Posts by Matthew Poole
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
And the mystery group at the Dotcom meeting is
Probably GCSB, being the Government's IT experts. Somewhat excessive, really, but not a secret agency. A bit surprised Davison didn't ask that question.
-
Hard News: Christchurch: Is "quite good"…, in reply to Chris Waugh,
My impression was that the next eruption will form a new cone or caldera.
That appears to be the closest thing to a consensus, yes. A new one will appear, possibly as a (super)caldera under part of the established urban form, and then the country will really have something to worry about. The Southern Cross Cable lands here, the primary broadcasting studios for both TV networks are here, there are specialist surgical facilities that aren't replicated elsewhere, the primary international air gateway is here...
Oh, and we've got a third of the population. Good luck coping with us evacuating. -
Hard News: Christchurch: Is "quite good"…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Steven Joyce rejected it out of hand!
Lord Uber-Fuhrer Joyce arbitrarily rejecting something to do with public transport? Say it ain't so!
-
Hard News: Christchurch: Is "quite good"…, in reply to Ed Muzik,
If you want light rail in the long term, you could do worse than lobbying CERA / the council to stop consenting subdivisions further and further out into the plains
GLWT. For the foreseeable future there will be zero support from Wellington for limitations on sprawl. Look at the battle Auckland's got on its hands trying to constrain sprawl in the Plan, and the government's explicit opposition to not sprawling.
-
Hard News: Christchurch: Is "quite good"…, in reply to Sacha,
Meanwhile here’s the City Council-led 30-year draft Transport plan. Who knows if it means anything.
Only the bits that support National's vision for m0ar roads mean anything. The rest of it is just blather from people who don't accept the innate supremacy of the private automobile.
-
Hard News: Christchurch: Is "quite good"…, in reply to Tim Croft,
Also, is it true, no light rail?
Probably. The current government loathe public transport, especially if it's seeking money for capital expenditure. They're quite happy, however, to throw wads of cash at subsidies for their mates at Infratil/NZBus.
-
Legal Beagle: Presuming innocence, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
I believe everyone is also in agreement that the law should be changed so that what Len Brown did is also illegal in the future.
???
What'd I miss about Len's conduct? -
One difference I see between this and Cuppa-gate is that a key issue in the latter was whether the conversation that Ambrose recorded was, in the legal sense, private. There’s pretty much no question there that Banks knew he’d got this money from these people, the issue is only that he says he didn’t know they’d been recorded as anonymous when he signed a return prepared by someone else.
The private-or-otherwise nature of the Key-Banks conversation was what would’ve made or broken a prosecution. Ambrose recorded the conversation, and that wasn’t debated. Key and Banks didn’t know the conversation was being recorded, and that wasn’t debated. But the two other parts of an illegal act – a private conversation, and mens rea by Ambrose – were very much in doubt. By announcing to the world that they believed Ambrose was a criminal, the Police reached conclusions about matters that were not in their purview: the privacy of the conversation, and Ambrose’s intent. Indeed, they reached conclusions that directly countered Ambrose’s public statements, whereas I’m pretty sure that deciding someone is lying is the job of a court not the Police.
Conversely, the Police have been absolutely clear that they are sure Banks knew who had donated the money based on evidence. They are also clear that the statutory limitation is what stopped them bringing s134(2) prosecutions, while it was only ambiguity about Banks’ knowledge that stopped them bringing s134(1) prosecutions. Ambrose got no such benefit-of-the-doubt over his intent or knowledge, despite his consistent protestations of innocence.
-
Hard News: It's not funny because it's…, in reply to merc,
Funny thing is that with all these experts involved in all these money decisions, not once has any mention been made of good old opportunity cost
See, when you start talking about technologies with transformative possibilities, opportunity cost gets really hard to measure. To pick a topical example, if DARPA had worried about opportunity costs when it began looking at packet-switched networks and ultimately developed the internet then we wouldn't be having this discussion, in this forum, because the internet would never have been created. Sometimes you just need to do it.
If NZ is to have any hope of getting away from being a low-wage backwater farm, we need to embrace things that promote lightweight production.
-
Hard News: John Banks: The volunteer did…, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I’m held to a higher standard of responsibility when I sign my tax return than I would be signing a local body election campaign finance return
FTFY.
Seriously, people are overlooking that Banks would have been thoroughly nailed if he'd tried it for a general election.
The Local Elections Act is absolutely a nonsense, with holes sufficient to fit a supertanker through beam-on, but that doesn't mean we allow all political candidates to get away with shit of this nature.