People who don't surf the blogosphere might've missed this, but the Police have recently been caught out spying on a whole lot of vaguely leftist groups under the auspices of the SIG anti-terrorism unit ( Read more... )

It's now up on the NZ Legislation website:

http://www.legislation.govt.nz/bill/government/2008/0008-1/latest/DLM1765606.htmlPretty much as expected, with the added loophole (as pointed out by Idiot/Savant) that employers can sack you if ( Read more... )

This article stunned me.They're not even pretending to play nice. Their excuse for circumventing the entire democratic process is that they're "not doing anything Labour hasn't done before". How fucking spiteful and nasty can you get ( Read more... )

I was having a brief discussion with somebody on LJ the other day about capital punishment, and it brought to mind a brilliant speech given by John Stuart Mill to the British parliament when they were discussing abolishing it. I won't post the whole thing as it gets a bit rambly, but the important bit (which is identical with my view on the matter ( Read more... )