Posts by Matthew Poole
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DeepRed, I did think it was rather chilly this morning. Run on ice skates and skis in the depths of Hades?
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What astonishes me about the Illuminati is how they control everything except Internet.
That's the thing about conspiracy theories, isn't it? There are these vast engines of malice that rule the world (or are hiding the truth about the end of the world in 2012 or destroyed the Twin Towers while telling all the Jews to chuck a sickie etc.) without anyone noticing, then they all went on holiday. Or something.
Shades of this comment from Rick Lock in our last conspiracy theory thread, really. Triggered by some truly audacious crazy. Ah conspiracists, so good for so little, but the little for which they are good (namely having a laugh) they do ever so well.
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Danielle, I'm glad you found polite words for him. I'm just going to nod in agreement.
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What would a new bridge be actually for? (i.e.what the current bridge can't provide already)
Well, for one thing the current bridge can't provide anything more than an aerial nuisance and a pathway for light (think bicycles and motorcycles) vehicles in the long-term. Structures like that have a finite life, and it's being babied along as it is. Already its capacity for heavy trucks has been halved.
Also, it can't provide for pedestrians and cyclists without potentially shortening that finite life even further. It's good for automotive traffic and that's all. If there's ever to be a rail connection onto the North Shore, the current bridge can't be the carrier.
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And please don't feel I'm poo-poo'ing your concerns, either. I'm genuinely curious as to whether I've missed some aspect of the scheme that could warrant further investigation.
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On a semi-related note, this is pretty cool, and could be very useful in a country like NZ which is petroleum-poor but has very widespread electricity generation from renewable sources.
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Kyle, quite. Their current performance as opposition raises serious questions about their collective capability to organise an orgy in a brothel.
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Dinah, why do you consider it insidious? There're an awful lot of data-sharing arrangements between departments as it is, so it's not like there's anything in the proposal that is particularly new and scary.
The single sign-on (SSO) concept for accessing e-government services is, I think, very worthwhile. The biggest concern is, of course, security. SSO's convenience is also its major risk, because the compromise of a sign-on account gives access to a multitude of services. -
It would require much more than just wasting money to bring down this government. Fucking with ACC could do it, and in that case Act would be even further out in the cold. Depends if Labour can get the message through that ACC's not actually in straits as dire as has been portrayed, except by the magic of accounting jiggery-pokery, and that applying some different accounting jiggery-pokery will present a rather different picture. So far they're not doing a very good job, though, and one does have to wonder if it's not partly aided by Goff's known right-wing proclivities.
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Not at 60% according to the latest polling. Every Auckland voter who voted national in the last election could swap over and they'd still be able to form the government.
But if the multitudes of lemmings in Epsom (regretfully the electorate of my residence) were to turn their backs on Rodney, that wouldn't hold true. National are there, largely, on the presence of Act's five MPs. Give Rodders the flick and Act disappears. 60% of the country might support National, but that includes a lot of Auckland. 60% of Auckland, statistically-speaking. Remove all those Aucklanders from the equation and National disappears back into Opposition, especially if Rodney/Act disappear from the House entirely.
As for not caring about the Bridge to Nowhere, that really does say it all about just how little taxpayers care about public money being wasted profligately.