Posts by nzlemming
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Hard News: Know Your Stuff: getting real…, in reply to Russell Brown,
The Daily Mirror story itself is a shambles. Stop calling synthetic cannabinoids “Spice”, ffs.
So i can't use it to navigate the galaxy then. Good to know.
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I feel bereft that there is no Barclay revelation on Newsroom today :-(
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Hard News: Barclay and arrogance, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
whose interests were served by keeping him in the fold?
Perhaps, by the time they realised this, the Nats needed his vote in the house more than they needed to be decent human beings who abide by the law?
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Hard News: Blockchain, what is it?, in reply to izogi,
From memory, though, the law which prevented it seemed to be more obscurely about forging or replicating ballot papers than about producing evidence of who you'd voted for
It was more about doing it on election day as being an advocacy for the party you voted for, which is verboten on the day. When I was a teen, we worked out a way to use the party logos to spell "MENTAL" and chalked it in appropriate colours on a school pathway leading to a polling place. The administrators were not amused.
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And the beat goes on...
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2017/06/27/36207/officials-heard-barclay-tapeswhich kind of dents my theory that PS were totally hands off the tapes. I'll be very interested to see whether anyone from PS made a statement to Police. They should have, IMHO.
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Hard News: Barclay and arrogance, in reply to Joe Wylie,
While the allegations that ended his political career were never proven, they achieved their purpose without having to proceed that far.
That was a tough one. While I lost no time in waving the prick goodbye, I did have a problem with how it played. But still, that's the theoretical "honourable" part of the equation, not Worth or Key, but the party as a whole.
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Hard News: Barclay and arrogance, in reply to Dennis Frank,
The problem there is about where to draw the line. Constitutionally, a seat member is representing his constituents. S/he may or may not be a member of a party - independents have, I believe, been elected on occasion, though neither often nor recently. Members have jumped their waka to become independent (e.g. Brendan Horan) or to form a new party (Peter Dunne on at least two occasions). List MPs are slightly more vulnerable, but constitutionally they can't be forced out as they were a part of the list that the country as a whole voted on.
The whole business of being an MP relies on the member being honourable. This obviously did not happen with Barclay (or Field). In previous times, a word from the PM would see the member resign and crawl away into oblivion, but National need his vote. Also, "innocent until proven guilty" has to play a part here. We have allegations and obvious lies in response, but you can't expect him to go on an allegation. Parliament's rules are clear that, if convicted, he would have to go, so it's a shame the Police did not push harder last year (and there will be more to hear about that, I think), but they didn't and aren't likely to move far forward before the election.
If you had a process for dismissing members on allegation of wrongdoing, it would be chaos with allegations being made every 5 minutes. And frankly, if you dismissed MPs for lieing, the house would be empty.
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The US are currently saying that one of the defences that their election system had against the Russian attacks last year was the sheer variety of systems used, so no single attack vector could compromise the system. I'm a geek from way back, but I'm not at all in favour of internet voting in NZ. Even with encryption, there are too many moving parts and potential for malfeasance. Plus we don't need it - we're not big enough that getting the vote counted in an evening is too hard a job.
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I usually roll over and turn Wallace off, but I'm glad I didn't yesterday. It was a good segment. Either he's got better at removing himself from the interview or it was deference to the power of the subject.
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Hard News: Barclay and arrogance, in reply to Sacha,
I'd finger Eagleson for that. Can't imagine Key would want to be involved - plausible deniability as well as below his sense of pay grade.
Probably. I don't know who was authorised to access the Leader's Fund.