Posts by Bart Janssen
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Hard News: Democracy Night, in reply to BenWilson,
+1
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How about
Taxation works
There are lots of ways to pay for a civilised society ... but of all of them taxation works. -
Up Front: What if We Held an Election…, in reply to Lilith __,
“Port Hills”
If it wasn't so unsubtle I'd be voting for that as Emma's next ink.
And yes Hager's analysis is interesting. We don't quite have the minority government I'd like to see - where compromise and cooperation between parties is required for legislation to pass. But it is close. His analysis of Key's future is less compelling and feel too much like wishful thinking for me to be convinced. However, we don't need to guess the experiment is already in motion and the results will be obvious in a year or so.
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Hard News: Democracy Night, in reply to Islander,
I am NOT convinced that “good” housing supercedes a good health care system
I tend to agree with you Islander that health is more important than housing.
The point I'd make is that sometimes the best solution for health is better and more housing. For the south Auckland DHB, the numbers showed that the biggest increase in the health of the people in the community came from the DHB building more (better) houses than from hiring more doctors.
It's a nice example of knowing the right thing to do only after you examine the problem completely. It wasn't an obvious solution, that would have been buying equipment, hiring doctors and building more hospitals. But there is no doubt that the best way to improve health in that community was to build houses.
There were other parts to the problem such as working with the communities so they understood the issues with having too many humans in one house. And also working out the cultural parts to the issue "no we're not trying to break up the families".
However the risk with that kind of analysis and approach is that the more steps removed you are from the direct solution (more doctors) the more assumptions you include. For housing the assumption was that with more houses available the families would spread out rather than simply gathering more families closer. Hence the education part of the concept "this is why we want more houses for you to live in...".
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Hard News: Democracy Night, in reply to HenryB,
On tv3 firstline
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Aren't we too early to be on to Emma's ... er ... Port Hills
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Up Front: What if We Held an Election…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
The Birthday Suit Party
All debates in the chamber must be in the nude, not hidden clauses.
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Up Front: What if We Held an Election…, in reply to Richard Aston,
a man of wide knowledge
She certainly is.
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Up Front: What if We Held an Election…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
The Birthday Suit
It is after all the only suit I own.
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Up Front: What if We Held an Election…, in reply to Sacha,
I'd love to hear what your perfect party would look like.
No, wait ... you want to know what my policies are before you vote for me? Damn you foiled again.