Posts by Stewart
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I'll try not to let your National/Stones linkage detract from my long-held love for the band that defined my formative years. Agreed that they haven't released anything worth the candle for eons, but they have a back catalogue that I can pick at regardless of what mood I'm in and find something simpatico.
And I wouldn't vote for National unless you paid me (more than Johnkey-the-donkey is offering). They are (Stones reference) Out of Time
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Isn't it just the nexus of capitalism and human nature that makes people go for the short-term gain and the soonest gratification? They saw the housing market taking off and other people 'making money' at it and they wanted in themselves. A bit of easy money that doesn't involve a whole lot of work and, in the short-term, it works.
But in the longer term it becomes another pyramid scheme where the last people to get into it are the ones who get their fingers burned the most severely. I suspect that politicians know well enough not to go upsetting the electorate too much in terms of telling them not to chase that easy money. They can make quiet noises to that effect but daren't make too much of it as, in a democracy like ours, thwart the people & they will vote you out. It doesn't matter if it is "for their own good".
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Apologies then, Gareth, I mistook it for French.
As you can see from my "Posts:" count I am a fresh-faced newbie here at PAS and not yet adept at reading the sub-text.
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That'd be les jokes
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Gareth - no slight, implicit or otherwise, was intended. (My slights are usually explicit enough to leave the recipient in no doubt.)
To my mind, the polls tell us bugger-all except that of a 'selected' portion of the electorate certain proportions favour one side against another. I can't have made myself clear as I wasn't trying to suggest that the result is in any way solid. I suspect that a portion of the electorate are poll-followers (the ones who end up voting for who they think will win because they want to have backed a winner) and that there will be a percentage who are influenced by the polls rather than by any particular policy.
The recent swing back towards Labour (from an electoral thrashing to merely a spanking) isn't likely to be enough to convince the block of voters I mentioned earlier to return Labour to power.
I like the fact that the only poll that matters is the one on Nov 8th - all the rest are frippery.
Have a good walk home.
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Good to see the PAS posse giving this a good shake-up to see how it will play & what the longer-term ramifications are, but what about the kiwi in the street?
I can't see the 'average voter' giving the topic this much analysis so it is likely to come down to a 'gut feel' for how this issue will affect voting. My suspicion is that the vast majority of voters have already decided who they're going to vote for (even most of the 'officially undecideds') and there's not much will sway them between now & Nov 8th.
Personally, I can see a majority deciding that they have had enough of the Labour Party in power and that it is time for a change - people who mention the nanny-state, people who want to be able to smack their kids without the potential for police action, the 'sensible sentencing' crowd. And a small section of the electorate who is politically uneducated enough to vote for the party that they think is going to win so they can feel like they have backed a winner.
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The sight of the fast cars & bikes has never really done it for me, but I got hooked on the intoxicating aroma of high-octane fuel, hot motors and hot-dogs attending the Te Marua stock-car racing in my youth*.
* Meaning 'in my younger days' rather than some sort of homosexual entaglement.