Posts by Steve Parks
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I want to be Minister for Pies.
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Don't be silly, Stephen. What's that got to do with Morality? That is Foreign Affairs.
It's all separate catagories, see: Foreign Affairs, Economics, Crime, Health, Social Issues, Morality.
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Apart from the gender difference, there's a large age factor on the homosexuality question. Overall, 61% think homosexual relations are "morally acceptable". But that rises to 71% for the under 44-year-old group, compared with only 41% for the over 60s.
That said, I'd argue that most moral questions boil down to the "icky/not icky" test for most people.
Yeah I tend to agree. On that subject, here’s a bit of a time waster, if anyone is interested: Morality, Taboo and “the yuk-factor”
Here are my results. (Note: my “universalizing factor” was indeterminate, as I found nothing morally wrong in their scenarios so they couldn’t get a fix on it. I’m reasonably universalizing, though, in the sense that they meant it.)
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What does it say about a government that thinks it needs to take such an easy choice out of the hands of ordinary New Zealanders? Do they think we are stupid?
There's a straw man argument which would only make sense if everyone had rushed out and bought power-saving lightbulbs, which they clearly haven't.
Old heat producing lightbulbs are a "freedom of choice to beat yourself about the head" argument.
But... we should be, and are, free to do dangerous things to ourselves. I'm weary of resorting to "for your own good" arguments. That isn't a reason to restrict our choices.
Arguments against unrestricted use/access to economic resources (by which I mean scarce resources, in the strict economic sense) can be made on grounds that don't require a 'society knows best' approach. If purchasing a certain kind of bulb, or polluting the environment, or whatever, affects others then it isn't just about personal liberty.
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And secondly, it does seem to imply a kind of top-down, shadowy cabal, kind of deliberate manipulation.
It's not necessarily for there to be any conspiricy, R A. That's the gist of Manufacturing Consent, and other commentary on this matter; it could be a systemic problem.
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Goff would have been a lot smarter to actually attack the cheapness of such empty words as "nannystate", "politically correct" and " social engineering."
I agree. I understand the concern of The Standard writer and some here who see the need to choose your battles, but that seems to have been taken too far. Labour can't focus solely on economic issues, and avoid social ones just because some rightwingers might screech "PC gone mad" or "won't somebody think of the children!" or whatever trite slogans they latch on to these days.
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I'm not concerned at our readiness for "full proportionality" in itself. I'm purely interested in the point - made by others here and that I'm taking for granted - that overseas experience demonstrates more instability with low/no threshold. If that is not the case, then I'm all for removing the threshold altogether. (I am not swayed by the "keeping out extremists" angle at all.) But if that is the case, then it would seem it is not merely a matter of shitty policy, or the character of the nation.
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Seems good. So proportionality would be maintained over the remaining seats? I'm in favour then. But I'm still in favour of reducing the threshold.
(Now, I've got beer to drink and rugby to watch.)
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... "every electorate seat" won by a party that gets less than 5% of the vote would be an overhang, I meant.
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So far the only argument I've heard against the lowest practical threshold of 0.8% (unless we raise the number of MPs) that isn't "I don't like minorities having any say", has been "It gives stability".
I'm surprised this is considered such a powerful argument.
We have a party-based, representative democracy system. One of the advantages of that kind of system is that there can be some kind of stability and continuity in government. Our democracy is not just a way of making discrete decisions, but also of making long or medium term policy on things such as the environment, economy, foreign affairs etc. As David put it, we need “to make sure that an executive has a decent stab at implementing its policies and a decent chance of making them work.”
Frequent elections, bickering and changing coalitions, fragmenting of parties etc are bad for that aspect of democracy. Stability isn’t the only important aspect, but it is important, and so concerns that removing the threshold would undermine that are certainly significant.I do think 5% seems unnecessarily high, however. So I’m in favour of maintaining a threshold, but a lower one.
I'd lower the threshold (say 4%) and abolish the stupid electorate rule whereby the threshold magically disappears for your party. Rodney gets to bring Rodney and nobody else...
I was also in favour of getting rid of the electorate rule, but apparently that results in every electorate seat leading to an overhang. Dropping the threshold to 2.5 to 3% would reduce the anomaly.