Hard News: The sole party of government
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Farmer Green, in reply to
Deborah , you probably did put something in my mail box , but all the local newspapers I would regard as junk-mail. I never look at them.
All I was saying was that none of it reached me ; I guess I don't get out much. :-)
There could be a lot of dairy farmers like that, especially at this time of year.
My remark was not a criticism of you personally; just stating the fact.
You might support the same things as I do : I wouldn't know.
But if you had visited , you wouldn't have been the first Labour politician to do so. -
Wall was a dual international - netball and union.
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In case folk are interested, the party vote swing is available here:
Large swing against Nats in Christchurch East, Helensville, Rimutaka, but the benefit isn't Labour.
I'll see if I can pull out the candidate data and do a similar thing sometime this week.
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mark taslov, in reply to
is which economic baskets to redistribute our eggs into?
Tourism, New Zealand received 2,699,762 visitors in the year to Nov 2013, Australia received 5.9 million short-term visitors in the 2010-2011 fiscal year, why aren’t we capitalizing on that? Where is New Zealand’s (I know it’s crass but we’re after all only talking about money) Gold Coast. Where is our abusive tourist Minister in all this? Where’s Seaworld? Where’s Dreamworld? And most achingly where is our WB themed Movieworld? Wetaworld?
Some may say we’re not that kind of market, but you know how things are in Beijing; rollercoasters, Miniworld, Bajiao, Happy Valley. I’m not suggesting environmental destruction, quite the opposite, this kind of thing can be quite sustainable, it just more economic use of suburban land to capitalize on the industry.
That is if it’s money we want, and jobs….and just maybe, one day, less shit in rivers.
If we can afford $88b debt, then maybe we could afford an 88b dollar investment, yeah, nah. Personalities. Milk is what we do cos milk is who we are mate.fig leaf/____
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Farmer Green, in reply to
There's nowt as queer as folk Andre.
" a third of the electorate doesn’t turn up, when media bias and corruption are proven there is no response and any party focused on these ‘old’ issues is branded as crack-pots."
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Keir Leslie, in reply to
But, ok, Deborah's job is basically to talk to Labour and likely Labour voters in her seat, and make sure they vote (and for her). You aren't in either of those groups, realistically, so I wouldn't expect her to be having many conversations with you. It's nothing personal, but it sounds like she was talking to the right people in Rangitikei.
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Katharine Moody, in reply to
I’m all for Winston being made Speaker of the House ; he knows where the door is. And it might shut him up , to some extent.
Yes, and I'm sure Key will try that one on - with the promise of a knighthood to boot. I don't think he'll take it but I do think he'd love to be the Minister of Racing again. Possible double-cross coming up here :-).
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Amanda Wreckonwith, in reply to
can’t get enough organic milk powder
Perhaps if Fonterra hadn’t ballsed up their supply chain by messing with their organic milk contracts they wouldn't be struggling.
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OK, I've extrapolated a better estimates of the 2011 potential voter population: 3,326,842. Subtract prisoners, add overseas voters, is 3,378,138.
Of course, the higher estimated base population figures for make the non-voter percentages even more shocking: 32.4% in 2011, but a massive 37.9% in 2014.
If anyone can tell me how to upload an image, I can bake some pies...
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Interestingly, huge increases in NZFirst party vote in the Māori electorates (3 - 5% absolute)
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Lucy Telfar Barnard, in reply to
Winston Peters has said, very loudly and very clearly, that he can't think of any job he'd like less than being Speaker. I don't know why people keep suggesting it.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Is she in the current All Black squad?
No, Alfie, but she wasn’t a political eunich when she was a dual international. You’re being as absurd as the people who had a rather unedifying shit fit about professional tennis player Andy Murray posting a pro-Yes Tweet the day of the Scottish referendum, or Robyn Malcolm expressing left-wing political opinion while appearing in partially publicly-funded television and theater.
Current All Blacks are perfectly entitled to express their political views, just like everyone else. What they’re most certainly NOT entitled to do is break electoral laws while doing so, and that would be no less true if their political leanings were more to your liking.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
In 2011 National got 1,058,636 votes, or 33.7% of the available vote. In 2014 it got 1,010,464 votes, or 31.2% of the the available vote.
And yet again our media appear to be mathematically challenged.
That's the generous interpretation - that they are so stupid or lazy they can't add.
Either that or they are part of the corruption that Hager revealed to us all.
hmmm I guess I'm a bit grumpy.
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
Tourism, yes, but... If Beijing is the example, then I would suggest it's culture and historic sites that draws the big crowds. Happy Valley is just around the corner from me, and I can see it from my classrooms. I walked past it a lot over the summer (less time now that classes have started) and although I did see a lot of people, including some clearly (tour coach licence plates, accents, etc) from out of town, I've never seen anything like the crowds attracted by the Forbidden City, Badaling, etc. Even Jingshan seems to easily match Happy Valley, even if it is only for the tree the last Ming emperor hung himself from and the view over the old city from the top of the hill.
Air NZ, Whalewatch Kaikoura and others are active on Weibo and elsewhere, Air NZ in old media, too, pushing clean, green NZ. But we do need to keep the environment reasonably clean to keep those tourists coming. Feng Xiaogang recently published an autobiography in which he had nice things to say about a trip to NZ, Yao Chen's Queenstown wedding was popular on Weibo, but you can imagine what would happen if somebody of their stature and influence returned to China talking on Weibo about NZ's lurid green cowshit sodden rivers.
I have zero faith in the current government to understand any of this.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Winston Peters has said, very loudly and very clearly, that he can’t think of any job he’d like less than being Speaker. I don’t know why people keep suggesting it.
Because it's been far too long since he did this?
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OK, with updated base population figures, here’s the 2011 voter distribution: http://imgur.com/Jr06oVW
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Michael Homer, in reply to
So basically when a family member dies and leave something of their life’s work to their offspring, Labour wanted to slip in there and skim some off the top when they sell it. I can’t for the life of me understand the ethical position. It’s a death tax. Avoidable by selling your family home in that briefest moment before you issue your last breath.
If you sold it and there was a capital gain you'd pay tax on it, whenever it was sold; your estate would either have an asset that could be realised for $X or $X in cash. There is no sense in which it is a "death tax".
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mark taslov, in reply to
The problem is though that all those examples in Beijing are pretty shit, as I recall Happy Valley closes in the winter, there’s better down here and yet still not up to the standard of GoldCoast or L.A. Those 2 million people to NZ contribute $24b, those 5m to Australia contribute $94.8b, clearly the investment in world class attractions pays off. And for lack of much historical interest, the backpacker market only stretches so far, but yeah the urban parks and lakes of Beijing, it's a beautiful thing.
NZ’s small tourism operation is up with the best in the world but something like a massive Wetaworld, under Peter Jackson’s direction would be amazing. in say the Wairarapa, with a high speed train through the Rimutaka Ranges. But yeah, maybe I’ve been here too long amongst this “impossible is nothing” ;) and Chinese capital.
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And the 2014 voter distribution:
http://imgur.com/BKvIGZU -
Katharine Moody, in reply to
Yes, the drop was worse – much worse – for Labour than for National (from 19.6% to 16.0%), and also dropped for the Greens(from 7.9% to 6.5%) but I don’t want to see this reported as a surge in support for National, because it’s not.
Exactly. And it was a surge for NZF and for Conservatives - which might as well have been a surge for NZF policies (which are national populism/anti-globalism) - but a resounding rejection of neoliberalism (ACT policy).
As I see it, globalism is the 2G of neoliberalism - you have centre left and centre right globalists - and the competing ideologies. NZF is a competing ideology.
If interested, here's a great academic paper on Ideologies of Globalization;
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So what now, it's a mandate to push for for an undisclosed TPPA, Charter Schools, endorsement of current media arrangements and a slow quashing of any revelations into corruption such as the boomer in the Herald , which has since been buried under wonderfull John Keys victory news.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11327317
So when do we get the US flag ? -
Katharine Moody, in reply to
Can’t think of anything else.
What matters is the hidden agenda. Point is, we had an early election called because our economic situation was deteriorating by the month - then by the week - and soon it will be by the day. National didn't want to make any proposals to increase the tax take because they want to be in charge when austerity measures are called for.
We still have valuable assets - Landcorp and the Conservation estate.
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Amanda Wreckonwith, in reply to
Tourism
At the risk of rattling Farmer Green's cage - this is the last thing we should be promoting. Encouraging even more unnecessary flights is totally the wrong way to direct our economic efforts.
Climate change is here. We ignore it at our peril. -
Katharine Moody, in reply to
I see no reason to trust National to even notice this question, let alone do anything about it.
I think they know what's coming. And the strategy is not to do anything about it. That leaves us with the only option but to sell more assets.
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mark taslov, in reply to
So shit in rivers and methane is preferable to airline emissions. Do you have any ideas Amanda?
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