Posts by Sam F
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"I am strongly on the side of people whose lives have been dislocated, not the hand-wringing academics who frankly are contributing nothing to the recovery effort."
Could almost have been taken straight from today's Kiwiblog comments thread on the story (barring the lack of profanity).
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Hey, someone's got to take up the fight against "the middle class wankfest of the blogsphere", I guess...?
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Nice, Rich...
And it goes on - DPF this time giving a very guarded thumbs up to Annalucia Vermunt and Penny Bright, all at the expense of Len Brown. How very odd.
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You can get that at the supermarket these days? Awesome!
I've always been thankful for the name of that salad, it produces such fantastic alternative spellings.
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Compulsory link to the Dim-Post's take on all this:
At this stage in the election cycle an opposition party needs (a) a vision and (b) a major wedge policy wedded to the vision. For National under John Key it was economic reform wedded to tax cuts, for Don Brash it was white supremacy wedded to abolition of the Maori seats and scrapping the Closing the Gaps policies.
Labour’s vision is ‘for the many not the few’. Okay. I don’t think anyone who isn’t a politics junky knows that and its more of a slogan than a vision, but that’s what they’ve gone with. What’s their big policy star they’ve hitched their wagon to? Slightly cheaper beetroots.
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Interested parties may want to join Messrs Boscawen and Hide in Auckland tonight, for an evening of dark mutterings about the new foreshore and seabed legislation.
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We all know that "affordable housing" when said by the Suburbistani tribe is really a trojan horse for McMansions developers, for the simple fact that they'll have the most to profit from it.
Further to this: over at Kiwiblog, Owen McShane is not happy that the Charities Commission doesn't regard gutting the RMA as a legitimate charitable purpose.
But it was all about housing affordability all along! Won't someone think of the children?
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DPF getting merrily stuck in to Len Brown again.
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Don't really have the heart to seek it out online, but today's Herald carries a full-page ad from Family First ranking the Auckland mayoral candidates on a range of 'family friendly policies'.
Results are presented via the highly technical means of smiley "yes"/ frowning "no" / neutral "not sure" emoticons.
The policies pushed for are pretty much the usual from McCroskie et al - clamping down on street prostitution, banning Boobs on Bikes, the Erotica Expo and anything even vaguely of that sort, pre-vetted G-rated billboards only, and that sort of thing. (Others actually seem halfway reasonable to me, in fact, but we'll get to that.)
Overall it seems Simon Prast comes out with the most frowny faces. Banks, Brown and Colin Craig are roughly line-ball with an equal spread of ratings. Note however that there are no instances where Brown gets a smily face but Banks does not - it would seem he's the pick of the two front-runners for the McCroskie brand of 'family friendliness'.
Banks is down as supporting bylaws to mandate G-rated public billboards and for restrictions on brothels in residential areas or near schools, playgrounds or shopping areas - Brown is rated 'not sure' on these.
Banks is also 'not sure' on whether he would ban Boobs on Bikes and R-rated events on council property - Brown has said 'no' to such bans, and earns two of Bob McCroskie's frowny faces.
All candidates except Simon Prast are apparently in favour of introducing bylaws to ban street prostitution. Again, all candidates except Prast have apparently said they will restrict alcohol outlets in residential areas and limit trading hours.
There's a policy on "Affordable Housing", which asks if candidates will amend zoning to unlock more land for building to bring house prices down for first-home buyers. (In other words - suburbia continuing out into the wops forever.) All candidates showed as neutral on this particular 'family friendly' policy, except for Colin Craig who I believe is/was a property developer by trade. How odd.
Overall, the person who seems to come out of it best for the wowser crowd is apparently Andrew Williams - except for that ridiculous 'affordable zoning' question, he gets the nod for their full shopping list of policies. Make of that what thou wilst.
From my POV, a moment of brightness to end, though: all candidates apparently support a reducing/sinking lid policy on pokie machines (except for Craig and Prast, who are neutral), and all except Simon Prast (neutral again) have said they will lobby the government for greater regulation of loan sharks especially in lower socio-economic areas.
Well, those are what I thought were the key points anyway - if, like me, a thumbs down from Family First almost always means a definite thumbs up from you, it's interesting information to have...
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Will it make a blind bit of difference?
Sure it will - all those hits from posting and reading of comments will go towards nzherald.co.nz's stats, enhancing the site's attractiveness to advertisers, and thus Garth's position is further cemented...