Posts by Rich of Observationz
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
OnPoint: Beyond 'a bad look', in reply to izogi,
That's broadly it. See, an honest argument against doing anything about climate change would run along the lines of NZ having the capacity to produce 20 times as much food as we eat, so even if that capacity is (literally) decimated by climate change, we'll still have enough food. And we have plenty of rock, so could build dams around cities, or just all go and live on the Central Plateau / Mackenzie Basin.
But the "the rest of the world will be dying like flies, but we'll be fine here" argument seems a bit callous, so denial (or the alternative of pretending to take action) works better for politicians.
-
"But 90% of illicit drug users don’t enter emergency departments or become addicted" - actually, I think it's more than that.
-
So basically, in your ideal utopia, there would be no need for elections, as all decisions would be made through proper peer-reviewed scientific process to achieve optimal results for desired outcomes.
In the case of designing a new flag for instance, international focus groups could be shown a range of computer designed shapes and measured on whether the flag made them more or less likely to buy NZ products, holiday here, or mount terrorist attacks on NZ citizens. The optimal selection of blobs could then be adopted.
-
Road safety is an objective science
Public policy isn't though.
Sure, engineers can work out the survivability in various forms of crashes at various speeds and conclude that if all vehicles are travelling slower, there'll be less deaths and at some speed like 40kph, deaths will tend to zero (for vehicle occupants, at least).
Driver behaviour is a lot less predictable. Will people obey the law? Will drivers slow down where they expect enforcement and drive badly elsewhere? Or take less care generally?
Then there are other, unintended, effects. How much does resentment at social control measures like zealous road traffic enforcement lead to a general lack of societal compliance?
And finally, there's the question of what the populace wants. How much benefit do people see in being safer versus being allowed to drive faster? That's an entirely subjective question.
-
Clement Attlee was elected immediately after WW2. During the war, the British media was primarily concerned with reporting the war and was generally somewhat leftist due to the way Britain was at war with a right-wing state and in alliance with a nominally left wing-one. They couldn't really attack Labour politicians in the government coalition, or the policies of central planning that won the war.
Harold Wilson was elected (the second time) as the result of a miners strike that led to the Heath Government being unable to maintain electricity supplies.
And Callaghan didn't win a (general) election at all, he succeeded Wilson as Labour leader.
-
-
Hard News: #GE2015: Proper Mad, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I'm sure *they* don't think of the Great British Masses that way. I haven't lived there for 11 years and haven't supported Labour for longer, so I can't be blamed for their failings.
-
I think UK (now pretty much just Anglo-Welsh) Labour need to get over their confrontational attitude to the SNP and Scottish nationalism in general.
It's not in the tradition of the party that granted India and many other countries independence last century. They need to accept that the degree of independence Scotland wants is a matter for the people of Scotland and that it's for England to work constructively to maintain an appropriate and friendly relationship through the transition period.
-
The big problem for this as far as I'm concerned is that the proletards and toryscum are quite likely to take away my EU citizenship.
The EU ought to provide a refugee option for UK citizens to renounce that and become citizens of the EU, with a resettlement grant paid for by a tax on British exports, such as they are.
-
Call me cynical, but I think the troll may be back.
- General cadence of the name, c.f. "fredster jones", "stamper stamp"
- All lowercase (sorry simon)
- Appears from nowhere in a puff of blue bullshit