Posts by Idiot Savant
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would s.123 be used to bring a prosecution for blaspheming a non-christian deity or religion?
While the way it has been written seems to be religiously neutral, thanks to UK precedent, most legal commentators believe that it applies eclusively to Christianity (some go further and believe it applies exclusively to the Anglicanism).
The law is unlikely to be used unless Pope Tamaki wins an election or John Banks runs for Parliament again. But its mere presence on the books is an affront to modern New Zealand's liberal and tolerant values, and undermines our ability to criticise other regimes which actively engage in religious persecution.
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And while we're on the topic, it's worth remembering that Afghanistan isn't the only country which outlaws blasphemy. Take a look at s 123 of the Crimes Act...
Shouldn't we remove the mote from our own eye and repeal this archiac, ridiculous, and theocratic law?
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I'm not aware of a comparable petition to our own government.
So perhaps its time someone started one.
New Zealand has troops in Afghanistan. We're propping up the people supporting this obscenity. We should be using whatever influence we have - including the threat to stop propping them up - to stop it.
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Hey, where's my housing affordability initiative? Screw it, where's my cheese affordability initiative?
I think they're saving the big guns - like tax breaks on Havarti - for an election campaign gazumping.
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Looks like the Kiwiblog right have struck again, with another brick through the PM's electorate office window...
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But Youth is a cunning demographic for National to target. They can't vote, so they are the perfect whipping boy.
Precisely. According to Key, it seems that Brash's biggest mistake was that Maori could vote. He's just as committed to divisive hate campaigns as his predecessor.
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This part of the coming election is becoming clear now. There will be a spending spree, and there will be a lot of effort to portray the spending spree next year as, oh, I don't know, "the last ditch attempt by a tired, directionless government desperately trying to hang on to power", that sort of thing.
...by people who will themselves be promising an enormous (and probably bigger) spending spree, but wit the benefits flowing to different (and almost certainly fewer) people.
Irony is clearly dead.
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If I understand your figures we have increase efficiency by about 12% over the period you mention.
15%. But given the lack of policy, that just seems to be business as usual. We need to really drive that figure upwards if we are to get on top of this.
Fortunately, sticking a price on emissions should do exactly that.
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Pretty graphs on emissions intensity and per capita emissions here
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Don: First, I wouldn't wipe my arse with that Wikipedia data; thelisted emissions bear no relation at all to NZ's actual emissions according to the UNFCCC (and looking at their methodology, its easy to see why). Always use the Inventory Report.
Quibbles aside, we've seen improvements in intensity, with $ of GDP / ton of carbon emitted increasing from $1425 in 1999 to $1608 in 2005 (emissions data from NIR; GDP from the stats.govt.nz time series, constant $1995/96 $). So, we're making more money out of what we emit - but that isn't going to solve our problem. To do that, we need to actually reduce emissions. If we wish to maintain our standard of living, then this will require significant improvements in emissions intensity. But we shouldn't mistake one for the other, or blindly focus on intensity while missing the actually significant statistics.
(We might also want to look at emissions per capita. On that statistic, we've been getting worse, with emissions rising from 17.41 T/person in 1995 to 18.72 in 2005. We are simply emitting too much carbon).
The good news in this is that our previous increases occurred when there was no real policy to stop them, and hopefully as policy is implemented we will see them begin to trend downwards. But it'll take a few years, and there are serious questions as to whether current policy will be enough to push uptake of clean technologies.