Posts by Matthew Poole
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Hard News: Wikileaks: The Cable Guys, in reply to Brian Murphy,
Not in the least bit interesting, really. The habits of foreign MPs are of interest, because they may represent levers in future negotiations. Or weaknesses that could lead to political instability. Our embassies doubtless collect and pass back to Wellington reams of similar information every year. Information-gathering is a significant function of diplomatic staff, because it can lead to all kinds of insights into the person across the table in future diplomatic meetings or exchanges.
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to Dismal Soyanz,
I was flattered to see a link to my "Lead Agency 101" post flying around twitter as the explanation for why it was Police running the show, but I never saw anything in t3h meedja explaining it to the wider public. I tried hard to use accessible language in the explanation, and everything that I said could've been verified with a called to MCDEM or, heaven forbid, the Police themselves, and then published for general consumption. That would've nixed a whole heap of the gripes that were floating around, perhaps even a majority once it became clear to people that the call not to send in rescue teams was being advised by Mines Rescue.
But, rather than trying to educate the media just left the confusion to feed on itself and fuel anger and ignorance. -
Hard News: Wikileaks: The Cable Guys, in reply to Russell Brown,
I'll tell you what's scary about Australia: at KiwiCon over the weekend, we got advised by an Aussie speaker that they don't have double jeopardy. Now that is scary. After hearing that, nothing that they might do to trample on free expression is in the least bit surprising!
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to Sacha,
So what he's saying is that Knowles didn't spend enough time justifying to the baying hounds of the collected meedja why he wasn't sending men to what's turned out to be almost-certain death. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
Knowles spent more time than was strictly necessary trying to pacify the rabid hordes as it was, without having to spend more time presenting explanations that, no doubt, wouldn't have been passed on to the public in news bulletins anyway.ETA: If it took two minutes in a one-on-one conversation, how many hours would've been wasted trying to answer the inevitable thick-as-shit questions from fuckstick Aussie journos who just wouldn't want to know the answer? Not a good use of Knowles' time to try and explain this one in a press conference.
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Hard News: Wikileaks: The Cable Guys, in reply to Daniel Wilton,
The US (I think CIA) got snapped stating publicly that, rather than trying to take WL down through legal means it might be better to discredit it by posting false material. One cannot help but wonder if some of what's going up is the fruition of that plan. WL is certainly losing its credibility in a lot of circles with a) the exposure of Assange's true personality, and b) the vendetta with the US.
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It will be interesting to see what the Commission determines about the incident management decisions. I doubt Knowles has anything to fear from the Police internal process, and I imagine that he'll probably get some kind of commendation for his handling of the incident, but hindsight from non-expert examiners is frequently harsh and unforgiving beyond what is necessarily reasonable.
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There are definitely people out there who believe governments should have no secrets. A former co-worker was firmly of the opinion that even things such as terrorism response plans should be public record.
One big problem the US has is that it has demonstrably misused classification in order to avoid releasing politically-embarrassing documents generated within the walls of power. That makes people distrust, generally, the government's application of classification to information. Toss in a population of people vetted to "Top Secret" which is nearly as large as Auckland and you've got a recipe for classified material to be leaked, especially when nobody's quite certain how many people actually do have clearances at any given level.
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to giovanni tiso,
I'll accept that one, and it's definitely possible. Though for a "gassy" mine, do the rules change somewhat? And would it be possible for a pocket of methane to ignite and cause a coal dust explosion?
There are many things that can explode in a coal mine, not all of them methane gas. If it turns out that a methane explosion was caused by significant, undetected methane build-up, then someone fucked up, somehow. But we don't know. They don't know, experts or not, what happened. We've been told that Pike River had pulled men off the coal face before due to methane build-up, so some kind of monitoring must've been in place. What happened to render it ineffective? They can't possibly know, what with a) being in the UK right now, and b) nobody having been into the mine since the explosion to try and find out. -
Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to BenWilson,
It’s entirely possible that human error on the part of the miners led to this tragedy. ... Maybe someone along the chain forgot to do some vital task, like close a door
The survivor's account quoted says that the door to the compressed air bay was open and the bay was filled with gas. Assuming that it wasn't blasted open by the explosion, that points to a safety lapse. The account reads very much as though he expected the door to be closed so that the bay would not be polluted.
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Yes, it is over an hour, but it fits with reports that SOP was to not alert the emergency services for an hour. Whether that is prudent and reasonable is a different matter entirely, particularly if you have a report from in the shaft that it's filling with gas and there appears to have been an explosion, but it doesn't jar with the other facts that are known.
As for the Brits, I would imagine Granny told them the "over two hours, and it was the guys who survived who raised the alarm" version. Because that appears to be Granny's narrative of the events. In which case, damning the mine and its response is justified. However, given that we've accepted that it's more like an hour from explosion to notification of emergency services, and that for that to have occurred the shift management knew something was amiss, those experts may have come to a different conclusion presented with that version of the narrative.