Posts by Stephen Hill
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Hmmm - sounds like Mr Whyte could do with reading this book: Crimes Against Logic
... oh, wait a minute ...
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Does any one here know the provenance of 'munted'?
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Hard News: Democracy Night, in reply to Clint Fern,
then Nat/Act/UF would have 60 seats.
Which to my mind would still make them the Govt, just one that may not be able to pass asset sales.
Absolutely – there’s no way that Labour/Green/NZ First/Maori/Mana could (or should) attempt to form a government in such a scenario – it’d be disastrous. However, with a small majority and the global economy is disarray the next 3 years are a real hospital pass.
And, if the Maori Party do decide to rejoin National in government, what’s going to happen when (if?) Tariana and Pita step down during the term and we get by-elections for Te Tai Hauāuru and Tamaki Makaurau? The Maori Party really are between a rock and hard place.
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Hard News: Democracy Night, in reply to Rich Lock,
I had a mess around with the MMP seat allocation calculator at Elections NZ yesterday - in the (admittedly unlikely) event that NZ first lifted to 7% (+0.2) and the Greens to 11.2% (+0.6) and all of that 0.8% came off National (47.19) then Nat/Act/UF would have 60 seats.
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Hard News: Democracy Night, in reply to Sacha,
How do go about putting together a citizen's initiated referendum (on asset sales)? Anyone have some spare time before Christmas?
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All the talk about 'huge majorities' is making me wonder whether I can't see the numbers on my screen properly. A quick analogy - Key scores 48 points for his side (Nat, Act, UF) to take them to a total of 49.7 points (51 if you add in the Maori Party) while the other team (Everyone else) scored 50.3 (or 49). That's great individual result for Key but ...
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I've found a precedent for Key's memory problems here - Losing memories overnight: a unique form of human amnesia.
So perhaps he wakes each morning thinking he's just had a cup of tea with John Banks. Poor guy - no wonder he's looking agitated.
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Why can't referenda be 'properly multichoice' - you know, 4 or more options? Having a simple yes/no response means that even a monkey can get it right half of the time.
(Sorry - I'm marking exams)
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On the importance of expectations for hearing things (like 'I killed the prick') in a noisy context see this
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In the USA there are some innovative approaches to doing this that allows the rollout to be conducted by unskilled workers, requiring minimal spicing and no trenches.
But wouldn't they be a tad dull and uninteresting with minimal spicing? If you're going to pay all that money why go for bland unskilled workers?