Posts by Rich of Observationz
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Hard News: A plea for sanity on the…, in reply to Alastair Thompson,
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I'm very opposed to a Wellington supercity. I actually think the opposite and that we should remove Tawa and J-ville from the city to create an actual urban community.
Councils aren't sports teams - the idea is that they provide good services and appropriate regulation - not to demonstrate what a cool place the city is or what a Big Swinging Dick(ess) the mayor is.
If we look at ultimate efficiency, then with a country smaller than most world cities, a single Ministry of Local Government could probably do it all more cheaply. The reason we have local councils is so that decisions can be made by and for distinct communities, which implies that councils should represent such distinct areas, not arbitrary large regions with nothing in common.
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Hard News: A plea for sanity on the…, in reply to Matthew Hooton,
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Auckland was unable even to accept a free rugby stadium from Trevor Mallard
Hang on, I know there are a lot of tax dodgers in Auckland, but are you saying that nobody in the AK pays tax at all?
Because they way I saw it, the 1.5 million Aucklanders were going to be paying 40% of the billion dollar cost of the palace of rugby they had planned, were understandably unkeen and expressed this through their elected reps.
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Hard News: Modelling Behaviour, in reply to FletcherB,
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More or less. Although controlled drug *analogues* which are currently illegal *can* be approved for sale as psychoactive substances. In theory.
I reckon a great experiment would be for a party pill/synthetic cannabis supplier to drop an entirely inert placebo into the supply chain and see how many moral panic stories of hospital admissions, crazed psychopathy and so on it generated.
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Legal Beagle: Kim Dotcom and the GCSB,
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Interesting news http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10886031
I think the activity that various people upthread 8 months ago considered unthinkable *was* actually happening.
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OnPoint: What Andrew Geddis Said, But…, in reply to TristanEgarr,
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I'm interested to know why it isn't a breach of privilege to expect members to vote on material that has been shared with some but not all of them. I guess that it isn't a breach if the majority (and the partisan Speaker) say it isn't.
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Hard News: Te Qaeda and the God Squad,
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Yeah, what's needed is a proper supervisory authority with the ability to take disciplinary action and prosecute miscreant officers, backed up by an offence of police misconduct that doesn't go away when the cop resigns.
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OnPoint: What Andrew Geddis Said, But…, in reply to Michael Roberts,
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That's got nothing to do with Royal Assent.
The HoL has voted down numerous Commons bills. What happened (roughly) with the Asquith government was that Conservatives in the Lords set themselves against a number of that government's policies (specifically finance and Irish Home Rule). Asquith wanted the King to create a number of Liberal peers to override this, which he agreed to do only after a General Election. After this second election, the Lords backed down and passed the 1911 Parliament Act, which limited the Lords abilities to veto legislation.
For a clearer explanation in book form, George Dangerfield's The Strange Death of Liberal England is an accessible and well written account of the period.
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OnPoint: What Andrew Geddis Said, But…, in reply to Idiot Savant,
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And Whitlam was just too slow. Mutually Assured Dismissal as Lewis Holden called it. If Whitlam had fired Kerr first and appointed a more favourable G-G, he'd have stayed in office (until the yanks invaded or the Aussies voted him out, anyway).
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OnPoint: What Andrew Geddis Said, But…, in reply to Steve Curtis,
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New Zealand was not "an independent Commonwealth realm" before 1947, but a quasi-colony under British suzerainty.
Britain appointed the Governor and then the Governor-General [EDIT: they were called G-G before they became independent of the UK] and directed the delay or veto of legislation. Note that it was not the Queen or King deciding on the veto, but the British government of the day.
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OnPoint: What Andrew Geddis Said, But…, in reply to Michael Roberts,
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"Appointed on advice of PM" means "appointed by PM". The Queen is no more likely to refuse such advice than the PM's pen is to jump out of his hand and stab him in the neck.