Posts by Andre Alessi
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In 1880s New York, a fraudster had a lead ingot cast and gold plated, with a slug of real gold in the base. He set up a fake assay office where the mug could be taken and given a clean report on the gold. If neccesary, he would scoop a piece of the gold slightly out and allow the mug to get it tested by a real assayer.
Yep, that's similar to the origin of the word goldbricking, referring to defrauding someone for personal gain. Interestingly enough, "goldbricking" now refers to employees of a company using "work internet access for personal reasons while maintaining the appearance of working." Heh.
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If Garrett is being opposed by dark forces, is he saying that he is on the side of the light?
Because I'm pretty sure Master Yoda would kick his arse out of the Jedi damn quick for any one of the idiotic tricks he's pulled.
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Would it be unreasonable to expect voters to actually take an hour or two to find out a little information about the candidates before they vote? Read a little media, attend a candidates meeting etc?
Well, my point is that in many cases, there isn't any information available, or the information provided is skewed based on the author's prejudices (on the Internet anyway-I assume you're not suggesting people trawl through hard copies of parliamentary voting records, etc.) It would make more sense for there to be a required level of detail for all local body biographies, rather than the current regime, which actively benefits individuals like Christine Rankin or Brian Neeson, who have name recognition but aren't required to list all the things they did to gain their notoriety in the first place.
Creating brief independent biographies isn't difficult, journalists do it all the time.
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The Granny notes...
Independents or not?That goes to the heart of what I'm uncomfortable with here. In national elections, people use party affiliation to determine, in lieu of detailed policy statements from each and every candidate, how they can expect people to act once elected.
In local body politics, people don't even have that marginal level information about an individual's policy positions, so all they have is party affiliation. Declaring oneself "independent" removes even that heuristic and turns voting into something like a lottery. Candidates should be required to declare previous formal political associations and positions held at the very least, as well. Ideally I'd like to see brief biographies written by independant auditors made a requirement, though I know that local body politicians value the ignorance of their electorates too much to ever go for that.
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Interesting that Brian Neeson is describing himself as an independent, and playing up his HRC role.
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Prize for getting it wrong is having your fingers cut off.
There aren't many celebrities that'd use an actual mug shot as their display pic on Twitter.
I admit, I do love 50 Cent's Twitter. He comes across exactly like a 4chan-er, trolling and all. I could see him posting in a /b/ thread.
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@Ian D: the big difference is Beyer told the whole story about her past to begin with. And more importantly, she didn't pontificate like Garrett or the Sensibles.
Even more importantly, she was bloody good as a mayor and MP. My conservative Catholic grandparents unreservedly voted for her as mayor of Carterton because she was simply the best person for the job. Her obvious competence relegated her past to a footnote, and one that wasn't particularly relevant to the positions she was elected to serve in.
Garrett, on the other hand, gives the impression of being only marginally qualified for the role he occupied.
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Slightly on topic: my girlfriend's mother was involved in running the mayoral debate last week. Her "inside baseball" notes on each of the candidates were about what you'd expect-Len Brown was pleasant and funny, Banks was an arrogant plonker, and she couldn't even remember the names of the other two, except that Brown noted (with a heartfelt sigh) that he always ended up standing between Banks and the guy that used to work for him (which I assume was Colin Craig) and that they hate each other.
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The painful thing about all this is that the hardcore believers will always cling to the "There wouldn't have been a problem if the government hadn't gotten involved and spooked everybody" argument. It's impossible to disprove that statement to their satisfaction because they're so convinced money just appears out of nowhere if government regulation isn't involved.
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I liked this a lot! Very Will Self-ish (pun not intended.)