Posts by izogi
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Envirologue: 1080, "eco-terrorism" and agendas, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Hi Steve. I can’t speak for them, but I believe they still agreed with National policy, or whatever it is they perceive National policy as being. The whole “all politicians are idiots and this total bastard level of undeground crap goes on everywhere all the time anyway” attitude was more about all of the stuff documented in Dirty Politics on how National and its friends have recently been conducting themselves. They’d to the thing of pointing at Dotcom and Hager and say “look, they’re sabotaging stuff too”, and so it’s all the same.
I don’t agree with them, and I think it’s just something many people tell themselves so they feel less bad about voting someone in. But I also don’t really care about arguing politics with the inlaws. I’d rather sit quietly and get on with them. :)
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Envirologue: 1080, "eco-terrorism" and agendas, in reply to Steve Barnes,
No matter how much this may hurt the already struggling dairy farmers, National is prepared to do anything to win in Northland.
From my own limited experience with the dairy farming family I've married into, National still seems to have lots of slack with dairy farmers and many of those they live and work with. Abusing that good will too much might come back to bite it some day, but hasn't yet.
Over the election with the news I heard plenty of ranting about how much all politicians were useless and stupid idiots. ("Hager was only telling us stuff that we already know obviously goes on", etc.) My partner, a townie since uni days, made a comment about not supporting Peter Dunne with her advanced vote in Ohariu, then got accused of acting against National as if it was inconceivable that she'd not support it. On Saturday they all went and dutifully voted National. It's who they always vote for, and it's justified by declaring that everyone's at least as bad.
I should stress that they're wonderful people, but not exactly in line with me politically.
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Good spotting (Philip).
What is 'business class', anyway? If Jetstar decides that the difference between Air Mail Cargo and Business Class means that the latter gets a glass of water during the flight to London, is that what the current law recommends?
If Air New Zealand renames 'Business Class' to something like 'Corporate Class' or 'Aristocrat Class', does that mean that pre-1999 MPs get nothing from Schedule 3?
Or is there a clear, legal definition of what's meant by Business Class? I can't seem to find one in the Remuneration and Services Act.
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Envirologue: 1080, "eco-terrorism" and agendas, in reply to Moz,
it might even be a paid member of the right wing PR team
Hi Moz. If you mean of a Dirty Politics style thing, it’d have to be an incredibly stupid PR team to put New Zealand’s entire dairy export economy at risk as a side effect of scoring political points around a largely unrelated internal matter, wouldn’t it? (Or have I misunderstood?) Most likely to me is still just a looney who either didn’t think about the likely reception and repurcussions, or through some screwed up logic actually thinks that threatening/killing babies is a sensical way to make a point with the ends being worth the means. (“It hasn’t wrecked the Pure NZ Image” yet, or “It hasn’t started killing people from being all through the water supply yet”, “better speed up the process to prove we're right about this being what's going to happen!” Or some twisted logic that.)
Australian National Parks are more like National-the-party-Parks than National-Parks-like-in-Aotearoa.
It may vary from state to state, but during my 3 years in Vic, after coming from here, I was surprised at how differently parks seemed to be managed there, and how different the culture of using them seems to be.
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Hard News: Masters of Reality, in reply to Matthew Poole,
you need odd numbers on a committee to avoid deadlock and thus couldn’t just make forward assumptions about how many parties would be in any future Parliament.
The way the law’s written does seem in some ways to be much more of an FPP-style, though. I get why Andrew Little wants to bring in David Shrearer as the only nomination he’s allowed, and who’s probably better suited than himself. But if Labour can already push Shearer as its trusted representative, does Andrew Little himself really need to be there for adequate oversight if another party can provide someone better?
The only reason I can see for doing this, besides some kind of vacuous political statement about Labour Party importance over alternatives is that legal requirement which states the Leader of he Opposition must be there (so of course he has to be!).
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Hard News: Masters of Reality, in reply to Russell Brown,
Shearer does have the background for the role, more so than anyone in the Green caucus. But it does breach an informal (albeit fairly recent) convention, so failing to tell the Greens is either provocative or stupidly clumsy.
Is it an informal convention?
As I read section 7 of the Intelligence and Security Committee Act of 1996, the law seems to state clearly that the Leader of the Opposition can only nominate another member "following consultation with the leader of each party that is not in Government or in coalition with a Government party".
Maybe a lawyer could read it differently, but I parse that section to mean that Andrew Little had to contact the Green Party leader(s) before he made the nomination, even if it was just to say "screw you, I'm doing what I want".
At worst this could open the committee, down the track, to accusations that it's operating illegally if it does something that's disliked by someone. Maybe that could be fixed by Andrew Little picking up the phone to say "screw you", before formally re-nominating David Shearer, but he'd first have to acknowledge he made a mistake.
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Hard News: Masters of Reality, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Hopefully the “Power of Positive Thinking” will win in the end. ;-)
Hopefully the power of positive doing would have something to do with it. I doubt positive thinking is much more effective than negative thinking. :)
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Hard News: Masters of Reality, in reply to Steve Barnes,
@DeepRed: Still, I do think SkyCity could be a tipping point
@Steve Barnes: It may well be but Sabin will be the final nail in the coffin.I hate to sound cynical, but I've seen (and made) any number of similar optimistic statements over the past few years about how this administration surely must crumble now, after [whatever it's just done]. I can happily accept that National offers a different ideology which some people prefer, but what's most dismaying is the distasteful way in which it's been run politically over the past while, and the way in which that attitude has translated into government.
Anyhow I'll believe that people are ready for a change when I see it happen. I hope it will, and I think the best chance is probably for a credible opposition to present itself as a credible alternative. Until it happens, though, I'll not underestimate voters' ability to consider the status quo as their least-worst option.
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Hard News: Masters of Reality, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
As I understood it Key didn’t even bother to read it out in Parliament – just handed it to the Opposition and then got straight into the extra time he now had for his killer new comedy material – written as Russell points out – on our dollar!
It really needs to be up to the opposition to capitalise on this and convince voters that it can provide a better alternative, preferably in a positive way.
I share the disgust at how our current government and its cheerleaders seem to be acting, but I think I’ve given up on complaining about it. In the end, repeatedly expressing discontent only goes so far and that distance doesn’t seem to be extending the length of convincing people to change their votes. At worst it devolves into polarising voters into camps who want to argue about who’s most stupid for who they support.
In the end, history’s going to judge what type of government we’ve had in the last few years. Funnily enough there’s less often disagreement once you’re looking back far enough.
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Speaker: Losing cultural treasures under…, in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,
But if I wrote and published that, and made money from it, and all that money went to me and none to her, that would feel wrong too.
To me it’s about to what extent information and speech can be considered property and be ‘owned’. It’s also about the main goal of copyright being to provide an incentive for creation to benefit society…. but not specifically to benefit creators (as far as I'm concerned).
Speech isn’t like physical property. There’s no natural scarcity. Esepcially now, it can now be reproduced for virtually zero cost. Unlike physical property, if someone takes it, you still have it. And this type of thing happens naturally with information all the time.
The only reason speech has any resemblance to physical property at all is because relatively recent laws (in the scheme of things) have made the artificial concept of intellectual property, which temporarily trades away the rights of other’s in society to repeat what you say in exchange for making a better incentive to create. Without the special legal constructs, there would be no concept of information or speech being some kind of sacred thing that a person can own the rights to, or limit distribution of, simply because they said it first. I don’t mind creators getting benefits for their work, but to me the critical thing, and the only thing worth legislating away society’s natural rights for, is the benefits that society gets as a consequence from creators creating.