Posts by tussock
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Hard News: Five further thoughts, in reply to Russell Brown,
particularly through Cunliffe's hapless grasp of the details, it created exactly the uncertainty the voters didn't want.
That's the bullshit lies Key told right at the end of the second debate. Cunliffe made the mistake of thinking Key might be telling the truth, that the Nats had found some error in the press papers. It was just a tissue of lies, and the media ran with it like usual, ignoring that Key had lied like usual, and then hammering away at Cunliffe for a while just for kicks.
NB: Explaining is losing. Key always new the lie would cost less than the explanation of why it was wrong.
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Hard News: Five further thoughts, in reply to Joe Wylie,
Given the numbers who voted candidate Labour, party National, I’m not even sure what you mean by National voters.
It's MMP. I'm not even sure why anyone cares who wins anything other than the minor party toeholds. It's the party vote, eh.
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Hard News: Five further thoughts, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
what I'm hearing is that Kelvin Davis just got
what Mana said, before the election, is a huge sum of money and people got dumped on the wider region two days out from the polls, busses and signs and radio and newspaper adds, after Mana had spent theirs and couldn't respond. That it came from all of New Zealand First, National, and Labour. Every single bit of it focused on killing the Mana party with bullshit attack slogans that they had no chance to respond to.
They could have rolled most MPs in the country with an attack like that. Could've turfed out Dunne easily. A single word from National would take out ACT. Instead, they killed the little party on the left. In a literal massive conspiracy across party lines.
And thus, the real left gets some money for a change and is again denied a foothold and it's voice. Dirty Politics ain't just National. -
Hard News: Five further thoughts, in reply to Dylan Reeve,
I'm not convinced the foreignness is a *huge* part of it...
Oh, speaking as someone who's been seen as a foreigner in Nuziland, despite being born here, it's all about the foreignness. This country is incredibly hidebound and inward looking, and readily falls to open hatred of outsiders.
That's more true south of the Bombay Hills, where Aucklanders are also seen as a bit foreign. And yes, that can get really ugly in a hurry too. When Winston talks about "the Chinese" he really doesn't mean people born here. Those people who tick "New Zealander" on the census are not kidding, they are instead 'not one of those fucking Europeans'.
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Hard News: Five further thoughts, in reply to barnaclebarnes,
What may be better is to work on policies where there is at least some alignment or some willingness to accept a path that aligns.
That's what the Greens have been doing for 24 years, including as part of the Alliance in '93 and '96. Consensus building, policy by policy. It's slow, they'd rather be in government, but it is what it is.
They sit in their little idealistic space in the liberal left where people have the time and energy to care about trees, attracting what vote they can, and they write policies for government which benefit their core, which are often taken up due to being so popular.
It helps when National isn't in, though. Because the National party doesn't really like anything about the Greens policy, unless the returns on investment are crazy high and that investment can be gamed by the rich.
But they still get some policies in through National governments, and will this time too.
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Hard News: Five further thoughts, in reply to mark taslov,
Random.
"Well, yes, but we're doing alright."
See, these things you think are important, a bunch of people don't. They just want a carrot. National's message was there are enough carrots, thank you, we've got ours, and we don't particularly care about what you've got, so long as you don't take any of ours away.
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Hard News: The sole party of government, in reply to Richard Grevers,
That isn't simply unfit to be a minister, but unfit to be an MP, and should lead to criminal charges.
There's truth in that Labour, when attacking female MPs from across the floor, need to let their female MPs do that, rather than one of their notorious misogynist males. Because even if he does it cleanly, what a lot of people are going to see is that guy hanging shit on a woman, again.
We do, after all, have a very large population of old folk who believe very strongly in manners and shit, and they all vote.
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Hard News: The sole party of government, in reply to Paul Campbell,
I think the "internet voting will raise turnout" idea assumes that
assumes that people will be stupid enough to let a few computer hackers decide the election results. It is completely insane. Not to mention the million people in the US with top secret clearance who just saw who you voted for and had to think about if they really liked that, and if it could be used against you.
People aren't turning out because there's no one they want to vote for and no one they want to vote against. It's just that fucking simple.
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Legal Beagle: Election 2014: The Special…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Our scrutineer system is all superb, it's basically the best in the world, and things like that do get tried on and people just get nailed. There's a bunch of old folk and others being looked after at home with poor mobility get voting papers taken to them by family. Everyone takes and compares notes, anything dodgy gets checked up on. There's phone calls to check, police visit people to check, people get caught. In smaller booths, the people taking votes mostly know everyone.
There is not a mysterious fifty thousand fake votes. Like nicking voter cards, the real person still votes 77% of the time or more, so you get caught when they compare the books, and the real person gets found to ask which vote was theirs. You can't do it, it doesn't work. Our system is superb.
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Legal Beagle: Election 2014: The Special…, in reply to Tim Michie,
The Māori electorates are all marked as 0 specials, because special votes are deposited in a box in the general electorate place and only sorted out to their proper electorates later. They overlap, so you can't count which is which yet.
Remember, specials is for where they're cast, not where they're counted.