Posts by HenryB
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Table matters
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Isaac Freeman,
“We’re the party of freedom, equality and fair play” is saying something they have to reckon with.
Nicely said.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Damian Christie,
Why did Winston get in?
A good point (assuming that the question is rhetorical). Yes, there is a strong `leadership' factor at work in Winston's following i.e. voting for the person as well as the policy platform.
Putting the Greens/Labour together gives something close to 40% of the electorate who are immune to JK's charms.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Damian Christie,
We had a nationwide poll a couple of weeks back with a pretty low margin of error, showed they were up on last time.
It depends on what we mean by `they'. I am uncomfortable with the idea that there has been swing to the right. After all, NAT+ACT+UF have gone from 63 seats to 61. Yes, National did get a higher % than last time - but, then, where were the ACT votes going to go? I realise that JK himself is popular but I think what the nationwide poll showed was that the electorate votes on more than the popularity of the leader.
Does this mean that the choice between the two David's doesn't matter in terms of the next election? I think it does but not in terms of public popularity - though that would be nice. What one needs is someone who can bring the caucus together to work towards (a) articulating Labour Policy more clearly and cogently in the next 3 years and (b) who can get the caucus to be more forceful in showing the weaknesses of the governments policies.
It has been suggested that Goff carried too much baggage from the past to be good at these tasks in the last 3 years. On the other hand, I really don't know which of the two David's would be better at them either. It would seem that some have knowledge about DC which would suggest that he'd not be good at these tasks. And the existence of an ABC group is troubling.
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Hard News: Democracy Night, in reply to Ben Austin,
Yes. In 1993 the vote for MMP was 54%.
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National received 5,240 more votes than in 2008
National+ACT+UF received 63,421 votes less than in 2008.Labour received 171,944 less votes than in 2008
Labour+Greens+NZF received 40,000 votes less than in 2008. -
OnPoint: Spending "Cap" is Fiscal Anorexia, in reply to HenryB,
Perhaps it will run one on the merits of fiscal caps soon.
Well it did write one on fiscal caps this morning: Saturday (`Government cannnot be reduced to a formula' - can't find it on the online edition). At least it wasn't a simple echo of the Herald's. In spite of a deeply tendetious reading of the economic management of the last two governments, at least it comes out against the cap arguing that it is `a sop to ideologues', that `it militates against good government, as well as bad' and, of course, that - in the end - it is unenforceable.
It still managed to make me choke on my breakfast cereal with this: `By increasing annual expediture by almost $4 billion in real terms, Mr Key's government has kept the economy ticking over and shielded the vulnerable form the worst effects of the GFC'... whilst, in the same breath almost, criticising Labour for giving `Welfare for families with six-figure incomes'. I would have thought that what Key's government gave in the way of tax cuts for the wealthy far outweighed any monies some families in the bracket referred to might have got from WFF.
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OnPoint: Spending "Cap" is Fiscal Anorexia, in reply to Sacha,
Much like the endgame for ‘national standards’ is now on the table as directing funding according to league tables to the better-off schools out of the same fixed budget.
Exactly.... and when I heard this I could hardly believe it. I thought all the (self-serving) rhetoric around `national standards' was to identify the children who were having problems so that more resources could be directed towards them, not less.
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OnPoint: Spending "Cap" is Fiscal Anorexia, in reply to Kumara Republic,
State schools still `stream' i.e. put cherries, oranges and apples into different boxes: a daughter of mine is about to take on next year a class of Year 9s with a reading age of 6. That said, streaming does mean that these children still engage, in a larger context, with those who are not streamed. This is also true of private schools - but the problem with the latter is the larger context only provides the cherry-picked children, other than other cherries, children with one common denominator - wealth. From the POV of the cherry this is not really a problem but it sure as heck is a great engine for reproducing all the inequalities that we so rail against.
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Hard News: Democracy Night, in reply to martinb,
+1 in spades (or should that be Hearts?)