Posts by Kyle Matthews
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Why would you over-sample and then weight the results as well?
I'm no stats person, but I'd imagine you oversample (say) Maori, so that if you take out the Maori data and talk about it by itself, you have meaningful numbers - ie, not 10 people.
When the data is dealt with as a whole, you weight it so your oversampling doesn't distort your picture of 'NZ as a whole'.
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The only time I've ended up in the gutter is when I drank too much.
Well that's just good citizenship. A decent rain will wash that away, whereas someone's doorstep, it stays there for weeks.
I spoke too soon...
ODT and NZ Herald. Yup, no great surprise. One pretending to be a big city paper, when it's not. The other seemingly doing the reverse.
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Third incident here. No police involvement in this one.
And now it is three incidents apparently. He's been charged in relation to the incident that Lucky Mulipola just dealt with. 3 in 3 months, there must be a prize for that. Hopefully some of the senior All Blacks give him a good hazing.
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I don't think three D&D charges in as may weeks is really something any prudent employer would class as a trivial "mis-deed".
I think it's two in as many months.
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IMO, "they" should phase out anything over a certain wattage, regardless of what sort of bulb.
I'm no electrician, but I presume they need larger wattage bulbs for commercial etc use. Warehouses and whatnot.
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The open fire is already on the way out. Now dimmers. Before you know it, romantic evenings will be mere history.
Maybe we'll all need to take up the violin.
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Not so with gay sexuality, it's nobody else's business. Why should homophobes have a say ?
Well apart from the obvious that in a democratic country, laws are passed by and for everyone, whether by our representatives in parliament, or by direct vote.
And also the small complication that if only gays get to vote on a measure, a bunch of them are going to have 1. Figure out that they are, and 2. Come out of the closet to vote.
And the fact that you'll get a great deal of debate from people as to whether a law only affects one group of people, or whether other people are affected as well. Homosexual law reform was opposed in part because people thought it would have bad impacts upon our society as a whole. Very few things occur in isolation, and even less are perceived to occur in isolation.
But Homosexual Law Reform is a significant moment in our history. Moving from it being illegal to have gay sex, to legal, is not only significant for people that the law affects, it's also significant for our society as a whole and what it says about our acceptance of difference and how everyone was taking another step towards being 'equal'. None of that would have happened if the vote was restricted only to those that it affected directly. It just would have been a bunch of homosexuals agreeing that they were OK.
The very basis of parliamentary democracy is that decisions are made by all and impact upon some. Everyone is affected by the Maori seats, because our parliament is different in nature as a result of them being there. We don't get a veto just because we're not directly affected.
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To provide you with an equally repulsive logical conclusion to what you are presenting, would you be OK with government that passed a law re-criminalising gay sex, or should they, y'know, see if it's cool with the gay community first ?
You don't want to come up with a sillier example do you? That one's only moderately silly, I think we should go the whole hog.
What about the 'dead beat Dads' having veto over child support laws? Paedophiles having veto over the criminal code? Beneficiaries setting their own benefit levels?
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"fixed" for what value?
I think Paul was referring to the USA. You can vote at any polling booth here in NZ, indeed as Matthew pointed out, you can adopt the McGillicuddy slogan and 'vote early, vote often...'
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Kyle, sure; he's a git most of the time and he's also capable of thoroughly vile politics.
Oh come on Paul, stay bitter. We were promised universal student allowances in 1996. You're not soft on Lockwood now too are you?
And when the rest of Maoridom agree with your fatuous argument (that Maori seats are consonant with historical policies that actively denied political participation), then we'll all migrate to the general seats and the matter will be resolved, won't it.
I still support the Maori seats, but I agree that if they change, then it'll be the choice of everyone (or everyone's representatives) that decide so. I couldn't see the movement of everyone onto the general roll and the removal of the Maori seats as 'disenfranchisement', under any definition.