Hard News: National Exuberance
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Idiot/Savant blog has not allowed comment for a long time so consquently I only read it every couple of days
Thank god. He shut them off before it became a sewer - not an easy choice, and I detect a hint of resentment when he talks about commenters on other sites that lower the standard of argument.
I'm of the opinion that most sites would be better without comments, frankly. Reading them is usually a complete waste of time, and detracts attention from the article in question. If you have a response, get a blog and write your arguments out well, rather than scrawling them down.
That said, there are obviously places where I feel that commenting is worthwhile for all involved!
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Thought you might be RB...talk about 'elevating the discourse'!
I don't think I've heard anyone actually challenge someone to a fight since...umm...Standard 2?
Anyway, I'm sure you and Mikey could take him...
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Everything is a distortion. Only believers in the doctrine of the Perfect Market think otherwise.
I've never quite got round to having this argument with someone who cares, but it has always struck me that the free market naturally tends toward monopoly and price fixing, rather than introducing competition, reducing prices etc.
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As laughable as Slater is, he's not benign. He appears the kind of person, so completely lacking in self control, that is capable of violence... even if his entreaties to "fight it out" suggests he knows his intellectual limits...
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Workers of the world unite - Support comrade tan!
geez, another quick switch, now he's joined the wobblies ticket ....
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Oh, with the Tan ACT conversion, I've talked to him and can assure readers here that his sentiments are sincere. He genuinely believes that ACT will protect workers rights, the environment, ethical foreign policy, and reduce crime.
I'm not awfully surprised. The jump from hard left to hard right is in many ways much smaller than that from the centre to either side.
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I'm of the opinion that most sites would be better without comments, frankly. Reading them is usually a complete waste of time, and detracts attention from the article in question. If you have a response, get a blog and write your arguments out well, rather than scrawling them down.
Andrew Sullivan doesn't have a comments section but he does have a 'dissent of the day' in which he posts feedback from readers who disagree with his positions.
For this to work you need articulate readers, which he has - but I suspect I/S's readers are also of a pretty high caliber. He could try it - it might work.
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"There are people far better qualified than me to comment on the employment law dimensions of Shawn Tan's future with the EPMU as an Act party candidate."
Hope you don't mind if I point people at one of those posts, Russell: http://jafapete.wordpress.com/2008/08/26/memo-to-epmu-what-to-do/
"Absent any other factors, I would tend to agree with No Right Turn that he has a democratic right to do so."
No-one is suggesting that he doesn't have a democratic right to stand for Parliament. It's whether he has the right to ignore the provision in the collective employment agreement under which he works. And that provision is about an employer maintaining its operations given that standing for Parliament requires serious time off work.
As the law stands, only public sector employers have to provide leave for their employees should they stand for public office. (And that provision in the Electoral Act is about the political neutrality of the public service, and to protect any government from having to rely upon people who are actively campaigning against it.)
Idiot Savant is free to campaign for a law change to mandate employers having to provide large amounts of leave to any of their employees who decide to stand for Parliament. But I suggest that it would inevitably finish up with a proviso similar to that in the Parental Leave Act to cover situations where it is unreasonable or unduly burdensome on employers to provide leave, keep the position open, etc. Which would bring us back to where we are at the moment.
A final point. ACT wouldn't support such a law change for a second -- just think compliance costs. Why doesn't someone ask them whether they would extend the requirement that they are asking of the EPMU to all employers?
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Oh, with the Tan ACT conversion, I've talked to him and can assure readers here that his sentiments are sincere. He genuinely believes that ACT will protect workers rights, the environment, ethical foreign policy, and reduce crime.
I've known Shawn since I met him at a Green AGM four years ago. He's always appeared very earnest, and I've no reason to doubt his earnestness now. An idea I heard applied to Prebble's transmogrification from left to right was "Strong beliefs, loosely held" may well apply in this case.
What strikes me is is how you can attend at Green Party AGM in June, and then contrive to number 10 on the Act party list a little over 10 weeks later. Fascinating.
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He genuinely believes that ACT will protect workers rights, the environment, ethical foreign policy, and reduce crime.
I'm fairly sure Roger Douglas did and does believe the same thing, quite sincerely, from my knowledge of the man. As opposed to the "Fuck You I've Got Mine" wing of the party I think of guys like Owen and Franks having epitomised.
but it has always struck me that the free market naturally tends toward monopoly and price fixing, rather than introducing competition, reducing prices etc.
Personally I think it rather depends on what you understand a free market to mean. I think capitalism certainly does (after all, monopolies or price-fixing cartels represent the best return on investment).
A free market, on the other hand, can mean many things to many people. To me I want my free markets accompanied by things like the Consumer Guarantees Act, to help ensure people get more perfect information, for example.
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For this to work you need articulate readers, which he has - but I suspect I/S's readers are also of a pretty high caliber. He could try it - it might work.
I/S did enable comments for quite a while, but found that some posters were voicing bile that would be more at home over at Whaleoil or Kiwiblog. So he stopped it. Can't say I blame him.
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No-one is suggesting that he doesn't have a democratic right to stand for Parliament. It's whether he has the right to ignore the provision in the collective employment agreement under which he works. And that provision is about an employer maintaining its operations given that standing for Parliament requires serious time off work.
Peter: I certainly hope the EPMU believes there's due process involved in addressing alleged breeches of contract. If not...
A final point. ACT wouldn't support such a law change for a second -- just think compliance costs. Why doesn't someone ask them whether they would extend the requirement that they are asking of the EPMU to all employers?
And a counter question to the EPMU -- do they think it's unreasonable to expect a trade union to be, well, at least as scrupulous about its employment practices as the companies that employ its members. I guess we will see how it all washes out in the Employment Court, but the irony is rather delicious.
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I remember when I/S had comments....
Mostly they were balanced and civil, much like here.... and when a few started to become a bit nasty, I understood why he decided to turn them off....
But frankly, I'm dissapointed in what's happened to his site since then....
Since turning comments off, while much of his commentary is the same as it used to be.... much detailed analysis etc. that even people of quite opposing political views have admired and linked to... he's also turned a little feral himself... he now includes more personal invectives, and even when not being personal, some of his positions seem less balanced and more campaigning.... overstating his "side" or ignoring obvious deficiencies or mitigating factors...
I'm unsure if this is just a side-effect of not having balanced and rational commenters challenge you, or if it was an intentional plan with an upcoming election on the horizon?
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Trotter seems to be something of a newbie where blogging is concerned. He seems to take every word incredibly seriously and exhibits that newbie excitability that we all learn to shed soon enough (or go insane). There are 6 billion of "them" and only one of Trotter. He can't win them all and shouldn't try.
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"Peter: I certainly hope the EPMU believes there's due process involved in addressing alleged breeches of contract. If not..."
Craig, it's my understanding that this is why the EPMU is in mediation with Tan.
Note also that, in accordance with accepted protocols, the EPMU has not commented publicly about the process, but that Tan, his party leader and his employment advocate have all been very forthcoming. Which party is taking the process seriously?
And a counter question to the EPMU -- do they think it's unreasonable to expect a trade union to be, well, at least as scrupulous about its employment practices as the companies that employ its members. I guess we will see how it all washes out in the Employment Court, but the irony is rather delicious.
Craig, you're jumping the gun here. The scrupulousness or otherwise of the EPMU's employment processes has yet to be determined. At the moment we have a few, contradictory details and a lot of comment from Tan, Hide and his anti-workers' rights advocate. Or, perhaps you believe Hide's assertion that it's really about racial discrimination?
Have you read my post?
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On the contrary, toll roads are user-pays. Abstracting away the cost of road use via borrowing (especially pernicious), taxes and rates creates a distortion. Now, you might argue it's a good distortion, but it's still a distortion.
The distortion I refer to is that under a freely-available-alternative model of road tolling, you WANT the distortion of free-one-way, charged-the-other. It's almost the point.
I don't discount the economic/investment distortion that you are referring to. -
Cameron Slater's rant is completely hilarious:
Oh, for fuck's sake... Cameron Slater is an attention junkie, and people who really should know better are quite happy to oblige (and perhaps need a fix of their own -- righteous moral indignation as virtual P). Anyone considered the possibility that if the really find the guy so objectionable, then enabling his rancour (and persecution mania) isn't really smart?
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What FletcherB says. I've just been accused of being a "party hack", though I think that the number of posts critical of the Government, CTU and, yes, Andrew Little, says otherwise.
I'm inclined to agree with Prog-Blog, who, when confronted by a reprimand from Idiot Savant for not calling Winston peters to account responded inter alia:
You know what is really tiring about the left? It is when the reactionary left decides that the views of others on the left are not sufficiently left enough. Anyone who disagrees with Idiot is an ACT supporter. Yeah yeah. When they need to resort to that kind of intellectual dishonesty, and old fashioned splitism, they haven't got anything to say at all.
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Trotter seems to be something of a newbie where blogging is concerned. He seems to take every word incredibly seriously and exhibits that newbie excitability that we all learn to shed soon enough (or go insane). There are 6 billion of "them" and only one of Trotter. He can't win them all and shouldn't try.
He's also cheerfully telling anyone who disagrees with him that they are 'just like Hitler', which is a classic newbie red flag (sadly some people never get past this).
On the other hand he's obviously enjoying himself, which is nice.
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If you took a big national or international company, they're unlikely to shut down their whole business because one project ran over.
What they do is to set up a separate company "New Kiwi Rd Building" that can be left to go bust if it all goes wrong. A sensible government would rightly distrust this and demand a guarantee from the parent(s), but governments can be real mug punters in this regard.
See Metronet, one of the London Underground operators, which went bust while it's shareholders rolled happily on.
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<blockquote>I'm inclined to agree with Prog-Blog, who, when confronted by a reprimand from Idiot Savant for not calling Winston peters to account responded inter alia</blockquote>
Pete: I feel a small grain of sympathy -- as I said up thread, Idiot/Savant can (in my view) be shrill and pompous, and having been on the sharp end of I/S's virtual tongue I can testify that it's not a pleasant experience. (And modesty forbids one from say whether one gave as good as he got, or not.)
Having said that, isn't there a little preciousness involved? As I also said upthread, if Trotter really wants to die in a ditch defending that SST column, that's his call. But there's nothing particularly "left" about saying there's any justification for breeching electoral rules. It's fucking creepy -- and Trotter deserves to have his nose rubbed in that as much as Matthew Hooten's equally vile effort the next week.
I know both Hooten and Trotter like to adopt a persona of the battle-scarred streetfighter who can cut the shit with the flick of a rapier. But when you've got two political columnists acting as apologists for for outright sleaze -- as long as only the "right" sight does it, in the service of the righteous cause of keeping those other bastards out of power -- then "party hack" errs on the side of generosity. "No friend of democracy" might well be over the top; but I certainly wouldn't say Hooten and Trotter were friends of thoughtful and reasoned discourse that week.
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<quote>Whaleoil playing victim again? Surely not.
I think I might have said to Mikey that Slater's father was embarrassed by his weird behaviour.<?quote>
So, does that make Whaleoil "Mr Slater's parrot" ? Don't worry, I'll get me coat...
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No-one is suggesting that he doesn't have a democratic right to stand for Parliament. It's whether he has the right to ignore the provision in the collective employment agreement under which he works
We-ll, firstly he's only announced his intention to run so far AFAIK.
Secondly I heard (Andrew Little?) on the radio saying that given the amount of time involved he would have had to ask permission. And that if it were some more amenable political party said request might have been seen more favourably.
That last bit didn't strike me as a very clever thing to say.
I'm unsure if this is just a side-effect of not having balanced and rational commenters challenge you, or if it was an intentional plan with an upcoming election on the horizon?
I'm fairly sure I/S was calmer at the previous election.
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What strikes me is is how you can attend at Green Party AGM in June, and then contrive to number 10 on the Act party list a little over 10 weeks later. Fascinating.
I call it bizarre .
At the moment we have a few, contradictory details and a lot of comment from Tan, Hide and his anti-workers'
Sounds like they are trying to drum up a severance package to leave.
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And a counter question to the EPMU -- do they think it's unreasonable to expect a trade union to be, well, at least as scrupulous about its employment practices as the companies that employ its members. I guess we will see how it all washes out in the Employment Court, but the irony is rather delicious.
He's been suspended, not sacked. And it's for what many would consider to be a serious breach of his employment contract. The EPMU would rightly be in the firing line if they'd just said "This looks like serious misconduct because you're standing for Parliament without asking permission, and to boot it's for Act, so don't let the door hit you on the way out." But they haven't, which is all that they ever ask of their members' employers - you're welcome to sack people who breach the terms of their contracts, but you're not allowed to do it out-of-hand and without due process.
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