Posts Tagged ‘no right turn’

NRT: The Greens’ “internet bill of rights”

Written By: - Date published: 10:55 pm, April 23rd, 2014 - 2 comments

No Right Turn is critical of the implementation aspects of the Greens’ internet bill of rights. Looking at his points about its flaws, it does appear that it has few real teeth. “…if you want to outlaw ISPS shaping customer traffic for anti-competitive reasons” … “then amend the Telecommunications Act to outlaw it. It wouldn’t sound as great as an “internet bill of rights”, but it would do the job better, and with more certainty of the outcome. Trying to use a general law to do it, without checking the underlying policy details, doesn’t just risk failure – it also comes across as lazy.”

NRT: “Shoulder-tapping” vs public service values

Written By: - Date published: 11:39 am, April 23rd, 2014 - 59 comments

Another angle to the Shane Jones resignation: “Mr Jones said he would leave Parliament next month after he was shoulder tapped by Foreign Minister Murray McCully for a new role as a roving economic ambassador across the Pacific.”

This is of course a total violation of public service values, and an unlawful exercise of Ministerial power.

NRT: Needlessly shitty

Written By: - Date published: 1:18 pm, April 17th, 2014 - 12 comments

No Right Turn points out here about a select committee filtering out submissions because they were not in an official NZ language. This seems needlessly shitty – not to mention undemocratic. Parliament is supposed to represent all New Zealanders, not just those who write their submissions in one of our official languages.

NRT: The PCE on the Environmental Reporting Bill

Written By: - Date published: 10:55 am, April 16th, 2014 - 2 comments

No Right Turn on the Environmental Reporting Bill that has the watchdogs up in arms. Listening to Amy Adams last night going on about how transparent and open to public scrutiny regulations are made me wonder what bloody universe she lived in – bizarro world perhaps?. Submissions on the Environmental Reporting Bill are due on Thursday.

 

NRT: Climate change: Action is affordable

Written By: - Date published: 11:56 am, April 15th, 2014 - 34 comments

Catastrophic climate change can be averted without sacrificing living standards according to a UN report, which concludes that the transformation required to a world of clean energy is eminently affordable. “It doesn’t cost the world to save the planet,”. The average cost of adapting to climate change next year is less than $30. Remember that next time Bill English stands up in Parliament threatening economic Armageddon if we try and do anything about it.

NRT: Unsurprising

Written By: - Date published: 2:52 pm, April 10th, 2014 - 17 comments

But on any realistic numbers, its unthinkable for a future Labour government not to include the Greens, and as Gordon Campbell points out, by refusing to define their relationship themselves, Labour has given National a free hand to do it for them – and in undoubtedly negative terms. That won’t do the Greens any harm. But its unlikely to be good for Labour.

NRT: Time to see if the Ombudsman will keep their word

Written By: - Date published: 2:20 pm, April 3rd, 2014 - 3 comments

Last month, we learned that Judith Collins had taken time off a taxpayer-funded trip to China to endorse her husband’s company – a company which had also donated significant sums of money to the National Party. The endorsement appeared to violate the Cabinet Manual, but John Key stepped up and claimed that the Cabinet Office said it was all OK. Then, just a few days later, he admitted that he’d lied about that. In the process, he implicitly raised serious questions about the quality of the Cabinet Office’s advice.

NRT: Blowback

Written By: - Date published: 6:56 pm, March 31st, 2014 - 6 comments

“The vast scale of online surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden is changing how businesses store commercially sensitive data…”  “A survey of 1,000 business leaders from around the world has found that many are questioning their reliance on “cloud computing” in favour of more secure forms of data storage as the whistleblower’s revelations continue to reverberate.”

NRT: That was quick

Written By: - Date published: 4:16 pm, March 28th, 2014 - 5 comments

No Right Turn nails the political value of the Internet Party in this post. In itself it probably isn’t that politically useful. However it’s mere existence means that the net becomes a political issue. It forces the typically technophobic and illiterate pack of antiques called Members of Parliament to start dealing with issues arising from it. It moves them outside their comfort zone

NRT: Gagging Kim Dotcom

Written By: - Date published: 11:20 am, March 27th, 2014 - 18 comments

No Right Turn put this up on tuesday. It is worth re-running it to note how a smear campaign operates at multiple layers.
“Since their botched raid on Kim Dotcom’s mansion last year, the New Zealand government has faced a PR problem over their handling of the case. And that has been hammered home at every opportunity by Dotcom himself, who turns out to be quite good at winning the hearts of ordinary kiwis. But now the government has a solution: gag him”

NRT: I don’t see it either

Written By: - Date published: 2:49 pm, March 25th, 2014 - 49 comments

The “big” political news today (this being a non-sitting week when the politicians are on holiday, some of them literally) is that the Internet Party is in talks with Mana to form an electoral alliance (which presumably means a joint party list). Like pretty much everyone else, I’m boggled by this.

NRT: Stinkier and stinkier

Written By: - Date published: 5:29 pm, March 24th, 2014 - 37 comments

In the ongoing saga about the Problem Gambling Foundation, The Salvation Army were unaware that the Ministry of Health had decided that they would take over as the national provider. They hadn’t even applied for it. It appears that only thing driving the ministry’s decision was the complaints from the gambling industry about the PGF trying to reduce problem gambling…. Is the gambling industry is thoroughly corrupting National’s ministers?

NRT: A good idea from NZFirst

Written By: - Date published: 7:06 pm, March 20th, 2014 - 4 comments

From an environmental economics perspective, mining is a wealth transfer, shifting public wealth (minerals) into private profits of mining companies. Along the way, it creates jobs, but it is basically spending capital. When the resources run out or become unprofitable to extract the jobs disappear and a regional economy geared solely to resource extraction withers and dies. NZ First wants to change that.

NRT: Climate change: War, disease, and famine

Written By: - Date published: 6:01 pm, March 18th, 2014 - 38 comments

The biggest single threat to civilisation from human initiated CO2 forced climate change is going to be in food production and distribution. In a leaked version of the IPCC’s AR5 second volume ” the report predicts that climate change will reduce median crop yields by 2 per cent per decade for the rest of the century – at a time of rapidly growing demand for food.”

NRT: An economic upgrade?

Written By: - Date published: 2:24 pm, March 17th, 2014 - 60 comments

No Right Turn reacts to David Cunliffe’s speech on Friday. “…one thing is clear: we need to move our economy away from a focus on milk. Our environment can’t sustain it, and its not delivering for anyone other than a narrow class of wealthy farmers.” “… rich economies have multiple sources of income. And they consciously develop them through industrial policy.”

NRT: A global cyberwar against everyone

Written By: - Date published: 11:31 am, March 14th, 2014 - 14 comments

The latest NSALeak: the NSA is deliberately spreading malware on a massive scale to spy on everyone. This isn’t the sort of targeted operation they aimed at Belgacom – its effectively a global cyberwar against everyone. They infected 100,000 computers already, and they plan to infect millions – well beyond any possible number needed strictly for “national security”. Why? So they can pwn you

NRT: Proving my point

Written By: - Date published: 10:52 am, March 12th, 2014 - 46 comments

Last week No Right Turn argued strongly that we needed full transparency over Cabinet Office advice on ministers’ conflicts of interest, because we couldn’t trust the Prime Minister to represent that advice accurately, and we couldn’t trust secret advice to be accurate. And John Key has just proven his point: “Prime Minister John Key has admitted he misled reporters over Cabinet Office advice…”

NRT: Did the NSA write John Key’s spy bill?

Written By: - Date published: 1:20 pm, March 11th, 2014 - 16 comments

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden gave evidence to the European Parliament last week about the NSA and mass-surveillance. The most interesting revelation? The NSA’s use of lawyers to subvert other countries limits on surveillance – including our own. So what did GCSB receive “legal guidance” on? What about the careful loopholes in the new Act

NRT: Inequality is bad for growth

Written By: - Date published: 2:44 pm, March 4th, 2014 - 7 comments

No Right Turn succinctly points out the impact of the International Monetary Fund changing its mind on the adverse effects of inequality in the economic sphere. A case of an accumulation of facts overriding dumb ideology.

NRT: A dirty deal

Written By: - Date published: 6:33 pm, February 27th, 2014 - 46 comments

When the government dropped charges against former Pike River boss Peter Whittall over the Pike River mine explosion, they claimed that the simultaneous announcement that he would pay compensation to the families of the 29 men he was accused of killing was just a coincidence, and that there was no deal. As usual, they lied.

NRT: National hates transparency

Written By: - Date published: 7:54 am, February 12th, 2014 - 56 comments

Yesterday Labour tried to put forward a Parliamentary motion calling on the government to release the draft text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement before signing it, on the simple democratic grounds that the public deserved to know what agreements were being made in our name. National refused to. The upshot: National hates transparency. It also hates democracy.

NRT: Dirty dairying and moral culpability

Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, January 16th, 2014 - 30 comments

There seems to be a divide in kiwi farming at present. On one side those just after a quick buck based on dirtying the cheap resource of water held in common. On the other generational family farmers. The result is a classic tragedy of the commons problem that we will be paying to clean up for many generations.

NRT: The NSA spies on its own government

Written By: - Date published: 11:11 am, January 8th, 2014 - 51 comments

Since Edward Snowden leaked proof of widespread NSA spying on US citizens, people have been wondering who exactly they’re spying on. Are they spying on their own government? Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders wanted to know, so he asked them directly. The response was not reassuring.

Perhaps the same question should be put to the GCSB? After all its oversight seems even more incompetent and incestuous than that of the NSA.

NRT: National’s New Zealand

Written By: - Date published: 12:05 am, December 25th, 2013 - 16 comments

National’s New Zealand: wage-suppression through one-sided employment law. A jobless “recovery”. Cuts to state housing and to welfare. 265,000 kids in poverty. An indecent society of haves and have-nots.  A government chooses, through welfare, health, education and child-support policies, whether all kids will get a good start in life, or whether their prospects will be blighted by their parents. The present government, a government of, by and for the rich, has chosen to tolerate, even exacerbate poverty, rather than impose on their wealthy supporters.

NRT: Unacceptable

Written By: - Date published: 9:13 am, December 14th, 2013 - 187 comments

No Right Turn has a view on Len Brown accepting nearly $40,000 in undeclared complementarities from the hotel industry. How many of these were from SkyCity? And who else has been getting them?

Prosecuting Cunliffe

Written By: - Date published: 3:06 pm, December 5th, 2013 - 56 comments

No Right Turn writes on what should happen with David Cunliffe screwing up on election day. Sensible advice and commentary on what looks like a typical example of some of the innumerable silly mistakes and accidents that happen during election campaigns. The reaction of some on the right has been pretty damn hilarious when they compare what looks like deliberate concealment of electoral finance with a silly tweeting mistake

NRT: Climate change: The enemy

Written By: - Date published: 2:12 pm, November 21st, 2013 - 31 comments

The climate crisis of the 21st century has been caused largely by just 90 companies, which between them produced nearly two-thirds of the greenhouse gas emissions generated since the dawning of the industrial age, new research suggests.

NRT: More police crime

Written By: - Date published: 2:57 pm, October 17th, 2013 - 26 comments

No Right Turn reports on a case that is symptomatic of just how out of control the police in NZ are getting. The response of Wellington’s Tactical Policing Unit was both completely disturbing in its use of violence to try to create the type of incident that they were expecting. The police lying, not only to the public, but also to themselves about the actions is even worse. If there are no prosecutions and stiff sentences for the officers involved, then it is time to start actively initiate a program of private prosecutions of individual police.

NRT: The biggest failed state on the planet

Written By: - Date published: 12:40 pm, October 2nd, 2013 - 22 comments

As I write this, the US Congress is in the final minutes of running out the clock before shutting down the federal government. From midnight, budgetary authority will expire, and the government will not be able to spend any money. Except, of course, on waging war – no matter what happens, the US War On Us will continue regardless.

NRT: More lies from Smith

Written By: - Date published: 1:19 pm, September 20th, 2013 - 11 comments

Yesterday in Question Time Nick Smith continued to pretend that he had not forced DoC to shitcan its submission on the Ruataniwha Water Storage Scheme. He even went so far as to claim that he had no idea that the submission even existed until this week. But it was just more lies

NRT: Laws are for little people – again

Written By: - Date published: 4:53 pm, August 29th, 2013 - 22 comments

No Right Turn looks at the police decision on the unlawful GCSB interceptions of DotCom’s communications. Of course getting the police to investigate their own requests for the GCSB to perform an unlawful activity is like putting a stoat in charge of kiwi chicks. Perhaps a private prosecution of the GCSB and the police would be a more productive.