Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: Democracy Night, in reply to martinb,
Herald says Carmel ahead by 10 votes...! Fingers crossed
Yes, lets hope it goes a lot higher! Otherwise there's sure to be a recount. But even to be highest on first full count is a major symbolic victory out west.
The booth division has been stark, which accounts for the big see sawing effect on election night. Some booths heavily for Labour, some for National, divided roughly along the lines of the most valuable property - which in Waitakere is in the hills. I've often thought people from the remoter parts of West Auckland were more rural than urban, which to me explains the red-blue battle at the border. The people in Titirangi and Henderson are one of the only urban groups I know who constantly hanker to be further from the city center. As the mid west suburbs have grown in value, they have traded up and moved further west. Often, but not always, glad to be quit of the growing ethnic diversity of the inner west. It was not very long ago that West Auckland was very rural indeed, my parents distinctly remember coming down my own street to buy from the orchards where my house is. The end of my street, up until only a few years ago was a big horse ranch, it was really weird to be able to walk down there with my son to watch a couple of old horses galloping around. Now it's going to be converted to a big retirement village. Te Atatu was the back of beyond until the north western motorway was put through there, and I think there's still a horse riding school tucked in there over the motorway from the motocross speedway.
The old west was very much a white neighborhood. This has changed and to me it would be incredibly heartening if Sepuloni took Waitakere, as much to show that the racism that was the least attractive thing about my father's side of the family is something that poorer westies have largely gotten over. Also, to disassociate with Paula Bennett.
Curiously, I have recently found out that both sides of my family at my grandparents generation were neither Labour nor National, but voted Social Credit loyally en masse. This included my grandfather who made all his money in property. I guess the post-war period set a lot of people to thinking about just how responsible fucked up capitalism was for all of those guys buried in Waikumete Cemetery, but at the same time Stalinism was a stark warning about just where Marxism could take things.
That Social Credit never got any serious representation in Parliament despite getting as high as 20% of the votes in 1981, and polling as high as 30% a few times, is one of the strongest indictments on FFP we've had in this country. Muldoon might never have happened if we'd had MMP. The country could have been on an extremely different financial path.
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Up Front: The Up Front Guides:…, in reply to Emma Hart,
Ugh. UGH. I have a sudden urge to cut all my hair off so I don't play with it by mistake.
Too late. You touched it in front of the entire town hall. Now that is just brazen.
My sister has dozens of stories about guys like this. Either she sends really mixed messages, or she's a magnet to such people. I think the latter more likely. She's super direct, on or off. So she's into them, until they muck her round, then she's off them. They really can't take that, can't believe it would be so.
Perhaps that's a danger of the direct woman - that a shy guy who gets attention from a direct woman thinks it must mean that they're really into them (rather than, in my sister's case, someone who just doesn't want to waste any time). So they test the boundaries to find out. Then they find out they were totally wrong, but they can't be sure, so they test the boundaries again, but by this time it's just totally creepy. Then they're shocked and offended that they're the jerk, which cranks up the jerk factor.
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Up Front: The Up Front Guides:…, in reply to Rich Lock,
I'd tap that.
Surely a reference to a beer keg rather than a dojo mat?
I'd hit that.
Cause it's not the kind of ball you take your eye off?
I'd tear that up.
Can't spin that one...either reading of "tear" is bad.
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Up Front: The Up Front Guides:…, in reply to Bart Janssen,
It's an interesting phrase that isn't it? Why does the action of enquiring if the other person might be interested in a relationship of some kind get described in such violent terms?
I'd have thought the meaning of hit was more about a target, rather than a blow. The one that always stymied me - in Melbourne it's called "cracking on". It also has a noun form, you can refer to "the crack on". "Hit on" doesn't seem to have that.
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Up Front: The Up Front Guides:…, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
No reason it *should* be obvious.
No, but it *can* be obvious.
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I do often wonder that treating all women as being equally human, as I try to do, sends them the wrong signals. Many times I've ended up deeply involved in a conversation with a woman I don't have any physical attraction to, and then tuned in my social radar and thought "Oh fuck, she's hitting on me. Now what?". I end up looking like an arsehole anyway, when I then have to pull off an escape move.
I'm not dense. I notice that guys treat physically unattractive women differently, dismissively. I've also noticed, to a lesser extent, that the same thing happens to physically unattractive men.
Makes me think that at least half of the meme that the other sex are alien arseholes is simply rejection at work.
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to HenryB,
Didn't NBH give us a link which provided a fairly comprehensive discussion of this processs?
Yes, he did, but it's only valid until 2005. I don't know if things have changed. My statements about how it worked here were based on that document.
Even the Labour Party ones take 2-3 pages and are fairly convoluted.
Yup. Which isn't one of the good things about Labour. Convoluted internal workings are an excellent way of putting up barriers to participation.
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
You know what, Ben - if you actually want try being civil I'll have an ask around because I'm not just going to transcribe great swathes of the National Party constitution because you're visiting from High Dudgeon.
I'd say pretty please with sugar on top, but you've already answered my question - you don't actually know, and it would take you some time to find out. I was only after a couple of paragraphs outlining the process, which you might have known, certainly that is the impression you've been giving by claiming inner knowledge from your long association with that party, and your sniping at any claims about how it does work.
At this point, it's up to you if you would like to spend the time to find out what the selection processes are in National - maybe that would be of some value to you, maybe not, since you seem to have actually not voted for them this time. I can ask other people, you know, there's no shortage. DPF, for instance, will know the answer to this straight from the top of his dome.
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Hard News: Most Discursive Website, in reply to lprent,
I rather like the idea of The Standard being second on the list of chattering sites after Public Address. It isn't one of our primary objectives but still nice to know.
Yeah it's a good outcome for you guys too, impressive.
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Dude, just tell us what the process actually is. You're being slippery.
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