Posts by Gareth Ward
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I certainly don't discount that many murders are religiously motivated, it was more a case of given that (in NZ at least) 60% of people identified with a religion, are significantly-more-than-60% of murderers religious? (Or whatever percentage lines you wish to draw around "depth of religious belief)
And in those, we could of course separate religious as an adjective vs religious as a driving motive.
Honest question re statistics with no bias to do it.
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Giovanni, I was referring to more recent murderous rampages given the context of "current state of religious whatnot" and was thinking more along the lines of individual murder than war campaigns.
At which point, yes I was serious in my question.
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Flim-flam doesn't attract tax exemptions or go on murderous rampages. By and large
The "big" religions are over-represented in murderous rampage stats?
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only 45% of respondents endorsed what the paper described as "the Darwinian position that human beings evolved over time from earlier forms of animals though a process of natural selection"
Considering that 60% have religious affiliation, it's not tooooo bad to have "only" 55% disbelieving Darwinian evolution.
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I did note that the PM said there would be a Select Committee process around all this on b this morning
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Mikaere, I like your ideas and would subscribe to your newsletter but fear that would breach Emma's new moderation bot...
I particularly like the wards-as-Local-Boards with direct Council representation model, and could even handle a smaller number of (proportionally voted) at-large members under that model to work as "independent directors". They could counter some of the local parochialism that may be a downside of pure ward representation. And I agree that Maori wards are relevant and important - letting the ward determine it's own voting structure seems appropriate in that sense.
But while I think the binding vote concept is a good one, I think voter engagement would be a real issue for local Auckland governance. 2/3s of people responding to a given ward referendum would still be a very tiny percentage of the local population given recent engagement and turnout.
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David Garrett, who said in the first reading of the Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill that the victims of 77 murderers in jail “would be alive today if, at the time they were killed, this bill had been enforced. That is not arguable; it is simply arithmetic.”,
So that would have been a straight lie in Parliament from Mr Garrett then?
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Will there be any recourse for submissions to the Local Govt Commission as they build the details for this?
A big driver of Local Board success will be exactly which services they are tasked with providing. -
MARK GRAHAM FOR SUPERMAYOR!
You've even got a radio show! =)I think part of the problem Auckland faces is that years of underinvestment now requires the dreaded rates rises simply to catch up. The last 10yr plan actually required double-digit rates growth just to be delivered on.
But try selling that to anyone - haven't you heard there's a crisis going on and BMW aren't selling enough 7 series? -
So Garrett asked Collins to confirm a number that was actually completely wrong? Did she confirm it?
A quick look through Hansard didn't show it up for me unfortunately.