Posts by Bart Janssen
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Up Front: What if We Held an Election…, in reply to Sacha,
Might even vote for it.
Already my evil empire is growing.
Mwa ha ha ha!
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Hard News: Democracy Night, in reply to John Armstrong,
Describing MMP as the system the Germans put in place after Hitler and …
dun
dun
dun
They haven’t had a majority (stable) government since.Pity the journalist (snort) didn’t point out that Germany is one of the richest countries in the world and there might be some connection.
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Up Front: What if We Held an Election…, in reply to linger,
No but it might stop people going to listen to Winston.
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Heh John Key just Godwin’d himself on breakfast TV :).
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Up Front: What if We Held an Election…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Now there's an idea - make them campaign in the nude.
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Up Front: What if We Held an Election…, in reply to Islander,
NO party had what I would call a good support system for the arts. They concentrate on bloody systems & bureaucracies instead of supporting actual workers in the many glowing fields
I'd say exactly the same about science funding in NZ.
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Up Front: What if We Held an Election…, in reply to Islander,
which makes it trebly sad that so many of us felt so indifferent – or fundamentally disenfranchised – that we just didnt bother to go vote-
I think it was indifference. "Why bother. It's just middle aged white men in suits* making decisions for us. We can't stop them doing it at work/at the bank/at the stock exchange, so how can we stop them doing it in parliament."
My friend wrote on facebook that she was so glad she could vote and be confident her vote was counted when so few people on the planet can be sure of that.
I think though that one issue is that we don't have enough political parties in New Zealand (because of the stupid 5% rule). The result is many people don't feel there is a party that represents them and their views. Certainly none of the parties fit my views.
Um too serious for this thread surely.
*Which of course is not the truth.
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Up Front: What if We Held an Election…, in reply to Emma Hart,
pointing at security cameras and obviously plotting
Did you say "blah blah blah nuclear bomb"
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Up Front: What if We Held an Election…, in reply to Emma Hart,
you don't expect all the voters to change their behaviour
I love it when people tell me that instead of inventing a whole new technological paradigm we should just change people's behavior. To which my response is "you go try that and we'll see who is more successful"
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Hard News: Democracy Night, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
But there are many other instances of governments around the world using taxes to the detriment of civilisation.
But that is a problem with who is spending the taxes and not with taxation itself.
For what it's worth my view on taxes is as follows.
If I could afford a personal physician I would interview and hire one - but I can't.
If 5 of my friends an I could pay for a personal physician between us we'd probably interview and hire one - but we can't.
But between 50 or so of us we can hire a personal physician so we all pitch in together and do that...
But I need an orthopedic surgeon - so I now need to find another 300 friends to group together and hire one...In the end it just seems more sensible to get everyone to pitch in and hire a whole health system.
The difficulty comes in two places for me.
First, defining things we should pitch in together and contribute as a group towards. Some things are easy, education, health care, fire dept etc. Some are harder.
Second, should individuals be allowed to opt out? My personal answer is no.The kicker for me is when you look around the world at high and low taxation societies, I much prefer the societies that are high taxation and high service versus those that are low taxation.
For me, that is the thing that I think should define Labour. The idea that having the government use (high) taxes for the benefit of New Zealand is the way we want our society to progress. Because when you look around the world that approach achieves the kind of goals I think New Zealand actually wants.