Posts by George Darroch
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Lindsay Tisch
Whoops. Embarrassing. I missed Upston, Shanks, Stewart and Roy off the list. Hopefully that's everybody. No doubt, they do represent the bastions of prejudice, and no doubt we can and will do what is in our power to replace them with shining examples of love and justice.
ETA: I just wrote to thank David Bennett. Doing the right thing is often harder when you're near the line, but it's just as worthy.
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It's heartening to see this pull through. Looking at the no votes, the almost entire absence of women is striking. There are a few (Lee, Tolley, Lole Taylor, Tisch), but opposition is almost entirely a men's game. If we had more equality in Parliament, we'd have more equality in Parliament.
The great numbers of proxies also suggests that those who lost the argument against equality last night didn't have the heart to stand up against the thousands watching them.
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I’m with Gio. If we argue it’s better economically or socially for society then all of a sudden we have to prove that point and the opposition can try and disprove it. It’s what the anti-smacking legislation got bogged down in. Do children have the right not to suffer physical abuse? If the answer is yes, evidence that it’s good for them or bad for them or does them no harm is irrelevant. If children have the right to education it doesn’t matter if it’s better for NZ for them to have it, they just get it.
Quite. We don't get gay marriage advocates arguing that their marriages will be good for the economy. (They almost certainly will be). They argue rights and love.
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New Zealand does however manufacture components designed to be used in weapons of mass destruction.
But I don't believe these are the terrorists they're looking for.
ETA: a point made already by Matthew.
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"the chills". Why your favourite music sounds so good. It's Science.
They showed that listeners' dopamine levels in pleasure centers surged during key passages of favorite music, but also just a moment before—as if the brain was anticipating the crescendo to come.
Are you really on drugs? Apparently so.
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To add to the others, excellent work, and it deserves all the support it can get.
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I'm happy to pay more tax. But only if it goes to Giovanni's children. And Emma's.
I don’t actually think that kind of reasoning is “like most kiwis”. Voting after one’s back pocket is really common.
I actually think they both happen at the same time. People have strong altruistic group-based motivations, and they have strong personal ('selfish') motivations, and they come into play in different contexts. In some people one is stronger than the other. Both can be primed. By turning these needs from an abstract idea into people with names, faces, and identifiable interests, you could successfully entrench the former, at least around this issue.
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I have my personal model for this, which is the radical reform of the mental health sector in Italy in the 1970s. No reason why we couldn’t demand a change of that magnitude.
What does that template look like? And who would have the social and political resources to make that happen?
It appears to me: (as an outsider to this process) that there isn't yet the level of organisation as a political force that could see transformation on the scale you're talking about. While there are pockets of activism and community, these aren't linked up to create outcomes, nor are the necessary allies yet on board. Are these the right impressions, and if so, what's necessary to change that reality?
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Up Front: Another Brick in the Wall, in reply to giovanni tiso,
I want the state to educate my daughter because she has the right to an education just like everybody else.
We might just pay an extra cent in the dollar in tax, so that all people might enjoy a fundamental right.
There's an irony here, in that New Zealand is ranked by the United Nations Development Program as the 6th most developed country in the world, in good part on account of the very high levels of education New Zealanders experience (in number of years, rather than outcome measures). New Zealand is a developed country. But it's one in which the overarching political framework is one that accepts/tolerates/embraces social exclusion, on a large scale. How do we change this? I don't think it's going to be enough to have a half-hearted promise from this or the next Minister of Education to increase funding within the current model; this ameliorates rather than ends the failures of provision.
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Is is sunny out? I don't usually post on these threads til I've had a chance to find a tube capable of playing music (often a few days later), so I have nothing to add yet. I assume it's good music, cause it always is...