting for more than 90% of the energy accumulated between 1971 and 2010 (high confidence). It is virtually certain that the upper ocean (0−700 m) warmed from 1971 to 2010, and it likely warmed between the 1870s and 1971.

Doing what we’re best at

Written By: - Date published: 2:37 pm, September 24th, 2013 - 53 comments

National is a very traditional party. They think that NZ is good at clearing land and raising animals, with a bit of mining on the side. The population is there to service farmers and miners on low wages. That may have been the case in the 1950’s. But as usual they’re hopelessly dated. Sometimes in recent years it has appeared to me that Labour thinks that way as well. But it looks like David Cunliffe is intent on refocusing us back on the burgeoning hi-wage and hi-growth hi-tech sector.

What’s in the friday dump this week?

Written By: - Date published: 2:10 pm, September 20th, 2013 - 18 comments

The spinners in parliament and government are rather predictable. They dump their embarrassments late on a friday, preferably on a long holiday weekend or with a sporting event. I’m picking that today we will see some material dropping off the rear of DOC related to what Nick Smith saw and can no longer remember….

Wendy Brandon: DC’s chief of staff

Written By: - Date published: 6:45 am, September 19th, 2013 - 65 comments

Ok, I’m very pleasantly surprised. David Cunliffe has made a very interesting choice for chief of staff. Based on what I know about the task, she looks like a damn good fit for the role. In fact I’m just surprised that he managed to attract her at all for the thankless task.

I’ve always thought that the Chief of Staff role should be exercised by someone who was more managerial and staff orientated rather than being deeply embedded in the political game.

The Gosman (hypocrisy) ruling and other policy changes

Written By: - Date published: 9:09 am, September 17th, 2013 - 134 comments

This may be shades of getting over-Apple’d as they mercilessly flay people on iTunes with their gargantuan pile of boilerplate each time they change a line.

However there are a couple of policy changes on this site that people should be aware of.

Outside the bubble

Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, September 16th, 2013 - 51 comments

For many years there used to be a blog site called The Thordon Bubble that was dedicated to the minutiae of the political scene as seen from a small area in Wellington. I always thought it was a perfect name for the thermocline difference of views between the hunting grounds of the politicians and parliamentary political media, and what happens inside the Labour party. The leadership vote numbers highlight the scale of the event horizon between them.

Open mike – Friday the 13th 2013

Written By: - Date published: 8:50 am, September 13th, 2013 - 125 comments

Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike… First make sure that the mike doesn’t bite.

My votes

Written By: - Date published: 9:22 am, September 12th, 2013 - 100 comments

I voted for Cunliffe, Robertson, and Jones in that order. My reasons are in this post. It is unnecessary for people to speculate on additional motivations.

But if any MP or jonolist wants to try to run a politically based smear on me like they did on Jenny Michie, Mike Williams, and others then I’m perfectly happy to tear them a new rectum through their political credibility over the next decade.

TVNZ / Skycity deal is an asset dump

Written By: - Date published: 10:02 am, September 5th, 2013 - 23 comments

If Key and Joyce aren’t simply corrupt, then they are some of the most stupid business people I’ve ever seen. But most likely they’re just politicians trying to cover their arses for making a stupid mistake. It looks to me like they have gutted TVNZ to give a bare land deal to SkyCity, ignoring the value of the building on top or the profitable business that they will destroy in the process.

The least popular weasel wins

Written By: - Date published: 9:55 am, August 27th, 2013 - 36 comments

In the odd moments that I have to view and write about politics outside NZ at present, I happened upon a Wall Street Journal article this morning about the election contest in aussie that got me thinking. Australia is leaning toward electing its first conservative government in six years, to be led by a man considered […]

Why singing in harmony pays in STV

Written By: - Date published: 11:39 am, August 26th, 2013 - 32 comments

There is a reason for candidates in  single transferable vote elections to sing in harmony. It has to do with the effect of second preference votes.

This probably explains the remarkable singing in harmony of Grant Robertson and Shane Jones this morning.

Besides it provides a nice simple story for the rising jonolists in the media.

Time to renew – by midnight

Written By: - Date published: 8:45 pm, August 22nd, 2013 - 42 comments

The word is that the NZ Council decided tonight when they will cut off the memberships which are current for voting in the membership vote on the leadership primaries.

The deadline is at midnight tonight.

Submit to prevent SkyCity corruption

Written By: - Date published: 8:57 am, August 14th, 2013 - 5 comments

The SkyCity deal still needs some urgent attention from members of the public interested in getting a submission to the select committee. They close on Thursday 22 August next week. The politically corrupting influence of the gaming industry means that members of the public will have to push the politicians to stop them giving SkyCity these extraordinarily lucrative and destructive concessions for a economic pittance.

600,000 Comments

Written By: - Date published: 7:28 am, August 7th, 2013 - 77 comments

600,000 comments is getting pretty large. Even more disturbingly we are almost exactly on Eddie’s predictions of getting to a million comments by the August 2015 – in a exponential growth curve. While the numbers of posts per month aren’t changing that much, the numbers of comments per post have risen to average 75 per post.  I have some charts and a bit of personal philosophy on what it all means…

On converting .pst, government style

Written By: - Date published: 1:52 pm, August 4th, 2013 - 49 comments

Were David Henry and his staff the right people to pursue an inquiry? They were incapable of opening a Outlook .pst file. And this appears to have held them up for days. They had the files before they even requested permission from Peter Dunne and (apparently) only their incompetence prevented them from their intent of reading the emails. If they’d been capable of using google, then our political landscape might look quite different..

GCSB protests at 2pm today

Written By: - Date published: 8:47 am, July 27th, 2013 - 132 comments

This cartoon by Mark O’Brien at monsta.co.nz probably accurately reflects the distasteful uncertainty that many of us feel about the purpose and intent of John Key’s bill to control the past and future excesses of the GCSB. Put away a bit of your weekend at 2pm and come and show your MP’s why they should […]

Lazy Jono on 3 News invents a story

Written By: - Date published: 7:18 am, July 27th, 2013 - 124 comments

Jono Hutchison invented a story that aired on 3 News last night. He took a single inaccurate comment expressing an opinion and wrapped a story around it as the angle. The comment he used was in my observation quite inaccurate and has escalated my opinion of Jono to that of being a lazy dickhead unworthy of being called a reporter.

GCSB protest – Auckland tonight

Written By: - Date published: 9:35 am, July 24th, 2013 - 145 comments

To say that the GCSB law changes are misguided is the kindest possible interpretation, but many people including myself tend to view them as being quite malevolent. They aren’t going to provide any more security for citizens and residents here. But they are going to provide more security for incompetents in the security and police forces from both public and legal scrutiny. There are series of protests planned, and one in Auckland tomorrow. Updated – packed.

On party membership

Written By: - Date published: 2:19 pm, June 2nd, 2013 - 67 comments

Been having a look around the question of party memberships. Turns out there was a good investigative package in The Nation last year. We really need to tighten this stuff up. From alleged National’s “raffle ticket” membership to the incompetence of our revenue minister’s party being unable to locate their members, it seems like an awful lot of money flowing around with little accountability.

Please, please educate the fuckwits

Written By: - Date published: 11:15 am, May 11th, 2013 - 127 comments

The story this morning of a hotelier in Whangarei causing a lesbian couple to seek another place to sleep. That she was worried about them doing “sodomy” under her roof might be amusing. However the coprolalia syndrome that it displays has been tiresomely endemic amongst the self-ordained fuckwits in recent months. When will they take time to educate themselves so they don’t look like they just have brain defects?

Advocacy is the core of any charity

Written By: - Date published: 5:26 am, May 10th, 2013 - 35 comments

Yesterday’s NZ Herald editorial gave a hard-line conservative view of what a charity should be. Charities should and must deal with ills of society on a person by person basis without attempting to fix the causation. That sounds more like a parasitical “charity” like the workhouses of the 19th century or the adoption factories of the 20th than anything that a person of goodwill would choose to support.

Hockey stick becomes a wheelchair

Written By: - Date published: 2:15 pm, April 30th, 2013 - 23 comments

When you look at the dependence of farmers in extreme climates around the world who are reliant on regular weather like the monsoons in Bangladesh or the mild winters in the gulf stream washed areas like Europe, it is clear how reliant we are for food on our relatively unchanging climate of the past 11,000 years.

Best (so far). The bill passed well.

Written By: - Date published: 9:07 pm, April 17th, 2013 - 144 comments

The marriage equity bill has passed with a strong majority.

This is a watershed moment in New Zealand’s political history.

Outage and an irritating lack of support

Written By: - Date published: 9:07 am, April 9th, 2013 - 15 comments

As I’m sure that many of you are aware, we had an outage commencing at about 2205 NZST last night and finally getting fixed at about 0825 this morning. I got notified about 10 minutes into the outage by my various ping systems that the system was down. The main server with the database was just […]

Iain M Banks: Bugger!

Written By: - Date published: 6:34 pm, April 4th, 2013 - 38 comments

Iain Banks has cancer and is expected to only have a few months.  Damn this is bad news.  He is one of only three authors whose books managed to survive my move into ePubs last year and the donation of large quantities of my science fiction paperbacks.

Surplus power and asset sales

Written By: - Date published: 10:03 am, March 28th, 2013 - 55 comments

Apparently Meridian Energy are saying that there is unlikely to be a renewal of the Tiwai Point power contract. This would massively disrupt the value of sales of shares in state owned power companies by this government. However news is being released just before Meridian appears before a select committee.  So I’m anticipating that it is a chicken little play to scare this weak-kneed government into an emergency wastage of taxpayers dollars – just like the Peter Jackson inspired Hobbit extortion.

Banks sued over exceptional bank fees

Written By: - Date published: 12:58 pm, March 11th, 2013 - 88 comments

New Zealand banks face  a large class suit for over $1 billion in default fees over the past six years by three of NZ’s largest law firms in a case being announced today at 1pm. It is about time.

The economic value of the internet

Written By: - Date published: 11:41 am, March 11th, 2013 - 35 comments

The innovations that drive our modern economies changes and growth these days is largely powered by the internet. It is ubiquitously embedded in most businesses these days to a fantastic degree. While I wish economists well in their continuous attempts at measuring the effect of the internet, I think that it will be a futile endeavour.

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