Whale Oil posts a fierce polemic on the UK left's false and patronising claims to speak for ordinary 'hard working' people.

I must get Nick Cater's book to bring that phenomenon closer to home. He mentioned on Monday evening that of 100 Labour MPs recently reviewed in Australia for class 'authenticity' only one had a trade certificate or any qualification related to manual labour. Over 30% had lawyer qualifications.

The DomPost this morning refers to an email which shows mayoral candidate John Morrison wanted to keep the previous Chief Executive if he would undertake to 'decimate' CCOs.

As reported:

"The council controlled organisations are nine companies or trusts which manage council-owned assets including the capital's waterfront, venues like the TSB Bank Arena and town hall, and Wellington's iconic cable car.

Morrison's email also named a number of CCO bosses, saying "I want to really nail" the executives

The report could be the start of something that helps us vote. Perhaps tomorrow we'll get the rest of the story.

As far as it goes, the story simply tells people there are vigorous internal discussions in colloquial terms. They would hope so. So it hurts neither sitting Mayor Celia Wade-Brown, or challenger Morrison. It adds to name recognition for both.

If this is as far as the story goes it will be typical of what Nick Cater of The Australian described last night – journalism but not reporting. Publishing  the players’ claims and words but not trying to find or explain the truth. He summarised modern political coverage as sports journalism by cultural relativists not interested enough in the truth to be good reporters.

To have real impact the email story must explore the issues. Instead, at present it assumes prissily that pithy language is a story on its own.

 We need to know:

1. what the relevant CCO’s are doing that is controversial
2. Whether John Morrison’s  concerns extend to them all;
3. If not, which ones he approves of, and which he does not;
4. Which CEO's he names;
5. Whether others share his concerns;
6. Whether the concerns have been expressed in public meetings;
7. If not, why not;
8. If so, when, by whom and to what effect;
9. Examples of the events or circumstances triggering concerns;
10. Whether the Mayor and Morrison differ on CCO governance;
11. What they think should happen;
12. How other councillors align on the future for CCOs;
13. Whether aligned views on CCOs fall along “party” lines (showing enough shared approach to indicate they will work together to provide steady united government);
14. Whether Morrison (or Wade Brown) want them ‘decimated’ so that Councillors can regain direct rights to play with the trains; or instead;
15. Thinks  they are inefficient and lose money or perform badly so should be sold or closed down and replaced by contractors.

In other words this could be a story of importance to voters. Instead, without follow-up,  it will be an example of why fourth estate scrutiny is no longer a quality control factor in Wellington local democracy.

I want to know whether Morrison just wants more scope for political interference, or has legitimate grounds to think that CCOs lack effective scrutiny and accountability. What has happened since to them?

It would tell me something if I knew whether his solutions were to find better directors, or to raise the performance hurdles, or to get expert vetting of them for efficiency. Or does he instead just want to manage them himself with his mates.

So far Wellington has a depressing choice in its Mayoral contest. Celia Wade-Brown lead the drive for the deeply stupid ‘living wage’.  The Council was reported to be unanimous in voting for it, so presumably Cr Morrison too supports it.  The incumbent leads her council into expensive indecision on the Basin Reserve bypass.

Today we have a story that shows that Cr Morrison at least expresses himself bluntly in private, as we’d hope, but still nothing to from which we can judge whether he would be a better steward of our assets than the dithering incumbent.

Prof Robert Wade is here to tell his faithful what they want to hear about inequality. I've been following this issue with interest, since first reading the Spirit Level. But Q & A's Susan Woods gave him enough time to be exposed as an academic lightweight, despite the breathless compression of the television attention span.

After he ranted about Quantitive Easing as strategy to redistibute income upwards she skewered him by pointing out that New Zealand has not done any QE.

So he moved right along to rant about corporate law:

"you should look across the board at government laws, regulations, policies to see how they are impacting on income distribution – for example, corporate governance law. Corporate governance law has a very strong impact on income distribution. Why? Because the law allows senior executives of corporations to appoint the boards of directors, number one, and number two the boards of directors set the salaries of senior management. And so there is a “scratch my back, I’ll scratch your back” kind of ethic that evolves and the result is a spiralling upwards of the salaries of senior management. So you need to change corporate governance law."

Wrong Professor, on who appoints directors. That US pattern is not our law, it never has been, there is no suggestion from anyone that it should be, and no likelihood that we would agree if they did suggest it.

In New Zealand shareholders appoint directors. Executives have no role or even influence except perhaps in rare cases where they are also directors.  Incumbent directors may informally influence succession, especially in companies without a major shareholder, simply because someone has to do the shoulder tapping to construct competent company boards. Otherwise they would be as accidentally dopey as local councils.

I wonder what he'd say on law changes that might actually limit executive salaries. I've not yet seen anything to invalidate my thesis.

I do not blame Susan for not puncturing the poseur's pretensions on company law. He spoke so authoritatively she might have assumed his claim was not quite as irrelevant as the QE 'explanation'.

But he went on:

"You need to change trade union law so as to strengthen the rights of trade unions to bargain over matters of salary and other things. These are examples of laws that seem to be unrelated to income distribution that actually have a very big effect on income distribution."

Just what changes could the Prof have pointed to, if she'd had the time to ask? No law stops trade unions in this country from bargaining over matters of "salary and other things".

Contrast the Prof's ignorant mouthing with the care taken by the other Q & A guest on inequality – Nick Cater, Senior Editor at The Australian. The journalist showed the respect for local knowledge, and the care about facts, lacking in the academic.

SUSAN  Your book “The Lucky Culture” – it’s about the loss of that great egalitarian Australian society and, if you like, a ruling elite, isn’t it, who have a very strong voice. Are you seeing parallels in this country?

NICK  I think I detect them here. I should first say that when I talk about egalitarianism – because I just heard that discussion you had on equality – I mean something very specific here. I mean equality of manners, equality of respect. So egalitarian doesn’t mean to say that everybody’s got the same amount of wealth. What it means is that everybody deserves the same respect.

SUSAN   So we value each other equally as people to some extent?

NICK  Exactly, and in a democracy, everybody has one voice. Everybody— Nobody’s allowed to shout anybody else down.

SUSAN  So you’re seeing those parallels in New Zealand?

NICK   Look, I would hesitate, really, to comment on New Zealand, but, yes, you do see them, because this is common throughout much of the Western world."

I'm looking forward to hearing Nick Cater this evening at The NZ Initiative.

[Tuesday – Stuff reports that Bill English took the twit to task in the green room. How refreshing. English had every right to be contemptuous]

Why did some parties but not others allow 'conscience voting' on the SkyCity deal, despite the Speaker ruling that it was to be a conscience vote?

Do standing orders allow Party Leaders to whip their MPs on a conscience vote?

Yes – the Speaker cannot direct parties or MPs on their votes, only on the manner of voting. When the Speaker rules that a conscience vote will be held, members must be present physically and have their vote individually recorded in the lobbies.

This is how all votes once worked in our House (and at Westminster).  Two nominees from each side of the House are appointed 'tellers' to count the votes (noes and ayes). Today the tellers mark off the names of MPs on a list. The nominees agree the number.

For convenience, parties in the New Zealand parliament now usually cast proxy votes via their whips or a nominated member of the party.  But that does not prevent any MP crossing the floor on any vote.

The 'whip' (or musterer for the Greens) wields party discipline. If you choose not to accept a collective decision you weaken your party's ability to influence matters in future. You will be unable to assure support on the compromises that democracy demands.

Parties tend to withdraw the whip to allow a conscience vote according to whether it helps or hinders the party.

A conscience vote is permitted for the protection of a party brand where there will be strong conflicting views among supporters of the party. The party wants to avoid the issue being  a permanent turn-off to disappointed supporters. They will remember the vote for the 'wrong' side, whereas those who approved of the vote have shorter memories, and their added loyalty may be trivial compared to the long term disgruntlement of disppointed supporters.

So on controversial issues that raise no strong issue of party principle, a conscience vote will ensure its  brand is not attached to the wrong side. It leaves MPs in the party on both sides so there is always someone to whom the opposing supporters can  remain loyal.

From the MP perspective the annoucement of a conscience vote ensures that 'floor crossing' is not seen as disloyalty even when there is a clear preferred party position.

Parties use it to make a virtue of necessity, and often try to claim spurious moral superiority over the party that requires the normal party  discipline that protects us from unpredictable and chaotic vote trading issue by issue. That system bedevils many of the younger parliamentary democracies.

Chris Trotter has eloquently risked a challenge to the Bowen beltway consensus that identity politics 'targets' are good. As Nikki Pender at work puts it, he  "argues that the reason why there are fewer women than men in politics, is that fewer women than men are natural born sociopaths. Discuss".

I think Chris is reflecting his experiences in a particularly poisonous culture. He describes elements I recognise, but overall I think it says more about the unavoidable ruthlessness of an ideology that says ends justify means. In my time on the left I saw the comrades practicing to eliminate their compassion. Moral bottom lines, including duties of loyalty to friends were a bourgeois weakness to be suppressed.

I can say from experience there is no equivalent sanction of that amorality about personal loyalty on the other side. Ruthless ambition and selfishness exist, but they are not so admired even when they work.

Of course they sometimes prevail.  I think that ACT's demise is largely attributable to not elevating good character higher in list selection. Zealots on the right share much with the zealots on the left. Conviction parties always teeter on the edge of being dominated by their zealots. Just as Labour is now contemptuous of the values and culture of its working class supporters, so ACT zealots could let an ability to recite a libertarian creed suppress misgivings about character. In my view character and intelligence and honesty are far more important than professed policy. You can fake policy committment. And as Chris says psychopaths are superb emotional manipulators. They can work the convictions of the convinced. So ACT (and National) can be vulnerable to the siren call Trotter mentions, though not as susceptible:

"Almost against our will, we are seduced by these ruthless individuals. Some ancient species memory kicks-in to subdue our moral qualms – reminding us that these are the qualities that work. It reassures us that the family, tribe or nation that places itself under the protection of such men stands the best chance of survival. Extraordinary moral strength is required to avoid falling under their spell."

I did not lie as a Parliamentarian, or ever feel a compulsion to do so. That does not mean I always felt it necessary to relieve others of their misconceptions. If they did not ask the right questions caveat emptor prevailed. But that is the normal code in non-family relationships. Honest people respond without lying to direct questions, but do not owe duties to 'spill their guts'.

I respected (and still respect) the character of most of my party colleagues. Decisions were unavoidable on which friends disagreed. Loyalties are tested by necessities to trade concessions. But at the bottom there was a duty of mutual loyalty that said there were things one simply would not do, to win. A substantial part of the reinforcement for that came from staff and party supporters. There were so many highly principled, highly motivated staff and donors and others giving their support that I thought it unthinkable to be coldly personally ambitious. The party was not mine to exploit.

Still, it may be pointed out that I lost the leadership vote, and a year later was ejected from Parliament.  I do not regard that as the inevitable march of history, eliminating a squeamishness that was unfit to rule, in Darwinian terms. It was a persuasion failure by me, and the bad luck and accidents of the conjunctions of people and events – like most history.

I believe the long term influence of the Greens has been because more often they've chosen the alternative. For all the mockery (deserved) of them as a religious cult, they continue to share some behavioural bottom lines that fit their convictions.

So they show the power of a well led collective, the way it extracts more from individuals than they could acheive alone. They have resisted the temptations to feed their public with 'presidential' politics (the cult of personality) by sharing leadership, and allowing spokespeople to emerge with their own identities.

I urged a similar model on ACT, and lost.   But I never felt that the culture Chris Trotter describes was dominant among ACT (or National) people..

Wellingtonians have until 2 August to let Wellington City Council know what they think of its draft alcohol policy, to ban supermarket alcohol sales after 9 pm and fix bar closing times, among other worthy irrelevancies.

Councillors are pretending they have evidence to show their obsession with suppliers of booze might work this time. Thirty years ago we dumped our laws against drunkenness. We replaced our effective laws on under-age drinking with ridiculous laws against under-age supply. We thought we’d become "mature" continentals by making grog a normal part of life, with on demand 'civilised' drinking in restaurants and cafes and free sale in shops. But instead of turning into idealised French sophisticates many of us unleashed the sodden inner Russian or morose Scandinavian berserker.

Bar owners are reported to be looking at court action to stop the Council’s proposed interference with their businesses. As a lawyer I think they could win, if they focus on the new duty of Councils to be efficient and to perform their “regulatory functions in a way that is most cost-effective for households and businesses”.

It is clear what people worry about. We want aggression stopped. We want low and high level drunken criminals taken off our streets. We don’t want to see, “teens puking up or asleep in Courtenay Place” as Taiki Waititi told the Youth Parliament. Many of us are ashamed that our public booze culture reinforces and propagates a climate of indifference to self respect, and respect for others. We suspect there is a difference between disgracing oneself in private, and doing it in public. The National Business Review recently reprinted a Salient (VUW student newspaper) article by Henry Cooke, who vowed to spend an un-lubricated Courtenay Place night with friends.   Town through sober eyes  says “Town reeks. The sweat; the urine; the booze; the cologne….This has been the worst night of my year, but it’s just that, a night. Not my life. Not my livelihood”.

But for many of us ensuring our entertainment zone remains attractive, is our livelihood.

 Nothing the Council has laboured over will address those worries ‘efficiently’ or in the most ‘cost-effective way’. Several years ago my firm researched (unsuccessfully) for evidence of success (at anything) in feeble supply restrictions. The only clear outcome is wealth transfers among suppliers, from those handicapped by restrictions, to those who are not.

Nevertheless I’ll be surprised if bar owners proceed with action to force the Council to do what is efficient and cost-effective. Many will find they can live better with what is proposed, as long as it applies across the board.

Whatever the case if you value your time, don’t waste it on this empty consultation ritual.  The draft policy approved on 20 June followed ‘consultation’ from February to April this year, a specially commissioned Colmar Brunton public opinion survey, and a dedicated web-based (Loomio) feedback service. That of course followed years of agitation and submissions and opinion polling as Parliament pretended to be anxious about binge drinking and drunken crime while making sure that Sir Geoffrey Palmer’s report changed nothing much, just as Councillors are now.

Go to the Council websites and look at the consultation material. Ask yourself whether the wet opinion poll questions tell you anything you could not guess. Wonder why there were no questions exploring how to regenerate more personal responsibility for drunken behaviour. And then examine the Council response – restricted to loading more restrictions on suppliers. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I’d think the booze barons had all politicians in their pay.

But in fact, the booze business wanted more direct enforcement.  In Parliament the Hospitality Association's Bruce Robertson bravely asked "Why not focus directly on personal responsibility for the behaviour we don’t want?" He got no answer.

It is not hard. Underage drinking is against the law in many countries. They enforce it with penalties on the underage drinkers. Not us now, though we did here, until 32 years ago. We also thoroughly enforced law against drunken oafishness, littering, breaking glass, foul language, threatening behaviour.

Now instead we get round after round of symbolic law, almost all aimed at people who supply liquor.

For some it will not much matter whether whacking suppliers works. They don't like them. But many of the restrictions will be welcomed by the industry, because they may lower their costs, without materially affecting consumption. Almost all the rest of the industry would love to see the supermarkets take a few for the team. I doubt that supermarket owners will recognise it, but as the targets all the others will happily combine against, the supermarket chains should be investing the most in ensuring that liquor law is more effective, and better targetted.

If it is worrying the pre-loaders that they will have to buy their discount bulk supplies before 9 pm, they are not squealing about it.

The supermarket chains should seek reinstatement of the offence of public drunkenness? They should be highlighting the lack of law against underage drinking? Because they are the most visible target now for the kind of policy makers who've promoted a whole string of laws, from dog control, to fireworks bans, that pretend to be tough by targeting the law-abiding with new restrictions. Above all they  fear tackling real  wrongdoers.

Sir Geoffrey was quite frank about the reasons for not focussing on personal responsibility in the Law Commission report -"because the Police tell me it is too hard to enforce". The Law Commission report did not explain why it was not too hard up until 1981.

  In my view we will get no material change, whether toward a more European civility, or otherwise, without a return to treating people of all ages as responsible for what they do, as they do in Europe, and the US, without allowing them to blame alcohol, or the person who supplied them.

That won’t happen for so long as the law patronises the young, and is besotted with whacking suppliers.

[This first appeared in issue two of Wellington's great new Capital magazine]

Wellingtonians are getting the hard sell. A shrewd Regional Council Chair leads  a well organised campaign to merge our 8 city and district councils  and the regional council into one super council. The campaigners are driven men and women. They fear the truth of John Key’s verdict that Wellington is dying, however fiercely they deny it in public. In private they urge that change is essential because of dysfunction and incompetence in local government.

So far so good – they exaggerate, but that is permissible  in conversation. And  council waste, incompetence and lost opportunities are widely condemned. The figures alone tell the story. With wide variations (Hutt City is among the best performers in the country) our local councils are as guilty as councils across the country of blocking initiative, driving housing prices out of reach of young people and average earners (without wealthy parents) letting  indebtedness  rocket, and pushing up rates far above inflation..

Across the country sound local government has become a matter of luck. Well run councils become dysfunctional on the loss of a good mayor or CEO, or when a few councillors are replaced by people who know only how to play the political game. Canterbury and Christchurch City are notorious for electing bad local government. Auckland Council is now lead by a presidential mayor but  extra powers have not produced common sense on the white elephant train set and tunnels he promised himself and he's shown the country that central government will compete for votes with a presidential mayor (in the Auckland seats anyway) with our money.

So you’d expect our Wellington-based reformers to focus on what might be making our local democracy sick. You’d think they’d want to upgrade the average quality of candidates, to ensure that councils had at least the range of skills and experience expected on an average company board.

No – they’ve nothing to say on such issues. They just want to put more centralised power over a whole region in the hands of the accidental results of the same democratic lottery.  They want more eggs in one basket, in the hope that voters will realise that basket is more precious than before and so take their voting job more seriously.

They also deny that incompetent decision makers could be even more overwhelmed and out of their depth with greater power and more responsibility. Instead they claim that greater size will cost less, give us a “stronger voice” nationally and internationally, “integrate” our economic development, with “scale” (meaning size) they will  “reduce red tape”, “have one single simple smart and sensible plan that covers everything we do” and have “more consistency, more focus,…more money accountability that enables residents to influence decisions that affect their neighbourhood…”.

Those flyer claims are so fantastical I thought at first that the flyer was a spoof, a tactic to make the amalgamators seem  ridiculous. But the good people driving the campaign are sincere. They just believe those magical things could happen, though size in local government often achieves  the opposite. Theoretical efficiencies of scale might work in say a water or transport network business. But even there  research suggests there can be diseconomies of scale over a certain size. I'm aware of no research or other reason to think that we will be more free or prosperous under “one…plan that covers everything we do”, let alone that it will be “simple, smart and sensible”.

Auckland’s vast unitary plan has united the city into universal nimbyism. Every neighbourhood has woken up to the fact that the RMA means that what home seekers and landowners might choose if they had the right, is nearly irrelevant. Development now happens only when, where and how politicians decide.  So every corner of the super-city is demanding politicians who will vow to allow no real change to their local status quo. It could take central government decrees to prick safety vents in the suffocating plan. Relieved Auckland Councillors will then be able to scream about dictatorship while secretly embarrassed at the sympathy they have to pretend to those who will end up in central government’s arbitrary intensification zones. At least they can pretend to be still in control, unlike the sacked ECan councillors of Canterbury.

So what kinds of change should the reformers be pushing for, before centralising more power with the accidents of democratic process?

Auckland Council is a constitutional experiment. It has procedures that no other council has. Our Wellington reformers could press for the right to pioneer on a pilot basis with some other democratic experimental upgrades. For example we might:

1. Vote for one third (or one quarter) of the Council each year. Adopting  the standard company system would improve continuity, enhance elector ability to send messages about their preferences, and aid in succession planning for good combinations on the council. At the moment we get accidental spills of good councillors without voters having much ability to know what kind of council they are putting together;
2. Cut the number of Councillors so that there is a better prospect of enough media coverage of the performance of each for us to know who are the passengers, who do the heavy lifting, and who have not been taking their pills;
3. Engage professional independent recruitment agencies to prepare objective profile assessments of candidates, to be circulated with the voting papers. That way we might have at least the resume accuracy and reliability available to an average employer . Few of us would now even know most of the names on our ballot paper, let alone have information on their capacities. I recognise the power this would place in the hands of the resume writer. But it could scarcely be more unfair than the unfairness inherent in the current accidents of notoriety or name recognition. Soon it may be almost essential for a candidate to have been a media personality, or criminal or wacky enough to have had media coverage for something remote from the boring acheivements of running a good business, or doing another job well;
4. Restore the protections against majoritarian abuses of power that were lost when councils were given powers of general competence in 2002 (by restricting what they can spend our money on);
5. Appoint a general economic regulator with power to force councils to measure and publish the true economic costs of what they are doing, and perhaps to ensure that disguised subsidies are exposed. We need much more to protect voters from unwittingly voting into power people who will promise to transfer other people’s money  in the absence of genuine public good according to standard economic principles;
6. As recently suggested by Keith Marshall, the former CEO of Nelson City Council, ensure that  expert members are co-opted onto councils to fill skill gaps.  Have a contracted independent agency exercise  the  power  if councils find it too hard.. Not many company directors want to be on a board without at least one accountant and lawyer, to help all feel less anxious that they might be  missing important technicalities.
7. Protect councillors from being mislead, and honest council officers from abuse of disciplinary processes, by extending the  State Services Commission code to  local government officials. They should be protected if they respond honestly and objectively to questions from Councillors. With the coming 'presidential mayoralty' model, if they have a legal duty to councillors I have not been able to identify it, and currently their sole duty is to their CEO.
8. Lift most of the burden of “participatory democracy”. It allows unrepresentative bullying by people who have the passion and the time to engage in ‘consultation’ at the expense of ordinary people who have better things to do with their time. In 2002 consultation substituted for statutory  limits on the purposes for which local power can be used. Enduring parades of  depressing people whinging and haranguing councillors steers good people away from local government.
9. Require expert and councillor certification of the honesty (absence of misleading or deceptive material) in public consultation documents. Directors of companies have to do that with prospectuses. How much more necessary it is with the often dysfunctional people drawn to politics. We need to reinforce honesty because the pointlessness of many consultation processses undermines honesty and morale.  Participants become cynical about empty process. At risk of having courts and lawyers oblige them to start again, they have to pretend to have open minds, even if they've been specifically elected to achieve the matters under "consultation". They have to stay bland  (so as to avoid looking as if they have 'pre-judged') in the face of predictable ranting and special pleading from busybodies whose greatest satisfaction comes securing rules to boss their fellow citizens around.

Lifting the consultation burden, and restoring more representative democracy (let them rule but make sure we can throw them out) would also relieve the constructive citizens and businesses forced to put their time into the same hearings, just to ensure that there is some common sense on the record. We need to restore willingness to serve on councils from a more representative group of community leaders who do not want it as a full time job.

Democracy is great for one thing – getting rid of rulers who are no longer trusted by those they rule. It is terrible at many other things. Among its modern perversities is that people can be elected and stay in power by pandering to the swing voters. Elected leaders who do not recognise that will fail at elections.  So all other voters' interests are subordinate to those of the swing voters. And many swing voters are the least informed. They are the ones most likely to be uninterested in politics and to vote (in local authority elections) mainly  for names they can recognise. Why they recognise them becomes immaterial. I do not know how to mitigate this flaw. I suspect it is becoming more material as we become collectively more frivolous, with shorter attention spans for things deemed boring, and no longer united by the shared experience of dominant local news-paper readership, or dominant MSM news channels.

[This post first appeared as commentary in the new Wellington monthly magazine “Capital”. The next edition will be for sale next week.]

My office is having a heated debate about the propriety of the investigator's access to records of Andrea Vance's movements through security points in Parliament. I'll record my thoughts here to avoid being distracted into joining the debate (because I am too busy at present).

I regard the protests as a non-issue. I always assumed while in Parliament that if I was involved in anything underhand, or even with people who were so involved, investigators would use the security system's records of my movements (if they were material).

In my opinion it is pointless for law to try to create privacy for actions that are public. Movements in non-private places are public. It is lawful to record comings and goings, or to photograph them (absent harassment). It should remain lawful, lest the power to suppress such attention be used by the powerful to punish and block legitimate private investigation of their actions.

I thoought all MPs assumed that the many security cameras around Parliament were recording us at all times. We joked about the risks unknown to previous generations, of attempting late night Speaker's Chair stunts. We knew the messengers gossiped with security staff. They were professionally discreet, but from occasional comments after a party, or a conspiratorial smirk, one suspected that embarrassments in Parliamentary precincts were liable to be known slightly more widely than one might hope.

And that is how things should be. It is idle trying to try to suppress knowledge of things that are in fact public, simply because they have been captured with recent technology, instead of old means. Movements can be reported and recorded without a security system, if there is a will, without committing any offence.

Most people in our country once believed that everything they did was seen and recorded by God, or angels. It may have contributed to lower crime rates and higher interpersonal trust. That is no reason to permit any authority now to spy on private places, or to record conversations and activities that are genuinely private. But I see nothing wrong with supplementing the all-seeing eye of God with technology to increase the risks of detection and punishment for offences in public places.

Perhaps such records should be available publicly in specified circumstances, to reduce the risk of selective abuse of power by those privileged with access to the public information.

Users of our courts should be heartened to know that our Supreme Court judges, (wrongly) stereotyped as fusty relics, are doing much of their work on iPads.

On their iPads they annotate written arguments, track oral argument, write notes, refer to research material and case texts and more. I'm told they've been using iAnnotate competently for some time. I don't know whether newly promoted Arnold J is up with the play, but if not, I'm sure he soon will be.

 The time must be approaching when counsel who cannot supply materials in the electronic format will risk disadvantaging their clients. Victoria Casey has nicely reflected (now in Law Talk) a lawyer's first experience of a Court where the complete case presentation was built around iPads. It was adopted as the only realistic way to manage the documents in the first price control input methodology merit review proceeding under Part 4 of the Commerce Act. To be honest I did not pick up some features as quickly as she did, and I fear that skills I've not recently practised will have evaporated from memory. But generally my colleagues who worked on that case (Nikki Pender and Jordan Williams) share Victoria's view of how well  it worked.

At the Supreme Court this modernisation  happened without too much process, evaluation, committee meetings, and general agonising. Understandably, after Incis, and now Novopay, government IT procurement decisions are fraught with back-covering process. Instead the Supreme Court judges were persuaded by one early adopter that they should all gain the efficiency advantages enhanced by sharing the same software and hardware.  Avoiding the painful processes of  Ministry budgetary approval, they each bought their own.

Perhaps Justice Arnold, if he is not already equipped, will ask the Ministry to fund him into getting with the programme. It can't be more than a fraction of the cost of the horse-hair wig and gown sets that connect the court in the opposite direction with our 600 year consitutional inheritance.

Maybe the consultants now wondering how to insulate government IT procurement against more debacles could create a win/win exception to the normal back-covering processes. Take a tip from the Supreme Court  – if more than say half the relevant  IT users are happy to pay for their own state of the art kit, and pioneer with it, then it can  become standard entitlement  issue and a full roll-out should be funded.

I've mentioned being surprised when catching up on the current state of Parliamentary sovereignty for the Green Party, at how far it had eroded in the UK.

This week's Spectator mentions briefly another case in which the UK Supreme Court has drawn on EU jurisprudence to over-ride traditional UK Crown prerogatives, in this case 'combat immunity'. I'll reserve reading the judgment until I have more time, but the article says it confirms that courts can investigate whether the state has taken enough care of its service-people exposed in combat, by way of training, equipment procurement and planning. The right or duty on the courts to second-guess those contentious issues of military spending is described as:

"… a politically far-reaching decision. The Court was asked to consider whether British military personnel on active duty overseas are under the jurisdiction of the European Convention of Human Rights. If they are, then the British state has a duty to secure the human rights of its overseas personnel (specifically their right to life under article 2 of the Convention) as if they were at home."

But the article's two sentence closing comment demands more consideration by judges before they feel too smug about second guessing political and official priorities.

"But there’s one final point to make: drones and machines are not subject to the Convention (at least where article 2 is concerned). In its way, this judgment is likely to change the way that government defends its citizens and interests."

In short, those who could be liable will decide it is better to fire missiles at strangers from afar, if the alternative is to risk the pious hindsight of lawyers and judges who've never been in combat, or had to face an electorate that demands both guns and butter.

A couple of years ago I wrote about the own-goal outcomes of high-minded human rights lawyering, as it drove the search for Al-Queda operatives. I said it would create opportunities for mercenaries to quell Somali piracy. Six months later I was able to say "I told you so" on the basis of an Economist article. I understand from a New Zealander with links to some of the New Zealand mercenaries now profitably engaged in the business, that the piracy risk is diminishing.