Posts by BenWilson
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There is, and has been for a long time, a very simple stratagem for Labour to deal with all of this, which is to split into 2 parties, one that contests electorates, formed probably from old guard, and one which contests directly and pretty much only for the party vote. They could openly support each other. Even if only a small breakaway group did this, it would help a lot. Following the tradition set up by Anderton, they could call themselves "Old Labour". People would be encouraged in any electorate with an Old Labour candidate to split their vote between Old Labour and Labour. Then they could actually benefit from strongly contesting both votes. Currently, all they achieved was shrinking the political left, giving the Nats their outright majority.
It's a thought, anyway.
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Speaker: Compulsory voting and election turnout, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
Maybe that means the UN worker should be able to vote, but until that time, the military exemption makes sense.
The military being able to vote makes sense to me. What doesn't make sense is that other absentees can't. The struggle to get the vote took millennia, and I'm always amazed at how fast people are to think taking it away is all good. It's a profound and fundamental human right, in my opinion, not immediately extinguished by the passage of an absence from our extremely remote islands.
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Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to giovanni tiso,
What I really don’t get is the outrage. Cunliffe is quite entitled to run again.
Exactly. It even seems like the right thing to do, to me. Then Robertson, or whoever, gets to actually beat someone. Or maybe, the party does actually soberly throw its hat in with Cunliffe again. It's not an impossible idea, even if it has casualties. It is certainly going to be of great interest to see who does actually support it, and to hear their reasons.
Furthermore, it IS happening. There's really no point carrying on about it.
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Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to Dismal Soyanz,
Isn’t the whole point of attack politics some attempt to distance the political machinery from the attack dog? Given that the link has been clearly made, National should be running a mile from him. Anyone who allows themselves to be tainted by association with Slater will face considerable derision and criticism, the Nats feeling bullet-proof now notwithstanding.
This is my thinking. Key survived revelations of his association with Slater, but I doubt that pushing it would seem like a good idea. Especially if Slater starts on some homophobic crusade. My pick is that if Robertson did get chosen, then Key would either tell Slater to pull his head in, or he would distance himself from Slater as much as possible. And that might be very hard to pull off, because I don't think Slater would take kindly to being shoved away. Key is actually stuck with the guy now, and we've only seen the beginning of how toxic that could prove for National. I'd think they'll just buy Slater's silence on that attack line. Might not even be very expensive.
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Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to Bart Janssen,
It is the reason scientists insist on as unbiased a data collection system as possible. It is why I think any decisions made at this point, without proper data analysis by Labour, is unbelievably moronic.
That's a little harsh. Do they have some analysis juggernaut on hand for that? What kind of analysis are you talking about, and how long should it take, how much should it cost?
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Cunliffe seems to have every right to throw his hat in again - then at least it's not his choice, but the party's, whatever that means. Both he and Robertson seem like OK choices. I'd say that people have simply hardened their hearts to Cunliffe, though, and it's a big uphill fight from here. For whatever reason, he rubs people the wrong way. Why over-analyze it?
Robertson's sexuality doesn't really seem to me like the issue that could break the left. I don't think that even the center right is as homophobic as that. The extreme right, sure, but they're lost, and fuck them, I say. It could actually sit there as the one thing that nobody can slag off. It's the one thing that any candidate will actually gain sympathy for, when ruthlessly attacked over it. It corners the bigots and begs them to shine the light on themselves. I reckon it's far more likely that it will just never be mentioned by political opponents. Then the only people it will affect will be through their own personal convictions, and anyone that strongly convinced is a pretty tenuous vote to be courting. Robertson would do well to make no issue of it himself either, treat it as a private matter, which it is. I think people would soon be judging him on the quality of his performance as a leader much more than anything else. If he's good, he could pull it out of the bag. If nothing else, instead of coming across as "smarmy with something to hide" he's "open, honest and professional". That's as well-liked a combination in this country as the other is disliked.
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Speaker: Compulsory voting and election turnout, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
I struggle to imagine how a quarter of the population have actual philosophical objections to voting. But then I struggle to imagine many things that turn out to be true…
I don't struggle to imagine it. It could be true, or it could be false, and nobody knows. I'd like to know the truth, and it is knowable through compulsory participation. When it's voluntary it's about as accurate as the census would be if people could opt out.
The problem is that our distributed, paper-based system is the result of much experimentation and experience over a long period
Yes, and also I think that if new technology is to become part of our democratic process, it should be in order to add functionality, rather than just for efficiency purposes. That's one of my greatest personal annoyances with my own profession, that it's so often sold on efficiency at replicating something that humans do, rather than on doing what it's actually good at, which is usually something quite different. It's always about chopping humans out of the loop, rather than adding something real and useful in. Technology has so much more to offer our political process than the triannual popularity contest we invest so much of our belief in.
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Speaker: Compulsory voting and election turnout, in reply to DaiKiwi,
Not brilliant though, and not evidence of compulsory voting being a cure-all.
It's not meant to be a cure-all, it's meant to address a problem in a practical way, rather than calling for a whole lot of things that might indirectly address falling participation in far less bipartisan and far more expensive ways. We can't know what the Australian turn out might be like if it wasn't compulsory - maybe it would be way worse than NZ's - and our historical figures were also the envy of the world. I'd be pretty stoked if we got 86%, along with 6-7% spoiled as a different figure to the further 7-8% who don't enroll.
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Hard News: A message from The Fabians, in reply to Russell Brown,
Then there's the "Left" microparsing every sentence uttered by whatever guy they don't like and writing splenetic tweets about it. I'm feeling unfulfilled.
LOL. Yup, we should give up this hair of the dog media feast. Labour have now got 3 years to get their shit together. It's not going to all be sorted out by us over the next few days.
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Speaker: Compulsory voting and election turnout, in reply to stephen clover,
What is that word?
Well clearly he meant "not democracy", manifested however that is chosen. He was over-egging it, and I'm quoting it now because it's a beautiful example of how hypocritical a Machiavellian operator like him can be, as a prime mover of scare campaigns against our current opposition.
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