Posts by Angus Robertson
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Ben: have tasted the spoons and report no difference.
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Ben: human taste sensitivity does vary a lot.
Edit: we would need more data sets, anyone else tried Ben's experiment?
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On the boycott/bombshell. Equity has tried with a number of production companies to negotiate the terms and conditions for performers. They have all resisted with extrememly agressive responses. Tried to talk to the Hobbit as well. Turns out the Hobbit was no different except we had an amazing display of international solidarity - performers around the world that enjoy union representation and negotiations (Warners are in a 6 week negotiation with SAG as we speak), extended their solidarity to NZ performers to enjoy the same.
Turns out the standard "no different" opening to all Equity negotiations is to ask for an international boycott of New Zealand made productions. (Wonder why Equity provokes "extremely aggressive responses" from NZ production companies.) Except with the Hobbit Equity achieved exactly what they requested - an international boycott.
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But real arguments in the real world aren't like that. Quite apart from being rather more robust than a courtroom or a dinner party, on any serious dispute they stem not from faulty reasoning (which two rational individuals could uncover and correct), but from incompatible axioms (which are, by definition, not amenable to rational argument, otherwise they wouldn't be axioms). And when that happens, you really have nothing to say to each other, so you might as well call a cunt a cunt...
...and commence firing.
Or we could talk about it some more, maybe so called axioms will diffuse over time.
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To be fair, John Key didn't want to congratulate the Nobel Peace Prize winner as he hadn't been briefed. Which is fair enough- you never know what kind of scoundrel this person might be.
Will Liu Xiaobo increase the rate which the CIA carries out bombing runs against Pakistani villagers? Will Liu Xiaobo maintain a military detention centre with prisoners in legal limbo? Will Liu Xiaobo sell $billions worth of advanced weapon systems into the world's hotspots?
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Picking up what Gio said about the unsatisfactory notion of a marketplace of ideas, the offerings we currently enjoy are already arbitrarily limited and homogeneous.
You might enjoy the internet, it is somewhat less limited.
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Why pray tell are MEAA going after our good union man Sir Peter Jackson and not after MGM? Looks like its because they are a bunch of bully boy Aussie pricks who feel it is much safer to pick on one guy.
Say there was a newspaper somewhere with its warehouse represented by the MEAA and the printing by EPMU. Warehouse gets pissed off with the better terms the printers have for themselves, so the MEAA march up to the head printer and tell her to divert money from her back pocket or they'll make her job impossible.
Now as far as i can tell that is not how a real union would operate, but apparently i am mistaken.
Irishbill at The Standard writes up glowing reports on how the MEAA operates. Irishbill at The Standard will fisk every statement that printer says. Irishbill at The Standard will call her a liar when she says she doesn't set the budgets and how she is totally so greedy for not reaching into her own pocket. Irishbill at The Standard will call her a bully.
Was going to post this on The Standard, but they don't like criticism. -
Because we assume the Maori Party wouldn't get 22,000+ party votes in the general electorates?
When correcting for any disparity caused by the smaller size of the Maori electorates, bringing in more voters in equivalent proportions to how the electorates did vote, I assumed you were going to be bringing them in from the general roll electorates. Mostly I assumed this because these voters actually exist, they are real.
I suspect however that you were suggesting about 100,000 more Maori voters would magically pop into existance so the Maori Party gets 30,000 more votes. That is simply making shit up.
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IIRC, he's a member of three unions in the United States: The Directors, Writers and Producers Guilds.
He might be good for some union backing then.
Go to his union(s), make a complaint that he is being unfairly targeted for exploitation by a gang of thieving Aussie bastards called the MEAA. Perhaps having all Directors, Writers and Producers notify the world they shall withdraw their labour from projects involving an MEAA member in the near future might be a good retaliation.
A - it might work
&
B - I'd really love to see the union paid writers at The Standard up in arms against the actions of a global union of writers.
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Because we assume the Maori Party wouldn't get 22,000+ party votes in the general electorates?
You appear to be saying so by...
...suggesting the larger cause of overhang is an unequal distribution of voters between electorates.
To state that causation is due to unequal distribution of voters, whilst basing your calculations on a tally derived by equally distributing voters from all the electorates is not going to be valid.
33,807 people were the Maori Party vote in the smaller and unequal Maori seats. 55,980 people were the Maori Party vote in the whole of NZ, an electorate that is definitely not small or unequal.