Hard News: Must-have Mayoralty
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LOL at Wishart, Godwin's Law personified. I do find it interesting that there is a cretin market out there that wants to put him on the bestseller list. Someone's gotta take the cretin money I suppose. And to use his reasoning method: Mein Kampf and Das Kapital are also bestsellers.
Re: Dawkins, why agonise over human irrationality, an outcome of evolution in the first place? If it were optimal for everyone to be Einstein, it would have happened millions of years ago. It's as dangerous to claim a monopoly on rationality as it is on God, IMHO, since both are claimed to be paths to the Truth. Science is a very broad term that is used very dogmatically at times. If evolution teaches us anything it's that the weirdest creatures can survive - same goes for science - the weirdest theories may not only survive but become the dominant, and predicting which is not easy. I think it is no coincidence that God is still with us despite thousands of years of the existence of rationality. Don't mistake that with saying I believe in God, btw.
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The jury's still out for me on Richard Dawkins. He's obviously a very adept thinker, but often gets bogged down in petty complaints that mar his good logic. Much like Ian Wishart? For example, in his book "The God Delusion" he quotes C.S.Lewis on Lewis' view about God and then uncharitably says, "and he(Lewis) should've known better". Unwise and elitist to slate a thinker of Lewis' capabilities I would have thought.
On Jackson and Tamihere. If Shadbolt can get elected, who knows?
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Do either of them really have the substance for the job?
Willy & John would make excellent mayors of Invercargill.
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Hell, at least they would be somewhat more characterful choices than yucky old John Banks and boring old Dick Hubbard. As for the rest of the candidates, Steve Crow, eww and I've never even heard of the rest of them. Bugger. Another mayoral election where you have to vote for people who haven't explained their policies, and even if they did, would we be interested? I'll stick with City Vision for the local body election like I always do, but why can't we have some interesting mayoral candidates?
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Do either of them really have the substance for the job?
More to the point, how the hell would you know if they did?
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Talkback - the new local government method of Binding Citizen-Initiated Referenda?!?!?!
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Hell, at least they would be somewhat more characterful choices than yucky old John Banks and boring old Dick Hubbard.
That seems to form the bulk of our thinking about Mayors. That's the only reason yucky old Banks got in I think, he's a character, even if that character is a complete dickhead. Winston Peters has been trading on it for years...which is why I continually despair of representative democracy. To form the basis of massively important decisions around personality cults is only slightly less fucked than monarchy as a means of government. Couldn't all the actually important decisions just be outsourced to the people? Or at least the subsection of society who care? I don't really give a shit about the Eastern Transport Corridor, but I'd like to have thing or two to say about planting trees in the middle of what used to be perfectly good roads out West.
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"we've all had a gutsful of regulation all over us" was precisely the point at which we started watched The Crowd Goes Wild.
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Herald readers seem highly polarised on the issue, with Tamihere's support coming, as you might expect, from angry conservatives.
Has John changed sides or have I missed something? I know he is standing against Bob Harvey but does that make him a non person like John Key?
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Ian Wishart |is discussing the reviews over at his blog (which is unmissable, btw).
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merc,
Conan isn't real.? Ian is Nietzsche?
I had to stop there, head exploded. -
I haven't seen the Dawkins programme but I have seen the photo of one of the faith healers, Elisis Livingstone, in the Telegraph
Made my day.
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Hell, at least they would be somewhat more characterful choices than yucky old John Banks and boring old Dick Hubbard.
It could be worse: you could be in Wellington. Apart from the deeply divisive Kerry P, we've got a self-appointed "man about town" who'd probably make Kerry look like Sue Bradford, some nice but essentially unelectable current councillors, and a bunch of frothing-at-the-mouth loonies.
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I haven't seen the Dawkins programme but I have seen the photo of one of the faith healers, Elisis Livingstone, in the Telegraph
Made my day.
Her quote defending her track record is rather amusing: "I have a 100 per cent success record with people at some level"
Doesn't that just fill you with confidence?
I must say, I think this is a better way for Dawkins to spend his time than bickering with clerics: new age mysticism is just so much funnier than any of the orthodox failths.
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merc,
Science is the poetry of reality," it feels as if he wants not so much a world free of superstition as a world free of metaphor.
Seen Il Postinio?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_Postino
Nona (to Priest): That poet, he is seducing my niece with metaphor!
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Tamihere had a few right-wing slogans ... but, it seemed, little or nothing in the way of actual policy.
As I said on another thread earlier this week, and as John Campbell pointed out last night: Mayors don't have any real power unless affiliated with a group that has the majority of seats on council. Voters get hyped up over who will be Mayor, but it's the majority on Council who decide which way a vote goes. So people should pay attention to the party that candidates are affiliated to (which is why I usually block vote Independents)(and yet always a wasted vote). If by some fluke Steve Crow was voted in (to Auckland City), he would be the ultimate lame-duck Mayor.
Tamihere pointed out that 70% of Westies have to leave town to go to work, and said he thought Waitekere had gone too far with it's 'Eco-City' status. I think that's his platform.
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Ian Wishart |is discussing the reviews over at his blog (which is unmissable, btw).
Ian's response to Ryan Sproull busting him on his patching together of three different quotes into something Marx never said is classic Wishart.
He just ignores the problem, sighs that people are such fools, and launches into another lecture. Unless you're just doing it because you're bored, he's not actually worth arguing with, because when confronted with his own fabrication or foolishness, he simply convinces himself of the next thing. He sleeps the sleep of the genuinely deluded.
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Mayors don't have any real power unless affiliated with a group that has the majority of seats on council
Why is it that we have a separate vote for mayor? Why not just elect ourselves a council, and let them pick their own leader from amongst themselves.
It seems to work OK for the Govt - otherwise we could end up with Winston for PM, but a Labour majority. -
Elisis Livingstone scares me.
She talks about some people having more than a double helix(maybe 12) and they were the closest to the people from Atlantis. This is the same shit the Nazis talked about. Their specially empowered people were Aryans. Once they combined with a cult of science, well you know the story from there on. Hitler was a hippy & Himler was a nudist.Saying that I've worked a few full moons on the door & the bloody Nor' Wester can have an impact on moods (not to mention alcohol & drugs)
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Unless you're just doing it because you're bored
Or masochistic, don't forget that Russell. (Hope the foot's feeling a lot better, BTW.) Seriously, without triggering Godwin's Law myself, I revere Deborah Eisendtadt for spending her professional life trying to rationally deal with the fundamentally irrational (and pathological deceptive) world of Holocaust denial. But she just keeps plugging away because the truth matters.
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BTW, when it comes to 'somewhat more characterful choices' for Mayor, I hope Pete Hodgson will quit Parliament and throw down for the Dunedin mayoralty in 2010. His performances on Morning Report the last couple of days have been pure comedy gold - like a hairy Vicky Pollard.
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Oh god (intentionally lower case), I've just spent some time reading the comments on Wishart's blog, and followed a few links, and I just keep getting reminded on why I generally keep away from the political blogosphere: I just end up feeling slightly ill. Then I found my way to "Dad4justice"'s blog, and this post in particular: To My Children. If you read between the (all caps) lines, there's a very scary story going on there, and its not about the "Liarbour Dykeocracy".
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Craig - you've seen the Tom Scott cartoon in today's Dom? Hodgson asking "And where were you on the night of the Crewe murders Mr Key?"
Gold.
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Lipstadt?
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D4J sounded a bit like Hopeful Christian
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