Editing The Standard

Labour - Epic fail.

2010-02-22T21:56:00.002+13:00

From stuff; Severe shortage of medical specialists in NZ,

Labour Party health spokeswoman Ruth Dyson has taken issue with suggestions her party is responsible for New Zealand's shortage of medical specialists getting to such a concerning level.

Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) publication, Health at a Glance 2009, placed New Zealand bottom of 28 countries surveyed, with figures showing it had only 0.8 specialists per 1000 people.

Greece was top with 3.4 specialists per 1000 population, while Australia was 20th with 1.4. The OECD average was 1.8.

Health Minister Tony Ryall said the figures, based on 2007 data, were worrying.

That's right, the situation in 2007 wasn't Labour's fault - Epic fail Ruth.

It's OK when my team do it

2010-02-10T20:13:00.008+13:00

rOb at the standard shows how partisan he is again

rOb uses the M.C. Escher picture of endless churn to represent National's recent announcements of impending tax changes. This is the same rOb who has endlessly defended WFF, top tax thresholds so low that people are paying the top rate while receiving benefits and of course rOb has always been the ultimate defender of status quo - the same thing he now dislikes about National.

Back in April 2008 I asked rOb some hard questions and did he care about the issues then - no he defended them.

I'm not sure rOb really understands just how much of a hack he really is, he has all the arrogance of his idol but none of his idols intelligence. He's just a muppet.

Epic Fail

2010-01-10T00:42:00.004+13:00

lprent posted at the standard;

A Potty Peer making money off future misery.

He gets all worked up because Christopher, Viscount Monckton of Brenchley makes about $23,000 NZD per speaking engagement.

Which got me thinking, how much is Al Gore charging per day. Well I found this little gem;
Al Gore's $100 Million Makeover.

A l Gore is a funny guy. And, for his $175,000 speaking fee, he tells this story: after leaving the White House and heading back to Tennessee sans motorcade...

That's USD remember, that converted at today's rate is circa $238,000 NZD and that was in 2007.

Looking at that it appears Lord Monckton is just covering costs but if Lord Monckton is profiteering then what the hell is lprent's team up to?

Perhaps Lord Monckton hasn't got so much smoke and mirrors to cart around with him.

Rocky learns the fun way.

2010-01-09T00:03:00.003+13:00

Yesterday 5 people got arrested protesting with megaphones outside the ASB Tennis stadium in Auckland. Rocky though that perhaps if she went there today and did the same thing there might be a different outcome. Gee shucks, she got arrested.

I bet she never saw that coming.

No Right Turn: Absolutely ignores intent.

2010-01-08T22:17:00.004+13:00

No Right Turn: Absolutely outrageous

Idiot/Savant paraphrases what Rocky has to say when he says this;

"So the message seems to be that you are free to speak, but only if no-one can hear you. This is as outrageous as it is ridiculous. Again, the law as interpreted by the Supreme Court sets a very high bar on the level of disruption which must be tolerated in public space. And merely making noise to send a message that people do not want to hear does not cut it."

But there is a question Idiot/Savant probably won't answer. If expecting to be arrested which John Minto did ( as evidenced by his comment here at the standard ) then arguably in the context of ‘Disturbing the peace’ expecting to be arrested provides the guilty mind. Doing the action that (rightfully or wrongfully) got you arrested (while expecting to be arrested) is the guilty hand.

So is causing the police to arrest and process half a dozen people that needed to be extracted from trees etc in itself disturbing the peace ?

Seriously disruptive technology.

2010-01-07T23:21:00.005+13:00

On stuff today: Google unveils iPhone rival.

There has been burblings about this for a while, it's certainly not news to the tech followers that this was going to happen. While phone buyers ponder do they go out on a limb with a new device might find this disruptive, think about the mobile device developers trying to second guess a whole new product from a very sucessful advertising empire. iPhone developers: how do you feel? Windows mobile developers: Where do you fit?

Next distruption stop, also on stuff; Microsoft ,HP team up on tablet. Well I guess that's where the Windows mobile app developers go, Java monkeys - take your chances one way or another - I can't see google and Apple working together for code portability so choose carefully.

Against anything that improves educational outcomes.

2010-01-07T17:42:00.005+13:00

In response to this prep-school spin from NRT;

Since the beginning of the state education system, there has always been a parallel private system, catering to those who thought that any school which accepted ordinary children was not good enough for their little darlings, who could not possibly mix with the peasants lest they be contaminated.

What is he trying to say ? - look at it simply and it becomes obvious;

The private schools are funded directly by parents who also fund the state schools with their taxes. These parents feel strongly about the education of their children and even though they are required to pay thousands of $$$ a year in fees while still paying their taxes to support a system they do not use, it pisses Idiot/Savant off because the private schools produce better academic results than the 1 size fits all debacle that has no accountability.

Unfortunately, the government funds this snobbery.

OMG, the state collects tax payers money from parents who don't use the state school, and lots of it then a tiny fraction is allocated back to private schools.

...but they're now also giving out $2.6 million a year in "aspire scholarships" to poor children

That is so wrong because poor children should go to poor quality schools and get a poor quality education so they stay poor.... Any other explanation ?

The message behind this is clear: the public education system isn't good enough,

Got it in one. Well done Idiot/Savant, you tried to bury that fact in prep-school level spin but it still stands out like dog bollox as a fact that needs to be addressed.

...and everyone should instead aspire to go to a private school.

Well as they produce consistently better academic outcomes - YES they should aspire to having a choice and being able to afford to do the best by their children.

...This is not something we should be paying for.

I can see why a lefty would say that, educated voters won't vote for policies and ideologies that have failed again and again.

...The sole purpose of private schools is to promote the snobbery of the rich.

Policies of envy alive in well in lefty-la-la land. I think the private schools actually exists to educate kids - but I guess if you love mediocrity you would make an insane comment like that.

...Instead of funding that, we should be putting that money into improving our public education system so that it delivers for every child.

Well this is a first, Idiot/Savant almost gets over his envy and remembers what school is about. Promising start but then he looses it again.

...And if the wealthy want to exclude themselves from that so they can think they are better than the rest of us, they can pay for it themselves.

Idiot/Savant - wake up. The rich do pay for it and they pay for the public system they do not use. These scholarships (irrespective of how the kids are chosen) are allocated to kids who are probably not even funding their share of the public system. But I guess like I said before you simply don't want poor kids well educated or they might not vote for a dim-bulb lefty party. Which will be why this quote was never put into Idiot/Savant's prep-school hack of theHerald article.

"It's purely about increasing educational opportunities and choice for those students who wouldn't normally have the ability to go to a private school."

You are a muppet - you prove again why you won't allow comments on your MSM newsleter.

Protecting his woman.

2009-06-06T14:36:00.003+12:00

lprent over at the standard has done a great piece on... something. Perhaps it is partisan attack stuff or perhaps it is a commentary on what is important in life when you just turned 50.

Gross hypricisy at the standard.

2009-06-04T23:05:00.004+12:00

I suspect battle lines will be drawn between lprent and Eddie (worse & worse) at the standard.

Eddie starts to fume about Key's so called 'acceptance of Worth's version of events. Eddie must be a bit slow to remember another version of a similar theme.

I think lprent justifies John Keys so called tardy disclosure in this comment;

lprent August 28, 2008 at 12:52 pm

burt: You are just being silly. Looked at the statement and nothing changes.

She asked Peters if it was true, and he said no. You take the word of ministers.

Tell me, do you expect PM’s to have a touch of the divine and to be able to see inside peoples heads?

Reading what lpren's comment was in response to gives it context. Non disclosure over a period of months and months compared to a few weeks.

Take the ministers word and do nothing was acceptable for Labour eh, but not National. lprent will be spitting tacks at Eddie for being such a hypocrite.

Something to be proud of?

2009-06-04T22:29:00.004+12:00

Hat-tip: No right Turn.

New Zealand has topped the Global Peace Index, making us statistically the most peaceful country in the world. That's quite an achievement, and Labour can take credit because it spent almost a decade slashing defense force budgets and under investing in military capability and hardware.

NRT style caption contest

2009-05-23T00:01:00.004+12:00

lprent gets some time in the sun.

2009-05-22T20:23:00.005+12:00

From The Sun: IT Workers are best at sex

I bet like computer nerds all over the planet lprent was mailing this to all his female friends.

Unravelling Eddie.

2009-05-22T20:04:00.005+12:00

That's it, National are starting to act far too much like Labour so Eddie needed a few changes to keep him posting. lprent has replaced the experimental hypocrisy detection classes with functionless classes conforming to the 'RateHypocricsyOfAttackAgainstPreviousDefenses' interface.

Please read through this where you can, Eddie occasionally speaks some wisdom. Eddie & Robinsod obviously share some of the same generation of 'Rabid' classes.

The problems of loosing root.

2009-05-21T21:33:00.004+12:00

lprent still reeling about not having root access to the server his blog is hosted on takes out his frustration by letting beta version 'authors' loose on the world. His latest catastrophe is Zetitic.

It's probably safe to assume that the name Zetitic stems from Zetitic Philosophy which is defined by Tom Bishop (notably a flat earth proponent) ;

"The Zetitic Philosophy is an exercise in skepticism to come to the absolute truth of a matter. It's a form of Empiricism in which all possibilities are assessed, facts collected, where the conclusion arrived at is essentially a quotient; which, if the details are correctly worked, must of necessity be true, and beyond the reach or power of contradiction."

Well, lprent has a lot of work to do, all Zetitic has done is tried to confuse the behaviour of Labour with the behaviour of business. Just 3 word substitutions unravels the opening paragraph.

"Our glorious ~~business~~ Labour party leaders spent the last 10 years of record growth ~~pocketing~~ wasting huge profits and whinging ~~for~~ against tax cuts. They should have been investing in our economic future. We’re meant to buy this myth that these are the smartest men in the room. Most of them can’t understand something as simple as climate change or that booms don’t last forever. They’re anti-intellectual, greedy, and shallow."

Zetitic makes some sense when he starts talking about Air NZ, his point about CEO's getting big pay rises while workers get buttons is one I have discussed on the standard before. Apparently it's OK for the PM to get a 9% ($30,000) pay rise while the public service needs to fight for 3% - but it's different when it's a CEO in "business".

Zetitic finishes well, 1 more substitution was all it took to discuss Labour's final years of government.

"They treat our country like a Chinese bear’s gall bladder. They milk us all they can without actually making us collapse. Billions a year sucked out of our economy in return for inferior quality ~~bank~~ social services.

So what do we do about it? Buggered if I know… tax cuts?"

Eddie makes a full apology.

2009-05-21T20:38:00.004+12:00

Having expended a considerable number of CPU cycles compiling posts that denigrate Melissa Lee over what Eddie was hoping would be a scandal of Winston proportions, New Zealand On Air have cleared Melissa Lee of any wrong doing.

Eddie having got his bits in a twist flinging around the "C" word that we all rightfully associate with Labour has now made a full apology. (well not yet - but I'm sure it will happen because Eddie insists he is fair and balanced)

Trevor Mallard has also made a more sincere apology than any Labour MP has ever made in this comment he posted on KiwiBlog.

"I might yet get to the point of saying sorry but not there yet."

That sure beats "Move on".

Full story here: NZ On Air - Report on allegations surrounding the production of Asia Downunder 2008

Labour and all their friends

2009-05-19T21:03:00.003+12:00

Eddie the code bot is at it again in his latest piece of hackery. (see: Cyclewatch )

lprent didn't equip Eddie to deal with the situation where Labour are becoming more and more isolated in the political wilderness. Typical Labour thinking had lprent believing that Labour would always be calling the shots, always be the natural party of govt. But it's simply not the case anymore. The Green's have shown they would rather focus on political outcomes (which is about time) and Labour are still flapping around getting angry at anyone who isn't still in love with them.

Poor Eddie, his parties got no mates and all he can do is denigrate everyone.

The same but different

2009-05-14T23:01:00.005+12:00

Dancer is back. The same but different in Observations in passing.

I have added some interpretation.

I’m a little re-created [lprent found me on an old portable drive] - some mysteriousness with my profile means I am re-defined “similar but different” for the time being. [I'm running and my debug tracing is driving lprent crazy] But I haven’t stopped reading and I thought these were an interesting series of observations on the current state of play: [they contained the key words: National, Mt Albert, Rankin and/or Lee ]

[deleted search engine score selected links]

Actually similar but different is a good description of this week so far. [i was doing nothing meaningful a few days ago as well] National - a popular government but I sense something just turning in the wind….[lprent made me say this bit]

Finally they get it.

2009-05-13T23:04:00.003+12:00

Bloody hell, it's taken being in opposition for the Muppet John A at the standard to realise that digging bigger and bigger holes denying something odorous just makes it worse.

After defending Labour in scandal after scandal it's funny to watch the Muppet's shuffle from defending the indefensible to being sticklers for principle. These people are great in opposition, pity they don't demand the same standard from their own leaders as they demand from their opposition.

Note: I support an investigation into Melissa Lee's dealings in this. Public money has been spent so accountability is required. I'm going to have a field day with the Muppet's if National end up validating this.

The science is settled ?

2009-05-13T22:13:00.004+12:00

NZ Herald (02 May 2009): NZ glacier findings upset climate theory

"The paper published in Science magazine yesterday showed the Mt Cook glaciers advanced to their maximum length 6500 years ago, and have been smaller ever since.

But glaciers in the Swiss Alps advanced to their maximum only in the past 700 years - during the Northern Hemisphere's "Little Ice Age", which ended about 1860.

During some warm periods in Europe, glaciers were advancing in New Zealand. At other times, glaciers were well advanced in both areas.

In a commentary which accompanied the research, Greg Balco, from the Berkeley Geochronology Centre in California, said the conclusion that glacier advances in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres were not synchronised was "unexpected"."

I found this when I was searching for information on NZ glacier recession rates after seeing this article on BBC NEWS. I found this link which is most interesting.

"New Zealand’s main glaciers – the Franz Josef and Fox glaciers have been advancing since the mid-1980s."

"Some valley glaciers have advanced, some have thickened in the upper trunk, and the larger ones and those with proglacial lakes continue to recede. The shift to advance is driven by an average lowering of snowlines of 67 m, equivalent to a cooling of 0.47°C if other factors are held constant.”

So what's the story? Are we getting warmer or colder down here?

The consortium of every scientist in the world has been surprised that history supports current divergence between northern hemisphere and southern hemisphere climate change. Wow, these guys must be smart, hope they are smart enough to work out how it effects the settled science.

I'm picking another great ski season coming our way this year.

Calling it a day

2009-05-13T00:15:00.003+12:00

Steve swam for it first, now it's Tane's turn.

CCD Myths - East Antarctica

2009-05-11T21:02:00.011+12:00

In east Antarctica, the sea ice sheets have been larger recently. Predictably this has been seized on by non believers (climate change deniers - or CCD’s as we know them) as evidence that climate change scriptures are incorrect.

The problem is the situation is bloody hopeless, this bloody cooling in certain areas and heating in others needs to be controlled. Now this planet we live on is lovely but its climate systems are in need of some management. We don't want to live in a place where the bloody hot and cold spots shift around. Local climates are supposed to stay where they were when we first accurately charted and observed them when we were planning to soot bomb the uninhabited ice caps to head off an ice age predicted for the 70's. We note from history that they have always moved around but now we can stop that, if we implement a good management plan.

I need to remind you that fossils of sea creatures have been found thousands of feet above the current (and now required to be stable) sea level. This tells us that if all the ice melts we are completely stuffed. Don't let CCD fruit loops tell you that land has been pushed up by tectonic plate movements, this is a myth. Don't let them tell you that shifting land masses over time effect sea levels and effect ocean currents causing climate change. These CCD crazies will also tell you that volcanic activity has an effect on climate and that volcanic activity is oblivious to atmospheric CO2 levels - they are wrong. I once heard one freak suggest that changing sea levels will cause sudden changes in land masses due to the massive weight redistribution. Luckily somebody shot that line of thinking down because it sounded like the book of revelation. Current management plans include relocation of residents within certain tolerances of current (and now required to be stable) sea levels but Atlantis type catastrophes are not within the scope or budget at this time.

Now remember if somebody challenges you to put an ice cube in a glass of water and mark the waterline with a waterproof marker and wait for the ice to melt to settle the blather about floating ice melting effecting sea levels. Don't try it - the physics is different in a glass of water than for the planet. Please leave the management of this complex stuff to the experts.

Is Hide on his way to the Priveleges Committee?

2009-05-08T11:31:00.005+12:00

Rodney Hide may breached privilege by seriously misleading the House.

This is one for you legal types out there but from a layperson’s perspective it looks like it. Here’s what happened

On Wednesday, Phil Twyford (or Twif-ford as Hide insists on calling him) asked Hide whether “he has costed the super-city proposal outlined in [the government's report]?”. Hide replied simply “Yes”.

On Thursday, Twyford asked Hide “How much will the government’s super-city proposal cost to implement and to run annually?” Hide’s answer: “Implementation costs will be minuscule compared with the present costs of running the various Auckland councils”

Twyford followed up: “What is the cost of the Government’s super-city proposal to implement and run annually?” Hide tried to avoid answering and eventually gave the minuscule answer again. Speaker Lockwood Smith told him that wasn’t good enough and asked him to give the cost if he had it (Trevor Mallard pointed out Hide had already said he did have it). Hide ummed and ahhed some more, Gerry Brownlee tried to cover for him but Smith insisted on an answer. This was it - Hide: ”The government actually does not have the cost of implementation”

But wait a minute, just a day earlier he had said the government did have the cost and the ‘miniscule’ comments imply he knows the cost, wasn’t that seriously misleading the House?

Oh dear. It's not looking good for Rodney. Serious this upsets me. I've always thought of Rodney as one of the few people in Parliament who actually took ethics and process seriously. I'm disappointed to say the least.

However, imagine if Rodney is censured by the privileges committee - the authors of the standard will be telling us that like Winston it's nothing serious really. He'll get admonished, perhaps be told he's a naughty boy by his major party leader who can do no wrong and we will all move on.

So what do you reckon Eddie? - we apply the same standard of "what do we do now" to Rodney if hes censured as was applied to Winston?

I think he should resign his ministerial warrant if he is censured - thats what I said for Winston as well. Look I hope its not the case, but if it is I'm going to enjoy posting all sorts of links to compare what the authors of the standard say about Rodney compared to what they said about Winston.

Take care guys - the burt is watching.

What's going on at editing the standard

2009-05-07T22:38:00.000+12:00

OK, you may have noticed that the blog took a stutter. The evidence is lodged in the blogsphere under the previous incarnation as Edit The Standard. That blog has become detached from my Google account, I don't know how it happened and its simply not worth badgering Blogger about. I did say to Eddie 'this ones for you' when I first published a link to it - so there ya go, Google works in funny ways.

Oh dear - Hyde the costs.

2009-05-07T20:02:00.000+12:00

How embarrassing. lprent must have decided that since he can't fix the bug riddled Eddie he will try and be a political commentator.

He has a point, but he looses the thread and starts shooting his mouth off about all the things he is upset about, the same things he has defended Labour for. I'm starting to get an idea why Eddie is so myopic....

It is a bit disturbing all the same, Rodney Hide has been forced to admit that he has no idea of the costs of his super-city proposal. Phil Twyford with the aid of the speaker cornered him into an admission that he’d been acting like a Labour party person and spending money like he has a surplus to hide so he can tell us "No tax cuts".

The Minister has been caught out trying to mislead Aucklanders about whether the Government has done those costings and only acknowledged there were none, when ordered by the Speaker in the House today.

Yesterday I asked Mr Hide whether the Government had costed its Super City proposals, as outlined in its Making Auckland Greater booklet, and he answered ‘yes’.

Today when I asked what those costing were, Mr Hide danced on the head of a pin as he tried to evade the question, until he was finally ordered by the Speaker to come clean.

I'm pretty disgusted actually, Rodney talked the talk big time when he was in opposition about being responsible with tax payers money, proper process for passing laws and the need for referendums. Now the plonker is just acting like a self serving Labour party and thinking he knows what is best for us.

I'm not happy but I do smirk when lprent starts slagging off Rodney for all the same things I use to slag Labour off for. The same things that lprent defended when Labour did them. (no referendums, use of urgency to pass laws and uncontrolled spending on PR and spin)

Well as far as I'm concerned this shit is wrong irrespective of which party is doing it. I get the feeling that we are going to see a lot more of this at the double standard, the defenders of the indefensible don't like it when it's not their party doing it - I just don't like it at all.

Zeal320 strike underway

2009-05-07T19:49:00.000+12:00

Zeal320 workers are on strike for four days from today. Ads in every major newspaper explain what they are fighting for - the same pay for doing the same work as other flight attendants on Air NZ flights. Sounds fair to me. ZealGirl has more details.

Eddie over at the standard has tried again to make this all about the company management and tries desperately to distract everybody from the fact the Labour party were the govt and therefore the major shareholder when this was all establish. In the comments in that thread Eddie even tries to blame National for this... Wow I use to respect lprent's coding ability, perhaps he should stick to more mundae stuff like sys admin.

lprent certainly has a bit of work to do with Eddie, some code changes need to be made so Eddie stops trying to compare CEO salaries with Flight Attendants salaries. Still what would a code bot know about the real world, the software is only as good as the author makes it.

Another Labour legacy

2009-05-07T19:32:00.000+12:00

Once again poor Eddie from the stranded gets very confused when he starts calling Air NZ a disgrace .

Eddie starts off well.

What exactly is our national carrier, which is more than 80% publicly owned, doing boasting about how it can break its own workers?

He then discusses the problems associated with industrial action for staff, once again Eddie stays on theme here.

Strike action is the final option for most workers, especially low paid workers like these. It only comes after they are given no other choice by their employer and it hurts all parties involved.

Eddie then starts to get down to business;

The deal with the Zeal crew is that they are employed by a holding company, Zeal 320, that Air New Zealand owns and that company has an agreement to staff Air New Zealand flights. They are the only employees of Zeal 320. Every one of their managers is employed by Air NZ.

Then he forgot to question 'how did it happen' - he looses the plot and goes straight for the guys who ran the company on behalf of the owners at the time it was all set up that way ( Labour ), the guys who set the profit targets ( Labour ).

The root of the problem is that Eddie is compromised in that he is programmed to never criticise Labour. It's actually a bit more than a config setting to correct, lprent has been playing with the Eddie bot for a while and he freely admits Eddie's got a few glitches to iron out.

So until lprent fixes the numerous bugs, please remember that Eddie will throw some wild stories to deflect any hint of blame from landing on the Labour party. Enjoy them for what they are, collections of context appropriate auto-argument fragments.

Editing The Standard is born

2009-05-07T19:30:00.000+12:00

Want a different view of The Herald? Try Editing the Herald instead.

James lays out the daily journalistic disgraces of our beloved Granny and makes you laugh. The dumb prick did however rip off their trademark masthead verbatim and now he's pissed that the herald are spewing and threatening lawyers gun and money unless he takes down the masthead.

Eddie got a bit upset earlier on over at my parody site The Standard and got a trademark infringement highly confused with free speech. Poor Eddie, I feel for him really.

Eddie might want to do some digging and find out how much was last paid for the rights to use that masthead.