Posts by Tim Darlington
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This type of person who doesn't and isn't ever likely to own a holiday home doesn't like low-level crimes not being investigated when I'm the victim either. The number of people who really don't mind a bunch of pissed wankers trashing their place would not be a large one, I expect. I can appreciate the principle that this kind of carry-on shouldn't be classed as burglary, but the schadenfreude of watching one of these misanthropes facing that charge would be a sore temptation...
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There were some weird notes, not least Espiner’s implication that it was only Labour’s “middle-class intellectuals” who had an issue with Jones’ use of a ministerial credit card to pay for porn in 2010.
Even if we were to grant him that one (in a fit of wild generosity, perhaps), it's certainly not just Labour's middle-class intellectuals who'd have an issue with a Leader of the party having been implicated in a highly dodgy immigration scandal. If this weren't someone else's blog I'd have an appropriate word for it.
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the banality of politicians who want to be seen as our moral protectors.
Given that politicians generally seem to have a moral compass more appropriate to members of the mustelid family than to homo sapiens, you have to wonder what credibility they have to be our moral protectors.
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If a commercial enterprise is genuinely viable, then it should be able to happen at a profit within our existing legal framework.
Public transport, for example? Seriously, don't go there - there's an endless range of publicly owned or subsidised commercial activity that most of us wouldn't want to do without.
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I think we can rule out basic decency - more likely to be that ACT on Campus put the hard word on him. No enthusiasts for religious conservatism among his enthusiastic electorate helpers, I'll bet.
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There are two problems standing in the way of expansion of Green OA:
1. The current model is largely based on authors signing copyright on their work over to the journal publisher, who has a direct financial interest in NOT undercutting the current model through allowing authors to publish their final draft online at no charge. For that reason, it's a long, slow uphill path getting publisher agreements for open-access archiving.
2. Even if we didn't have PBRF, an author would want you to cite his publication in the prestigious journal that published it, not the X university institutional repository. But with PBRF, an author has to be seriously public-spirited to make the final draft available open-access - it could potentially reduce their citation count according to the measurements that TEC are going to make.
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But a lot of voters – not just self-interested elites – have valid reasons for supporting some limit on parliamentary representation...
That term "valid" bugs me. The only basis for a threshold other than 0.83% of the party vote is Tyranny of the Majority - ie, if lots of people don't like small parties, small parties can be given a hard time getting into Parliament. Democracy allows for tyranny of the majority, but that doesn't make it right.
I think most people would see that it keeps much of the same ‘proportionality’ of MMP though, except that it is fairer.
Fairly obviously not, given that most people voted to keep MMP.
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Labour leader Phil Goff is calling for a law change to stop minor parties "smuggling" in MPs when they're "not entitled".
Only a rep of one of the two main parties would have the gall to refer to minor parties "smuggling in" MPs in numbers proportional to the votes they received. The sooner these geriatric hangovers from FPP days are eradicated by retirement, the better.
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My favourite, that I've seen twice now, is that MMP has given us Hone Harawira - an electorate MP...
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Duncan Garner, would you come over here and read this, please?