Posts by Paul Campbell
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Hmmm - I wonder if Jinty (elected to council as part of the mayor's own coalition) is going to stay with the occupiers ....
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Best sign I've seen so far, under a National sign "official representative of the 1% since 1936"
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Thinking about it more I think that party lists are giant red herring - you can look at them before the election and decide if you like them - and if you're voting for a party you trust them and the list they produce, if you didn't vote for them then you don't have much interest in who they choose for their candidates (other than maybe sour grapes).
The alternative is a separate US style primary vote ....
On the other hand reading the above I realise that yes we should have STV in national elections, but only as part of the local representative vote in our MMP system - all the complaints about FPP apply to that too - my local representative might be elected to parliament with the backing of 1/3 an electorate's worth of votes while a list MMP is elected with a full electorate's worth - if anything a list MP is MORE representative even if he/she didn't get in as a local representative
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Legal Beagle: Up to 11, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
p.s. how cool is it that the star ranking on the IMDB page for This is Spinal Tap goes up to 11?
To be pedantic it still only goes up to 10, but it's out of 11
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I was disappointed by the lack of a Pirate Party showing arrgh!
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Peter Dunne's hair continues to amaze ...
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Oh dear – trying to make Act people smile on cue – their teeth almost fall oout
On the other hand whoever did the Maori Party ad needs lots more practice before they use the green screen again ....
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Hard News: We interrupt this broadcast ..., in reply to nzlemming,
You know, I never knew how my father voted. My mother swears that even she didn't know.
My father always voted National, my mother always voted Labour - in Dunedin there's a silly bylaw that limits each household to exactly one election sign - as if for some reason married couples (or flatmates) always have the same political views - I'm sure it wouldn't pass BORA inspection
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Of course kids should go to demonstrations with their parents - it's as much a part of their education as any high school social studies class - I've never made signs for my kids - I've talked about why we're marching and they've chosen to make their own signs.
I had a lot of fun the other day with my daughter who will soon vote for the first time - she said she wanted to vote for Labour because she'd seen a sign promising $15 minimum wage (she has a part time job) - that let me ask the "what do the other parties offer?" question so we went searching web sites we found that the Greens had a slightly better deal on offer, the Nats were plain evasive (we'll revisit that after yesterday's news) and Act (when they got over their Bacon ipsum thing) apparently wanted her to earn as little as the market would bear
(then we got to talk about what the minimum wage was, and why, and what your happen if it was really large)
Politics is not just for schools to teach
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I think that given that National have already done this bit of take back then if Labour increase the 3% to 7% (still taxed) then I'm better off as if my gross had increased by 107/103 = 3.9% and I was being taxed normally - at the top marginal rate my KS investment will go up by 66% of 3.9% = 2.6% of my gross.
So the National change takes a little from me, the Labour change gives me actual new savings.
(in my case where I'm an employer who pays myself as an employee and runs the company basically as a non-profit - my monthly gross is what's left in the bank at the end of the month, National's KS change will actually take 1% of my net income [the bastards!] - the same is true of anyone who ends up in a situation where their employer trades their employer's portion KS contribution for their gross)