Posts by Angus Robertson
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Hard News: Gaying Out, in reply to Matthew Poole,
It's what being a conservative is all about.
If he was a conservative he'd have opinions, he doesn't.
He is aiming for the centrist niche. Some competence, affability and an aspiration to do nothing more than reflect projected attributes from the widest possible cross section.
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...so much as he's just not a leader with strong convictions.
Its a big part of his appeal.
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Hard News: Gaying Out, in reply to Idiot Savant,
Tough shit to them. We have a law, and that law says "you can't discriminate - on race, gender, religion, __or__sexuality". Being religious does not give people an exception to that law, and nor should it. If churches want to disobey that law, then they will face the consequences, just like any other racist or bigoted business.
I agree that permitting gay marriage is the correct thing to do, but that still does not give our dominant culture permission to enforce our wishes on any weaker culture. Being correct is not enough.
You want to ban mosques from marrying people?
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Hard News: Gaying Out, in reply to Idiot Savant,
Its not about doctrine and practice, its about the provision of goods and services. Saying "bigot celebrants can refuse to marry gay people" is the same as saying "bigot accountants can refuse to do taxes for gay people", or "bigot landlords can refuse to rent houses to gay people".
They aren't going to be selling a state marriage. They will be selling a religious practice including religious marriage.
I've blogged about this here, and the legal case is pretty clear cut. Acting as a marriage celebrant is providing a service. Discrimination in the provision of goods and services is outlawe dby the Human Rights Act. So a celebrant couldn't refuse to marry a gay couple. Neither could a religious body refuse to provide a venue which was otherwise made available to members of the public or their congregations for such functions.
Legally the state can do whatever it pleases, but religions don't always take well being told what to do - like they have some sort of religious objection to it. States when they do try to tell religions how to conduct their affairs can run into severe blowback.
(In practice, I expect this not to come up. After all, who wants to be married by a celebrant who doesn't want to marry them. But there's an important principle here, and when the day comes, I'll be hounding bigots off the celebrant rolls).
Its nice to have principles, but...
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Combine this comment with the earlier comment that he'd resign if National lost the election. It's increasingly clear that Key doesn't see himself in politics for much longer.
This sort of reluctant leader schtick polls real well among the Right. There are quite a few GOP representatives who owe long careers to their promising to have short ones.
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Muse: TV Review: Good Gods Almighty!, in reply to Amy Gale,
Outside of American Gods, I can't think of another pop culture appearance of the Norse pantheon off the top of my head.
They are referenced in a lot of video games.
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Talk about a fracas that has no point....
Thailand is facing massive internal dissent and a traditional remedy for that is to cook up an external enemy. Also if Thaksin is involved with the Cambodian regime, a fighting war makes the red shirts look "un-Thai".
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There are problems with any term that includes the word ‘west’ simply because of the historic baggage.
They've got economic influence coming from growing China, cultural headings from Bollywood and a Japanese tech base of the pervasive mobile phone.
Are they looking West?
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Hard News: "Orderly transition" in #Egypt, in reply to Dismal Soyanz,
Modernised?
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Hard News: "Orderly transition" in #Egypt, in reply to BenWilson,
But again, I think that America is still a long term loser running such a strategy, and would actually be better off in a more peaceful, and more democratic world, as would everyone else.
Thats pretty much why I see them as running this strategy now.
They don't specialise in selling weapons that poor people can buy, what they mostly do sell is over specced uber technified military hardware. They sell debt and banking services, products which sell best when customers have money. And they do not project force against "economic" rivals, they do project force against "ideological" rivals and/or people who are too poor to matter.
They're cold hearted capitalists who figure that a smattering of democracy, freedom and peace are good for business.
But the particular elites that run the place don't see things the same way.
During the cold war i'd agree with that, but not nowadays. The old elite of military and industry is being supplanted by bankers, marketeers and technologists. The new elite wants to give everybody the dream of consuming as much branded product as the could possibly want and more.
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