Posts by Richard Grevers
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Hard News: The positive option of Red Peak, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Labour’s position has always been Yes/No vote first, the only sensible approach.
Au contraire, how can you have a meaningful vote on "do you want to change the flag?" if there's no context of what it would change to? I would change it to some designs, I wouldn't to others. I wrote thus to Andrew Little, but got the usual formula reply.
What matters is that we have preferential voting - although preferential voting with blocks would be even better (I don' think this has ever been used in any electoral system, coming more from the occupy movement. Any candidate would have to outscore the number of votes against it to still be live. - Whih might have given us a single referendum, as the no-changers could have voted against every option. -
...although it might be torrentable at archive.org
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Dang, I was going to give you a link to Ed Piskor's webcomic "Boingthump" about Phreaking, which I'm sure you would have appreciated Russell, but his domain is expired and squatted :-(
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Slater (ok, it's a name, but also a word quite descriptive of him - a woodlouse, hiding under rotting logs eating detritus :-)
Internet Party
Five Eyes
Surveillance
Intelligence (an oxymoron in most uses).
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It is bizarrely ironic that at the same time Little was being announced as leader, 40 EPMU members in his home town were being laid off
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It was never going to be anything but close - had there been a universally popular candidate, Cunliffe would have been rolled six months ago.
Little was branded as an outsider in New Plymouth six years ago, and has been fighting that ever since. Over the past three years I've encountered (and tried to avoid eye contact with) Jonathan Young a couple of dozen times around town, and seen Andrew Little once - it is said that Young will turn up to the opening of a jam jar. And yes, we are oil town and milk town - both pretty blue-thinking workforces.
It's a sad indictment of the self-interest of New Zealanders that a party has to consider dropping policies that would clearly be in the best interests of the country and the majority of people because they are "vote losers". But being in opposition, Labour doesn't have the luxury National had of not actually having to announce any policy.
Let's give it time. And lets hope that the Labour caucus shows a bit of loyalty and discipline - we don't need another "Cunliffe Holiday" farce.
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While searching for loopholes in the building laws, I came across a published submission to the Tasman District Council from people at the Tui community. It proposed a category of owner-built houses:
- Rural or semi-rural areas
- One meeting with Council to establish nature of house and which set of practises you will be following, with no further inspections - and fee reflective of that.
- Owner-build consent would waive Council of all responsibility re performance and safety of the house. Status would be recorded on LIM
- As you wouldn't be able to get insurance, a moptgage would probably be out of the question.
I doubt if it got anywhere, but the ability to build your own house for $30 - 50K would be appealing. -
The shoe thing: Do they apply geographical correction to the data? Without it, it’s useless: Living in Christchurch, it was very rare to see people barefoot about 10 months of the year – it’s either too bloody cold underfoot or tar-melting hot. Here in the balmy ’naki I see barefoot kids going to decile 10 schools – in winter. Yes, those kids will own shoes, but if they aren’t wearing them constantly they won’t wear out.
...and at NPGHS it seems to be a badge of honour that you don't wear a raincoat, just walk to school in the wet in your woolly jersey. The classrooms must smell interesting on a wet day.
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Hard News: Housing, hope and ideology, in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,
(coming to this thread late, as usual :-)
I think it's not so much lack of houses as lack of houses in the right place (where the jobs are). Or, perhaps more tellingly - lack of jobs where the houses are. I have joked that my solution to the Auckland housing problem is: 10,000 in Invercargill, 1000 in Gore... etc. etc. - and while moving more people to the provinces would create more jobs there, not enough unless you can also move industry (remember that?) there. -
Hard News: Five further thoughts, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
None of ous had - ok, a 1981 Chrysler Avenger is hardly a high-spec vehicle :-)
But our '97 Camy doesn't either. That's a car which is keeping on keeping on - 360,000 ks and did 35K last year. Just having bits of the exhaust fail one by one.