New Zealand Cricket Recruits Fresh Talent

In an unexpected move, Dunedin South MP Clare Curran today confirmed she would quit politics to take up a new role at New Zealand Cricket.

Curran said she would join New Zealand Cricket in April 2013 as Senior Communications Manager.

Oh Look, Another Post About Red Alert

I really am fed up with posting about Labour's Red Alert blog, but posts like this one and this one force me to. If Labour people who use social media don't stand up and say stop, the party won't listen.

The insinuation that John Key cares enough about Twitter to bother to buy followers, put out there without any evidence whatsoever, is ridiculous. It's also embarrassing to those Labour followers who give a damn about the more important issues, like asset sales, education, jobs, and growing the economy.

This isn't the first time Clare Curran has posted material that makes her and her party look silly.

John Key's social media strategy may be robotic and impersonal, but it's still better than Clare Curran's.

Of Mice And All Blacks

Labour Party leader Phil Goff is today the subject of renewed questions about his leadership, after blogger Campbell Slug released a recording of a Labour MP contradicting an earlier statement by Goff.

Mr Goff told listeners on Paul Henry's Radio Live show on Monday that his favourite All Black player was Richie McCaw.

However, this morning blogger Campbell Slug released on his blogsite FishMeat a recording of Labour's Dunedin South MP Clare Curran stating that Dan Carter was "the man."

This disagreement between Labour MPs adds further fuel to suggestions that Labour's caucus is disunited and that the party lacks discipline.

"If Labour's MPs can't even agree on basic issues, like who their favourite player is, then it's clear they're just not fit to govern us," said prominent media commentator and blogger David Farrar.

Prime Minister John Key was later asked at a press conference what he thought of Labour's latest blunder.

Mr Key did not respond directly, but instead just smiled, and most of the journalists in the front row of the gathered media scrum collapsed.

Once they had recovered somewhat and taken some air, Mr Key was asked who his favourite All Black was.

"They're all wonderful," said Mr Key.

Political insiders praised Mr Key's masterstroke, and most are predicting that he will live a long and prosperous life.

However, ACT leader Don Brash has slammed the media's obsession with rugby players and rugby stories.

"Frankly, I don't understand why this matter was even reported, when our economy is in such dire trouble," said Dr Brash.

"ACT has been talking about the issues that matter for months, but nobody's listening. It seems as if nowadays only the most trivial and nonsensical of news gets front-page treatment, while the stories that matter go untold.

"I have a whole collection of homosexual-mice stories, but the news media just aren't interested."

Time Now To Focus On The Real Enemy

Well that's a chapter finally closed. Clare Curran has apologised graciously for her ill-advised remarks on Red Alert about the Greens, and this seems to have been accepted by a number of her most vocal critics in the blogosphere.

It still leaves unaddressed the role of the Red Alert site in Labour's communications strategy. My personal view is to just sod all this OpenLabour stuff and go for the win. Be ruthless and on-message, even if that's boring as hell. Its what the Nats do very well, and the public don't seem to mind it at all. It would offend many in the blogosphere, but I suspect those most incensed would be the ones already outraged at Labour's perceived lack of discipline.

But those are not decisions for me to make.

The good news, though, is that this disagreeable incident seems to be at an end. Hopefully this means that Labour and the Greens can now work together for the common good and focus on the real enemy: Hone Harawira and the Mana Party. Splitters!

So Why Not Get Rid Of The Entire Thing?

Labour MP Clare Curran continues to push her hobbyhorse - that software patents will spell the end of us all.

She provides examples of some "bad" patents as evidence that software patents stifle innovation. But by using the same evidentiary technique, I could easily argue that we should abolish the entire welfare state because some people cheat the system.

There are bad patents in every field of technology. It isn't a perfect system, and processes exist within it to deal with most of the bad patents: such as revocation and invalidity actions, examination procedures, infringement defences and the like.

Curran is just rehashing the same myths the open source movement has been perpetuating for years. Those arguments are not anti-software specifically; they are anti-patent. There is no logic in Curran adopting these arguments (however flawed they may be) to justify banning software patents only. To be consistent she must demand the abolition of the entire patent system.

Which she will not do, because if we did abolish our patent system we would become the laughing stock of the entire world and would have most of our free trade agreements torn up.

The most troubling thing about Curran's post is her apparent failure to even understand the legislative process she is a part of. One of the most concerning aspects of the outright ban on software patents expressed by the language of the Patents Bill is that it does not allow for "embedded" software: software that plays a part in controlling electronic componentry, such as appliances. The Commerce Minister, Simon Power, agrees that embedded software should be allowed, but wants the matter resolved by the drafting of appropriate IPONZ guidelines. This has concerned many patent attorneys, because it is not clear how these guidelines would interact with the clear wording of the Bill, which is to disallow all software patents.

Curran says in her post:

there may still be some intense discussion to come around the regulations that accompany the legislation.

The trouble is the IPONZ guidelines are not regulations. And that is the critical thing. The wording in the legislation will override the guidelines if they are inconsistent with the wording of the legislation.