Posts by Rob Stowell
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Overall it was a good result for Chch, eh. Hoping Andrew Turner gets in. Too close to say, but he's got the best chance. Voter turnout on BP was higher than in the city- and some very good candidates.
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Capture: Two Tales of a City, in reply to Lilith __,
For Banks Peninsula Council seat?
Andrew Turner at present. Hoping he can stay ahead .... and wishing the family hadn't split the votes! (Knowing two other candidates made it tricky.)
Nuk is a nice enough bloke but a little too blue for my taste :) -
Cracker: Lundy and Me., in reply to Lilith __,
Not guilty =/= didn’t do it.
Remember OJ Simpson? Found not guilty of murder in a criminal court, but convicted in a civil case of 2 counts of “causing wrongful death”.
It strikes me the cases that linger in the public mind are often those where the criminal standard of ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ clashes with the ‘dinner-table’ ‘court of public opinion’ standard – which likely will always tend towards ‘on the balance of probabilities’. In the balance of probabilities, factors like another plausible perpetrator have a great deal of weight; not so much in criminal court. It seems to be a tension that’s built into our justice system. Probably for the best, but in cases with intense media pressure, and less-than clear-cut evidence, undoubtedly a tension.
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Lovely writing :)
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Hard News: Local interest, in reply to Hebe,
Policies set in stone you mean?
Commitment to something would be nice. I'm partial to wood :)
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Hard News: Local interest, in reply to Hebe,
I really, really wish more candidates would say concrete things
So do I.
We want concrete! (In the right places, of course.) #TheConcreteParty
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Hard News: Local interest, in reply to Keir Leslie,
Rob — which ward are you in?
Banks Peninsula. And yeah, Andrew Turner looks good.
If he’s got Lyttelton behind him, he’s probably a shoo-in; all the others live in Diamond Harbour, Govs Bay or similar- dispersing a thin population base. -
Hard News: Local interest, in reply to Hebe,
I found the councillors hard:
Me too. Only one option, know 2 candidates socially. And there's another who's a bit tempting!
I want to vote for a rep who will say "Nah, no thanks, not now, maybe later" to convention castle and rugby palace. Noone seems to be signalling that! -
Hard News: No Red Wedding, in reply to Tom Semmens,
if it works (“works” being defined as producing measurable and repeatable improvements in proper clinical trials), it will be quickly taken up by medicine
In an ideal world....
Science is a fine thing. Publicly funded science is often a very fine thing.
But getting a medical treatment 'to market' is slow and extraordinarily expensive. It's also far from certain that even decades of clinical tests won't get things approved that turn out to be not so effective, or not-so-harmless.
That's not a problem with scientific method itself. But the 'science' we have is done by people who operate in a social, political and economic world. It's not perfect or all-encompassing.
And human health can be incredibly complex. Incredible advances in understanding genetics, for example, keep revealing how big an influence subtle things can have- and how much we don't yet understand. -
Hard News: Local interest, in reply to Hebe,
Gap Filler has done a pretty little questionnaire
Thanks Hebe. Hasn't made my decision any easier but it's definitely better informed :)