Posts by tussock
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So, if the Greens earn +1 on specials (probably will), taken from National (most likely), that gives them 60-60 on votes with a Nat speaker. Good enough I suppose.
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Hard News: Last Words, in reply to ,
I would like to vote against National if I may.
Technically, any vote for a party that crosses the threshold or wins an electorate other than them is a vote against National. They want 61+ MPs, and every other list MP elected before their 61st works against them.
Edit: Oh, and Green, the local Sue Coutts so she gets the refund (very safe National seat), Keep MMP, and STV.
Be nice if the MMP review can get us PV or STV seats, no threshold (well, first divisor 1.4 I suppose) and maybe even a few less list MPs. But that's later.
Two ticks entrenched? So the nats push through SM. Bah.
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So, if the left gets out the vote, as they say, we'll have a minority National party coalition, hamstrung on the crazy. Could flip left if the 20% of us who are usually non-voters can be moved significantly.
If the left stays home, we'll have a one-party state for three years, with people who don't like accountability, don't like evidence, don't like government spending (health and education, eh), and who could rattle though a quick change to a less proportional electoral system and keep it that way. Taking from poor kids to give to the rich pales in comparison.
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I also won't be talking to anyone on this thread. Taking my ball and going home with it, I am. LA LA LA, can't read this with my fingers in my ears.
Anyhoo, my old man used to be quite racist too, in conversation if not in action perhaps. Then he stopped. Totally happens if you just talk it out with them, eh. Now he's in the camp where he can't figure out how it's bad for Māori to own beaches and good for rich white folk to own beaches at the same time, even going so far as to call that racist.
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Hard News: The Solemnity of the Day, in reply to Ben Austin,
National’s economic management abilities
That'd be the one where the economy always does better under Labour. The economy being made up of people, who are better off under Labour. Funny that.
There's a Keynes vs Hayek musical interlude in there somewhere.
'was finding it hilarious every time tonight Key in the debate didn't want to talk about poverty or jobs because he needed to fix the economy. Guess what the economy is, dumbass: the distribution of wealth and the jobs that directs us to undertake. More people paying for stuff means more jobs to do means more people with money to pay for stuff.
Well, that and some macro about not letting it all result in building rows of mansions in the desert for wishful profits, and maybe planning for some future energy security, preventative medicine, justice, bla bla bla.
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So, half the people stop leaving for Australia every time the government changes, with the government changing every time that peaks around 40k per annum. Notice what it's currently at? 40k per annum. Cool, might get a government change, certainly will next time if not.
Otherwise, got a lot of British bobbies in to be cops under Helen, got a short peak of Chinese hopefuls (all the same age, ~30-35 now?) too. The odd rush of Indian doctors to drive our taxis (as a threat to local Doctor's union). A steady run of white people taking their 2.3 kids out of South Africa forever. Only a trickle of old folk either way, and most young emigrants don't come back.
Mostly though, people from various places come here, people from here go to Australia if they're sick of the government. Cool. Heh, my parents moved to Oz at the end of Muldoon, and again at the end of Lange.
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Hard News: The Solemnity of the Day, in reply to Martin Lindberg,
The laws forbidding political stuff on election day are why we don't see political stuff on election day. Back in ye olde mother country (ahem, Britain, apologies) in times long past, folk used to rush around town all polling day and buy votes, intimidate the opposition, make all sorts of threats and promises, and the only law keeping it in check was the secret ballot. Which didn't keep it in check at all, even if a lot of people didn't vote for who they were paid to.
If you don't have laws against it, you'll have teams of people screaming at you at the polls about how Labour's all Communists, or National's all Fascists, amongst much uglier alarmist nonsense.
It's not a speculative argument: before such laws existed, that was what happened, all the time. Voting day was very partisan and quite nasty. Hell, in early democracies like revolutionary France it wasn't unknown for opposition agitators to be killed by the government, for treason, all legal like: opposition politicians too, in league with aristocracy and such.
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Would you find “ill-informed democracy concern-troll, in the hope that a cheap shot at an easy (and unpopular) target gets him some favorable press” be more agreeable to you?
Oh definitely, I'm all for fairness and accuracy in reporting. One can hope it doesn't signify worse to come for the "how to fix MMP" questions though.
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The weird thing about FPP is they had such high turnouts, despite all the safe seats. I guess disinterested people weren't enrolled in the first place.
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's More of that Labour party entitlement complex, eh. But as it stands ACT's not going to be smuggling Brash in anyway. ACT voters don't seem to want him.
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Why didn't we get preferential voting for the preferential side of this?
You know
FPP 4
PV 2
SM 3
STV 1And then a Condorcet count of it, or at least PV? Why a plurality vote to ask if we want a preferential system? As you said, we've already got STV in play regionally.