Posts by Moz
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Hard News: Communications breakdown, in reply to TracyMac,
Our local council tried this with one bike infrastructure scam and got really snotty with one person who repeated their "confidential" comments on failbook. They never agreed to keep anything confidential, and in fact were never asked... just told after the meeting started.
So when they emailed me I said "I'd be happy to record an interview with whoever you like and put it on utube so everyone can see it" and got a very garbled response that seemed to mean "that's not what we are trying to do". Yeah, I know, and now you know that I know.
That said, in general I've had very good dealings with our council and other local government. It's only when they can't help me that things get, well, unhelpful :)
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Hard News: Communications breakdown, in reply to Scungo,
The focus seemed to be less about actual communication, and more about risk mitigation
See also the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers with their tribe of assorted shills and hacks all ready to leap into action every time they discover a new way to label something as government waste.
It is almost a cliche example of the best outcome being nothing, but the worst being really horrible, so it's no surprise many local government staff try to minimise public exposure. In a way the weird part is just how much outreach councils actually do.
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Speaker: The Government lost the election, in reply to Dennis Frank,
It's in our common interest that this new govt survives its term & delivers suitable results as specified in the coalition agreement.
It's often forgotten but worth remembering that in Oz the Gillard minority government got an awful lot done and was very stable, except at top where Rudd worked tirelessly to support the News Ltd line that a female prime minister was by definition incompetent and hopeless. Somehow the stream of legislation that passed went without note, and the lack of glaring failures possibly made that necessary.
In many ways I hope the Arden government has a similar experience, trusting the NZ public to be a little more grown-up about their take on it (that will help keep the media in check). But then, NZ is more used to having women in charge and, dare I say it, less thoroughly misogynistic than Australia.
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Hard News: Cycle infrastructure: the…, in reply to Mikaere Curtis,
Putting a cycleway heading north along the Southern Line might well be feasible, but would likely require engineering.
FWIW they do this in Melbourne... but Melbourne also accepts quite a high death rate from running trains at ground level with minimal separation.
I used to ride the Upfield bike path most days and this looks ok but as you get into more built-up parts it can get a bit ugly. Despite that, I do recommend that as an example of how you can wedge a bike path into a very small space (especially as the alternative is Sydney Road which is very ugly to ride on). I would much rather ride very close to a busy railway line than a busy road. Or live, for that matter :)
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Speaker: The Government lost the election, in reply to TracyMac,
I haven't heard of any Aussies complaining about not being able to understand this voting thing.
What's the donkey vote proportion in NZ elections? In Australia it's about 5%.
Here's an article in The Conversation on the topic:
Many also felt perplexed by the voting system, to the point of lodging donkey votes or even informal ballots if they did not have parental guidance
My observation of the actual voting process is that a lot of people find it daunting, and if there's not a simple "write one in the box" option the informal vote rate goes way up. This isn't about people saying "I R 2 DUM" in loud voices, this is about people just quietly not casting valid votes despite their apparent best efforts to do so. "no-one told me" doesn't mean the problem isn't there.
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Speaker: The Government lost the election, in reply to Simon Lyall,
{some think} Labour should be the only-party of the Left
I'm kinda happy with that, because I see the more important split as being between the brown parties and the green ones. So The Greens and to some extent TOP are greenish, and Labour are less brown than National. But IME many Labour voters get quite upset with that approach, even the ones who are willing to let The Greens exist.
FWIW I have green-ish friends in Labour who are still angry 20-odd years after most of the Labour environmental faction split off to form a separate party. {eyeroll}, that's why we have MMP now. Suggesting that the best way to eliminate the Green Party would be a coalition hasn't previously got much traction, but maybe now National has done that to three of its "partners" they might see how it works? OTOH, they might correctly fear that the more organised party who's been more effective in opposition might execute a reverse takeover once in power?
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Speaker: The Government lost the election, in reply to Simon Lyall,
long-term relationship
Politics today is not really about long-term friendships except with donors. Possibly more accurate to say that National don't have principles in that sense, they are the embodiment of neoliberal philosophy. What's in it for them, right now, the end.
Labour have long-term enmities with both The Greens and Aotearoa's ruling class which would make things difficult if they got into power and were not sufficiently subservient. You see this dramatically in Venezuela, but the mining super-profit tax in Australia was a more local demonstration (mining companies very publically said "we will buy our way out of this tax with a PR campaign... and the Australian public said "that's a great idea, we're with you 100%"... because the public really are as stupid as the very worst stereotype tries to make them look).
I'm with Kumara Republic above, except that I think "active fact-checking & strong transparency" won't work because the Trumpian media go along with the "gut feel" approach to modern life. Facts are boring, no-one cares they keep telling us, and that is working. Finding a way to beat that is IMO the first step. NFI how, sadly.
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Speaker: The Government lost the election, in reply to Neil,
Peters has expressed some of the most toxic views
... in Aotearoa. You really don't want to be reading Australian political media right now. My take is: any time you have actual Nazi's supporting your views you need to be cautious about employing slippery slope arguments. I mean, obviously those making the toxic arguments are not doing that but IMO they should be. Even though the yes supporters have no way to get the obvious response into the far-right media.
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Speaker: The Government lost the election, in reply to Neil,
I didn't realise how many senior National and Labour MPs trust and respect Peters. They could have at least told us before the election.
Yep. This would have been such a great opportunity for Labour to say "well, we have this agreed deal with The Greens so I guess anything Winston First want will follow from that and of course require agreement from both parties". They could even have done that *before* the election. Which would have been even more effective.
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how you see it as an ad
It doesn't fit with the rest of PA, it's actually jarringly different. It's all about a single person/company, and it's clearly written by a not-very-good marketing person. At best they normally write for a very different audience and they have done no research to see what PA is like so they've badly misread their audience (viz, they're not very good). The lack of a byline is very unusual here, but from the reception so far I think the author's decision to hide their identity was the right one.
Which is why the few who've responded have all assumed that Russell is being paid for publishing this. It's the most charitable explanation.