Posts by Rich of Observationz
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My understanding is that there are two sorts of Labour activist in NZ: those who would have joined the Greens, but their Aunty wouldn't have a bar of it, and those who would have joined National, but similarly would suffer the wrath of Aunt(ies).
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Wellington doesn’t *have* a Beltway
You wait. Brownlee's got a plan in his office. Six lanes through Eastbourne, tunnel under the harbour entrance, down past the airport, big causeway through Island Bay and back through the former sites of Brooklyn and Aro Valley.
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And another one: citizenships for National party donors.
(I've noticed Fairfux often bury the contentious stuff, like Chalkie's fisking of the Electricity Authority in the business pages).
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Hard News: Spring Timing, in reply to Idiot Savant,
So basically, she was and is part of a government that, as its decided policy, sacked a council, disenfranchised (forever?) half a million Canterbury voters and thus enabled a few thousand farmers (including her family) to make a lot of money.
But because she left the room for the key decisions, she's Teflon.
Making a tiny minority rich at the expense of the rest of us, it's what it says on the tin, and people seem to like it for some reason.
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Hard News: Spring Timing, in reply to BenWilson,
They also do undergrad degrees, I understand.
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Hard News: Spring Timing, in reply to Deborah,
He has a degree from Harvard.
That would have made him one of those foreign students then, squeezing out the locals?
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Hard News: Spring Timing, in reply to Mr Mark,
I don't even know why they ask the question - we elect parties and candidates, not a prime minister? Perhaps because they know National are vulnerable on issues and they want to personalise the campaign as much as possible?
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Hard News: Spring Timing, in reply to Russell Brown,
Shane Jones doesn't even seem to be trying to keep a lid on it
Shane Jones should give it up and go and be CEO of his slave-fishing operation again.
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game-changing monthly flat-rate account
It's interesting the way NZ went. In the UK dial-up access was typically through a revenue shared standard rate call (0870 number ISTR) such that the ISP got per-minute revenue. Often you didn't even have to sign up, and there were services where you could start your own virtual "ISP" at negligible cost. There were even models where you got some kind of information service, like stock prices, in return for connecting through a particular number.
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Hard News: Spring Timing, in reply to Phil Lyth,
I'm not convinced this is apathy so much as the current opt-in, address based enrolment system.
Older voters typically spend several years at an address and will receive regular enrolment reminders from the electoral commission. Once you've responded to one, they then track you through changes of address (via NZ Post, etc) and you typically stay in the system without much effort.
This doesn't work as well with new voters who haven't established an initial registration.
It would be better to proactively register all NZ citizens and permanent residents using data matching - the government already has details of births and migration which could be turned into a list of everyone eligible to vote (with a very small set of exceptions). Then voters could turn up at any polling booth, produce *either* id or an Easyvote card, confirm their address and cast a ballot.