Posts by linger
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Hard News: My Food Bag: is it any good?, in reply to Robyn Gallagher,
I’d note that in book reviewing for academic journals, being paid by keeping the review copy is absolutely standard practice. But there at least (i) reviewers can self-select for books that are in their own areas of interest; and (ii) the cost of most academic books is high enough that, if it’s something you were thinking of buying anyway, it does end up valuing the writing reasonably fairly.
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Up Front: Card on the Table, in reply to Chris Waugh,
That was a counterfactual, for very good reason. One serious objection to referenda in this case is that, in a state with any kind of ethical commitment to human rights,* matters of equal treatment for minority groups should not have to depend on the beneficient whim of the majority.
[* this last vote aside, several of NZ’s political parties are displaying quite dismally low levels of said commitment.]
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Good result; very happy to have been wrong about the scheduling.
Meanwhile, I/S obliges with a list of who changed their votes:Labour's Raymond Huo switched from an abstention to a "yes", while National's Brownlee, Coleman, McKelvie and McCully [voted against].
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I/S notes that there's too much business on the agenda ahead of the Marriage Equality bill, so there'll almost certainly be no vote on it until the next Member's Day.
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Legal Beagle: A four-year parliamentary term?, in reply to James Caygill,
Governments are elected to govern
It’s not always that simple (and the “winning” group should be wary of simplifying it that far by making claims about the size of their “mandate”, which is something of a fiction in the MMP environment anyway).
Sometimes they’re elected because people have stopped trusting the other lot, or figure it’s time for a change, or time for someone else to have a go. Actual differences in stated policy platforms don’t always seem to be that much of an influence.
Looking at the election results vs. the later protests – and looking at the downward trend in voting participation – I’d have to conclude that much of the policy signalled prior to elections doesn’t directly connect with what many potential voters actually care about; or maybe that a large number of potential voters don’t expect any politicians to actually do what they say they will. -
Legal Beagle: A four-year parliamentary term?, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
All of which is simply the tu quoque fallacy.
It doesn’t constitute a reason against doing something now.
(As I’m sure you know; but I figured it should be made explicit.) -
a-Paul-ing pundits
Holmes as that cheeky dead guy
forming with Henry, Lhaws, and their ilk
the fraternity of uppity nigglers. -
Not music, but audio links anyway:
Two BBC4 programmes on 21/12/12 (so they’ll be around for at least a week; possibly longer) are connected to A Recent Thread. (I’d have put the links there instead, but, well.)
(i) The Listening Project: parents of an autistic boy
(ii) More or Less: US gun crime statistics -
Hard News: Music: In before Christmas, in reply to FletcherB,
The TV theme is of course that of Futurama.
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Up Front: Whimsy Is an Extra 5 Cents a Word, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Oh yes. The horror!