Posts by Matthew Poole
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Hard News: Judging the judges, in reply to Kumara Republic,
We’re thankful not to have that kind of society, no matter how strong the temptation.
I was deeply, deeply disturbed to see a former schoolmate comment on FB the other day that he was off to elect Birmingham’s (I think) first mayor. And the Police Commissioner. Electing anyone into the criminal justice food chain gives me all kinds of discomfort.
-
Hard News: Judging the judges, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
All the more reason to have them on! Although, to be fair to Russell, I think he has.
He has.
-
Hard News: Judging the judges, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I would suggest some politicians are remarkably (and unwisely) intemperate in their attacks on the judiciary
They can be, yes, though they tend to be intemperate about The Judiciary rather than specific jurists and judgements. Not all, and not all the time, but much more so than is the inclination of the media or, particularly, iSST and their ilk.
-
Hard News: Judging the judges, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Do you assume an SST representative would not add to the conversation in some way?
Probably more that we already know what their contribution will be: “Judges need to be accountable to the public for their decisions, and judges whose decisions piss us off need to be at risk of losing their jobs.” And that contribution is not helpful.
ETA: Plus, iSST already gets an inordinate volume of column inches/screen time, and I imagine one of the things Russell will be asking about is the level of coverage their opinions get in the MSM.
-
Hard News: Judging the judges, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
When judges express even the mildest criticism of media reporting it’s an unacceptable assault on press freedom etc.
Or when judges dare to question the direction of penal policy. Politicians do tend to be somewhat more moderate in their public discourse regarding specific sentencing instances, but the strict sentencing laws they pass and the discussions around those laws are attacks on the Judiciary’s independence.
-
Hard News: Triangulated by Fools, in reply to Barnard,
Labour do need to be taking votes off National & targeting the current crop of non voters.
Much less the former, much, much more the latter. National only managed to scrounge another 5k party votes in 2011 over 2008. It was the massive non-voter pool that swung it their way, with over 100k fewer votes cast despite three years of population growth and the babies of the 1990s mini-boom pretty much all 18+.
-
Hard News: Calling the race before it's over, in reply to Andre,
Hopefully NZ First doesn't need to be included in any new government
It appears that people have realised that 6-point-whatever percent of the party vote doesn't give Winston that much more parliamentary influence personally but, rather, brings in a whole lot of other people as well. The "But I didn't vote for him" reactions just after the election were amusing, and spoke to a high level of ignorance about the true functioning of the party vote system, but were also comforting in pointing to this term being Winston's last, glorious hurrah rather than a resurgence of NZF. It would certainly explain why NZF is polling at fractions of the margin of error.
-
Hard News: Party on, dudes, in reply to Russell Brown,
Although if you add up all the comments for the three Hobbit posts, hobbits win
I suspect that, since the PAS version of Godwin's Law is "Any thread that achieves sufficient post volume eventually turns into a copyright debate", copyright still wins :P
But yes, I am proud of my particular bit of PAS immortality.
-
Hard News: Party on, dudes, in reply to Peter Darlington,
has anyone mentioned that cool copyright thread we had a year or two back, yet?
Well, as the author of the post that started it, I was going to thank Russell for the opportunity to foment the Thread Of Doooooom[tm]! (Not that we had the faintest inkling what it would become at the time he asked me.) And, generally, for establishing and supporting this utterly awesome community of people who are,by and large, courteous in the pursuit of decorous discourse. As someone who was slumming it in nz.* when Hard News was a weekly occurrence (not that I recall reading it at the time), it’s comforting that there’s still room amongst the filth for a place where something like the intelligentsia of the NZ online scene can gather.
Being part of PAS has been, and continues to be, an experience. I’ve learned a heap of lessons, some of them very brutal IRL lessons, but also been rounded out somewhat by exposure to so many different perspectives from what’s largely (at least amongst the commenters) the same Political Compass quadrant – collectivist libertarians. It’s also let me feel like I can get some of the things I know about slightly obscure aspects of our society’s functioning – how emergency services (should) manage incidents; and how bad it could really be that a dirty blogger was able to virtually stroll about the WINZ network – into the eye of a public who don’t understand and, consequently, struggle to grasp the significance or propriety of things that are currently in the news. PAS provides me the forum to do that while also being a thirty-something with too much time on his hands and too many opinions.
So cheers, Russell and everyone else, for creating this place that so many of us enjoy. And as this will be post 3,069 for me, I feel terribly inadequate by comparison to Sacha who is well into five figures despite having arrived two years later!
-
Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to Matthew Poole,
NZ uses the Coordinated Incident Management System for command and control of emergency responses.
Having read the relevant sections of the Royal Commission's report, it's quite interesting to look back at this. I had assumed, very wrongly, that there was a proper CIMS structure in place. There wasn't. In fact, the Commission raised concerns that some of the issues with the management of the response were down to the fact that there wasn't a proper CIMS structure in place. Knowles hadn't even been through formal CIMS training despite its having been in existence for so long that he would've been at least a senior sergeant and an inspector while it was in place. Clearly the Police have a lot of work to do around being read to operate within a CIMS structure for a real multi-agency response.
More broadly, the Commission was pretty damning on the true level of formalised cooperation between the state emergency services, Department of Labour, Mines Rescue, and Pike River. That is, there was none, at any level. No MoU anywhere to resolve the question of who would be lead agency and who would provide the Incident Controller (IC doesn't have to come from the lead agency), etc. The contrast with NSW and Queensland is stark and unflattering, though that's really unsurprising in the NZ environment.