Posts by Graeme Edgeler
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as someone who at one time voted Alliance with my list vote, only to see Alamein Kopu paid $70K a year not turn up to work, then to refuse to represent the party she was a List MP for, for more than two years, I would disagree that simply being able to vote them out every general election is sufficient as a check against this sort of behaviour.
I always feel an odd compunction to defend Alamein Kopu when she is brought up in circumstances like these. Her position was ultimately a reasonably principled one.
Ms Kopu felt she was in Parliament as a Māori woman to represent Māori women. She accepted that she wasn't the important part in this (at 12 on the Alliance list, who had heard of her?), but she felt that what she represented was important (people voted for the Alliance in the knowledge that if they got X votes there would be two Māori women MPs representing the party, and more Māori women in Parliament than otherwise).
She offered to resign if she could be replaced by a Māori woman. This isn't how the law works, and Jim didn't like the suggestion, but still. She then went for a while not turning up, but ultimately did re-start, and was the first/only MP who made a practice of only speaking in Māori in the chamber (and for that matter, in media interviews).
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I find any quizes or surveys that include "agree/strongly agree" options end up telling far more about my inability to commit to an unequivocal opinion than anything else.
It's particularly odd where the quiz makes it clear that the veracity of your answers doesn't matter:
How to score: "Definitely agree" or "Slightly agree" responses to questions 2, 4, 5, ... score 1 point. "Definitely disagree" or "Slightly disagree" responses to questions 1, 3, 8, ... score 1 point.
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I was once at an air-show where an F18 did a 1000 km/h flyby at 30 metres altitude.
Unless it was over the water, I hope you don't engineer aircraft!
=)
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Surely at some stage the speaker has to say to their party leader "umm, what are we paying this guy for again?"
Perfectly reasonable. The mechanism to allow this is for the House to amend Standing Orders.
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He'd been rumbled, denied it (hardly a man of his convictions then?) and then came out swinging...
Chris Carter has denied denying it.
He says that when confronted by people from within Labour, he asked "what's your proof?" Given the things members of the Labour caucus were saying about him at the time, I'm prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one by a long margin and the allegation he lied about being behind the letter as the spin it very likely is.
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Why was I not surprised to find you blogger link going to Kiwiblog? DPF has banged on about this shit for years and years, like enforcing his idea of working hours on MPs is somehow going to make them actually do better jobs.
I actually wrote the sentence first, and went looking for people to link to at the end. DPF was just the first place I looked.
I think you're being a little unfair on him too. DPF hasn't complained about MP working hours; rather, his past concern was about sitting hours. He doesn't expect MPs to sit in the House for massive amounts of time, he'd just like the House to make more time available for the passage of legislation. It's not actually all that many hours in a year.
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I'm thinking of solutions that don't require changes to the law - like you I agree that it's not a particularly useful one. Is there the possibility of a statutory body (the SSC?) publishing a register of attendance?
A statutory body? No chance. Parliament doesn't like being told what to do by other people. Parliament itself? Maybe. After the bit I reference above, the Law Commission's Issues Paper notes:
The Serjeant-at-Arms kept a daily record of members’ attendance in the House.
However this record of members’ attendance is no longer maintained. Since 1985, the Speaker has been able to delegate the power to grant leave of absence to other members. As a result, a central record of attendance became practically impossible to maintain, as each party had delegated authority to grant leave of absence and maintained its own records.
in 1999, the Standing Orders Committee considered the obligation on members of parliament to attend the House. It described section 20 of the Civil List Act 1979 as “totally ineffective” and suggested that the provisions of section 20 should either be repealed or made effective. It also noted that the record keeping should either be made effective or it should be abandoned, but that making it effective would
greatly increase the parliamentary bureaucracy, and would probably require a recentralisation of the granting of leave of absence, a course which the Committee did not favour. -
Or even, if anyone can grow a pair, V For Vendetta.
So a TV remake of Sleeping Dogs?
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I think Stephen Bowie entirely missed the point of that abortion plot line on Friday Night Lights ... And I'm pretty sure the out-atheist Ron Moore would love to know what "surreptitious" Christian dogma he was pushing in BSG
It's a blog ... feel free to let him know =)
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shows that we’re really behind on: Friday Night Lights...
I've been meaning to watch that... I suppose I should?
It's one of the shows that Region 4 gets squelched on with DVD special features - and I imagine deleted scenes can be pretty good for a show like I understand this to be - so I have a nice Region 1 set just sitting on my bookshelf.
I should just get on my butt and watch it then?
And the Classic TV History Blog has this, which y'all should read.