Posts by Rich of Observationz
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But since, unlike in Britain, we have no alternatives
What he said.
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Sometimes people just dig themselves a hole.
An example of that would be the actions of certain members of the press gallery in hyping Shane Jones as a potential Labour leader. He had negligible support, a fact which they surely must have known, but they persisted in running the line that he was a contender. This was a story which had a predictable endpoint - Jones coming a poor last with 15% of the vote.
If people behave like that in any profession, they'll attract criticism. It's like a shoe shop whose products fall apart in the first shower of rain.
Question is, does the structure of the industry actually require that journalists produce such tendentiousness in order to enjoy career success?
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Capture: Laneway 2014 + Lorde, in reply to Heather Gaye,
If she didn't swear, she'd be like a Grange Hill character:
Last frame of the below: "We're the only kids in England who don't say fuck"
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Hard News: All John's Friends, in reply to BenWilson,
Best bet would be for Labour and Greens to withdraw their nominations (at 11am on the morning they are due, leaving the National cndidate on the ballot paper). If they'd done that in 2011 it could have given the seat to Paul Goldsmith.
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Hard News: Crashing the party before it starts, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Maybe he saw the amount of leverage ACT gets with negligible popular support.
I wonder whether if Mega gets to over 1%, Labour might gift them a seat. Then he'll have an MP in place and be able to make a few minor demands (file lockers excluded from scope of criminal copyright would suffice, as that would make him unextraditable and allow his business to prosper in reasonable safety).
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Hard News: Crashing the party before it starts, in reply to Tristan,
Very good point. The EC is (maybe, they haven't released any reasoning for their position) taking a maximalist approach that unless a political meeting is kept to a minimum standard of dullness, it's considered to be an orgy of corruption.
(Even though such corruption isn't even possible. When "treating" was first proscribed, candidates could (and did) have an open bar next to the hustings, and were able to ply the voters with beer/gin/laudanum and observe them voting in the desired fashion. Dotcom would have had no idea whether his party attendees stay in bed or vote for another party on election day).
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Hard News: Crashing the party before it starts, in reply to Keir Leslie,
But when you look at an ad supported web page, the deal is that you get free information/entertainment/whatever in return for your eyeballs on the ad.
How's that different to a sponsored WiFi service?
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Has a political party ever bought banner ads on a website in NZ? I don't recall ever seeing it, but is that because it could be illegal or is just thought not to work?
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To be an illegal practice, there has to be an element of corruption.
Traditional party rallies are seen as legal, because the purpose is to promote the party and its policies through a fun event.
Bribery or treating would seem to require some sort of explicit or tacit understanding that services are being provided in return for a person's vote. I guess this can fall short of swapping a photocopy of a postal ballot for a manila envelope stuffed with cash, but there must be some sort of actual or attempted corrupt bargain, surely?
It's hard not to think that shere's a subjective standard being applied here: "legitimate" established parties are allowed fund raising rallies, while a new single issue party run by an indicted "Bond villain" doesn't get cut that slack?
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Hard News: Crashing the party before it starts, in reply to Chris Waugh,
The clause in question is almost identical to English law dating from the early 19th Century. The UK doesn't really have "election year" - elections are even more at the whim of the PM than here and have been held anything from six months to 4.5 years after the last one (with a hard limit of 5 years).