Posts by giovanni tiso
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Who needs Russell Brown when you've got Joanne Black as the ace in your pack?
They recently deciphered some of the cave paintings at Lescaux and it turns out it was somebody bitching about the slipping standards at the Listener.
Big blow this, though, there's no denying it. We need a lot more Browns and a lot fewer Blacks.
(Okay, I hope that sentence is never going to be quoted out of context)
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So when you say that NZ would be a very different place if National had governed, I suggest that only a NZer would even notice the difference.
And I suggest that that the differences between the two main parties with regard to public assets, public spending, the funding of schools, workers rights, taxation and social reform have been marked compared to what goes on in other Western democracies. If you'd rather we adopted one of the other 'political systems in the world today', I'm not against the notion, but I'd be interested to hear which one.
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Oh, yes I forgot. Yay fruit..Booo nuts.
Look, this isn't student politics or fantasy government. To the extent that the politics of a country is influenced by its elected legislators, these are things that make a material difference in people's lives and in the character of our communities.
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I'll still eat Big Bikkies dipped in extra chocolate sauce one day, and nutty caramel the next, but I'm beginning to not see any point in trying to expand anyone else's palette.
When mixed proportionality meets mixed metaphorizing. (Try to say that aloud five times in a row).
It seems to me that the situation you lament is endemic to Western countries, even those that don't have a strict two-party FPP system. And I'm not sure that the alternative, in parliamentary democracy at least, is necessarily productive. When I was a lad in the old country we had two leading parties, the Christian Democrats and the Communists. Both hovered around the thirties and the latter would often lag the former by just a handful of percentage points (it once overtook, in the early eighties) but in a strictly proportional system the party of revolution could never get enough votes or allies to govern. So - contrary to the popular belief of those who simply look at how often the governments were dissolved and reformed - Italy got a fifty year diet of stable Tory rule.
You certainly had very different flavours back then, I would say uranium and mint, but what's the point of liking mint when you can never get your tongue around the ice-cream? And having to content oneself with looking through the display glass became harder and harder to do. Finally a group of judges came and bulldozed the ice-cream shop. So for another ten years we got all the wonderful flavours in the universe, with no fewer than three communist parties and two fascist parties and the Trozkists as well as two larger parties, one of which was bent on keeping its boss solvent and out of jail, while the other tried to build a modern, progressive Labour party via the cunning plan of enlisting all the former Christian Democrats and social conservatives that were still at large. So I'm not sure the abundance of choice served us that well.
Having said all that, I would quibble with the 1% gap between Labour and National that you suggest. I think at times the difference has been quite marked. Not as marked as I would have liked, but while some inequalities have been inexcusably entrenched, I think that a lot of people in what is broadly the right side of the spectrum have had their lives improved, and that NZ would be a rather different place if National had governed for the last nine years.
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I don't expect Paul Henry to do anything other than masturbate on air, so it doesn't shock me when Clark and Key on Breakfast is the televisual equivalent of warterboarding
Honestly, Craig, sometimes I wished you stopped sugarcoating your opinions and started telling us how you really feel.
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I wonder if it will allow my son to attend school on a full time basis...or if I will be required to pay for the extra aide time as is expected now.
Quite. The extra 18 mil for ORRS is supposed to add 250 kids to the scheme, but makes no mention of the fact that the 6,700 students currently on it are not fully funded, and schools and parents have to fork out the difference.
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Special education gets a desperately-needed boost with an additional $18.4 million over four years for students with high needs.
It irks me the way they frame that increase in funding, though. To wit:
This initiative, which is demand-driven, increases the number of students provided for by the Ongoing and Reviewable Resourcing Schemes (ORRS) from 6,700 students in 2007/08 to 6,950 students in 2008/09. (my emphasis)
In theory ORRS funding should be bottomless: so long as your child fits the criteria, the funding should be provided. Now they're not saying that they're relaxing the criteria, just that they're providing for more children, which means (as well we know) that currently the ministry is not fulfilling its obligations. I welcome the extra money but it's still galling that so many eligible kids are made to miss out.
More good news on the special eds funding not covered in the press release you linked to, Russell: 14.2 million over four years for non-ministry ORRS providers, 2.67 million in extra money for teacher aide support for students with high health needs, 2.4 million to maintain "maintain levels of learning support for students with physical disabilities" and 6.1 million for the visually impaired.
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One of the TalkLeft bloggers and a number of their readers advanced the view that Clinton should get the only delegates from MI, and Obama should get none.
So does Wolfson, by the way, that's the campaign official line. It's only marginally less insane than Huckabee's "I didn't major in maths, I majored in miracles" line, but there it is.
That said, I still maintain she's pulling her punches now and moving towards the concession. All her arguments are pro-Clinton as opposed to anti-Obama, and she's already asking her supporters to vote for him in the GE.
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It's hard to know what to think about the timing of Edwards's endorsement - he had to do it sometime so over-analysing is a definite risk - but it's hard not to see it as a (sucessful) response to Clinton's arguments about the working class vote and the Michigan/Florida stand-off.
That, and he obviously got the pair of jet skis he asked for.
Seriously, did anybody see the edWORDs on Colbert a couple of weeks back? That was priceless.
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(but as for Obama - why did he leave his name on the Florida ballot?)
He couldn't withdraw it under Florida law except by withdrawing from every other primary as well.