Posts by Moz
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Legal Beagle: MMP Review: Trusting Voters, in reply to Tom Semmens,
if enough of the Greens would discover sitting in the back of a ministerial limo comfortable enough to develop a similarly obstructed caucus colon... The triumphalism of Green supporters means they never pause to consider that the latter is probably more
Tom, it hasn't happened in other Green party offices and the NZ Greens have considered the issue quite recently, so I don't think that is likely. The Greens have more of a history of standing on principle and refusing to compromise, so the "anything to stay in power" problem would represent quite a large swing.
There's also the little problem that a significant number of their current voters (likely a majority) vote for them for exactly that reason, so if they tried that tricky they'd probably lose at least 5% of the vote. I'm guessing more.
Look at what's happening in Australia right now, for example. The Greens have said "our policy is to deal humanely with refugees" and sat on that for over a year now while the two major parties bicker about which inhumane policy to implement. The pressure applied and bribes offered to The Greens have been significant. Result: much activity in the membership and a very firm "tell them to get f**ked". If anything, the pressure has led to Green supporters signing up for the "host a refugee" program in large numbers (http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/51004 ).
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Legal Beagle: MMP Review: Trusting Voters, in reply to Sacha,
Sacha, I'm not saying it's likely that both Mana and Maori would want to join a Labour-Green coalition, just that Rich's thought experiment seems to require it. That's why I said "National would need one, Green-Labour would need both... which would be easier to get?"
Rich, you continue to make me guess at your numbers then criticise my guesses. I don't think your numbers make sense, so I can understand your reluctance. But I'm going to leave it here.
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Legal Beagle: MMP Review: Trusting Voters, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I'm assuming no more overhangs, as proposed, so there are only 120 seats ever.
Ok, my take on "no overhang" is that extra electorate seats get set aside when proportional calculations are done. So the simple case of Labour getting 20 seats on 5% of the party vote means we have 100 seats = 95% of the vote (Labour's 5% effectively disappears because of the overhang). The Greens 30% give them 29 seats (28.5 before rounding), National get 52 (52.25). So Green/Labour have have 49 seats to Nationals 52 (total 101). On past numbers Mana and Maori will both clear the new 4% threshold, so the larger of them would have 10-15 seats. At the high end of that split you could get a 3-party coalition on the left, but either way National can definitely govern with one of them and possibly the smaller (if there's a 10/9 split, for example).
I think to make this plausible we'd have to see a lot more love between both Green-Labour and Mana-Maori than we currently do. Or a wilder vote swing - if the Green vote was more like 35% to National's 50% the watermelons would definitely be able to choose between indig parties so the resulting negotiations would be much more exciting.
This would be a lot simpler if you'd show some working, so your other assumptions are stated and the slow members of the class like me don't have to grind it all out ourselves.
Or have I completely misunderstood how the "no overhang" rule works?
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Legal Beagle: MMP Review: Trusting Voters, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Well no (55% of *votes* not seats).
If you were following earlier, we have a two-vote MMP system. If a sizeable number of people split their votes electorate to Labour/ party to Green then Labour could still hold maybe 20 electorates (last election was 22), even if Labour went down below the quota of votes that justified that number of MPs (16%).
Maybe I'm just dim, but I still don't think that adds up. National's 55% would give them 66 seats (plus their 1-5 seat microparty bonus). Greens 30% is 40 plus Labour's 20 electorates is still only 60 seats. Then you've got minor parties soaking up about 10% of the vote, leaving Labour on 5% and an overhang of about 15 seats for a total of 135 or 68 to form govt. In other words, almost all of the old-school, rusted on Labour voters would have to split. That's a lot more than did the Mana/Maori split.
But the question in that scenario is: can National get two support votes more easily than the Greens can get Labour plus 8 more?
I think to have any real chance your assumption would have to wipe out Mana or Maori, plus the christians, ACT and Winston, leaving only the four parties standing. That would leave a bidding war between National and Green/Labour for the sole minor party.
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Legal Beagle: MMP Review: Trusting Voters, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
What would be great would be if National got 55%, Labour 15% and a bunch of electorates and Green 30%, leading to a Green-led government. I'd just love the impotent rage of the righties if that happened.
I assume you guess those numbers wrong because an election resulting in National having 55% of the seats would only have The Greens in government if National wanted them.
If it was National 45%, Greens 31% and Labour 20% then we'd have the funny situation of Labour having to decide whether they wanted to be the minority party in government. Which would be funny, because the hard right wing Labourites would have common cause with the whining green remnants in Labour and that is a very rare thing. My bet is that the attraction of power and the shitty deal National would no doubt offer would bring Labour on side quite quickly. The interesting question is whether any Labour MPs would resign rather than go down that route.
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Up Front: The Up-Front Guides: The…, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
they don’t know any awful hoe-mow-sackuals are the strongest opponents?
I dunno. My racist workmate (cue TMBG song) is quite upfront that his asian-ancestry coworkers are inherently inferior and Australia would be a better place if they all went back where they came from. And I dislike him intensely after his crack about "black New Zealanders" being lazy and useless. I can't imagine he'd be any happier about teh gayz, only in this case he's much quieter due to the sexuality of his employer.
My impression is that there's a core of opponents who are quite genuine and often a little naive. They really do think that all children should have a mummy and a daddy and live in a nice suburban house where daddy works and mummy looks after the children and everyone goes to church on Sunday. Since allowing those other people to marry would not be this, we should ban it. They haven't, and won't, think through what that means for them. Thinking is for their church leader to do and they simply follow instructions have faith. They're not called a flock for nothing. But they often dislike being told what to do by those unfortunates who have not been saved and that quiet resistance helps them not think.
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Up Front: The Up-Front Guides: The…, in reply to Emma Hart,
I'm with god on this one, smiting Hamilton from the face of the earth is the right thing to do. Apologies to stargazer, but that's just the way it is.
I was amused when my parents swung from "meh" to unconditional support after my sister got married. I suspect because someone wanted to attend the wedding.
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Up Front: Let's Talk About Sex, Baby, in reply to linger,
you see, that there’s an endorsement of making babies. Which creates this kind of logical disconnect: Parthenogenesis? Fully approved, hey, it’s fully What Jesus Would Do. Go for it. Oh, wait, you can’t do that? Well, fuck.
Hey, it worked for Jesus.
I read once a discussion of Christ as a millenial end-of-days figure and how the expectation was that he would return within the lifetime of his followers and that would be the end of the world and ... well, The End. So the whole blessed chastity thing was about not bringing children into a world that was about to end and so on. Which explains a few of the hideous contradictions between volumes one and two, and how some of volume two just makes no sense at all (even compared to volume one, which does set the bar pretty high).
I think female sex bloggers are damaging to men, because they set expectations quite high on the whole communication and self-awareness front, and that's just not on. Stiff upper lip, chaps, and don't let them see your fear.
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Hard News: Women and their representations, in reply to Lilith __,
Or your ice water. Spritz, spritz!! That’s gotta get you excited. :-)
Hint for cosmo readers: if he's jumping up and down screaming and holding his genitals he's probably not excited in a good way. And if you get trampled in the rush as he's trying to get away, well, sometimes bad things happen to stupid people.
(apparently they need to be told these things).
Also, I'm keeping my "child proof cap" safely inside my pants. Thanks for that image. But at least it will give Emma a huge new list of euphemisms.
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Up Front: Sex with Parrots, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
Blake is gender-ambiguous? Logan? Ryan?
Yes. It also runs the other way. Seven is unabashedly a boys name. Obviously.
I'm also interested in names where the usual gender varies with location or language. Like french boys names being given to pommy girls because french sounds kinda feminine to the english speaking ear.
It makes for great phone-answering in places that are so retro that they still have ye olde lande-lyne telephonical devices. Also as a junkmail laundering aide. When we get mail for "Mr Sam and Miss Bob" we know it's someone guessing (or the gas company, but they misspell our names too so that's easy).