Posts by Russell Brown
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i think the correct verb is "bang on about". it's an unhelpful simplification of world-view designed for slightly stupid minds.
witness the "socialist" bullshit over on kiwiblog.
Heh. The best one ever was when I noticed a KB refugee on the Trade Me forums breathlessly inform another that I was in fact a "hardline Marxist".
Ya rly. It's a good thing the large financial services company I presented to recently didn't know ...
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I think Ansell is simply seeing you as synonymous with the 'leftist' blogosphere. Not an uncommon thing, and probably quite a good thing for you. I can see a billboard: Browns vs Clowns.
I suppose so. I've never been comfortable with being part of this "The Left" thing that Chris Trotter et al talk about. On reflection, perhaps Claire read him my comment and asked for a reaction. It doesn't really explain why he should be such a sook about it.
I notice that Iraq coverage has slipped to bugger all in the US these days, in favour of the elections and economic woes.
Pew has had some good stuff about this lately. As the war has slipped out of the news, it has also fallen out of memory:
Public awareness of the number of American military fatalities in Iraq has declined sharply since last August. Today, just 28% of adults are able to say that approximately 4,000 Americans have died in the Iraq war. As of March 10, the Department of Defense had confirmed the deaths of 3,974 U.S. military personnel in Iraq.
In August 2007, 54% correctly identified the fatality level at that time (about 3,500 deaths). In previous polls going back to the spring of 2004, about half of respondents could correctly estimate the number of U.S. fatalities around the time of the survey.
In the current poll, more respondents underestimated than overestimated the number of fatalities. A plurality of 35% said that there have been about 3,000 troop deaths, and another 11% said there have been 2,000 deaths. Just under a quarter (23%) said the number of fatalities is closer to 5,000.
Pew is also seeing a return to isolationism.
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Politics is not a secular religion, says Craig Ranapia, who doesn't think the "doctrinal knife-fight" has to dominate election year.
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<disclaimer> keith ng could do a better job with these stats!</disclaimer>
He did (no offence) but someone's not doing their job in putting Fact Check up on the Herald website. Keith should ask the HoS if he can just post the column a couple of days later.
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I see that you are being painted as a the big bad wolf who made the poor ACT advertising man feel bad.
What on earth is John Ansell on about? As far as I can tell I've never even mentioned him by name -- and even on the two occasions I expressed some distaste for the iwi-versus-kiwi billboards, my language wasn't exactly angry. How bizarre.
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And just wait a mo', Russell. Before we get together and give Cunliffe a hand job
Eeew.
perhaps there's one or two questions to be asked about how the hell things got this bad in the first place.
Before Cunliffe was Minister of Health, you mean?
The allegations have been that Cunliffe's sacking of the board and appointment of an administrator was a naked attempt to shut down a political scandal involving his predecessor. The independent review has essentially said the board was so bad he didn't have much choice.
And the fact is there have been official questions raised about that board's performance for some time. The local press appears to have had a different perspective.
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Bierre and the ADHBs got a bit of a bum rap on that case. Justice Asher, in the High Court, effectively invented a new form of conflict of interest in order to overturn the decision: the argument was not that Bierre abused his position to win the tender, but that by being on the board (before the tender) he instinctively had a better understanding of what the board was looking for from a proposal on community labtesting (a far cry from actually seeing the RFP ahead of time).
Fair enough. That's certainly not how it played out on Parliament, where Bierre was accused of misleading a range of stakeholders. It also seemed odd that he was supposed to have stood down six months before the bid, but Asher found that he had only done so 18 days before the RFP was issued.
It did, however, occur to me at the time that MedLab appeared to believe it had a sacred right to the contract.
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Wow -- the Checkpoint interview with the director-general of health was fairly interesting.
He repeatedly made the point that even within the narrow terms of reference the review was given, its authors found sufficient dysfunction that they'd have essentially recommended something similar to what the minister did -- implying, as he did so, that they'd have gone up to 11 out of 10 if they'd been in a position to address broader issues.
This very clearly was not a good board. Tom S's comments upthread about the local media's performance seem quite relevant.
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Can only endorse the call for removal of the elected Boards if there is an apolitical authority erected to investigate and prosecute the type of corruption that is alleged in this instance and apparent in the Medlab/Labtests fiasco.
The Labtests debacle was much worse than what Hausmann did. He didn't participate in discussions, did eventually declare an interest (but didn't say he'd had an early look at the RFP) and ultimately the bid was cancelled.
In Auckland, Tony Bierre was a CitRat board member in a position to gather comprehensive information about the contract and MedLab's position, who left the board and used that information to make a successful bid. Unlike Hausmann, who owns a respected service delivery company, Bierre had no track record and no staff when he won the bid, which threatened to dangerously disrupt the whole region's lab testing services.
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Also Scoop has the Q&A for the media (which emphasises the authors' view that they would "have recommended that at the very least, a monitor was needed to help address the issues found if the review had not been overtaken by events") and a link to the full report.
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