The Herald reports:

Hosting the America’s Cup in Auckland would be “barely worth it”, says the New Zealand Initiative after the Government was forced to drastically reduce its cost-benefit analysis.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) today admitted errors in its report on the economic benefits of the hosting the cup.

Its initial cost-to-benefit ratio estimate was between 1.8 and 1.2, meaning benefits would outweigh cost by between 80 and 20 per cent. However, it today revised this to a high of 1.14 and a low of 0.997, the latter scenario would mean the cost would outweigh the benefits.

“In simple terms, the cost benefit ratio is normally the total benefits divided by the total costs,” MBIE said in a statement.

 

“However, Market Economics had erroneously divided net benefits (new spending less the costs to deliver the goods and services) by total construction costs.”

The error was brought to the Government’s attention by policy think tank the New Zealand Initiative.

Great work by the NZ Initiative in finding the error. The Government may have spent tens of millions of dollars on the basis of this error. Now we know that there isn’t really much of a case for taxpayers subsidising the America’s Cup being held in New Zealand.

Research Fellow Sam Warburton, who reviewed MBIE’s numbers, welcomed the ministry’s correction to the optimistic figures that were widely reported in media.

“The alleged net benefit of the Cup was relied on by key decision makers including Economic Development Minister David Parker and Auckland Mayor Phil Goff,” he said.

“As in every public project, cost blow-outs and optimism biases are a possibility when hosting the America’s Cup. A benefit-cost ratio of just around 1 is not a sufficient basis for committing taxpayer’s money to this event.”

If the BCR at the moment is 1, you can be sure it would end up as less than 1 eventually.

The final package has been passed in the House and signed by the President. It is a big victory for Trump and the GOP. It is just a pity they are not cutting spending also, as the US deficit will get even worse now.

The main details are:

• Corporate tax rate drops from 35% to 21% (note Canada is 15%)
• 15% personal tax rate drops to 12%
• 25% rate drops to 22%
• 28% rate drops to 24%
• 33% rate to 32%
• 39.6% rate to 37%

The NZ corporate tax rate of 28% is now looking quite high.

The Herald reports:

Wellington Airport’s plans to extend its runway have suffered a blow after pilots have won a Supreme Court case over safety areas required.

The action followed a series of court cases over the airport’s proposal to extend its runway.

Earlier this year, the Court of Appeal determined that international civil aviation law, as applied in New Zealand law, required a 240m long safety area, or such shorter distance as is practicable, and not less than 90 metres.

Basically the Court of Appeal said that costs should not really come into the decision making. If 240 metres is practical, then it should be 240 metres. The Supreme Court has been a bit more nuanced saying cost is part of assessing whether it is practical, but shouldn’t be the main factor.

It is possible that the CAA could reconsider the Wellington Airport extension and find that 90 metres (the status quo) is acceptable. This is unlikely though – but possible.

So it is likely the Wellington Airport extension has become (even more) unaffordable and will not happen. The ruling also has implications on all other airports. Basically if they ever want to expand, then they are likely to need a RESA of 240 metres rather than 90 metres.

Stuff reports:

Lorde says she is “considering all options” after backlash against her decision to perform in Israel.

Activists against Israel’s control of Palestine have been trying to stop musicians from touring Israel.

Lorde announced on Tuesday that she would perform in Tel Aviv mid-2018. She was immediately met with a backlash online. …

New Zealand’s own Palestinian Solidarity Network has called the move by Kiwi singer “unwise”.

“We as a Palestinian support group feel it’s entirely inappropriate for Lorde to be supporting the breaking of the boycott,” Palestinian Solidarity Network spokesperson Janfrie Wakim said.

The pro-Palestinian movement, called Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS), has launched many campaigns to stop famous musicians from playing in Israel. The group calls for the “freedom, justice and equality” of Palestinians under Israeli control.

One can have a view that Israel should not be building settlements in the West Bank but also that the BDS movement is a nasty campaign with anti-semitic overtones.

Is there any other country in the world that faces such a movement? No. And there are scores of countries that have far worst human rights issues.

If Lorde was to play in China no-one would demand she doesn’t because of their control of Tibet.

If Lorde was to play in Moscow, no-one would demand she doesn’t because of Russian’s annexation of The Crimea.

If Lorde was to play in the US, no-one would say that doing so means she supports President Trump.

If Lorde was to play in France, no-one would demand she boycotts Paris because of the Rainbow Warrior.

It is only Israel which faces this nasty campaign. The campaign is motivated more by people who want Israel to no longer exist as a country than it being about a peace deal for Palestine.

Stopping Jewish kids in Tel Aviv from being able to attend a Lorde concert is not going to bring peace to the Middle East.

News.com.au reports:

AT least 16 people have been struck by a four-wheel-drive in the centre of Melbourne.

StatsNZ reports:

Gross domestic product increased 0.6 percent in the September 2017 quarter, following an increase of 1.0 percent (revised) in the June 2017 quarter, Stats NZ said today.

GDP per capita increased 0.2 percent this quarter, following a 0.5 percent increase in the June quarter. 

The Herald reports:

The Press Council has issued a rebuke over the publication of sponsored content on Stuff and nzherald.co.nz that masquerades as news stories, noting that this practice is a breach of the professional standards expected of a trusted media and that some of the ‘stories’ published are simply inaccurate.

This is a huge slapdown. First the Press Council is saying they are masquerading advertising as news, and secondly the “sponsored content” is fake.

The Press Council has undertaken consideration of this complaint on the basis that if material is being published in a way that makes it look as if it is genuine news it should, at least, be held to the same standards as news content.

The Council is also alarmed at the way news and advertising content has been mingled together beyond the control of news sites’ editors.

As they should be. Both sites work hard to fool you into clicking on sponsored content.

The decision relates to native advertising material that is dressed up as editorial content and placed at the bottom of each story page. In the ‘stories’ covered in this particular complaint, completely fictional characters – a Levin man, Paraparaumu kid and Christchurch taxi driver – were purported to have made considerable sums from investing in Bitcoin. Viewers were attracted to the material because it was localised to their hometowns and presented as news headlines. On accessing the supposed articles, readers were taken to Bitcoin promotional material.

So the sponsored content is fake, using made up locations to con people.

While the publications argue the content is advertising and they use visual cues to distinguish this paid content from independent news, the Council has ruled those cues fall short of international best practice, as does the mixing of news and advertising. The content is so clearly intended to look like news that the Council decided to accept the complaint and consider its impact on journalism standards in this country. As a result, we are urging the news sites to harden the lines between news and advertising, to ensure transparency and protect the New Zealand media’s hard-won reputation for independent and high quality journalism. Readers deserve nothing less.

Well done the Press Council. NZME’s response:

NZME and the New Zealand Herald, like other publishers across the industry, rely on the revenue that advertising generates to ensure that we can continue to deliver the latest breaking news to its readership from the best journalists in New Zealand. Native advertising, when properly disclosed, helps us to achieve this.

Their argument is that if we con enough people into reading fake sponsored content, then that can fund the real news. And they wonder why trust in media is so low.

Despite our belief that we were complying with international standards, NZME has carefully considered the points of the Press Council and swiftly made changes to the Outbrain widget which appears on the New Zealand Herald digital site. These changes include:

A physical separation of content which is:
• Reticulated within the New Zealand Herald site (such as other, related stories published by the New Zealand Herald), under a header called “Recommended”; and
• External links provided by Outbrain, under a header called “Paid Content” (or similar);
• Any images related to external links will continue to show the external website name immediately below the image. 

Sounds like an improvement.

The full Press Council ruling is here. Some key aspects:

In the Herald, news stories, stories from other news sites and ads are in fact melded together under the ‘Recommended’ banner, as Cropp concedes. Therefore when Cropp asks if the sponsored content is “part of an editorial framework or advertising framework?” the answer can only be: both. ‘Recommended’ as a headline does next to nothing to alert readers to the fact that much of the content below is paid and not independent journalism; quite to the contrary, it implies that the content linked to is somehow special and is endorsed by the Herald. Given that this content is paid and includes either advertising or stories from sites of dubious merit, including the made-up Bitcoin headlines, such an endorsement sends a worrying message to readers.

Stuff does more to assist its readers, separating the ads and paid content from other sites [promoted stories] from its links to its own stories [more from stuff]. It also has a thin border above and below the content, which the Herald does not. Yet it’s disturbing that it still labels the native ad content as “stories”.

So both sites promote these advertisements as stories.

On Frewen’s complaint under Principle 1, the headlines employed on both sites are clearly inaccurate. There is no Levin man, Paraparaumu kid or Christchurch taxi driver. They are figments of an algorithm’s imagination and are deliberately designed to deceive and dress up advertising as news. In fact, the headlines are total fiction.

And the headlines to get you to click on the “stories” are fiction.

Stuff reports:

Along with Cullen, the 10 members are:

* Professor Craig Elliffe, University of Auckland

* Joanne Hodge, former tax partner at Bell Gully

* Kirk Hope, Chief Executive of Business New Zealand

* Nick Malarao, senior partner at Meredith Connell

* Geof Nightingale, partner at PwC New Zealand

* Robin Oliver, former Deputy Commissioner at Inland Revenue

* Hinerangi Raumati, Chair of Parininihi ki Waitotara Inc

* Michelle Redington, Head of Group Taxation and Insurance at Air New Zealand

* Rosenberg, Economist and Director of Policy at the CTU

* Marjan Van Den Belt, Assistant Vice Chancellor (Sustainability) at Victoria University of Wellington

Overall a pretty good group. Oliver and Nightingale are serious hard hitters when it comes to tax. Elliffe and Hodge also got very good backgrounds along with Nick Malarao who has acted for IRD in many civil cases.

Personally I’d just have tax experts on there, and not have anyone from the CTU or BusinessNZ. But Labour is obliged to put union reps on everything, so you then need to balance that with someone from BusinessNZ.

Their terms of reference are severely limited but hopefully they can still come up with some good work on how to improve the tax system (as opposed to how to tax people more).

Politico reports:

A single vote in Newport News, Virginia, is set to give Democrats partial control of the state’s House of Delegates and could help the party pass Medicaid expansion next year.

After a recount conducted Tuesday, Democrat Shelly Simonds had 11,608 votes to Republican incumbent David Yancey’s 11,607 votes in Virginia’s 94th House District. Simonds’ apparent victory — which will head to a judicial panel on Wednesday for certification — means Democrats and Republicans will have an even 50-50 split in the House of Delegates and will have to share power when the Legislature begins its next term in January.

So a single vote in the 94th district led to a tie in the entire legislature. This is why it can be very important for everyone to vote!

John Armstrong writes:

On the evidence so far, Labour is the party that is calling the coalition shots — as it jolly well should be doing given it outnumbers Winston Peters’ party by more than six MPs to one in the current Parliament. 

The latest indication that Labour is very much in charge sprang from Donald Trump’s announcement that the United States would be shifting its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. …

When Peters finally did comment in his capacity as Foreign Minister, he suggested the decision was America’s to make. …

 Many members of [Labour] would already have been concerned with earlier signs of Peters’ pro-Israel leanings and would have been horrified to hear him give what was effectively a tacit endorsement of Trump’s decision.

So what happened?

Stuff reports:

Owners of an Auckland nursery filled with rare palm trees were hoping for a Christmas miracle but have been evicted after they refused to pay their “ridiculous rent”. 

On Tuesday, Oceanic Palms’ founders Brent Hubbard and Harley Haynes were locked out of a property on Arthur St, Onehunga that they lease from KiwiRail after refusing to pay a threefold rent increase from $37,000 to $100,000 instigated in 2015. …

They continued to pay their previous rent after KiwiRail increased the amount in 2015. 

I’m pretty sure you can’t as a tenant unilaterally set your rent at the level you think it should be. No surprise they have been evicted.

The pair said KiwiRail was failing to meet a principle of the State Owned Enterprise Act – to exhibit a sense of social responsibility.

“It’s ridiculous. What business can afford a threefold rent increase over night?

“It is a completely speculative and outrageous valuation they tried to make us pay.”

A sense of social responsibility doesn’t mean subsidising a particular business. And the accusation that the increase was overnight and based on a speculative valuation is in contrast with what the Court of Appeal and High Court found.

This Court of Appeal decision gives the other side of the story, namely:

• The lease in 2010 for $34,300 per annum for five years was explicitly advised by Kiwirail as being a concession below market rates. They said in 2009 that if the lease was renewed in 2015 it would be at market rates
• Both Kiwirail and Oceanic Palms nominated a valuer. The Kiwirail one assessed market rental at $115,000 and the OP one at $75,000.The two valuers conferred and agreed $100,000 would be fair. Now remember this includes the valuation firm OP picked.
• OP simply refused to pay the higher rent and also refused to enter arbitration over it.
• Kiwrail gave notice in late 2015 of termination for unpaid rent.
• OP took Kiwirail to the High Court and lost on all 16 grounds advanced. The Judge did allow them to keep the lease if they entered arbitration but they again refused and appealed to the CoA.
• The CoA found “KiwiRail advised Oceanic Palms that the rent agreed for the initial five-year term of the lease was a concessionary rent. KiwiRail also made it clear, as is recorded in the lease, that the rent would be reviewed to a market rental at the expiration of the initial lease term … It is simply not arguable that KiwiRail acted in bad faith in exercising its right to review the rent to a market rent in accordance with the lease. That is exactly what it said it would do prior to the lease being signed.”
• After losing in the High Court and CoA they appealed to the Supreme Court and was not granted leave to appeal

So reading all this, I’m not convinced Kiwirail are the bad guys here.

Over 1,500 people have voted in the 2017 Kiwiblog Awards. The winners are:

• National MP of the year – Bill English beats Chris Bishop with 69% to 31%.
• Labour MP of the Year – Jacinda Ardern beats Andrew Little by 58% to 42%
• Minor Party MP of the Year – Winston Peters gets a majority of 55% followed by 29% for Julie-Anne Genter and 16% for Metiria Turei
• MP of the Year is picked up by Bill English on 58%, then Jacinda Ardern 27%, Winston Peters 12% and Andrew Little 3%.

The MP of the Year results may reflect the readership of Kiwiblog (but I note Russel Norman won in 2012) but I think it also reflects that Bill English ran a great campaign and it is hard to see what he could have done differently to remain in Government (short of making Winston Prime Minister).

Stuff reports:

Wellington ratepayers are more than $10 million out of pocket after a council insurance stuff-up.

Wellington City Council has footed a bill of about $9.7m after a failed insurance claim for a delayed leaky building liability, and the council now expects it will pay more than $1m in additional costs. …

Proceedings started in September 2011, but the council did not bring the claim to Riskpool’s attention until August 2013.

The High Court agreed with the insurer, that the council had notified it of the claim too late.

So ratepayers are $10 million worse off due to this blunder. If this was the private sector, I’m pretty sure staff who cost the owners of a company $10 million would be looking for another job. But I suspect WCC hasn’t even used a wet bus ticket against those responsible – after all it is our money, not theirs.

Radio NZ reports:

Only 20 percent of Aucklanders have confidence and trust in their council, although this is up slightly on a year ago.

The result of council’s first survey on public perceptions, fuelled criticism of it in the mayoral election campaign last year.

Only 19 percent were then satisfied with its performance, and only 17 percent trusted the council to make the right decision.

“When less than one in five have confidence in Council, that’s a fail,” said then-mayoral candidate Phil Goff.

So Goff has lifted it from 17% to 20%. What does one call that then?

A new report on organisational risks within the council said both measures had risen to 20 percent, well short of the 2019 goal of 50 percent.

At this rate they will make 50% in 2034!

A recent value-for-money assessment of the council group’s Communications and Engagement work found plenty of room for cost-cutting and improvement.

It recommended an immediate 5 percent cut to the group’s $46.5 million spend, and repeating in each of the following two years. Councillors held back on that one.

They couldn’t even cut 5% from their PR budget!

“Diminished (communications and engagement) budget available to spend in FY18 will impact delivery across the work programme,” the report said.

“This represents a significant risk to Trust and Confidence.”

No, no, no. You don’t build trust and confidence by spending more on PR. You do it by spending less, and acting differently.

The Herald reports:

A new climate-change law next year will bind Governments to carbon targets and set it down a path to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 – though agriculture looks set for a free ride until at least mid-2019.

And Greenpeace has called on the Government to back up its talk by banning all new mining, oil drilling and fracking consents – which Government officials say would cost the country more than $15 billion in lost revenue.

Targets are meaningless without policies to achieve them. A net zero emissions target is as meaningless as a zero suicide target.

I don’t agree with Greenpeace on banning mining, but they are correct that the Government is not actually doing much to achieve its goals. The reality is that achieving zero net emissions will be incredibly costly and painful. It will involve massive trade offs.

Shaw said the country’s net greenhouse gas emissions were currently about 80,000 mega tonnes a year. It was possible to reduce that to zero through measures such as planting trees, moving towards 100 per cent renewable energy, and electrification of the Government’s vehicle fleet.

That is basically a lie. Also the net is 60,000 not 80,000. You’d hope the Minister would know the difference.

The Government has around 15,000 vehicles which is around 0.4% of the total fleet. Vehicles emit around 13 mT a year of emissions so this would reduce emissions by around 51 kT or around 0.05% of net emissions.

We are already 85% renewable energy. Even if one can make it 100% that would only reduce net emissions by 3 mT for public electricity or 2.5% of net emissions.

This leaves tree planting which the IPCC estimates could globally only sequester 2% of global emissions. Assume the same applies for NZ and basically the three measures Shaw talks about will reduce our net emissions by maybe 5%. That is why I call it an effective lie. The “easy” stuff with few trade offs will make almost no difference to our level of emissions. If the Government was serious they would be banning new petrol cars and mandating a reduction every year in the number of cows in NZ. Those policies of course would be deeply unpopular and spark a huge backlash so instead the Government pretends what it is doing will allow them to meet their goals – and they know it won’t.

But he would not rule out buying carbon credits from overseas to help reach the zero target.

“I can’t predict the future. Our attention and everything we are doing is designed around our domestic emissions profile, so we don’t have to [buy credits from overseas].”

Ardern added that New Zealand would no longer buy “dud” credits from overseas.

We’re not going to buy those nasty dud credits, we’re only going to buy the best quality credits!

Stuff reports:

The Green Party is breaking its long-standing opposition to waka jumping legislation after getting several concessions from Justice Minister Andrew Little.

The Labour-led Government introduced the Election (Integrity) Amendment Bill to Parliament last week, part of a promise made by Labour to NZ First during coalition negotiations.

The Greens have sold their principles out to Winston.

Those concessions include reinstating a provision that means 75 per cent of caucus members have to agree with a party leader’s decision to expel an MP from caucus.

That is a fairly trivial barrier.

Just imagine if such a law had been in place when Muldoon was Prime Minister. Marilyn Waring, Derek Quigley and Mike Minogue would all have been expelled from Parliament by Muldoon.

This allows party leaders to expel MPs who criticise them. It won’t be hard to get 75% of caucus support when a party such as NZ First is basically a personality cult.

It will also have a chilling effect on MPs who sometimes have to disagree with their party on an issue of local importance. If you stand up for your constituents, then wham you may be out of Parliament.

Stuff reports:

Former Opportunities Party (TOP) candidates say the party’s board did not allow any internal criticism of the party.

So who was on the board?

It’s understood a meeting had already taken place to select a new leader on Wednesday, with a handpicked group of candidates who had not criticised the party invited to contest the leadership – and told to keep the meeting secret from those who had. 

These party faithful are understood have been offered two options: one where Morgan properly left the party and lowered his financial contributions, and another where he stepped back from the leadership but remained on the board. The latter option was selected.

A Clayton’s choice. Of course they were never going to vote for the option that left the party with no money.

Co-deputy leader Geoff Simmons was overwhelmingly voted in as a new leader, but subsequently resigned over a conflict with a board member, a candidate who was at the meeting said.

Simmons describes that as a “massive over-simplification” but did not dispute that he was the pick of the meeting, or the conflict with the board.

So which board member?

The three-person board – made up of Morgan and longtime staffers Donna Clifford and Andrew Gawith – is given sweeping powers by the party’s constitution to compile the party list and select electoral candidates.

Gawith has worked with Morgan for 30 years. Clifford is also described as having been involved in almost all of Morgan’s previous ventures so the board was basically Gareth.

Despite this, she argued the problem was less with the members of the board itself and more with the party structure, which gave them complete power.

“For me the substantial problem is at the heart of the constitution. These three people are handpicked by Gareth as long-time confidants of his. I don’t think that structure is viable for a political party going forward.”

“Any political party has to be able to allow for lots of different kinds of of personality to coexist. That was the fundamental problem here, that certain viewpoints were never welcome.”

If you want people to volunteer for a political party, they will want to be able to have some day over who the party operates.

This is Part 5 of my family tree covering the Spiras, my father’s father’s mother’s family.

The first known Spira was Rabbi Kalonymous Spira who lived in Speyer (in Germany) from 1285. Spira was a common name in Jewish Europe.

Juda Spira (officially Haschman Leib Spira) was born in 1755 in Trebic (formerly Trebitsch), South Moravia. This is now part of the Czech Republic. He is my 5^th great-grandfather. His first wife Slawa had five children, the eldest being Veit Spira. Susanna died in 1804 and Juda had a further four children with Rosel before he died in 1820.

Juda lived on Blahoslavova Street. He was a barber (at the time Viet was born) but also a shoemaker and a musician.

Moravia had harsh anti-semitic laws including a Familiant Law which forbade Jews from marrying without permission, in an (unsuccessful) attempt to keep their numbers to around 5,000. A new licence would only be granted when someone with one died, and they were restricted to eldest sons. The law was in place from 1726 to 1849.

A similar law required the Germanification of first names, hence Haschman had to become Juda.

Veit Spira, my 4^th great-grandfather was born in 1774 in Trebic. He married Esther Gruenberger in 1799 and had six children with her. He died relatively young aged 44 in 1819.

Jacob Spira, the 2^nd son of Veit was born in 1805 in Trebic. He is my 3^rd great-grandfather. Jacob married Mariany (Sara) Prinz in 1849.  They had eight children. In 1868 they moved in Vienna and lived on Mariahilferstrasse. Jacob was a barley dealer and later a spodium maker. Spodium was a charcoal made from bone used in medicine. In Vienna he was a second hand goods dealer (a trodler) and later a merchant of a store. He died in 1876.

Philipp, Jacob’s oldest son, was born in 1837 in Trebic and is my 2^nd great-grandfather. He was born out of wedlock as Jacob was not given permission to marry until 1849. So he was Philipp Prinz until he was 12 years old. Philipp married Rosalie Weinwurm in 1862 and moved to Vienna in 1865. They lived on Niemergasse and had nine children.

Philipp was also a trodler initially and in 1895 he opened an antiques store, the 2^nd oldest one in Vienna. It was called Ph. Spira Antiques and located at Weihburggasse 20 . His grandson, Kurt, reopened the store after WWII and operated it for many years. Philipp died in 1919 aged 82.

One of Philipp’s sons, Fritz Spira (my 2^nd great-uncle) was a theatre and movie star in Germany, Austria and Poland. He was born in 1873 and started his theatre career in 1899 and did 60 silent movies from 1910 to 1935. He was killed in 1943 in the Ruma concentration camp. His wife Lotte Andersen was also an actress appearing in 70 films.

Fritz and Lotte had two daughters – Camilla and Steffie, who were also both actresses. Camilla appeared in 68 films from 1924 to 1986. She died in 1997 aged 91. Steffie (my 1^st cousin twice removed) was born in 1908 and joined the Communist Party of Germany in 1929. She fled the Nazis (being a Jew and a communist was a very bad combination) and ended up in Mexico. She returned to East Germany in 1947 and appeared in many film and television productions in East Germany.

She was the final speaker at the Alexanderplatz demonstration on 4 November 1989 where she called for the East German Government to step down. It was the first ever privately organised demonstration in East Germany’s history and 1.5 million people attended. Five days later the Berlin Wall came down. She died in 1995.

Philipp’s 2^nd oldest daughter Gisela is my great-grandmother. She was born in 1870 in Vienna and married Markus Feuer, my great-grandfather in 1895. They had three children – my grandfather Frederick (Fritz), and my great-aunts Hedwig (Hedi) and Margarete (Greta).

Gisela lived on Wipplingerstrasse in Vienna. On the 15^th of February 1941 she was transported to Opole, Poland. Her prisoner number was No 93.  She was taken to the Majdanek or Lublin concentration camp and died there along with around 80,000 others.

Gisela was one of 70 members of the Spira family killed in the Holocaust. Around 140 survived including her son, my grandfather, who came to New Zealand.

Thanks to Art Spira in Canada for much useful information on the Spiras, through his book Making Us Proud: The Story of the Spira Family

The High Court has struck out seven causes of action that Kim Dotcom brought in a judicial review.

Each of them was ruled to be an abuse of process. An eight cause (uncontested) will be heard in February 2018.

I’m not sure how many more months or years it will take for the court action to be concluded and then the final decision on extradition to be made by the Minister of Justice.

But this is now Andrew Little, so it will be interesting to see if Dotcom now starts attacking Labour as a way to undermine Little’s decision. He manufactured evidence of a conspiracy between John Key and Hollywood. He can’t try and play that card anymore.

In December 2016 I did my normal 20 predictions for the forthcoming year.  In 2016 I scored myself 14/20. How did 2017 go?