Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: The scandal that keeps on giving, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I’d say News Corp meets that definition.
And I'd suggest you'll be interested in the Commons select committee hearing that Brooks and the two Murdochs are about to appear before. It's live on Sky News tonight from 11.30pm. Yowza.
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Cunliffe's fairly blazing rebuttal of Joyce's numbers.
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Up Front: How About Now?, in reply to Emma Hart,
Because I am, of course, an ideologically-bankrupt incrementalist.
We really need to work out secret handshake for that club.
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Up Front: How About Now?, in reply to Tom Beard,
Please don’t think I’m trolling for saying this, but I don’t support same-sex marriage because I don’t support such unnatural lifestyles. By which of course I mean “marriage”.
Do you remember that early in the CUB debate there was a group called Lesbians Who Don't Want a Bar of It?
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I was wrong, and I know this for sure now because we actually have polling data.
I think you’ve missed a crucial point here – which is the change in attitudes to same-sex marriage since civil unions became law.
From the Herald, 2004:
The report included a Herald-DigiPoll survey of 750 people, which found that New Zealanders broadly approved of the Government’s plans to recognise gay relationships as civil unions but not as marriage.
A majority of those polled agreed with the civil union plan (by 56 per cent to 39 per cent) but disagreed with the idea of gay marriage by almost the same margin (54 per cent to 40 per cent).
Does anyone have any other pre-2005 poll numbers? (I’m not counting the ropey Close Up phone poll that registered huge opposition, on the basis that it was a ropey Close Up phone poll.)
According to the new poll, support has increased by 50%. Even allowing that some old people have died since, and the general shift to acceptance in western countries, it does seem to me that civil unions have done the job many of us hoped they would.
I suspect doubters have noted the Obvious Failure of The World To End as a result of civil unions, and perhaps even seen friends and family happily “married” by that means. Clearly, it is time to deploy Phase 2 of the Homosexual Agenda.
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OnPoint: Easy as 1, 2, 22.8 billion, in reply to Simon Poole,
Hope that made sense, and if anyone has a clear answer I would be very interested in hearing it.
It was, may I say, an excellent question.
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Field Theory: It's not yours, but you…, in reply to Damian Christie,
but as someone said above, making the term Radler as generic as possible is the best way to invalidate it, cf Sellotape, Xerox etc…)
But it is already generic, that's the point.
Selltotape isn't, as anyone who's ever received one of their terribly polite legal reminders can attest.
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OnPoint: Easy as 1, 2, 22.8 billion, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
you don’t need to look too hard to find occasions where Treasury numbers should be taken with an unhealthy amount of salt.
Keith's point is these are not Treasury numbers.
That would imply that they have been provided by Treasury staff with the degree of professional integrity we would expect from public servants. They have not. They have been created by political staffers with a publicly available spreadsheet tool. Calling them "Treasury numbers" does besmirch the professional integrity of the public servants at Treasury.
And I'm quite sure David Farrar knows that.
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On Twitter, Farrar cited these same numbers as “numbers from Treasury”. Let’s hope he doesn’t say the same thing in his columns or his blog, because that would be greatly misrepresenting these numbers and besmirching Treasury’s reputation as neutral, competent public servants.
On Farrar's recent form, I'm not sure that prospect would deter him.
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Hard News: An inspirational record, in reply to nzlemming,
Russell, have you or the Cactuslab boys changed the timeout on the blog? Normally, I leave the pages I’m reading open for days without having to relogin but today it’s happening every time I come back to it. Chrome on Win7. And not just HardNews, but all the PA blogs.
The upgrade this week -- which will deliver the much-requested "jump to first unread comment" feature, among others -- has been throwing up an array of bugs.
This one might take a little longer to resolve because the CactusLads are at Bar Camp Auckland all day, but I've passed on the report.