Saturday’s soapbox is yours to use as you will – within the bounds of decency and absence of defamation. You’re welcome to look back or forward, discuss issues of the moment, to pontificate, ponder or point us to something of interest, to educate, elucidate or entertain, to muse or amuse.
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Homepaddock 
Being at the centre of a growing number of invasion of privacy breaches and spying scandals is making John Key look very bad indeed. Being called John Keyhole isn’t helping helping, nor are published cartoons of Key taking ‘up-skirt’ photos of a ‘girl’ named New Zealand. These are not proud times for Mr Key.
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Who cares?
How is the prime minister handling the Parliamentary phone records scandal?
Badly 1390 votes, 68.4%
Well 212 votes, 10.4%
It’s more a Parliamentary Service issue 240 votes, 11.8%
Don’t really care 190 votes, 9.4%
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics
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Yes Robert this is turning into a real mess now – and these are the people who want to spy on us, to keep us safe from terrorists they say.
Well who will keep us safe from their incompetence I say.
You cannot trust GOVERNMENT and the only way to stay safe is to keep their power over us to an absolute minimum.
Alas we are a nation of sheep all to willing to sell our birthright in order to maintain the illusion we are safe
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So if someone was to draw a cartoon of you twisting some girls knickers and publish it in the Southland Times (good look for an ex-school teacher) you’d be responsible for how that reflects on yourself Robert? I’m quite good at cartoons.
You haven’t much pride in my opinion.
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Key’s being portrayed as being responsible for the now-exposed spying on New Zealanders that seems to be getting completely out of control, Tracey. As PM and head of the spooks division, he is responsible. The cartoon indelicately draws our attention to just who it is that responsibility lies with, John Key.
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Thanks for the ‘like’, Robert. I knew you’d see the funny side. That’s what cartoons are meant for.
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I have a great deal of sympathy for your position, Andrei.
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Can you be trusted then Robert? Considering you are in local government yourself.
Or is local government not government?
Andrei said “you cannot trust GOVERNMENT”. You have “a great deal of sympathy…” for this.
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yep when local Govt councilors get 18% pay rises and 300% increases in allowances off the backs of the poor ratepayer, I struggle to trust them. Add to the fact they make time at meetings to discuss things in secret, things do start to smell.
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I surely can, Tracey and therein lies the difference between me and Mr Key. I still maintain my sympathy for Andrei’s position, despite your hair-splitting. There are a number of ‘governers’ whom I do trust – Nelson Mandela, Ghandi and others closer to home, so I’m not willing to declare that all governers are bad, as you might have been hoping I would (or did).
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the Gweens/Labour/Winny1st demanded all info (e-mails) between Vance and Dunne and now they OUTRAGED, OUTRAGED I say that they maybe available .. who cares? Red Russ said his smelly backroom (I assume they are NOT allowed deodorant) staff have written 100’s of questions about this “scandal” .. good to see where their focus is, I’m sure their voters are happy.
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Yes. We are. Thanks for asking.
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Good to hear Robert. So in an entirely hypothetical situation where a council officer breeched the privacy of a ratepayer in the course of their work, you, as “governor” would take responsibility?
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“entirely hypothetical”, Tracey, or are you thinking of an actual event. If so, you are being disengenuous. You’re not, are you?
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No Robert. Sorry I was not very clear. By “you” I meant you or anyone in a council governance role. Would (or should) they take responsibility for the privacy breech of an officer? It’s a genuine question. You’re free to not answer it if you think it inappropriate.
If you say they should not take responsibility, why not?
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Tracey – if I held sole responsibility for a very sensitive agency, say, spying, then YES, I would take responsibility for all of the actions of the people in my ‘chain’ and I would expect the public to hold me to that. Hypothetically though, there’s much more to it that that though, isn’t there! Friday’s ‘news dump’ showed that it wasn’t a low-level employee that did wrong, it was in fact someone who was the ‘hypothetical governor’s’ direct responsibility. Head’s of departments, top-dogs, yes, must take responsibility.
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“Irrespective of the rights and wrongs of the government/parliamentary agencies, this has become the very worst moment in time for an incredibly intrusive, highly contentious, deeply unpopular Bill to be rammed through with the slimmest possible majority.
If the government wants to restore a sliver of trust with the public, and some integrity to the political process, it should now withdraw the GCSB Bill, go back to first principles, and reach a consensus that has a decent majority of parliament behind it.”
Great comment from Orewa1
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good grief .. again .. the bill was a disaster waiting to happen when it was introduced bOb .. where were you then??????
Once the faults were exposed, this Govt took steps to fix it AND insisted the changes get reviewed in a couple of years or so .. what a top man John Key and his Govt have proven to be.
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Agreed…100% (Freddy’s sick of the Bushwa)
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Well you couldn’t really answer “no” to that now could you?
One further question, and again feel free not to answer it. If you were part of a privacy breech (any breech – remember all individual’s rights are equal), would you expunge yourself from the ratepayer indemnification you currently enjoy in order to feel the full force of the law?
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