Posts by Chris Waugh
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Hard News: The perils of political confidence, in reply to HenryB,
You haven't really clarified things for me at all. I've heard all that ordinary bloke stuff and all the above politics stuff and I just can't see where people get that impression. 'Psychopath' is the impression he gives me. He strikes me as the kind of guy who doesn't feel shame or guilt about what he does so long as it advances his cause. At the very least, one does not achieve the kind of success he has without at least a certain measure of ruthlessness. I don't know what Key's cause is, but I don't believe for a second it's the good of New Zealand.
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Hard News: The perils of political confidence, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Yeah, whatever John, run along now.
I wish he would.
It's been bugging me for a while now, and I just can't for the life of me figure out why John Key is so popular. My mum was here for a month, and so every day we'd watch 3 news (it's the only one that streams fast and reliably enough on my connection to bother with), so I've seen a bit more of Key recently than I otherwise would. I asked my mum why he's so popular, and she said it's cos he's like the guy next door, but the more I see of him the more he strikes me as a psychopath (in the technical sense), and I sure as hell wouldn't want to live next door to a psychopath (in either the technical or the slang sense). So I'm still mystified.
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So if fracking is causing earthquakes in places that don't normally get them, with some of those in Oklahoma recently being about 5ish, do we really want to find out what they'd do in a seismically hyperactive place like NZ?
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This strikes me as being good news. My vote, if I manage to either figure out how or perhaps get over my honesty and just use my parents' address (a house I've never seen except on Google Street View), would be keep and tweak MMP, with my pet tweak (obviously) being "Give expats a party vote but no electorate vote".
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Legal Beagle: Election Fact Check #3: It…, in reply to Paul Campbell,
I wonder if we should do something similar – been living overseas more than X years, you lose you electoral vote but keep the party one (just a suggestion – still trying to figure out if it’s a good idea)
So long as we've got MMP, I think that should be the rule. I am similarly unstuck from any local electorate in NZ, and so don't see how I could, or why I should be allowed to, cast a vote on any local issue, be it electorate MP or city councillor. But as a NZ citizen I do have a stake in the outcome of national elections and therefore would like the luxury of deciding which is the least bad party and casting a vote accordingly.
And to Lucy and Graeme's questions: It has been a long time since I had any place of residence in NZ, and I no longer have any ties of any kind to any such place.
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and have lived here for one or more years.
According to Elections New Zealand:
You cannot enrol if:
• you are a New Zealand citizen who is outside New Zealand and has not been in New Zealand within the last 3 years or
• you are a permanent resident of New Zealand who is outside New Zealand and has not been in New Zealand within the last 12 months.Which would mean that I'm eligible to vote for the first time since 1999 - except that last time I was in NZ I spent a week each in Hamilton and Wellington (based in Kapiti), so how I'd enroll having not lived in any electorate for one month, I don't know...
Anyway, just thought it might be an important clarification for expats (or those of us who are neither diplomats, peacekeepers, or similar such exempted personal and their families).
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Up Front: Casual, Shallow and Meaningless, in reply to BenWilson,
Ben, I like what you're saying and it makes a lot of sense to me. Trouble is, it runs completely counter to my own experience. For one thing, I find learning foreign languages infinitely easier than making small talk in English. I'm quite happy reading newspapers and novels and textbooks and poetry in French and Chinese, but I need to know somebody reasonably well before I can converse easily with them. And I'm pretty sure it took me until university to learn how to converse in English.
In my work life, I learned to deal with my social awkwardness by acting, creating a "social Chris" persona that I put out there to deal with my colleagues. Trouble is I have to do that in two languages, often simultaneously, but it works. It drains me, but it gets the job done. With my students, the teacher-student relationship/divide helps immeasurably.
Outside of work social interactions can be quite fraught. My Chinese-language self reminds me a lot of my 12-year-old English-language self, in that I find it incredibly difficult to take part in conversations. I know I'm supposed to, and in theory I know what is supposed to happen, but there is some mental block that I'm still trying to work through. It drives my wife nuts in the same way and for the same reasons I drove my parents nuts when I was a kid, but there you go, there's me. I can still be very awkward in English, even more so in Chinese. In fact, I'm pretty confident I'd find it easier to learn Mongolian to the point where I could read the Secret History than properly learn this small talk/social interaction thing.
Shared too much, perhaps, but that seems to be a common problem around these parts.
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to BenWilson,
Fair enough, but I do see value in having people elected to represent specific geographical communities at the national level rather than local communities having to rely on the generosity and benevolence of the parties to send representatives their way. I also think the electorates would be better served if the parties - or at least those parties that operate at the national level - stayed out of them.
How one could achieve all that while maintaining the fairest, most democratic system possible I do not know.
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to BenWilson,
If the issue is one of weighting, fine, but I have to ask how do you cut that weighting down to an appropriate size while keeping the electorates to a reasonably coherent geographical area?
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to Russell Brown,
But it would seem odd not to use a vote to which you have a right.
Abstention can be a perfectly valid choice if you have no confidence in any of the candidates. But that's a whole other issue.