Posts by Idiot Savant
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Legal Beagle: Adventures in the OIA or:…, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Simplest to wait for a couple of weeks. The Commission will make its interim allocation and will hopefully put that up on its website. Then it will be "official". You should get a news story or two to go along with it
Point. And they'll also likely post the submissions.
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And on 17 March this year, just before the 5pm deadline, I asked the Electoral Commission who had applied.
Can you scan that and put it up please? There are some new unregistered parties crying out for wikipages, but need independent sources.
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The Electoral Commission is hearing submissions from the parties today and tomorrow on the proper Based on past numbers
Something seems to be missing there.
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Legal Beagle: Adventures in the OIA or:…, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
On Media7 last night, Jon Stephenson said it took Jerry Mateparae six months to deign to even respond to his last OIA request, and it was basically (I'm paraphrasing) a long "fuck off, I'm not telling you shit." That's blatantly flouting the law, but unless the Ombudmen get real enforcement powers what's the downside?
In theory, the Ombudsman has those powers. They can look at Mateparae's reasons, say "this is bullshit", and force him to answer. Unless PM certifies its a security risk (in which case its on him) or Cabinet says no (something which hasn't been done since the clause was modified in 1987), there's a public duty on every member of the NZDF to release.
In practice, the Ombudsman doesn't kick arse and take names, but negotiates and compromises. And they take months, sometimes years to do it. I'm still waiting for their draft decision on Cabinet conflicts of interest to become final (and for DPMC to be forced to release some information as a result).
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Hard News: Any excuse for a party, in reply to Russell Brown,
It’s not a projection. A VisitBritain study found that tourists spent more than £500 million visiting attractions associated with the British monarchy and its history in 2009. There were nearly a million visits to Windsor Castle alone. I don’t think there’s any doubt that royal tourism is a major earner for Britain.
Of course, the UK would get that money anyway even if it didn't pay the Windsors - they'd still be there, after all. Arguably, it would even still get that money if it striped them of any constitutional role and reduced them to the status of ordinary citizens. Its not as if history and castles and fools thinking peasantry is romantic disappear simply because you pass a law.
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Hard News: More Secrets and Lies, in reply to Russell Brown,
BTW, anyone who can find the assessments of the three prisoners apparently taken from Band e Timur (the Americans officially spell it "Band Taimore") in the Wikileaks files gets a chocolate fish from me.
Gone through all Afghans in the Guardian release; no-one stands out.
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Hard News: More Secrets and Lies, in reply to Terry Baucher,
What do the British do with their prisoners? Or for that matter the Australians, Canadians, Danes and other ISAF partners. I'm curious as to why we can't or won't follow their protocols.
The Canadians have turned them over to the Americans. In fact, a couple of years back the raid on Band e Timur was bein attributed to them, and they were having the same argument as we are now.
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Up Front: Fairy-Tale Autopsies, in reply to Danyl Mclauchlan,
This wasn't a cunning plan. O'Connor won't win his seat, and in the next electorate selection he'll be challenged by a union candidate and lose. His political career is over.
And good riddance to him. Prick voted against Civil Unions. He should have been out long ago.
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You mean like when the head of Mainfreight suggests that Police National HQ should be closed down and the residents distributed to the front line? What’s scary is that the likes of Joyce listen to such men.
None of them would dream of running their private bureaucracies without a head office to supervise and advise; why do they think public service bureaucracies can do without?
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See, I disagree. I think there is someone in there, but it's that relative you have to see every Christmas, the one you try desperately to avoid having to talk to.
Just because its wearing meat doesn't mean its a person.