Posts by Stephen Judd
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Crowd-saucing.
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I was interested in the proposed tour of the provinces, and the open acknowledgement that Labour did crap in the provinces.
Dude needs to slow down and embrace silence. When an interlocutor tries to break your flow and rhythm, you either relentlessly continue, or you deliberately pause, reset and restart the way you want to. Stammering, repeating, and going with the interlocutor's new rhythm yields the initiative to them.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to BenWilson,
Have I told you about my theory that you should always bet against your own team in order to maximise your happiness?
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to BenWilson,
It's not like this market exists for the same reasons as derivative markets - futures and options were meant to exist so that companies could take out insurance against commodity price fluctuations, and investors could take out insurance against stock price collapses
I dunno, if I were a public servant in Wellington perhaps I could have offset my risk of being laid off by betting heavily on a National win. In fact that probably goes for property owners in Wellington generally, as Wellington property prices are negatively correlated with public service cuts.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Deborah,
I think in asking where Cunliffe was when the hard questions about numbers were asked, Keith has put his finger on an important reason why the previous incumbents might not support Cunliffe.
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Certainly two questions I would like to pose to Labour aspirants are:
- what effect do you expect climate change to have on New Zealand in 30 years?
- what policies will you advocate now to mitigate or deal with those effects?Dealing with the flood of migration from Australia as the cities run out of drinking water and the back country can't grow enough food any more is going to be difficult for us.
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Hard News: Democracy Night, in reply to Keir Leslie,
I think the current method of regional lists followed by secret conclave doesn't work, and can't work.
Amen.
I'm not sure how, given Labour's current constitution, reform could be achieved, but I am all for it.
However, note that even the Greens struggle with this. All NZ parties are structured such that incumbents can protect their positions.
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Hard News: Democracy Night, in reply to Tim Hannah,
I'm not sure why the reaction to losing an election is focusing on the small things your friends arguably made mistakes about rather than you and your allies losing an election.
Yup. You lot know I'm solid Labour, and I think there is no point wrangling over the distribution of left votes when the central problem is that there weren't enough of them.
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Spent the day doing things for Labour in Rongotai, mostly delivering refreshments to scrutineers. It felt unexpectedly heartwarming to see all the people going in to vote in primary schools and church halls and, oddly, a little garage at the top of Upoko St. A lot of the schools had taken the opportunity to schedule a school fair so there was a very festive family atmosphere at some of the polling booths I went to. Cast your vote, get a non-partisan sausage.
I did feel a bit sorry for the lone National scrutineers who weren't being fed by their party, but not sorry enough to bring them a packed lunch.
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Apropos the polls -- I think the landline issue is very real. The polling companies claim they correct for this, but they don't say how. I find it hard to imagine a way of doing this that isn't voodoo, because by definition, we know nothing about the preferences of people we cannot contact, and extrapolations from people who are otherwise demographically similar might be very wrong.
Another thing that we should take into account is the very large number of people who simply refuse to participate. Up to half the people rung in a typical polling run, I believe.
If we look at the work of Bryce Edwards' students we see that there is a distinct possibility that polls are both inaccurate AND influential on voter choices. I find this quite worrying. I think polling companies should be required to state the proportion of calls refused, the number of undecideds, and the methods used to weight their samples for demographics.
My plan for tomorrow, assuming I'm not in bed with a burgeoning cold, is to be spending the day at Rongotai Labour HQ, running errands, making tea, reheating sausage rolls, whatever.