Posts by Kyle Matthews
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The e-receipt says in part:
“All money will go to Nicky Hager to support any legal case or to cover any costs incurred as a result of the police raid.
And…
Did you know 100% of what you donate gets through to your cause on Givealittle.
I’m confident that it’s all going to Nicky Hager.
What's your email address? I've got this money in Nigeria I need to move...
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Boy, do I have a book to sell you then. Because that’s what I argue, although at slightly more length and with more references to the assassination of Julius Caesar.
Feel free to use my line for the back cover. No charge even.
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The coppers have bagged Nicky Hagers property but are they allowed to examine it yet? And on what basis. Could drives be cloned and sent elsewhere perhaps so technically the local plods can say ‘they’ have not looked.
The material has all been placed in sealed evidence bags. So no, the cops can't do anything with it at yet. Hager has already said that he'll dispute the warrant, so it will be up to a judge whether the police can use the material gathered.
I also think it’s pretty legit to say that the cops shouldn’t really be raiding the homes of journalists full stop
His home is also his place of work. I'd agree that they shouldn't be typically executing warrants on journalists homes, but it's not uncommon to execute them at media organisations. Media typically won't turn over materials to the police, so warrants are the standard way that the police get access to them. I was a victim of police violence in 1993 and the police executed a warrant on TVNZ who had a camera there. Scared the crap out of us until a reporter said that this was the only way that the police would get access to the TVNZ footage - they wouldn't hand it over upon request.
I agree with Russell though that this is over the top by the police - issuing the warrant while he was there and retrieving less material (his work computer) would be better.
How can we be sure? Given this Govts history with this stuff, I would think it’s highly likely they’ll be angling for a conviction.
Well, Nicky seems confident that he's just a witness. So it's probably a sideline in intimidation rather than a lineup for a future conviction (for which it seems pretty clear there's no case whatsoever against him).
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think it could be done. Imagine an Australian type scenario where they have the Liberal-National coalition. National here includes both groups of that party – they could create a Country party and they would win all the rural electorates if they told their supporters too vote Country MP and National candidate.
But even if you did it, and say created a 10 seat overhang through your Country party winning 12 seats and having a 1.5% list vote, only half of that is advantage, as you've raised the number of votes needed to pass anything by 5.
So it would only take a 4% backlash against the National Party for such an obvious ploy to break even. And you'd give campaign material to your opposition for Africa. And even if you finished ahead by a couple of votes for one election, you'd be stung further in the following one.
Australia again doesn't really compare - those are two historical parties in coalition. That's very different from making a party out of thin air entirely to game the electoral system.
as they have with ACT and UF, both parties whose leaders have been formers National MPs
Dunne was a Labour MP from 1984 - 1994. Never been National Party.
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Ah, but that only works if you implicitly accept that the term “conspiracy theory” isn’t really a pejorative marking out irrational beliefs.
I think it needs to continue to well and truly cover the "the GCSB are spying on us" claims, as well as the "the royal family are all aliens" claims.
If conspiracy theory gets claimed only to include the wacky claims used to put down the person talking, then we'll lose the use of a particularly useful phrase.
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Just how else do you fix the inherent problem in MMP that almost by its design it can be gamed with parties deliberately creating an overhand and thus wrecking the proportionate basis of it?
MMP is currently less proportional via the 5% threshold to a much greater extent than it is due to overhang. That's been true numerous times.
You could make MMP more proportional by reducing the threshold, which many people here are in favour of.
TBH, I think the idea that any large party could split into an electorate party and a list party, and come through an election successfully preposterous. If the party didn't tear itself apart debating whether or not it should do it, the electorate would rip them to shreds at the ballot box. The current machinations that go on with Act and United Future are about a party not campaigning against an existing political party, not about constructing their own very similar political party to not campaign against.
I don't see it as something that we need to protect MMP against.
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What does a ‘Conspiracy Theory’ become if it is proven?
It just drops the theory and becomes a conspiracy (or, it was always a conspiracy, but now we just know about it).
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I'm astounded that rugby doesn't have rules for this - when referees are and aren't allowed to use video replay. In ice hockey video (for those leagues that have it) video replay is only allowed to be used in relation to scoring of a goal - did the puck cross the line, did a player kick it into the net or play it with a high stick etc. You cannot request or use a video replay to decide on penalties.
And when there is a review, it's not done via the big screen (though often the big screen will have the same feed, but often they have less camera angles than the referee) it's done on a private screen off the ice.
You can't have players coming up to the referee and asking them to review plays on the big screen. That's just encouraging players to demand refereeing by video.
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I think in the long-run MMP needs to be fixed. No threshold. No overhang – if a party wins more electorate seats than they were entitled too then they lose whichever electorate seats they won by the smallest margins until they are reduced to their correct proportion.
You can't do that to MMP, you'd have basically killed the mixed member component of it, which is pretty core. Electorate MPs make up over half our parliament, you can't unelect them because someone else in another electorate did better, that's screwed up democracy.
You might as well just go straight to a party vote made up parliament and get rid of electorates entirely.
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And finally, I’ve never heard the original of this
Russell, don't you follow everything I post here? I'm not a cello fan, but he's doing things with it.
That's not one of Ben Sollee's better songs, but I it remixes well.