Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Rich:
Grant's been involved in Wellington Central campaigning long before he became the MP, and you don't need a masters in political science to see Labour wasn't hurt by National's support and local organization getting seriously hurt by the "Bolgering" of Mark Thomas. (And even under MMP, it's pretty hard to win an electorate when you don't have a solid ground game.) I think I can speak with some authority on that last part, because I was there to see it happen. Anyone in the National Party who thinks doing that all over again in East Coast Bays is a good idea needs a good clout in the ears.
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Hard News: The Uses of Dotcom, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
The assumption is that National would be able to herd most of those 14,000 voters into the yards of whatever party they wished to favour*
M’kay – ask Grant Robertson how that played out in Wellington Central. Along with the truly bizarre Dotcom/Norman/Cunliffe threesome nobody has been able to explain to me, I won’t have what Paddy Gower and the rest of the Press Gallery are having, thank you.
Indeed. Would Murray McCully really go that quietly as political pundits would have us believe?
He wouldn't, and neither would one of the larger and better-heeled electorate organizations the National Party has. The prospect of your popular local MP getting monstered hardly puts donors in that election year giving mood.
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Did you float a claim of shabby journalism without even watching the story about which you floated the possibility of being shabby?
YMMV, Graham, but I think when you’re accusing a political party of trying to game an extradition request for electoral advantage but bury the explicit denial from one of the alleged parties two-third of the way into the story? Well, when it comes to law you’re way above my pay grade. But as a matter of good journalism, “shabby” is putting it politely IMO.
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Hard News: The Uses of Dotcom, in reply to Russell Brown,
Also: what on earth would the Greens have to offer in votes in a Coatesville electorate race? Seems silly.
Or East Coast Bays, come to that. For a seat Murray McCully held at the last election with a 14,000 majority and over 60% of the party vote, certain commentators seem obsessed with all kinds of bizarre shenanigans.
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If Gower has floated this claim of a deal and left out an outright denial that’s the case, that’s shabby.
That’s a very polite way of saying “a breech of fundamental journalistic standards.”
Key has the art of dismissing or changing the question mastered, but doing so would not help Cunliffe. “Why won’t you answer my question David? Why?”
George: How about this – “Well, Patrick, I’m not answering your question because by law and convention extradition requests are assessed by the responsible minister not the Prime Minister/Opposition Leader through the media. Labour/this Government thinks that’s a good thing, why don’t you?” Would that really have been so hard?
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Hard News: The Uses of Dotcom, in reply to linger,
It would help immeasurably if the MSM were to decide that, PM or not, Key’s “suspicions”, “suggestions”, and other such freshly squeezed opinions do not deserve to be treated as news.
It would also help immeasurably if Messers Key and Cunliffe learned from their UK counterparts and practised saying "no comment." There really is a great deal of wisdom in the old saw, " 'tis better to keep silent and be thought a fool..."
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That’s pretty big news. Trouble is, neither David Cunliffe or Russel Norman actually say that – or anything of the kind – in the report.
And I’m really glad they didn’t, because even putting aside the politics of it all it really should be a no-brainer that's it is dangerous for opposition party leaders (or the Prime Minister) trying to game the process through the media.
As you note, Russell:
And ministers do sometimes say no, as British Home Secretary Theresa may did last year in the case of hacker Gary McKinnon, who was wanted for trial in the US. May cited McKinnon’s disabilities (Asperger Syndrome) and depressive illness as grounds for refusing the request, and she was right to do so.
It was also right that, as far as I’m aware, the Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader carefully declined to comment, and rightly so to avoid even the appearance of interference with the Home Secretary’s exercise of her statutory duties.
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Hard News: The Cycle Frolic, in reply to kris_b,
Rail bus replacements are of course no use in this case anyway, since you can’t take your bike on a bus.
You can on the ferries, and I understand most of the buses on Waiheke have bike racks. But it wouldn’t hurt anyone to suggest to Auckland Transport that would a useful piece of kit to make standard on new and upgraded fleet. (IIRC, Wellington and Christchurch have run pilots but don't know if that's gone anywhere.)
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Hard News: The Cycle Frolic, in reply to Luke Christensen,
This is a rail network closure weekend, so no trains on Western, Eastern or between Newmarket and Britomart.
Details of the rail replacement bus services this weekend are on the Auckland Transport website here.
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Hard News: Aiming for the feet, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Exactly. If Progressive refused to pay tax, we’d shut them down, however much people needed groceries. Somebody would buy the stores from the receiver and start them up again.
Which is not a terribly good analogy. Unless I’ve really missed a lot of somethings, not even Clark is claiming outfits like Microsoft, Facebook and Google are engaged in flat out tax evasion. (And if they are, the IRD needs to be answering some hard questions about whether they’re properly resourced to investigate and prosecute complex tax cases involving multinational corporates.)
But when it comes to very large multi-national corporations engaged in complex and long-standing campaigns of aggressive tax avoidance across multiple jurisdictions? Well, as Russell pointed out, it’s nothing new or unique to New Zealand and really, really needs a more considered response from everyone than musing about shutting down Facebook. Or, for that matter, banning sales of IPhones and Windows until their producers get a local billing address.
Yes, it's a horribly complicated area of public policy for which there's no quick, populist silver bullet. Just thinking about it makes my tiny brain squeal with pain, but I'm not pitching for a seat on the front row of the Treasury benches.