Posts by Rich of Observationz
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I think some hard localism would do well.
Um, you do know that National haven't manage to impose FPP yet, and we're still on MMP. Which means that even if Labour carry off all the trophy seats, their majority still depends on the party vote.
Or is this part of Goff's barely hidden two (three? four?) election strategy? Use the next two or three elections to get some reasonable talent into the house, in preparation for a Labour government in 2014 or 2017.
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perhaps as a Progressive
I had wondered about that. But if Jim gets the mayoral chains and leaves parliament, does the JAPP disappear with him? And is he ok with gay people, or are they Evil, like drugs?
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NACT top tricks #1208 take an annual amount, apply inflation and compound interest to it until it reaches a suitably huge number. Publicise this number through the tame and inumerrate media.
Bonus points - limit access to education to ensure an even more innumerrate population that won't call you on it.
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I don't buy that we need an austerity program to reduce public borrowing. The old fashioned idea that government borrows in a recession to help with the bad times and taxes in a boom to reduce the excess seems like a good one to me.
Providing cheap lifetime education, decent public housing and a quality health system creates jobs and make peoples lives better. The downside is that rich people can't get quite as rich and might actually have to pay tax (gasp) on their assets.
Surely a labour leader could get that over and not rely on ertzatz NACT policies washed down with dog-whistles to bigotry. No?
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I'm 100% with Graeme on this. The electorate should be the judge of an MPs performance. Having Parliament able to sanction members is at best unnecessary and at worst an interference with our right to elect who we choose.
Following from that though, if it's a breach of the BORA to fire an MP for sickness as I/S suggests, are the electors liable if they vote out a sick MP?
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re John Peel - you didn't try and hug an English ex-public schoolboy? Without them having dropped at least two 'e's?
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At $29 a 100M it's cheaper to use a phone anyway even at current rip off rates. Not for foreigners, though.
Are there *any* hotels in NZ with free wifi? Think I've been given it as a Corp rate bonus before but can't remember where.
A mayoral candidate wants to spend $$$ on free citywide Wifi in Wellington. Which seems a waste of resources when we already have 3G. And what will stop people using it instead of home internet to download petabytes of movies?
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justified and ancient
Now, since you allow me to digress, I saw a poster on a wall at the weekend with KLF on it.
Are they reforming and coming to NZ.
Or is it the Khandallah Liberation Front?
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If there was no black market in heroin and addicts got their supplies from pharmacies, there would be no illicit profits to be made. It'd also be way healthier for the smackheads.
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If we *could* "help" and not make it worse, I might support some form of intervention in Afghanistan. There are circumstances where military force has worked, for instance the Falklands, East Timor or Uganda.
But that's been where there's been a foreign invader or a small dictatorial group that didn't enjoy much (or any) popular support and could be removed from the scene. Radical muslims in Afghanistan are not such a group.
There is also the aspect that there are now two groups in Afghanistan, those that support the Western occupation/colonisation/friendly support operation and those that violently oppose it. If there wasn't much of a civil war before, there will be once those groups are free to get at each other. The longer we stay, the more polarised society and the worse this war will be. (There are parallels here with the British plantation of Scots Protestants into Ulster).
One could also consider that all Russell's arguments could be applied (even in retrospect) to Indochina. If the US had stayed and applied sufficient force, the Khmer Rouge could have been suppressed and the atrocities of the Pol Pot regime averted. However, they'd have been there indefinitely, at least until the collapse of the Soviets in 1979, or a nuclear war before that.
Of course, Vietnam and Cambodia sorted themselves out after the US left and are now semi-democratic, reasonable civilised states. (Ok, Vietnam sorted Cambodia out, technically).
So we can't help and should stop making it worse (see also British India, 1946).