Posts by Rich of Observationz
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I guess it depends on whether you think the members of a party should be allowed to decide the leadership and direction of that party, or whether you prefer the model (as in NZ National and the CCP) where control flows from the top down and the members are instructed on what to do and think by the centre.
Brecht had a solution:
the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?Die Lösung, 1953 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_L%C3%B6sung
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On the main topic:
Geoffrey Robertson (QC, incidentally) sez what I was thinkingThe UK government can't trigger Article 50 without first getting legislation to repeal the European Communities Act through Commons and Lords.
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Crimes of the Corbynites:
- student activists being mildly nasty on FacebookCrimes of the Blairites
- their leader organising to kidnap people and send them to Libya to be torturedObviously, the Corbynites are way worse…
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Speaker: A Disorderly Brexit, in reply to Russell Brown,
“Both vigorously deny the claims” – it’s not unheard of for organs like the Telegraph to just make shit up, you know. And there is an influential minority that conflate Zionism with Judaism and the Jewish race, allowing any criticism of Israel to be treated as anti-semetic.
Corbyn won with three times the votes of the runner up, you know – it’s the MPs who are out of line. Do you think Labour should be run as a self-perpetuating entity (like the NZ National Party) where the MPs tell the members what to do?
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Basically, the UK establishment rely on Labour as their plan B. When the Tories become too toxic, a Blair-style figure can get in and put a new face on the same policies.
Corbyn's destroyed this insurance policy and that's what they're terrified of - an actual left-wing government
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Speaker: The Government you Deserve, in reply to David Hood,
The UK would analyse its census categories by occupation using the NRS system:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRS_social_grade. This reflects one aspect of social class but not the caste-like system that pervades England - e.g. a working class FX trader would be in AB, while a posh gardener would be in C2D.NZ collects the same information, it just presents it differently http://www.stats.govt.nz/datavisualisation/treemap/occupation.html. You could extract the NRS information from summary/meshblock data and I'm sure people do, but not Stats I don't think...
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My experience of UK education is that while it was (at the time) functional, it was also a process designed to perpetuate social division and produce an ignorant and unthinking populace.
My year was the first to enjoy comprehensive education, but at least in the south-east, state schools were mostly populated by the lower middle and working classes (joined by those in the middle classes who had parents too idealistic, cheap, or both to send their kids to private school). The middle classes attended a range of schools, ranging from famous public schools down to those whose main function was to keep the more retarded offspring of the gentry out of trouble until they became army officers (boys) or married an army officer (girls).
Despite being nominally comprehensive, a sifting process operated at every stage - pupils were assessed and streamed by ability (and of course pre-selected by social class) at 14 (GCE or GCSE exams, now rebranded as separate papers), 16 (staying of for A levels) and then at university.
The selective university system is the final filtering process in the UK. University courses are ranked by UCAS points, with Oxbridge at the top and places like Luton at the bottom. Unless you are either brilliant or well coached (e.g. went to public school) you won't get to fuck pigs at Oxbridge and will wind up somewhere down the list - and the list very accurately mirrors social class.
So basically, everyone outside a tiny minority (who run the country and write the media) gets failed by the education system. Add to that they way the system rewards conformity (because docile kids allow a school to get good results in the various league tables) and prioritises cramming for exams, it's pretty unsurprising you've got a population of disgruntled failures.
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I don't see how "not less favourable to trade" applies. NZ hasn't had a free trade agreement with Britain since 1973? It has one with the EU, which is a different entity.
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I don't quite understand the "not punish" thing? If the EU allows UK-based corporates continued free access to sell goods and services into Europe without complying with EU laws and regulations, then they'll be "punishing" everybody in mainland Europe by undermining their labour and environmental standards.
(At the moment, anyone can buy a car in the UK and import it to a mainland EU country without paperwork. A warehouse or factory can ship a container of goods through to anywhere in the EU without it being opened or inspected, That relies on having common standards. Equally, British-based banks can operate in the EU supervised to an agreed standard by the Bank of England.
When the UK leaves, all that is gone (without an EEA-type agreement to replace it).) -
Polity: Four cents on Brexit, Fonterra,…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Well yeah. And often, if purchasing government ministers ask nicely, they can find their personal bank accounts get nicely filled up by arms companies:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_bribery_scandals
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Yamamah_arms_dealNot that any NZ politicians would engage in such shenanigans, unlike some of their UK counterparts.