Posts by BenWilson
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Ignorance is bad enough but taking pride in that ignorance is truly mind numbing.
I've been waiting for the right lead in to this:
I'm totally ignorant, by choice, of this particular video and song. Is that better than watching it and being disgusted? I took the same attitude regarding the Kurariki case.
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Emma, I think the party line would be that you would be better off in an asylum, then the state could make all of your choices.
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but the implication here is that intelligent writing/journalism and mass market appeal are mutually exclusive. I don't think they have to be.
They don't, but the quote we were talking about used cutting edge instead of intelligent . There's a difference.
I expect we get a bit closer to that edge with overseas stuff simply because even cutting edge stuff has a market that is huge in huge countries. There's still reams and reams of foreign drivel, every bit as bad as Granny Herald's worst days. And the internet's got even more, by several orders of magnitude. But it also has the gems. How many apparently cutting edge works written in the mass media abroad had various blog sites and the rough and tumble commentary thereon, as a primary source of inspiration? Hard to know...
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Why is it that (mostly unpaid) feminist bloggers are at the cutting edge of debate, and columnists in the mass media are left pontificating about nothing in particular?
It's not just feminists. I find this comment goes for just about any kind of opinion or debate.
My reason: Mass media has to appeal to mass markets. Cutting edge is seldom mass market.
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So yes, small parties should have an interest in MMP, but ACt (or at least some parts it ) don't seem to see it that way. Oddly enough.
You're onto something there. I wonder if ACT's love of FPP stems entirely from the fact that it was the system by which Roger Douglas and Richard Prebble managed to sell off billions of dollars worth of state assets? Perhaps they see inherently that the power of their ideological interests has a freer run in a system geared towards huge power shifts and the exclusion of minorities, and that the current system gives them the piss-all power that the population generally wants them to have. This despite being able to bring about the greatest reform in our local government since God knows when, without one single referendum.
Except the Māori Party. First-past-the-post could be really good for them.
Yeah, I never know what to make of them. They could be natural king makers every time. Or the Maori seats could disappear back to Labour and the Maori Party be forgotten. The sell for MMP on them would probably be that usually the majority under FPP is more than 7 seats, so most of the time they could be safely excluded from power by both major parties. There is also the danger to them of another Maori party, of their own party splintering, possibly along tribal lines, with Labour splitting their vote.
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I don't see why we need a referendum. It hasn't come from public pressure, but from a wish in the National Party (and, I suspect, from some in Labour) to rule absolutely.
If the current system were in the 'middle' of a spectrum of choices, rather than at the extreme edge, I'd disagree. But "More proportional, less inclined to 2 party" options aren't in there. Hence my question about reforming MMP in the reverse direction of FPP being an option. Instead, we've got the same choices we had last time.
But ultimately I don't think a referendum is a bad thing. If it brings MMP back in, then that pretty much puts to bed the opposition, and does rather leave egg on their faces too. Which, I think, is why the two main parties are careful not to take a position. My gut feeling is that opposition to the idea of MMP is not really very high at all. At least 30% of people, who don't vote either National or Labour, are clearly going to be in favor. Which only means one third of each of the National and Labour voters have to like it, for it to win. So it doesn't actually matter if the majority of voters for those parties don't like it. And I'm not sure they're so opposed to it either, it has, after all put their parties in over and over again for 15 years.
The last time, a massive advertising campaign managed to scare the referendum into being a close call. That won't happen this time - MMP is "the devil we know" now. It's more likely that a scare campaign against the alternatives (which are all basically aligned with creating a 2 party system) would be effective, trotting out images of Muldoon and Roger Douglas to scare people into realizing exactly what excluding that moderating 30% of voters actually means.
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PAS is quite the hotbed of reggae heads doncha know. Never be scared to throw around some Caribbean goodness in here.
Never, ever. My heart swelled the other day when I asked my 4 year old in the car what he wanted, tentatively suggesting "The wheels on the bus". The answer, firmly, was "NO. Bob Marley's Buffalo Soldier".
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I tend to think the random ordering of each ballot paper would be better than one overall random ordering, in terms of removing the bias. It would be really interesting to note the correlation afterward in terms of how much people really did just go for the first option presented.
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So voting to just reform MMP with tweaks doesn't come under any of this? Or does that arise from the required review, in the case the country chooses to retain MMP?
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Tragic. I feel pretty nervous driving along that road even in a car. Something about it is just totally off. Highways are much better designed in Australia.
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