Posts by James Caygill
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Speaker: Blinded by the white, in reply to Joe Wylie,
And I'm not running from my whakapapa, just noting that I'm not my father.
I'm not one for personal attacks, and I expect better here at PAS.
In your original post you were linking Tahu's lack of publishing with my employment at Te Rūnanga ( at least I think that's what you were trying to do). I've pointed out that you're wrong, and corrected your statements about me personally (it is after all my specialist subject).
How about you leave me out of it now?
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Speaker: Blinded by the white, in reply to Joe Wylie,
It's really not splitting hairs when what I assume you were trying to do was pigeon hole me as a property manager (likely a commercial one at that); when I've never been anything of the sort. If you understood how Ngāi Tahu operated then you'd understand it's an enormous distinction.
The Tribal Properties are held as cultural taonga and managed in consultation with nga papatipu rūnanga. They aren't managed for a commercial return, and they also happened to form a tiny part of the group I ran.
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Speaker: Blinded by the white, in reply to Joe Wylie,
Hey thanks for the love Joe, keeping it classy I see.
If I were to speculate I'd suggest Tahu's stopped writing due to his health.
For your records Joe, I'm not a Rogernome, I prefer to be identified with things I've actually done so if you want to attack me blame me for the fifth labour government, not the fourth.
I've never worked for Ngai Tahu Property, or any of the iwi's commercial subsidiaries. I was for three years the General Manager of Tribal Interests for the Office of Te Rūnanga. One of the teams in my group managed the tribal properties returned to the iwi as part of the settlement.
I'm not remotely sure what "elevation ... to virtual Tangata Whenua" means, but to be clear, I'm Pakeha, my partner is Ngāi Tahu and Ngāti Porou.
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So to me it all boils down to your fourth point Rob, the rest is both distracting or arguably beside the point in the cut and thrust of real politik.
Labour should be focussed solely on the mis-spending of funds appropriated by parliament for a particular purpose. On that point I wholeheartedly agree with you and Hooten - Ministerial resignation should be the minimum required.
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Other commentators, however, have demeaned themselves with cartoonish hyperbole. Phil Quin resigned his role as Labour’s resident fly-in-its-own-ointment while comparing the data release to the Rwandan genocide. That’s obviously absurd. Anyone repeating his claim showed the same lack of perspective.
You better believe I resent being categorised this way Rob. We're former colleagues and as such, you ought to know I judge you and the failure in properly presenting this debate by standards I know you're aware of.
I'm not a statistician (I leave that debate to those qualified to hold it). I'm interested in politics and message framing (that is my background) and I think this was framed in a way which was guaranteed a racist raection (I find that irresponsible, and unacceptable). To sit back and say, "we didn't do that, we're not responsible for those burnt in the fire we deliberately lit", is daft.
Conflating all non-ethnic Chinese objectors as you do in the quote above is a straw man of the silliest kind. I'm pleased to see Tze-Ming and Keith defend themselves, and I feel the need to do the same.
I find racism of any kind objectionable - I have a zero-tolerance for it. That's why I've objected, and why I've taken the actions (speech and financial) that I have. I don't believe I'm guilty of cartoonish hyperbole - I believe I'm defending principles that Labour seems to have walked away from.
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Polity: Government votes not to improve MMP, in reply to linger,
I don't pay enough attention to know at a detailed level - but Select Committee oversight seems to be functioning as well as it ever does (certainly the big change to Standing Orders at the intro of MMP was a massive improvement).
I'd still like a few tweaks to Standing Orders to empower SCs more, and I'd like more scrutiny in a few places - but they're not complaints that are aggravated by more MPs.
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Polity: Government votes not to improve MMP, in reply to linger,
"Representation" is the primary function of the House of Representatives in my opinion.
Parliament doesn't run the country, it legislates and oversees. The Executive runs the country.
Besides in my experience idiot is in the eye of the beholder - we generally disrespect politicians because we're thinking of the side we don't support. In a pluralist democracy I'm pretty relaxed about a Parliament where I consider a reasonable number to be idiots. They're generally idiots because they don't agree with me all the time - which they probably shouldn't if they're representative.
More importantly the change isn't likely to lead to a House of 250 people - just allow it to increase as needed to stay generally proportional.
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Polity: Government votes not to improve MMP, in reply to Idiot Savant,
Easy answer to the proportionality issue: include a change to s191 of the Electoral Act to ensure that the size of Parliament changes to maintain proportionality.
Limiting parliament's size to 120 is a stupid idea - a populist one sure, but stupid. It gets more stupid the more the population grows.
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Up Front: An Open Letter to the Labour…, in reply to Rob Stowell,
Hey Rob (and anyone else interested),
I'm always happy to chat - flick me an email from my site and we can get a time that suits.
James
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Don't forget that Homosexual Law Reform actually legalised sodomy for all, not just men.