Posts by Sacha
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Article about political poll reveals continuing confusion amongst both public and journos about how MMP works.
Two-thirds of voters polled last month by Horizon Research believe National will be able to govern after the election, expected to be held in November.
But when asked to reveal their personal voting intentions, the result makes the election too close to call. National is by far the single most popular party, with 40.4% of the 1718 people polled saying they will give it their party vote, compared to just 28.3% for Labour. But the poll also predicts 8.9% for both the Greens and New Zealand First, 2% for Act, 1.7% for the Maori Party, and 1.2% for United Future.
When those parties are taken into account, a Labour-Greens-New Zealand First alliance (46.1%) would be a whisker ahead of a National-Act-Maori Party-United Future coalition (45.3%).
And Hooten gets handed another chance to lobby for getting rid of that pesky impediment to two-party rule - and to instruct Epsom's voters. Thanks, Fairfax.
But right-leaning political analyst Matthew Hooton said that although he had some qualms about Horizon's polling practice of asking "undecided" voters to indicate their preference, the results showed that "small parties will continue to have a huge impact on the result of the election".
He said for that reason alone, New Zealand should reject the MMP proportional representation voting system.
If Peters were to be cast in a kingmaker role, it would show that fringe parties with no public support, rather than the voters, get to choose the prime minister.
Similarly, Hooton said, Horizon's numbers suggested the result in Epsom would be "absolutely decisive".
"If National voters in Epsom vote for a National candidate, Goff will be prime minister; if they vote for Hide, Key will be prime minister."
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Matt McCarten on the Urewera trial.
The special terrorism task force co-ordinated the round-up and breathlessly informed us that they had smashed a home-grown terror plot by hardened Maori radicals, diehard communists, revolutionary anarchists and wild environmental activists. Anyone who knows anything about politics knows any such combination is the opposite of the tightly-wedded force necessary for a terrorist cell. They don't even believe in the same things.
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The Urewera defendants are unlucky because their case has too many careers and reputations in the state bureaucracy riding on them being convicted and jailed to get a fair trial. I'm not saying the people arrested for attending a camp, where perhaps firearms were involved, haven't broken certain laws. But I'm sure the whole silliness could have been fixed at the start with the iwi liaison cops in the area being sent up to Tame to pick up any weapons and give him a kick up the backside.
But vested interests need to embellish the threat for their own reasons. It gives an excuse to introduce laws so the state can spy even more on its citizens, increase funding and powers for our paramilitary police and deny legal defence rights for anyone charged under these new laws. In the past four years this is exactly what's happened. If I was a conspiracy theorist I'd think the whole thing was a set-up. At the very least the state has milked the situation for all it's worth.
The last thing the establishment wants is a jury trial where ordinary citizens see this nonsense for what it is and laugh it out of court.
That's the real crime.
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Speaker: It's called "planning" for a reason, in reply to FletcherB,
It's a foot in the door for a bigger route along the waterfront (and at least to Britomart) funded in the dying days of the ARC. Sometimes easier to get support when you have a demo project to show.
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Revealing road trip asks who's really restricting access to Northland's beaches.
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Speaking of beaches, the Herald's John Roughan strikes a pose in defense of the budgie smuggler. Here's why he reckons they went out of fashion:
Yet by 1970 or soon after, boardies had taken over the beach. The hedonism of the sixties was giving way to the new moralisms of the seventies: feminism, environmentalism, political correctness.
Someone buy the man a drink (or a brain).
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Drinnan and others get to whine smugly about 'hip operations' as soon as they've mentioned the billions in discretionary tax cuts skewed mainly to the wealthiest New Zealanders.
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Hard News: My Year in Culture, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I'm pretty sure I shared this beauty when it came out:
especially given that it's such a blatant rip-off of the Thin Lizzy tv ad :) -
Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to Neil Morrison,
Let's cut to the chase shall we - Somalia.
Right, now back to some intelligent conversation. -
Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to Peter Cox,
You're suppressing the vibrant free market in culture that existed before state support, Peter #neolibtwatcockery
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Hard News: Do you like what we've done…, in reply to Steve Parks,
Matthew's subscription suggestion does just about the same, though, so no biggie.
That's what I figured