Posts by Nat Torkington
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For more background, read the Cabinet Paper. Hide was on National Radio this morning:
Announcer: .... footpaths, water services, and public health and safety services including garbage collection. He won't venture into what else might be included, but says the list would be generous and include services like libraries.
Hide: I've always been keen to include libraries because my mother would never talk to me if I upset the libraries.
I'm nervous about referenda. Referenda can go horribly wrong: California's the poster child here, where citizens passed Proposition 13 which was an attempt to cap taxes and ensure older residents could afford to stay in their homes. It sounded good in principle, but it's rooted their tax base and damaged school quality, libraries, fire departments, etc. The weakness appears to be:
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury.” - Alexander Tytler
The citizens' weapon in a representative democracy is the ability to vote incompetents out. You'll never get perfect decisions from those in power: they'll run a failed musical, or build an unjustifiably-expensive stadium. But at the end of their term you can punish them for doing it. That's the rep.dem. bargain: you give them the ability to make difficult decisions that balance a good long-term against an unpleasant short-term, but in return you can vote them out if you think they got it wrong.
Happy to be convinced otherwise. I've stated my position pretty baldly here, but I really want consultation and referenda to work. I can see how they'd be useful to head off bad decisions, but I worry they also open the door to their own kind of bad decisions.
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Nobody ever told me that it was possible to be homesick regardless of where I lived. I don't know that I would or could have done anything differently, though, if I'd been told. It's an utterly foreign feeling, in all senses of the word, that past experience just doesn't prepare you for.
It took us a year to really get over the worst. A surprisingly large number of people leave again within twelve months, the vision they had being sorely let down by the miserable day-to-day existence of incessant souwesterlies, poorly insulated homes, ratshit public transportation, high food prices, a vacuous mass media, and fewer and smaller niches than wherever we came from.
Rebecca is right, we went through a grief process. Anger, denial, the whole lot. The mindgame that I found that worked is "don't miss what you don't have, enjoy what you do have". So I stopped pining for my geek friends in San Francisco and began gardening. I stopped grumbling about the weather and bought a fireplace that is a family ritual every night in winter.
That lets me live here and enjoy it, but still I don't "fit". I misunderstand social cues, I still can't understand some people, and I'm periodically reminded that I think like an American ....
Thanks for posting that, Daniel. You're not alone, it never becomes perfect but it does stop being horrible, and as you've discovered it's not the same when you go back either. Hang in there for a year, install a good fireplace, and see what you can grow in the garden ...
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Kyle said:
I'm no expert on selling major assets, but don't you get a much better price for them when they're making craploads of money, rather than when they've just hacked their profits?
I thought the same thing, but then realized this line of reasoning doesn't provide any guidance on when to sell assets: can you imagine yourself looking at Ports of Auckland when it's bringing in shit tons of cash to the ARC (which they then depend on in their budgeting) and then saying "ok, time to sell that puppy!"?
I couldn't see myself selling an asset because it's being successful, or because it's struggling. I think the better argument is: does this asset belong in state hands? And for the Ports of Auckland, I say "hell yes". It's critical infrastructure for importing and exporting. I'm not seeing people say that the downturn in profit is because it's mis-managed, I suspect the downturn in profits is because we're in a massive downturn in world trade. There's no sane reason for this to be in private hands.
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Re: MagnumMac ... I've recently found a guy who imports refurbed Macs from Australia and sells them here direct and via TradeMe. We've bought several from him and are very happy. He's a trained Mac technician, and does repair work too (fixed J's cup-of-watered machine for 1/3 the cost of Renaissance's quote). I'm avoiding NZ's official outlets for Apple hardware now, it's just insane how much more expensive they are than they have to be.
(email me if you want the guy's contact info. I don't get kickbacks, but it would still feel like I crossed the boundary between information and advertising if I posted his details here)
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Re: Bruce Sterling @ Webstock, it's amusing to think of an American out-ironying Kiwis. Part of the problem in the room was that Bruce's delivery was so deadpan, his laconic Texan drawl so steady, that you couldn't tell whether he really meant it or not. Was he ripping Web 2.0 a gaping new orifice, or was he having fun playing with words? I think the discomfort in the room came from the fact that it was very difficult to know whether one was watching a witch-burning or a comedy roast.
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And sweet fuck all effort being made to convince me that it was.
True. And that might be because it deserved to die. My point isn't that there wasn't subsequent public debate about the merits of the conference, my point is that there doesn't seem to have been prior internal debate about the merits of the conference.
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Pharmac & Herceptin ... well, it WAS a campaign promise. Surely the time to say "but we have a process for deciding what gets funded, if you don't like it change the process" was then. They ran on a promise to throw candy to their constituents, now they're elected they're throwing the candy. The huffing and puffing seems unfruitful.
Education: again this reminds me of the US. George Lakoff's book "Don't Think of an Elephant" was fascinating reading. He said the two parties have a mindset that selects the language they use. In general, Republicans are father knows best: central authority, success and virtue strongly intertwined, we're in a dangerous world so do as you're told or bad things will happent o us all. Democrats are it takes a village: support, nurture, focus on collective good rather than individual opportunity. "No Child Left Behind" is a phrase that perfectly matches Democrat ideals while the policy itself perfectly matches Republican ideals. This is no accident, of course.
Played into National-Labour, you see National playing the stern parent and saying "don't wag, you naughty boy!" and implementing stern consequences for failure to obey Daddy John. The ideal Labour truancy consequence, I suspect, would be Community Hug Therapy. I am exaggerating both sides, but I think there's some truth in Lakoff's views and that they do apply here in NZ.
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Being a National supporter, his stock response to any question about motivations/reasons etc was 'They've got the mandate, the country voted for them'.
That's what George W Bush said when he was re-elected. "I have a mandate, I was given political capital and I intend to spend it." With about 53% of the vote, heh. And look how well that ended ....
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Craig wrote:
Oh, so those on the front line don't spend any time thinking about "the big picture"? Sorry, but it might be useful if the blue sky thinkers actually got out of the seminar room and spent a little more time down where those clever flow charts and mission statements have to be translated into tangible results.
The problem is that you don't know whether the conference was needed, I don't know whether the conference was needed, and we all suspect that after a week in the job, Paula Bennett didn't know whether it was needed either.
There probably is a lot of fat that can be cut from government departments. I've certainly seen my share of head-shakingly pointless things. But you won't find fat by randomly cutting off big lumps, because you're as likely to sever a head as a wobbly bum.
A metaphor so strained that I believe I can hear it creaking ....
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Lovely story! Let's hear it for free-range kids.