Posts by Ben Austin
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
The Green Party is the only party to have made contact with me here in London. I understand they have done this before, from the Electoral Roll. I certainly have not given them my contact details.
It is a nice touch on their part I guess.
From casual conversations at the pub, other social occasions or at work with NZers, it seems more are centre left, but there are still a lot of people considering voting for National. Not so much because they like JK, as no one I've met seems to understand why he is so popular back home (unless they left after 2008), but more for National's economic management abilities. So, traditional reasons to consider voting for a centre right party that sells itself on such, I guess
-
Indeed.
Perhaps also this is a disadvantage of being a minor member of the Anglophone community. Linguistically and culturally NZers can identify with these larger, more exciting, sometimes richer member states and sometimes easily immigrate. I'd imagine this has been the way since British colonisation.
It must be a much harder decision (to immigrate) to make if one is not from the Anglophone community
-
People don’t immigrate just for reasons of employment or wages though. I and most of my friends who migrated 04-07 left before the recession badly hit either NZ or the UK, when there were a fair amount of interesting and well paying jobs available in both countries.
The principle reason seems to be, in our cases, that the UK would make for an interesting change, even if not intended to be a permanent move.
-
I don't recall seeing any research cited that proportional representation, along the lines of MMP, has ever had, as the principle factor, any demonstrable effect on economic development. It seems to be one of those things that people assume should be true, but does not seem to be.
Exactly what hard economic decisions did say Labour not make 99-08 that would have improved NZ's long term economic position? Or National during 96-99?
-
The Ipredict show (available online) has been a great resource so far for catching up with what is happening (along with the Listener*) overseas. Pretty hard to believe that the host was barred from RNZ
*Never thought I'd be saying that!
-
The documentary looks interesting, will it be made available online later for purchase or have any showings in the UK next year?
-
Sometime last year I came to the sudden realisation that British accented English now sounded normal to me. It happened in the middle of the working day and it mildly amused and confused my English colleagues. However I am still not quite sure what I meant by that comment.
I do also share the fear that my accent is either now, or on its way to a halfway house of not British and not Kiwi. Not much I can really do about that I guess, except move back to Oamaru asap!
-
I tried 8 Wired's ReWired at a specialist beer pub by Victoria Station, the Cask, a month or two back. It was pretty good and has totally changed my mind about Brown Ale
-
Apparently there are a few (money & valuables) safes scattered about West Croydon, freshly crowbarred open, or at least there were during the morning commute.
-
I don't see that this is going to have an immediate impact on David Cameron. I would think instead that this could bolster him if he strikes the right tenor to the nation. Hard to judge that till we see it though.
I suspect there will be a huge amount of sympathy to the victims, business owners, workers, emergency services and police and calls by all and sundry for tough measures. The latter of which, the Conservatives have a history of benefiting from.