Hard News: The March for Democracy
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@Deborah I am even further from the Herald's home delivery region than you are, but it certainly seems like a good question to ask. You don't have to be Woodward and Bernstein to follow the money.
Maybe we could just crowdsource this piece of investigative reporting to PA System, and see what turns up ;-)
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Maybe we could just crowdsource this piece of investigative reporting to PA System, and see what turns up ;-)
I have a PAS crowd-sourcing project in mind, too, but apparently it's quite hard to get one's hands on the book in question at the moment.
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I have a PAS crowd-sourcing project in mind, too, but apparently it's quite hard to get one's hands on the book in question at the moment.
His back catalog, on the other hand...
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What they want is a change to the law that brought about CIRs in the first place, to make CIRs binding
This is the bit that, to me, shows how loony Colin Craig and his mates are.
As a basic example, if I suggested a referendum to abolish all taxation I'd get huge support for it. Given that taxation funds a lot of government activities, those activities would no longer be funded and the community would suffer. Yet the gov't would be obliged to slash funding if Colin Craig had his way.
That, people, is why they should not be binding.
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is there any evidence that the actual spend came close to the $450k they talked about??
For those who don't get the print version of The Herald, there have also been a number of full-page ads in the last couple of weeks, running on either pg3 or pg5. I don't know how much that would run to, but I'd guess several tens of thousands for the dozen or so that have run.
Being smacked in the eye by a full-page flourescent orange sheet of newsprint first thing in the moring before the coffee's got to work should be illegal in New Zealand.
It will be Tea Parties next, you mark my words.
Sweet. I've been waiting for an excuse to break out my dormouse costume.
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To put things in perspective, a few years ago I helped in a very small way (Tze Ming a much bigger one) to organise a march of 3000 people on a budget of exactly zero dollars.
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just sort of standing there.. as if taking a leak, actually. Albeit not with a wide stance.
Heh. Looks like that foot position you sometimes see from those who trained in ballet. Maybe the boots are.. overcompensating?
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Would homosexual law reform have survived a CIR? Probably not. 20+ years on, Sodom & Gomorrah are still intact.
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As a basic example, if I suggested a referendum to abolish all taxation I'd get huge support for it. Given that taxation funds a lot of government activities, those activities would no longer be funded and the community would suffer. Yet the gov't would be obliged to slash funding if Colin Craig had his way.
A perfect description of the lunacy that Rodney Hide has in mind for our Councils. Because it worked so well in Colorado and California.
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reproduction of a new breed of leaders ..stand up, organise.
cant wait til i learn how to hack and spam, then it'll be reproduction of a new form of protest too:)
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Craig's explanation is actually rather like one of the referendum questions he espouses: he jolly well wants to see something done, but seems curiously disinclined to actually propose an action that would meet his needs.
That is because when they do, their crowds vanish and their votes evaporate.
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And yet I am - to many of you people who post on these very pages - a right wing nutcase.
To be fair, you do have your moments. Still, nice to see you here contributing. I agree that following the money seems like sensible journalism 101.
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<qquote>I agree that following the money seems like sensible journalism 101.</quote>
ALWAYS follow the money!! -
@Deborah I am even further from the Herald's home delivery region than you are, but it certainly seems like a good question to ask. You don't have to be Woodward and Bernstein to follow the money.
Maybe we could just crowdsource this piece of investigative reporting to PA System, and see what turns up ;-)
The MSM don't appear to show much more interest than they did back in 1981, when the now almost forgotten Kiwis Care march drew a vastly bigger crowd to Queen Street on a weekday. Ostensibly a grassroots movement founded by one Tanya Harris, the march was supposed to have been inspired by a vague resentment against creeping union power.
Harris's I'm-just-an-ordinary-kiwi self-effacing persona was probably genuine. The media loved her, and gave her all the mini-celebrity coverage she could handle until she voluntarily left the limelight to marry a helicopter pilot. Her vacant niceness seemed at odds with the protest's divisive theme, and had the effect of utterly defocusing whatever it was supposed to be about.
No-one ever seriously pursued the question of who funded the mass printing of placards and stickers, or why most of the marchers appeared to be paid employees in company time - one confused but happy group were even carrying Bankcard logos as though they were protest banners.
Only months later the Sprinbok tour swept away any collective memory of that odd little phenomenon. Over a quarter-century later, for one who does remember, Colin Craig's mumblefuck effort seems like a weird little afterfart.
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What they want is a change to the law that brought about CIRs in the first place, to make CIRs binding
A date for your calendar: 9 December, the date by which the Clerk of the House has to determine the precise wording of Baldock's CIR petition on this.
Only a couple of weeks to go. No doubt they will be banging on when the precise wording is announced.
Geeks only: the proposal was lodged on 9 September, the CIR Act provides 3 months, there were four weeks for public consultation (yes I made a submission). Geoffrey Palmer also had strong views. Might find a link if anyone wants it.
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Looking at the Herald, they were talking about a budget of close to $450,000 -- but this is a decent fraction (a third, maybe) of what you would expect to spend running a general election campaign for a decent sized third party -- is there any evidence that the actual spend came close to the $450k they talked about??
There is little doubt in my mind the Section 59 referendum has morphed into an aattempt to re-launch a Fundamentalist political party. If you see this march in the context of part of a program of trying to build momentum for the 2011 general election then it makes a little bit more sense.
Getting only 4-5000 people though shows just how deeply Godless socialism has infected our benighted people since 1935.
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As a basic example, if I suggested a referendum to abolish all taxation I'd get huge support for it. Given that taxation funds a lot of government activities, those activities would no longer be funded and the community would suffer. Yet the gov't would be obliged to slash funding if Colin Craig had his way.
Let's get all the way down to those clichéd brass tacks, if you want to destroy our parliamentary democracy to save it why piss around? Why not just shut down Parliament and hand off all legislative functions to a consortium of polling firms? Yes, I know that's a reductio ad absurdum with a heavy emphasis on the absurdum, but you don't have to reach for the F-bomb to find it a form of populist demagogy that would be hellishly sinister if I thought anyone involved had really thought it through.
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A broad-church approach to grievance and the vilification of elected leaders are also, of course, hallmarks of the "tea party" movement in the US.
That's actually quite an interesting comparison. I'd never really thought what teabagging would look like Kiwi-style (unfortunate mental image most definitely not intended!) but it does appear it looks like a bunch of disgruntled but polite people with vague disaffections towards "politicians" and "bureaucrats" for the most part.
I first heard of the march from a poster up in the staff tearoom here, and read it twice trying to figure out where the reason for the march was hidden (answer: nowhere.) I was particularly amused to hear two coworkers discuss the matter-a 40-something Pakeha fellow regaling his Chinese friend about how NZ democracy was "a sham", only to be shot down by, "What are you talking about? I haven't been shot or teargassed by the police once since I arrived here!"
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I was particularly amused to hear two coworkers discuss the matter-a 40-something Pakeha fellow regaling his Chinese friend about how NZ democracy was "a sham", only to be shot down by, "What are you talking about? I haven't been shot or teargassed by the police once since I arrived here!"
Let's just call the Comment of the Day right here! :)
As for people who'd like to call our democracy a sham, I'd love to bring those pop-tards along the next time I'm scrutineering on E-Day. Funny how often you can pick out the folks who have direct experience of real dictatorships. They're the ones who bring their kids to watch Mum and Dad cast a vote that's worth the paper its printed on. See that happen enough times, and I promise your patience with wannabe Tea Baggers of any stripe will vanish, never to return.
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That's actually quite an interesting comparison. I'd never really thought what teabagging would look like Kiwi-style (unfortunate mental image most definitely not intended!) but it does appear it looks like a bunch of disgruntled but polite people with vague disaffections towards "politicians" and "bureaucrats" for the most part.
I googled this stuff this morning (I have spent the last dozen years outside NZ, but it is still home and the only place I can vote) and very quickly ran into a bunch of pure tinfoilhattery claiming that the repeal of S59 was mandated by the UN, and proof that New Zealand was run by some vague cabal...
Not sure what this proves, beyond that New Zealand has its share of nutters.
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We need far more coverage of the fact that we live in the least corrupt country in the world. And one of the easiest in which to do business.
When idiots of any stripe (including politicians) claim that we suffer a lack of democracy or stifling "red tape" whose removal can miraculously cause economic success, you'd expect journalists might be capable of referencing some background facts like that.
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I do find some of the arguments put by the Sensible Sentencing Trust and the pro-smacking brigade show that their leaders and supporters are anti-democratic. They talk constantly about how 87% of NZers voted in their favour at the referendum when the true figure is less than 50% of eligible voters http://tinyurl.com/ye5j6gf
They'd have more of a point if an extra 30,000 votes had been cast - so the margin is not that great. But this is a democracy and almost half the population didn't care enough to show up and vote. They were also rarked up by this type of coverage which fails to mention that only 56% of voters turned out: http://tinyurl.com/ya25cewThey waved placards with slogans such as "Warning: Police State" and "We've been 2 Hell 'n' Clark". Others chanted messages such as "John Key listen to me, we want democracy."
I think that elements of that march were fascist but many of the people there seemed like older middle class kiwis who felt that their right-wing views weren't being listened to. I saw many ACT signs but not many Green or Labour ones for example. I used fascism as an epithet and may have been better served by pointing out Colin Craig as the friendly face of fundamentalism.
Here's what George Orwell wrote in 1944:The word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else... almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. – George Orwell, What is Fascism?. 1944.[
I quite like the word facist BTW. Fascist racist... or should that be rascist.
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@Craig:
Which earns any alleged adult a two-week, all expenses paid holiday on the naughty step.
Or worse, two weeks all-expenses paid in Northland enjoying "korero" with elders and the QC you have retained to try and save your bacon.
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Yes, I know that's a reductio ad absurdum with a heavy emphasis on the absurdum, but you don't have to reach for the F-bomb to find it a form of populist demagogy that would be hellishly sinister if I thought anyone involved had really thought it through.
Sinister is perhaps a stretch, its just another form of government.
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the next time I'm scrutineering on E-Day
Yes, right from 8.50am when you can see that the ballot box is empty before the plastic seals are put on (honestly, in some countries they stuff boxes? Never!) through to 7.10pm when the same seals are broken and the votes are counted in front of the scrutineers.
An election process that is honest and can be seen to be honest. Makes me grateful to be in NZ </rant.>
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