With you here. It would be better to talk about length of service. Time to give others a go. A new person in their 60s could be just the ticket.

Although, in government, how important is previous ministerial experience? Or how important is it *perceived* to be by the electorate? I make it nine current Labour MPs with 'Hon' next to their name -- and presumably this'll be a much lower number by the time they are next back in government.

Would be interested to know how many of the incoming Labour MPs in 1999 had previous ministerial experience/baggage -- and that out of a supremely unpopular government. Certainly the leader did.

Maybe not WOTY, but I think Winston Peters needs a small shout-out for continuing to use the verb “Cinderella-ise” after he muffed that attempt to say it on election night in 2011 so spectacularly.

Supporters of the boycott of Radio Live and its advertisers were hoping to silence the speech of those they see as placing blame on victims of rape . . . .

Leaving aside the 'was there a boycott by advertisers of RadioLive or was there a boycott by consumers of advertisers' question -- no. I supported what Gio and others were doing because it was sending a great useful noisy message I agreed with. Yeah, maybe (and only maybe) it wasn't technical best principled practice in a world where our one goal is freedom of speech. But that's not the world we live in, and that's not my one goal. We live in a world steeped in a culture of rape that doesn't get discussed or challenged or combatted nearly enough; a world where I know too well what the shape of my keys feels like between my clenched fingers, where I want to weep if I hear the two words 'duct tape'.

So I felt that I was supporting an it's-about-time, let's-talk-about-this, loud-hailed statement, not a silencing. But if there was a tiny little bit of freedom-of-speech curtailment in there, well -- so? A larger, louder piece of speech was also heard. In a world with structural inequalities, I do not think this free speech thing is an inviolable monolith -- I'm down with a little bit of affirmative action, I reckon.

I'm also an editor, so I ask people to think about curtailing their speech every day. It's not that big a deal to me. Sometimes I even curtail it for them. Most of the time this is in the interests of trying to help maximize the impact other bits of their speech will have. Someone at RadioLive should have been playing this role for Jackson and Tamihere -- they weren't or didn't. A really awful thing was done to a caller, a really terrible non-apology was given, an attempt (Hooten) to discuss opposing positions was made, speech on the subject was then shut down. In this context, where not a lot of fruitful discussion was being had, and counter-arguments were not being heard, the effect of the advertisers pulling support from the programme and the station was a circuit-breaker that increased speech about the issues.

So, yeah, I guess I can sign up to: "Please don’t protest in a way designed to diminish the free speech of others, or at least be very careful before you do." But I think that's a very simplistic, and sad, and limiting, message to take away from what went on two weeks ago.

I have been FAQing asking this in my head for a while, but I have never found out the answer, so perhaps it is iF.

When the peeps are grumbling about the illegitimate list MPs not being real MPs, blah blah, don't deserve to be there, etc., I generally retort that if people don't want to vote for list MPs, they can just *not use* their party vote.

But if many people did that (or didn't do that, rather) -- say everyone on the electoral roll cast their electoral vote, but only half of them cast a party vote, would the overall no. of MPs change?

(I'm guessing no, because I suppose that would wreck proportionality in other, different ways. Which means I probably need a better retort.)

Thanks, Graeme.

Whanganui River: Bridge to Nowhere. Gorgeous, concrete, incongruous.