Posts by Idiot Savant
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Hard News: The positive option of Red Peak, in reply to Jeanette King,
For example, can I just put 1 beside Red Peak and not rank any other options and still cast a legal ballot?
Yes. We're not Australians, and we don't try and strap the chicken by requiring you to preference everything.
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to Katharine Moody,
Aside from the marriage equality bill, I can't think of another Member's Bill that was passed into law recently. Can you?
It doesn't need to be passed. It doesn't even need to be drawn (but that helps, a lot). The mere presence of a bill in the ballot, the provision of an alternative solution, crystallizes policy alternatives and strengthens pressure to act.
Labour and the Greens have changed government housing policy this way (I'd say they'd changed zero-hours contracts as well, but it looks like National is trying to pull a fast one there). Oppositions aren't helpless. Anyone who says they are is trying to sell you something.
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Polity: House-buying patterns in Auckland, in reply to Katharine Moody,
nzlemming - you need to be the Government to do either of those two things!
What could the parties in opposition do - right now - to find the numbers?
Put up a member's bill on it. Its worked very well for them in the past.
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In fact, we’ve also done the numbers on third term governments in New Zealand. There have been five in the modern era (under Fraser, Holyoake, Muldoon, Bolger / Shipley, and Clark respectively). Two of the five got a fourth term.
And they're the oldest ones. Looking back to 1969 - almost 50 years ago - for your political entrail reading probably isn't a good idea. It was a completely different world then.
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Given that the Electoral Commissions proposals would reduce the overall proportionality of Parliament, I'm not exactly unhappy about this. And if Labour had seperated their desire to kneecap national's coalition partners from the straight democratic argument in favour of a lower threshold, their bill might have succeeded.
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Or at least not be funded without somebody, somewhere making some money out of it.
Welcome to modern corporatist government: where the private sector lobbies for the creation of statutory monopolies where they can insert themselves and leech rent. The existence of which then provides them with the funds to lobby politicians to perpetuate their rent-seeking.
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Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to webweaver,
And then I read Matthew Hooton's tweet from earlier "I understand that MediaWorks CEO Mark Weldon thinks @CampbellLiveNZ & @JohnJCampbell are too anti-government. " and get all depressed again.
There's No Such Thing as too anti-government for a journalist. Its their job to hold power to account, and Campbell does it regardless of whether that government is red or blue. That's one of the reasons I bother to watch it.
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Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to Robyn Gallagher,
Serious question: who here regularly watches Campbell Live? And by that, I mean the full episode, live to air. Not occasionally watching a video someone has shared on Facebook.
Its about the only thing I still watch on broadcast TV (and even then, I kill it if it heads into fluff territory). Once its gone, I might as well simply dispense with the broadcast receiver entirely.
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That’s because one person’s pest is another’s recreational resource, stuffed trophy or even their prime income.
Or family. Just to make it clear what's on the line here.
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If characters from The Wire start talking like they're in Famous Five books – "Gosh darnit, what the freaking heck is that freak doing here?" – they have become different characters.
I'll say. I mean, this just doesn't seem right:
Aw... freak.
Mother-freaker!
Freak freak freakity freak.
Freak
Mmmm... freak. Freak freak freak.
The freak?
Freak.
Freak!
No. Freak.
Freak it. Aw, the freak.
Mother-freak!
Oh freak. Oh freak.
Freakity freak freak freak freak. Freaker.
Aw freak. Freak.
Freak freak freak freak.
Mother freaker!
Freaking-A!
Freak!
Mother-freaker.
Freak me.
Pow.
Heh.(With apologies to Bunk and McNulty)