Posts by Stephen Judd
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Hard News: So long, and thanks for all…, in reply to Tom Semmens,
Labour doesn’t exist outside the main centres.
And doesn't need to if support holds up in the main centres, which is where the vast majority of New Zealanders live. It's all about the party vote. Failure to turn that out in the cities is a big part of Labour's struggles in the last two elections.
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Hard News: So long, and thanks for all…, in reply to Russell Brown,
New Zealanders aren’t ready for a gay leader
... who met his husband at the rugby.
I don't think GR would have any worries on that front.
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Shearer's own political principles, ideology if you will, were never clear to me, though he came across as a good and decent person.
The NZ public for better or worse wants leaders and prime ministers who come across as tough on TV and radio, and who can speak confidently impromptu. A great PM needs much more than those qualities, but as long as they are essential, Shearer could never be a successful leader.
I agree he would make an excellent cabinet minister with a heavyweight portfolio.
On the whole, I think I'm happy with this, but most interested to see who the contenders are. The leadership selection process is new and untried.
One way for caucus to game this I guess is to only put forward one candidate and hope the membership takes a hint...
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I find that sometimes, polite ignorance, just on the right side of mocking, is a fun place to be. Really? What an interesting thing to say. Explain to me how that works? Does that actually happen? Wow! Do you know the person that happened to? Etc etc. (Joke variation: don't get it. Oh, I see, and that's the funny part, right?)
Other times, sorry I just have to go and talk to Emma about something is the only viable solution.
Then there was the time I told my brother in law he could either fucking pull his head in or get out of my house before I threw him out.
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Hard News: The Real Threat, in reply to Jarno van der Linden,
The deal with treating metadata properly in the legislation is that many people fear that the GCSB currently belives comms metadata -- who calls whom, when, where, etc -- is not classed by them as a "communication", and therefore not subject to the same rules re warrants and oversight etc. So the reason we want a proper treatment of metadata in law is to clarify that metadata collection and analysis in the comms context is equally intrusive, in order that the GCSB be more restrained, not less.
In making this argument we're strictly concerned with the point of view that says the message is the communication and the details about the message are metadata. I agree that actually, the "meta-ness" of metadata is a matter of your current view of what the data is.
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I don't want a nice mayor, and I especially don't want one who's a figurehead for central government minders. Can't understand why you do, unless you've given up on local government entirely.
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Hard News: Who else forgot to get married?, in reply to Russell Brown,
How heteronormative of you. :-)
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When I was married, my then wife kept her maiden name. Our daughter has her mother's surname as her middle name. Everyone seems happy with this arrangement.
In Latin America as I understand it women keep their surnames on marriage, and a child of Jose Sanchez Ferreira and Maria Martinez Alba would be Juan Alba Ferreira. Arguably more fair and reasonable (though still patriarchal because it's the father's name that gets propagated to the next generation).
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Yeah, the beloved and I have been notionally engaged for about 7 years now. But weddings are expensive and the law means her property rights are protected now, and it's all bit hard so... meh.
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Capture: Two Tales of a City, in reply to Just thinking,
Yeah he doesn’t have the experience,
…or the ability. He was the right person at the right moment, but just on his own account of things when I heard him speaking in public, he would never get a majority of councillors united behind him or be anything other than an inexhaustible source of wacky ideas. If you think he would be ok with minders, my question is, why not just elect the minders and avoid saddling them with the burden of managing a difficult puppet boy.
To be honest, the A team of the council deserve a savaging. Part of their job is to hold the council management to account and they have failed.
Apropos the cardboard cathedral , this is interesting reading.