32,000 and still going strong
The online petition against Labour’s validating legislation is still rocketing up, and still the No 1 online petition in the world.
32,000 as at this post.
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Tags: Labour
October 21st, 2006 at 11:44 am
Maybe the latest UMR and Ray Morgan Polls are wrong. Maybe if we had a Re election now National would win ………..
October 21st, 2006 at 12:03 pm
There are duplicate entries, invalid entries and bogus entries in this petition which are not being weeded out (either because the website interface doesn’t allow for this or because the petition author cannot be bothered). This IMHO is damaging the credibility of the petition…..
-cc
October 21st, 2006 at 12:11 pm
Shane, the petition cannot be used officially anyway.
The power of this petition comes from the large number of signatures.
While there may be fake signatures, it wont be a huge proportion of the 32,000.
October 21st, 2006 at 12:13 pm
Shane, the petition cannot be used officially anyway.
The power of this petition comes from the large number of signatures.
While there may be fake signatures, it wont be a huge proportion of the 32,000.
October 21st, 2006 at 12:17 pm
Shane, the petition cannot be used officially anyway.
The power of this petition comes from the large number of signatures.
While there may be fake signatures, it wont be a huge proportion of the 32,000.
October 21st, 2006 at 2:45 pm
wazzup..!..pay it back..!..dr brash..!
hasn’t kiwiblog been oh so quiet about the revelation bryan sinclairs’ salary was paid out of don brashs’ leaders’ budget..?
and if there is one thing we all now know..that is that is a no-no.!..eh..?
so..given the posturings of the last little while..i..for one..am looking forward to the news of how brash is going to ‘pay it back!’
here’s the deal…if he pays it back straight away..and begs our forgiveness..
we won’t raise the ‘corrupt’ question..
‘cos that could be a tad embarrassing..eh..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
October 21st, 2006 at 3:34 pm
peteremmc, firstly you need to stop clicking post so many times – one click is enough okay?
And where did I mention anything of the sort in regards to the petition having any sort of official strengths or purposes? I was talking credibility. Not bind-ability, or liability, or anything else.
Correct the amount of invalids or fakes, etc isn’t exceeding the valid entries, but their presence which if the Governor General or anyone else whos opinion might matter- were to note their impression of the weight behind it could well be skewed. Now I slapped a IMHO on it from the start, so don’t give me the you are wrong business because it’s already apparent where we both stand and there’s nothing to be gained further. You think the invalids are a welcome comtribution to the family, I’m with disowning them.. Fine..
-cc
October 21st, 2006 at 4:19 pm
and how would you like all your words/rhetoric seved back up to you..?
would you like them dry..?
or cooked..and on toast..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
October 21st, 2006 at 5:34 pm
The petition will need to gather a fair few more signatures before it reaches critical mass. More than half the electorate at the last election would be a good number. That would be around a million and a half.
I don’t think it matters a hoot that taggers and idiots have put fake names on the list. It made them feel clever for ten seconds, so enjoy.
The petition it asking the GG to do something it’s questionable he even has power to do, and actually attacking the constitutional base of our government.
And if Mulholland really thinks that petitions are the way to run a government, I wonder what other popular measures he’ll start a petition for.
Castrating rapists?
Hanging?
Flogging?
Drawing and quartering?
Petitions are a good focus for a campaign, because they offer the chance to seem to do something without actually doing anything. But when was the last time a petition worked and the petitioners got what they wanted? 1870 and the booze laws? 1964 and Radio Hauraki?
The election spending rules are clearly a mess. No party has clean hands in this. That suggests either that they are all scofflaws, or that the rules were unclear enough that National misappropriated a few thousands and paid Bryan Sinclair we don’t know how much out of the slush fund the Auditor General didn’t see, while Labour went ahead and spent an enormous amnouont of money on the useless and crappy pledge card, and didn’t even try to cover it up in the books, which suggests they need better campaign advisors.
The more National pretends this was “theft” and that mnoney and votes were “stolen”, the less they make many voters feel like supporting them.
If it was “theft”, then all the parties did it. The amounts are different but National, Labour, United Future, Greens, NZ First, ACT and the my Lord Jim’s Vanity Party all committed theft under National’s definition.
I don’t think it was theft as defined by the Theft Act. I think it was misattribution, which is a different matter, and can also be an offence but not theft as defined in the Theft Act.
I have yet to see any convincing proof, as oppposed to loud assertion, that any of the parties that fell foul of the regulations deliberately connived to breach the rules. Because they all did it, it’s clear that the rules are poorly drafted and subject to different interpretation.
That leaves the choice: either Parliament passes retrospective legislation, or officials of all the parties that misattributed funds are taken to Court and tried for their misdeeds. Retrospective legislation stinks like rotten fish, so I propose that the responsible people in each of the parties that has offended be charged.
There’s no case for singling out only one of the parties. Justice demands they all go up before the beak.
It’s also true that whether the amounts involved have been “paid back” or not is irrelevant. The crime has been committed, and that’s an end of it.
I would bet a small round coin of uncertain value that the GG will give Royal Assent to the retropective legislation, and that there are politicians and advosors in each party who will be damn glad they don’t have to front up before a judge or a commission of enquiry.
October 21st, 2006 at 6:10 pm
Yup, its right up there
I notice that even Sonny Shaws fluffy Kiwi has voted for the affirmative
October 21st, 2006 at 6:11 pm
Yup, its right up there
I notice that even Sonny Shaws fluffy Kiwi has voted for the affirmative
October 21st, 2006 at 6:16 pm
Honestly, if people were passionate enough about this…………………………….
then wouldnt they go door knocking
with bits of paper
for people to sign ?
seems pretty obvious what the soft option is
Harden up National
October 21st, 2006 at 7:19 pm
Shane, no offence was meant.
I happen to think we are both right, I never said that I supported the silly signatures.
As for the multiple posts… I have been having trouble with Kiwiblog and getting errors when i try and post comments. After the errors the comments haven’t appeared, they seem to be delayed in showing up as well.
October 21st, 2006 at 8:31 pm
http://www.thepetition.co.nz/
October 21st, 2006 at 8:49 pm
Latest update: 800,000 signatures! The people have spoken!
Oh, sorry, that’s the petition against legalising homosexuality, 1985/6. You’ve got some way to go, guys.
They lost, by the way. And they were wrong – weren’t they?
October 21st, 2006 at 10:54 pm
34,000 names
The roll call of honour. The names of integrity and justice.
The tip of the iceberg.
To paraphrase. Each signature is one small step for a man (or woman) . One giant leap for this country.
October 22nd, 2006 at 1:14 am
Hi all, I have just finished a quite a bit of work on validating the petition and posted it to my blog. Go and have a look at:
http://blog.deane.jessep.co.nz
October 22nd, 2006 at 1:03 pm
The amount of people who have signed the petition, represents 0.0152% of everybody that voted in the 2005 election…. Great indicator huh? Give me at least 10% of the population and hell, I’ll sign!
October 22nd, 2006 at 1:20 pm
Deane Jessep
interesting analysis, well done
.
If this petition is the genuine article, and I have no reson to doubt it, it seems that the tipping point might come sooner than we all thought. What is needed is discord within Labours ranks, and as indicated in the SST article on H2 looks like there is a deep feeling of anger, and the leadership group are further isolating themselves. More and more like Muldoon every day.
October 22nd, 2006 at 2:56 pm
35,000
Are you listening Peter and Winston?
Pull the plug on the rotting corpse.
October 22nd, 2006 at 8:40 pm
Yep, 500k affronted NZ wankers will surely persuade Hulun to resign.
Keep at it guys, there’s any number of Kiwi non sequitur’s on which you can suck.
October 23rd, 2006 at 9:34 am
I’ve just proposed over on a (surprisingly interesting) lefty blog site that, on this precious Labour Day, we have a minutes silence for all the workers who must scrub our hospital floors, digs drains, pick up garbage etc to pay for the wasteful excesses of our governments who then use our own money to bribe us and buy our votes come election time.
Perhaps all you guys concerned with corrupt and wasteful government might like to do the same?
October 23rd, 2006 at 10:17 am
and speaking of other blogs..rabid-rightie murray has had one of his comments picked up/linked to by salon.com..
it is in their roundup of the blogosphere..
and is one of his less inflammatory comments..
he’s only suggesting ‘water-boarding’errant democrats ‘to find out the truth..’
phil(whoar.co.nz)
October 23rd, 2006 at 11:34 am
Speaking of blogs I was wondering why there were so few lefty blogs compared to righty. Then of course I realised that the lefties have all the media – newspapers, radio and TV.
BTW retropective legislation is wrong no matter what shade of gevernment passes it.
October 23rd, 2006 at 11:42 am
Deane, I’d feel a whole lot more comfortable if the checking of the names involved more than just ascertaining the existence of the signatories. You really need to check if they also signed the petition. That probably involves a phone call.
Your analysis was interesting, but I can tell you as a computer programmer myself that every single thing you tried to pick up as indications of automation are not only easily coded around, but already have been. Auto completing and submitting web forms is an artform that has been around as long as spamming. The only relatively strong method to stop it is the ‘are you human?’ checks where someone has to read munged text and type it into the form submission. That makes it more work than most spammers could be arsed with. But a political hack? Who knows?
Not that I think automation has happened. The number of signatures is far too small to indicate that. I’m just saying that proving the petition is valid statistically involves a bit more legwork (or phonework, actually) than anyone has bothered to do yet. Which is not surprising when you consider that less than 1% of the population has signed, real or fake. Currently it’s at a ‘who cares?’ level.
The phonework would only need to be a few hundred randomly selected signatures. We’d surely get a pretty good indication of the accuracy of it from that.
I do quite like the idea of the automated petition. If the kind of control analysis is done that I suggest then they could be very valuable ways of finding information. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper than the old method of collecting signatures. The amount of effort involved in the crosschecking would be less work than the boring job of one person walking the streets collecting names (and a lot safer too!).
But noone’s going to bother on such a small petition. Give it more time.
October 23rd, 2006 at 3:59 pm
37,000 and still going strong
October 23rd, 2006 at 7:55 pm
still going strong
What optimism. I was just wondering what happened to all that momentum. Perhaps people are no longer angry?
BTW retropective (sic) legislation is wrong no matter what shade of gevernment (sic) passes it.
Always?
October 23rd, 2006 at 8:07 pm
37,500 now. Which part of going strong dont you understand.
This is an illegal government that came to power by a corrupt practice. Labour has no moral authority to govern.
October 23rd, 2006 at 8:10 pm
Another 165 in the last few minutes.
October 23rd, 2006 at 8:21 pm
Seems to be picking up staem again. Presumably people getting back from computerless Labour weekend baches and catching up with their emails pointing them where to sign to signal that they wont accept corruption any more.
October 23rd, 2006 at 9:02 pm
why don’t you go and sign a worthwhile petition..
there is one at dontattackiran.org…
phil(whoar.co.nz)
October 23rd, 2006 at 9:19 pm
Because we care about our countiy’s future and not some rarified political dogma of course.
October 24th, 2006 at 4:14 am
porcupine said..
“..Because we care about our countiy’s future and not some rarified political dogma of course…”
mmm..!..all the more reason to sign that iran petition..
(you’d think..?..)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
October 24th, 2006 at 9:22 am
nearly 39,000 now and still rising every few seconds. Click refresh to see the growing number of people who reject making theft legal.
October 24th, 2006 at 9:24 am
No, quite the opposite
October 24th, 2006 at 9:37 am
Prickly porcupine. Cannot do maths and cannot accept reality.
PS now 39,163 ie rising every few seconds
October 24th, 2006 at 9:46 am
Fine, you’re right, a great success. Marvelous, wow the people have spoken … kinda. I wonder if the petition will still be in people’s memory in a week’s time.
October 24th, 2006 at 9:53 am
I see the script kiddies are back at work!
October 24th, 2006 at 10:10 am
The fact it picks up again once the olidays are over, indicates strongly the vats majority are genuine. You also can see the diversity in how people state their names – two names, three names, initials, no initials and also the different electorates where people often get it wrong – all signs of good old humans.
But hey easuier to deny most people signing ar egenuine than face up to the reality there are a lot of pissed off people out there.
October 24th, 2006 at 10:16 am
The problem is David that no-one knows. The script kiddies maybe using their workplace systems hence you would see the same pick up after the hols.
No credibilty I’m afraid.
October 24th, 2006 at 10:49 am
Sonic said
No Credibility
and I’m afraid
just about says it all.
Finally some truth from sonic
October 24th, 2006 at 10:52 am
Actually it is quite easy to compare names to the electoral roll and see a high level of matching, and the script kiddies won’t have an electronic electoral roll so they can’t be using it to generate names.
But hey stay in your world fo disbelief.
October 24th, 2006 at 11:05 am
There are indeed a lot of pissed off people out there, and so they are driven to respond. They get together to protest about … aerial spraying, power pylons, school closures, leaky homes, new roads, rates rises and much else. Real concerns, real people, real numbers, real action.
If you believe this petition, there are thousands of “pissed off” people in Auckland alone. So when and where is the packed public meeting? Or did I miss it? Because I’ve got to tell ya – governments never took any notice of people sitting on their butts.
With all these “names”, and all this “outrage”, if the protesters can’t organise even one little gathering of angry voters, either the people are fake, or the anger is. Or both.
Currently, this ranks somewhere below the painted apple-moth.
October 24th, 2006 at 11:32 am
Simon,
“With all these “names”, and all this “outrage”, if the protesters can’t organise even one little gathering of angry voters, either the people are fake, or the anger is. Or both.”
Not correct, there is another perfectly valid reason.
Protests take time to organise, and need organisers. Take the painted apple moth protest. Who organised it? My guess is that the green party & other like minded organisations (possibly outifts like forest & birds too)- organisations with existing membership and infrastructure.
At the moment this “protest” has no leaders or structure or anything of the time. There has been plenty of the “somebody should organise something” type talk, but no-one has stood up and taken the lead yet.
For people to be willing to turn up to an event it is a requirement that there is a perception that the event will actually go ahead, which means advertising of some sort, and an infrastructure to organise things. Spontaneous protest marches are very very rare, if they exist at all.
It is less than a week since the petition was put up, which is rather a short time frame to be starting a movement creating an infrastructure from scratch.
October 24th, 2006 at 11:59 am
Peter S
It is a week since the petition was put up – true.
But it is months since the first claims by Brash et al that Labour “stole the election”. The issue has dominated NZ politics. The Auditor-General’s report had a fixed due date, which everyone knew well in advance. And Labour’s response was either going to be “won’t pay” or “pay and validate”. Everyone knew that. Surely either response would have prompted a protest, if this issue is as serious as its proponents claim.
And yet in all this time there has not been a single public protest meeting, of any note.
When there is one – no, many – I will believe the anger is real, and deep, and lasting. Until then, I don’t. I’ve seen enough politics to watch “issues of the day” whip up froth and subside just as quickly. This will too. And one reason it will – ironically – is that the critics have overplayed their hand.
Many New Zealanders believe the government stuffed up. Hardly any believe the government is illegitimate, or unconstitutional. The public might choose to punish Labour with their votes, but they are not going to demand the Governor-General do it for them.
October 24th, 2006 at 12:47 pm
Simon,
The vast majority of people in this country take very little notice of politics most of the time. I myself seldom have until very recently, but what has gone on over the last few months has incensed me enough to start taking a lot more notice, and even making comment about it, which is also unusual for me.
There are a number of people that I know, who have only given the pledge card stuff cursory attention, not having got beyond the “money stolen, Labour shady” type position. The validation has made them sit up and take notice, and say that what has happened stinks big time.
There is something inherantly wrong in being able to change the law to suit yourself, it goes against all the rules of fair play and there is a perception that this is how Labour, NZ First & United are acting. Most of these people would never normally even think of marching, or anything like that. Signing the petition is a radical act for them, but, having signed the petition, if someone suggests marching, they will be a lot more open to the idea than previously.
October 24th, 2006 at 1:24 pm
Someone misquoted me: “no, quite the opposite” was a reply to phil u want us to sign the Iran petition.
Humble apologies Fisiani