Kiwiblog

Damien O’Connor blogs at Red Alert:

I thought we lived in a free democracy. Since when did a sign become illegal when expressing an opinion or encouraging people to act? Does this ban all signs at marches that may in any way be linked to a movement or political party. The EC needs to pull their heads in. This is not the 1930s in Europe.

And Clare Curran chips in:

Hope the Electoral Commission is reading this. Is this what our democracy has come to?

I agree with you Damien

So Labour equate being forced to obey the electoral laws, as akin to Nazi Germany.  The sad thing is that they have got so used to being above the law, that they really do think it appalling that an independent agency will not kowtow to them. In fact the post is a barely veiled threat against the Electoral Commission.

What is especially ironic is that Damien voted for the Electoral Finance Act which would had far more restrictive laws, than the current Electoral Act.

Also in case people think Labour is right, and you can no longer wave a sign at a march – this is not the case. The only requirement is that the sign have an authorisation statement on it, if it can be considered an election advertisment. And this has in fact been the law for the last 15 years or so.

So what Damien is really complaining about is transparency. Transparency is what he compares to Nazi Germany.

As if one needed another reason why Labour is unfit for office, this is it.

Phil Goff claimed this week he was not briefed by the SIS on the Israelis backpackers. He said the PM had lied about it.

Now Goff has admitted, after meeting the SIS Director this morning, that he was briefed in March. He says it must have been insubstantial as he doesn’t recollect it. More likely is he was distracted by the Darren Hughes scandal at the time.

This is incompetence of the highest level. Sure we can all forget things, but forgetting an SIS briefing?? Worse though, Goff could have checked his diary or checked with the SIS. Instead he accused the Prime Minister of lying, and impeached the integrity of the SIS.

Let us look at his words. First Danya Levy in the Dom Post reports:

I was not aware of the allegations.

And then today TVNZ reported:

Goff is furious over the Prime Minister’s entire handling of the affair, including claims yesterday that the Labour leader was kept in the loop.

Goff insists he was not briefed before, during or after the investigation and says he has texted the head of the SIS to complain about John Key’s comments.

And further he said:

He said the prime minister has to understand the responsibilities of his office and cannot “mouth off” without checking his facts first.

This is especially ironic. Goff now stands as the one who mouthed off, can’t even recall an SIS briefing and was too lazy or too incompetent to even check his diary or with the SIS, before he repeated his claims.

Goff incidentally did not just falsely attack the PM, but also attacked the integrity and independence of the SIS. Section 4AA of the NZSIS Act says:

(3) The Director must consult regularly with the Leader of the Opposition for the purpose of keeping him or her informed about matters relating to security.

So Goff effectively accused the Director of breaching his statutory duty. A very serious charge. Again someone with an ounce of competence would double and triple check before claiming he “was not aware of the allegations” and that he was “not briefed before, during or after the investigation”.

On Wednesday the Government is releasing their Green Paper on Children, which is about improving the outcomes for vulnerable children.

I understand there will be an open invite launch/rally in aotea square, so interested people can go along.

You can also get updates on the Green Paper on Facebook or Twitter.

facebook is – www.facebook.com/greenpaperonchildren

twitter is – www.twitter/greenpapernz

Got sent this graph by a reader in the alcohol industry. As people will know liquor advertising is blamed for a lot of things. In fact the Law Commission recommended banning all alcohol advertising and sponsorship – even Tui billboards.

While I do think breaches of the advertising standards for alcohol should carry penalties (at present you just get told to withdraw the ad), I am not convinced there is any case for an overall ban on alcohol advertising and sponsorship.

Having said that, I think there are some issues around price advertising (as opposed to brand advertising) and loss leading that are worth considering changes to.

AFP report:

The fact that Norway’s maximum penalty for any crime is 21 years in prison is facing rising criticism in the wake of the twin attacks that killed 93 people, with many deeming the penalty too lax.

Ever since Norwegian media named 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik as the prime suspect, calls have been growing for the maximum penalty under the Norwegian penal code to be extended.

If found guilty, Behring Breivik’s 21 years in prison would equal a penalty of 82 days per killing.

That would be an insult to those dead. Especially when you consider the news that he used “dum-dum” bullets which cause massive internal injuries.

I blog at Stuff on why I think we need a four year term, and look at what the length of term is in other developed countries. Only one country has a two year term. NZ and Australia are the only ones on a three year term. 29 countries are on a four year term and nine on a five year term.

Yesterday Bomber Bradbury blogged at Tumeke:

Take Auckland as an example, 35% of households in Mangere and other south Auckland electorate’s have landlines, 50% in Mt Albert and other isthmus electorates have landlines, close to 80% in most North Shore electorates have landlines. A decade ago those differences were less than 10% and all electorates had the majority of people on listed landlines, now they don’t and you can easily see by that breakdown in Auckland alone how biased these cheap brainfart telephone polls can be.

There is no reference for these figures. Whale Oil responded quoting the latest census statistics:

But if you look at some real facts, not just the one pulled out of his rec­tum you find:

Man­gere: 76% of house­holds have landlines

Mt Albert: 89% of house­holds have landlines

North Shore: 94% of house­holds have landlines

If you go through all of the Auck­land seats, you can’t find a sin­gle one that even remotely matches Bombers fig­ures. So Bomber is say­ing (I sus­pect he invented the fig­ures from his rather large and expand­ing arse) than since the 2006 cen­sus, 40% of House­holds in Man­gere have given up their land­line and 39% of those in Mt Albert have also given up their phone lines.

Bomber doesn’t do his ten­u­ous grip on real­ity any good by spout­ing totally made up fig­ures. He should retract his lies and apologise.

Bomber then posted again, just repeating his numbers, without any reference on which they are based.

So Whale has responded with this challenge:

I issue a chal­lenge to Bomber then, that if he can prove his num­bers, cat­e­gor­i­cally, then I will donate the equiv­a­lent of a 5 year mem­ber­ship to the NRA to the Mana Party. But if he can’t pro­duce any proof of his asser­tions then he has to join the NRA for 5 years.

I bet he isn’t man enough to accept this challenge.

Sounds fair to me.

The NZ Herald reports:

Australia is the world’s “dumbest continent” where people “drink constantly” and are “quite racist”, according to training at Indian call centres.

Staff are taught “how to act Australian” and are told to “speak slowly” because Australians tend to be technologically “backwards”.

They are also warned that Australians are “touchy” about their pets and their preferred term for Indians is “brown bastards”.

The revelations appeared in an article in the US news magazine motherjones.com, which also refers to the British as sarcastic and Americans as shouty and “free with their anger”.

Perhaps mercifully, there is no reference to New Zealanders.

The drinking constantly line is beyond debate anyway

Danya Levy at Stuff reports:

Prime Minister John Key has admitted he initially mishandled suspicions of spying by Israeli backpackers, saying: “sometimes you don’t get it perfectly right in the first moment”.

This is what I said in my Herald column – Key doesn’t always get it right, but he does have a very rare trait for Prime Ministers in that he will acknowledge when he could have done better. And that is why Kiwis like him.

However, Labour leader Phil Goff says Mr Key has got it wrong again – this time in his comments about the massacre in Norway – and has accused the prime minister of “mouthing off” without checking his facts first.

Oh this is crap. The mydeology blog has covered this issue well:

If you go to the Whitehouse, the comments by Obama and Key were:

OBAMA: I do want to also just make note — we were just discussing the fact that there has been a bombing in Oslo, Norway, as well as a shooting there.  We don’t have information yet, but I wanted to personally extend my condolences to the people of Norway.  And it’s a reminder that the entire international community has a stake in preventing this kind of terror from occurring.  And so we have to work cooperatively together both on intelligence and in terms of prevention of these kinds of horrible attacks. 

I remember fondly my visit to Oslo and how warmly the people of Norway treated me.  And so our hearts go out to them, and we’ll provide any support we can to them as they investigate these occurrences.

KEY: Similarly, I echo your sympathies and concern for that situation in Norway.  If it is an act of global terrorism, I think what it shows is no country, large or small, is immune from that risk.  And that’s why New Zealand plays its part in Afghanistan as we try and join others like the United States in making the world a safer place.

Key clearly speaks conditionally. The whole thing is a beat up.

Also I would point out that an extreme Islamist group did claim responsibility for the attacks, before the gunman and bomber was identified.

Unless there is a major upset, John Banks will become the MP for Epsom after the election. Now I don’t think Banksie is coming back to Parliament so he can sit on the cross-benches. It is highly likely that John will want to be a Minister again, especially as he has significant experience as a Minister.

So the question is, what portfolio would John Key give Banksie if they win the election? He could take Police again, but do you want to go back to your exact old job? Plus Judith seems very attached to it.

Thinking about it, the perfect ministerial job for Banksie is to be given Judith Tizard’s old job, and made Minister for Auckland! Wouldn’t that just be delicious.

Could you imagine the cries of horror from Len Brown’s mayoral office when he finds out his new Minister is Banskie

I saw the final Harry Potter film on Friday.  While overall it was an enjoyable film to watch, I was pretty disappointed with it, or more specifically the last 15 minutes. My gripes were:

• In the “limbo” scene they don’t mention that the reason Harry sort of survived is because part of him was living in Voldemort, as well as part of Voldemort being in him. No explanation given for how Harry survived.
• Having Harry spring to life in front of everyone was naff, leading to an silly chase scene between him and Voldemort like some B grade action flick – especially the wrestling each other off the tower.
• The whole point of Harry going invisible and staying presumed dead is so that his friends fighting on is even more heroic – they would rather die fighting than surrender to tyranny.
• The Molly Weasley v Bellatrix Lestrange scene failed to capture it as well as the book. Lestrange is second only to Voldermort in power on the evil side. In the book they describe her fighting three female wizards at once, to get across how formidable she is. That makes it all the more powerful when Molly Weasley charges in seeing Ginny at risk, and kills her after being taunted over her son’s death.
• Likewise in the book Harry shows himself only when Voldemort is about to kill Molly for killing Bellatrix. And in the book almost all other fighting stops to watch the final battle between the two main characters. In the film due to their silly brawl they are fighting outside, with almost no witnesses or sense of majesty.

The annoying thing about all the deviations is they were not necessary. J K Rowling write the final scenes perfectly for a movie. They did not need any change or editing. The changes they did, were not about making it shorter – we’re talking a few minutes only. It was just that they failed to get that emotional climax that Rowling did in the book.

So if you have seen the other movies, go see this one. But it was not a worthy ending to the most popular books and films in history. I guess it shows the difference between a genius producer/director like Peter Jackson who can take a hugely complicated plot, and still produce a stunning film, and other producers and directors who make a technically proficient film, but not a glorious film.

Anthony Hubbard in the SST  picks the politicians he thinks have made the biggest impact this year:

• John Key
• Simon Power
• Steven Joyce
• David Parker
• Phil Goff
• Chch Labour MPs
• Russel Norman
• Keith Locke
• Tariana Turia & Pita Sharples
• Hone Harawira
• John Banks

I was a bit surprised about the inclusion of Phil Goff until I read the details:

He has given the party time to regroup and to start looking for another leader.

Ouch.

Whale Oil blogs:

Just about all the Stan­dard posts that Mal­lard has pro­moted on Red Alert have been from Zetetic. And a com­par­i­son of Mallard’s post­ing style and Zetetic shows very close cor­re­la­tion. Espe­cially when they post from an iPad with all the give­aways that post­ing from that plat­form reveals.

When you do a Google search of “Trevor Mal­lard + Zetetic you find that Zetetic has an almost unhealthy obses­sion with every utter­ance of Trevor Mal­lard in the house. Som many posts about how great Trevor Mal­lard is, so many that the only con­clu­sion you can come to is that Mal­lard is Zetetic or some­one on his staff is. Either way they are one and the same.

I’m sure Trevor is far too ethical to blog something in one identity, and then praise it with another, and then tweet about how great it is.

This is such a horrendous slur on Trevor, that I am sure Zetetic will reveal his or her identity, in order to defend Trevor’s otherwise sterling reputation for ethical behaviour.

The HoS reports:

Amy Winehouse, the beehived soul-jazz diva whose self-destructive habits overshadowed a distinctive musical talent, has been found dead on Saturday in her London home, police said.

It’s very sad but when I read the headline I wasn’t surprised at all. It’s a useful reminder that just being rich, professionally successful and famous is not guarantee of happiness.

A guest post by Dmitry of PickyDomains.Com:

1. Million Dollar Homepage

If I had to pick THE craziest idea for making money online, this would be one. A 21 year old student decided to raise money for college by selling pixels on his website. Alex Tew, that is. And, as they say, the rest is history. Alex got his college money and more – over a million dollars, media attention and countless interviews. Copycat sites immediately popped up and… failed all. Maybe this is the reason why we no longer hear about Alex Tew – all his new projects were variations of MDH. Time for a gradschool?

2. ShitMyDadSays

To some cranky father is a source of irritation. To Justin Halpern it was his ticket to stardom. Justin, a struggling comedy writer himself, had to move in back with his parents. His father just would not stop yapping about anything and everything, so Justin decided to start a Twitter account just for father’s words of wisdom. In just 30 days Justin’s microblog was mentioned on The Daily Show. It didn’t take for sitcom and book deal to materialize soon after that.

3. PickyDomains.com
We are all good at something. Dmitry Davydov was good at naming things. Anything, really. So he decided that he might as well make a career out of it. Dmitry started offering people a deal they could not refuse – I’ll come up with a cool domain, name or slogan for you, and you pay me $50, if you like it. And if you don’t – pay nothing. No risk involved. The San Francisco Chronicle picked up the story and Dmitry was swamped with orders, so he created crowdsourcing naming service called PickyDomains.com that operates via the same risk free principles.

4. BugMeNot.com
Don’t you hate when free sites, like NYTimes.com or YouTube require registration for full access? It bugged the hell out of Guy King. Unlike others, Guy decided to do something about it, so he started BugMeNot.com in 2003, a free web service that instantly provides logins and passwords for free sites to folks who do not want to waste their time on registration. BugMeNot got really popular after 2004, when Wired magazine reported on efforts to get the site shut down by the dark corporate forces that insist on registration, so they can send spam the hell out of it. But the light has won. BugMeNot has since branched out into similar niches, like RetailMeNot.com.

5. Doggles.com
There are some certainties in this life and one of those is “dogs don’t need sunglasses”. Sunglasses for dogs? That’s the stupidest invention ever. It is also the one that generated millions of dollars for Ken and Roni di Lullo. Doggles are now sold in (hold onto something) 4500 different shops in 16 different countris! One thing I do admit though – dogs look cool in doggles.

6. GeesePoliceInc.com
Chasing geese may sound like a metaphor, but it’s not for David Marcks, who makes $2 million dollar a year, well, chasing geese away. What’s his story? Back in the eighties, David worked at a golf course that suffered from “the geese problem” (read too much bird poop on golf balls). He could not kill the birds, but he did take note of the fact that his dog, a border collie, was good at chasing them away. He now owns 27 trucks and 32 dogs that do just that – chase geese away from private and public properties for money.

7. FindAGrave.Com
Have you ever heard of ‘tombstone tourism’, i.e. visiting graves of famous people, because you like visiting graves of dead people? To Jim Tipton it was a weekend well spent. One problem, though – he lived in Utah, a state not known for great population densities (dead or living), so he basically ran out of (dead) celebrities to visit. So he started FindAGrave.Com, a site that helps you locate a grave of any person in US. The hobby soon turned into a big business, providing multiple paid services, like genealogy research. “I see dead people” ©.

8. ShoppingCartAbuse.Com
Plain and simple, this one is impossible to explain, but the site has a cult following and more than likely started as a college prank. For some reason, the owner(s) of this one prefer anonymity. Here is a description the site provides – “The Center for Prevention of Shopping Cart Abuse is an organization dedicated to preventing the pervasiveness of Shopping Cart abuse”. Prank or not, ShoppingCartAbuse.com t-shirt became a must have fashion accessory for 2010 with several Hollywood celebrities spotted in one.

9. WheresGeorge.com
If you know this site, the owner profession should not be a surprise. No, Hank Eskin isn’t an accountant. He is a database consultant. Who else would think that punching serial numbers for dollar bills into a big online database is fun? If you are new to Where’s George, here is how it works. First, you log onto WheresGeorge.com and enter your zip code and bill serial number(s). Then spend your money and hopefully some other person will do the same – enter bill serial number and zip code into the database. As of this month, Where’s George is tracking 192,623,138 bills totalingUS$1,040,594,634. This means that millions of people have logged onto Where’s George to find out where their money has been.

10. SantaMail.org
Male lifecycle is defined as “first you believe in Santa Clause, then you don’t, then you are one.” Byron Reese must have taken that literally, because in 2002 he decided to start Santa Mail, a website that that lets kids to send letters to the North Pole. There is a little twist, however, parents pay $9.95 to make sure little Johnny or Jane get a personalized letter back from the “big man” himself. Last year Santa Mail had responded to over 300,000 children. Multiply that by $10 and you get the picture.

I like the business model for pickydomains – using crowdsourcing to come up with ideas for domain names for businesses. Allows those with a creative bent to make some money, and those looking for a good name to get ideas cheaply.

Karyn Scherer at NZ Herald interviews Roger Kerr. Some extracts:

Roger Kerr doesn’t even wince when I ask whether it feels as though everyone is already writing his obituary.

“It doesn’t bother me in the slightest,” he chirps. “If I’m of sufficient interest then great. It’s an opportunity to tell the story the way I see it.”

After 25 years of banging the Business Roundtable drum, Kerr doesn’t need to be asked twice if he’d like the opportunity to bang it a little more. And although he predictably rails against personality cults, who wouldn’t enjoy the sort of attention he’s been getting of late?

A recent Herald editorial described the gong he received in the latest Queen’s Birthday honours as “perhaps the most deserved” on this year’s list, and suggested he’d had a greater influence on New Zealand’s economic direction over the past few decades “than anybody outside the state service, or possibly within it”.

There have been compliments from less obvious quarters, too, including several Labour MPs, as well as others “who might have seen me as a tribal enemy or something”. Such tributes, he beams, “mean more to me than the award itself”.

Whether the 66-year-old might have got the same reaction had he not discovered eight months ago that he might not have much longer to live is a moot point. Regardless of whether you agree with the Roundtable’s message, few dispute that Kerr has mostly been an unusually personable messenger.

That’s just the first few paragraphs. The full interview is quite lengthy, but in my opinion very good.

It is hard to know what to write about the tragedy in Norway. A friend, who is an MP in Norway, says the entire government district in downtown Oslo looks like a war zone.

It appears to be the work of one madman, a “religious, gun-loving Norwegian obsessed with what he saw as the threat of multiculturalism and Muslim immigration to the cultural and patriotic values of his country”.

The death toll is now 92.

The killer, Anders Breivik, was captured alive. So we may get some glimpse of understanding into his particular insanity which led him down this road.

Horrifically 85 of the 92 dead come not from the bomb blast which would have been quick, but from being hunted down and shot. Their final minutes must have been terrifying.

Initially many thought the terrorist attack may have been an extreme Islamist group – partly because such a group actually put out a press release claiming responsibility. But it is a reminder that killing innocent people because you don’t like Islam is just as evil and demented as killing innocent people in the name of Islam.

From the Centre for Mathematical Social Science blog:

New Zealanders will vote in a referendum in November asking whether they want to change the current voting system used for deciding the makeup of Parliament.

Dr Geoffrey Pritchard and Dr Mark C. Wilson, members of the Centre for Mathematical Social Science at the University of Auckland, have created a simulator intended to voters to compare the 5 proposed electoral systems in a quantitative way, by allowing them to compute quickly, for a given polling scenario, the party seat distribution in Parliament under each system. It is written in Javascript and the source code is publicly available. The assumptions made are detailed in the FAQ.

Try the simulator now!

Some of their assumptions around Maori seats are questionable, but still a useful tool.

From Gotcha. Fill in the paper for Trevor – funny, not nasty.

Derek Cheng at NZ Herald reports:

 The Israelis at the centre of spying suspicions say the allegations are ridiculous and insulting – and they are demanding an apology. …

Mr Jordan said last night he and his friends were backpackers, not spies.

“It’s a big lie, and it’s rubbish,” he told 3 News.

“When I was in New Zealand, I was just a backpacker and was travelling New Zealand.” …

Israeli search and rescue team head Hilik Magnus said he helped facilitate their quick departure.

It was “ridiculous, impolite and even rude” to think that their swift departure was suspicious, he said.

“What should three youngsters do when one of their friends has died? Stay in the park without their belongings? Should they sit in the park and wait? Or should they go home, hug their families and share their sorrow with the family of their friend [who died]?” …

Mr Magnus, who led a seven-person team to Christchurch, said it was “total bullshit” to think that any spy activity was going on.

He denied reports that his team was caught in the Red Zone and had to be escorted out by police.

He said the team was allowed in the restricted area only once – under police supervision – to retrieve to belongings of dead Israelis Mr Levy and Mr Ingel.

“We are going to demand an apology [from the Southland Times, which broke the story] and if they don’t do it, we are going to sue. It is a stupid story. Nothing connected to reality.”

I have great sympathy for the three young backpackers who not only lost a mate, but had these allegations to deal with. Likewise it has been tough on the families of other Israelis killed.

And if there were factual errors in the Southland Times story, they should of course be corrected.

But in terms of the issue of the initial suspicions of the security agencies, the reality is once bitten twice shy. The attempt to get false NZ passports a few years ago by Israeli intelligence agencies was incredibly stupid and damaging. If that attempt had never occurred, then I doubt this whole issue would have occurred. But it is natural for our security agencies to be more vigilant or suspicious when there is a track record like Israel has.

I am a defender of much of what Israel does, as they do get treated unfairly and discriminated against in many ways. But I am not an uncritical defender. Actions have consequences, and if you abuse a friendly country’s hospitality once, then it is no surprise that security agencies will be more vigilant in future.

The young Israelis and their families (and the USAR team led by Mr Magnus) are innocent victims in all this, and will be justifiably angry at having to defend their names and reputations. They have my sympathy. But some of their anger should be directed at the former Israeli Government which authorised the attempted passport identity theft in the 2000s. If they had not done that, this whole episode might not have ever happened.

Christopher Adams at NZ Herald reports:

Currency experts are not ruling out the possibility of a seemingly unstoppable New Zealand dollar reaching parity – or equal value – with the US currency.

That would be great news for Kiwis planning a trip overseas, but a nightmare situation for many exporters. And adding to the pain, the kiwi is also making ground against the Australian dollar.

So where is the NZ$ against various currencies. Let’s take them in turn.

US – currently at 86.22c. Previous high (before 2011) was 81.76 in 2008.

UK – currently at 52.83p. Previous high (before 2011) was 49.94 on 31 Dec 2010

AU – currently at 79.58c. The high was 95.54c in Dec 2005 so a long way off the high

JP – currently at 67.67. The high was 97.62 in Jul 2007 so huge way off the high

EU – currently at 59.83c. The high was 60.92c in Dec 2005 so close to the high currently.

TWI – currently at 73.7. The high was 76.9 in Jul 2007 so some way away from the high

I still regard this as more of a story about the US and UK currencies being so weak because they have such huge fiscal deficits, than about the Kiwi being unstoppable.