Posts by Emma Hart
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bet he'll be asking you to be his friend on facebook soon robyn
LUCKY!!!Hey, anybody see that episode of The Chaser where they invited all of Kevin Rudd's Facebook 'friends' over to his house?
I just mention this in passing...
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Perhaps in a few years we'll be reduced to 'Which Presidential Candidate would you like to watch doing your wife?" instead of having a beer with. In which case I'd hope Obama would romp home ahead of McCain. Americans are funny.
I think that puts Palin on top of the ticket. So to speak.
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Stephen Franks, less smart than the average bear.
Pah. Less smart than the average beer.
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Sure, but we can't all be Meryl Streep darling
Just as well, my cat used to go crazy whenever Meryl Streep was on the telly, trying to claw her face off.
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However, what I like most about Emma's post is this sentence
the inability to actually effect anything
where either effect or affect works.Cheers, James. In my secret identity I do spend a bit of time explaining grammar to idi... erm, grammatically-challenged people, and I dunno how many times I've said 'affect is the verb, effect is the noun'. Except in this case, where I do mean 'effect'. Though I guess if you affect enough things you might effect something.
Being much older now, I am much more on board with diplomacy and subtlety 'n' all that shit.
If your party wins 1 electorate and less than threshold, you just get that 1 MP.
Hey, Icehawk. I'd forgotten that. I think I like that idea, even though I did once briefly toy with the idea of voting for the Progressives to see if we could get Matt Robson back in.
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Like an awful lot of people my first experience of voting was as a leftie student in Gerry Brownlee's very safe electorate.
Until we moved, I absentee-balloted for Aoraki (except I don't think it was called that then, it may have been South Canterbury) because it wasn't entirely futile.
Wigram huge, I don't think so Emma
Chch, half an hour's drive is considered a major PITA. When compared to the old Sydenham, it's bigger and more diverse. Of course it's not as geographically large as a rural electorate.
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Not quite. Anderton's majority was 8548. He would only need to lose half of that, plus one (4275 votes), to the second-placed candidate, to be unseated.
You are of course absolutely right. Half his majority not half his vote. The keys are so close together.
I do idly wonder how much longer he's going to keep standing. One assumes the seat will revert to Labour by default - it's more Working Men's Club socialism than socially liberal Green.
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It's a bias in favour of a one-person-party that has support in a concentrated area (Dunne, Anderton) over a genuine national party like the Greens.
Ah, see, I also think this is a feature. So if a party or a person has a concentration of support in one geographical area - because of demographic quirks or genuine regional issues or WTF factor - they get a seat, maybe two. I would like to see the threshhold lowered though.
I don't know what the answer is for how hard it is to get new parties represented. If Act were to lose Epsom and not make it over 5%, there'd be a gap for a genuinely hard-right party, as I think there is where the Alliance used to be. (Apologies to the several people I hugely respect still working their arses off for the Alliance.)
What is *wrong* with the place. Is SW Christchurch some kind of wierd fundamentalist NZ version of Kabul? Emma, do you have to wear a full chador when outside, or does a headscarf suffice?
Actually, 'chuck stuff down Emma's cleavage' is a popular party game still...
I get the Big Questions. Wigram's a huge electorate. We live two blocks away from friends who are in Ilam - also a rock-solid safe seat, Gerry Brownlee's. One thing I have deduced about Chch is that it can be very small-c conservative. Once you get a seat, or a mayoralty, you can pretty much have it til you're sick of it.
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"If I lived in Wigram, I'd be wondering what to do with my electorate vote - Labour, probably, but would the National candidate have a better chance of unseating Anderton?"
Bog, I meant to reply to that.
Look at this. See the size of the swing it would take to unseat Anderton? He'd have to lose half his vote, all to one candidate.
Last time round as an expression of futility I gave my electorate vote to Tom Dowie, on the grounds that it takes some gonadal fortitude to be the Alliance candidate running against Anderton.
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However I'd suggest in order of radicalism:
- Removing the dual vote, so that a voter's party vote went to the party of their electorate choice.I know people have had a go at this idea before, but I do think it's all drawback and no advantage. What's it supposed to do? Apart from stop independents standing for electorate seats and give people's votes to parties they don't support? If, for instance, we'd lived in ChCh central last time round I'd have given my electorate vote to Tim Barnett. I still don't vote Labour. Vote-splitting is a feature, not a flaw, and one Kiwis don't seem to struggle with.
Some of the things I like about our system aren't wedded to MMP. I like the fact that we vote on weekends not weekdays, and I really like the ban on campaigning on election day. Watching Australians run the gauntlet of 'helpers' handing out 'how to vote' cards gives me the heebies.