Posts by Rich of Observationz
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Legal Beagle: Referendum Fact Check 4:…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
He was a very complex character and shouldn't really be judged by the standards of the 21st century. ( I doubt many politicians of that era would show up well on that basis. Lloyd George was seen by the Nazis as a potential quisling, practically all labour movements had a clear racist bent, Asquith opposed universal suffrage, Attlee started work to make an atom bomb, etc).
-
What is wrong with personal vanity parties?
If a politician is a member of a real political party, then if they want their ideas enacted, they need to persuade caucus (and support parties) of their validity. If they want to be a minister, they need to convince the leader/caucus of their personal merit.
If they're a one-man-band, they can often get these things just by turning up and agreeing to confidence and supply.
So a vanity candidate gets super-representation in return for a small number of votes concentrated in one place - this contrasts with the influence a real party gets with hundreds of thousands of votes from all over the nation.
-
Winston Peter's isn't so much an argument for ending MMP as for introducing an upper voting age limit.
-
I think it should be a threshold of the quota needed to win two list seats, so that in order to get MPs, a party would need enough support to be an actual movement (albeit small) rather than a personal vanity party.
-
Legal Beagle: Election Fact Check #3: It…, in reply to Jeremy Andrew,
I wonder if one could
chooses to make his or her home by reason of family or personal relations
without actually physically living in a place, like your father.
He does after all have a BORA right to vote, so a court would need to consider how the Electoral Act could be interpreted to not disenfranchise itinerants.
-
I wonder how much focus leading Labour people are giving to the election that matters (to them) - the leadership election in December?
-
We have surfeit of cheese. Meat Loaf is touring NZ.
-
it’s capitalism that gave us the computers we have the free time to type on, and all the toys that make our lives easier
Because its all about the toyz…
I wouldn’t want to relitigate this, preferring that people just watch history unfurl.
However, I’d just point out that the good stuff peaked at some point in the early 80’s. As a young tech in 1988, my grateful employer flew me around business class and furnished me with a brand new, very whizzy company car. I don’t think any geeks in their 20’s receive those sort of things nowadays – and the majority of other middle class jobs are in similar decline.
Globalisation and resource exhaustion are rapidly eating away that cushion of mass affluence that enabled capitalism to dodge the Marxian bullet.
-
properly discloses its fees and investment strategy
And doesn't for instance, recycle those fees into the fund to inflate the valuation, as Hujlich has been charged with. I'm amazed that Brash and Banks have avoided prosecution on that - as directors they should be liable, but I guess Key doesn't want to see his coalition partners go down.
-
The idea of compulsory savings is predicated on the concept that money placed on the stock markets today, or even in a bank, will be around and able to purchase things in 30, 40 or 50 years time. I'm not convinced that's reasonable - aren't we just being forced to prop up global corporate capitalism by this policy?