Posts by Henry Barnard
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Hard News: News Memories 2: The Twitter thread, in reply to Gareth,
I am with you, Gareth. The Cuban Missile Crisis, though I was 13 at the time and living in Manchester with my aunt and her family. We were truly worried by the events. The first `News' memories should be Suez when I was 7 and I was on board an Italian ship, sailing from Port Said to Naples and we saw planes flying from Malta or Cyprus to the canal (ours being one of the last ships to make it through the canal) but it simply didn't register as `News' to my mind at that time, just something fascinating to see. We had to return to India via South Africa the following February.
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Hard News: The new establishment, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Since the person who talked with Chris Hipkins is a New Zealand citizen, would hopping on planes even be necessary?
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Hard News: Metiria's Problem, in reply to ,
Yes, I saw that on Pundit. I have asked him for clarification because, to my untutored reading of the relevant section ("A person resides at the place where that person chooses to make his or her home by reason of family or personal relations, or for other domestic or personal reasons") it seems to me that there is profound ambiguity in this clause. It seems to read as saying that one can call a place The-place-of-one's-residence if one chooses to regard it as one's home for "personal reasons". In other words, `home is where the heart is' and not where one actually resides in the ordinary sense of the word. And if Turei's heart was in the last place she lived where her friend was standing for election, then surely she perfectly free to choose to call that her home, and therefore her residence for electoral purposes.
I wonder, too, if the folk who drafted this clause didn't have precisely these sorts of issues in mind but/and, more particularly, to allow people who might never have resided (in the ordinary sense of the word) in a place but whose turangawaewae might be elsewhere to declare that place as their home and, hence, their place of residence.
I await Andrew's response with bated breath.
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Hard News: Metiria's Problem, in reply to izogi,
Earlier, section 72 has a heap of rules about determining a person’s place of residence. I’ll submit to legal expertise and may have mis-read, but I cannot see where the flexibility is. 72 says your place of residence is where you make your home for family or personal relations, or for domestic or personal reasons. Section 83 then says you have to provide that place of residence when you register.
I’m not a legal expert so would also be grafeful for a little clarity here: Doesn’t the fact that the rules say that you can declare your place of residence as the place where you make your home for “personal” reasons pretty well provide for the kind of “flexibility” referred to? What counts and doesn’t count as a “personal” reason for declaring a particular place your home? Could it be as simple as it’s the place where you wish to call your home? Wouldn’t the fact that you wanted to support a friend count as a “personal” reason?
And if this is the case, then isn't all this talk of electoral fraud almost defamatory and the only people who are guilty are those making such an allegation?
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Hard News: Ten Thousand Maniacs, in reply to Hebe,
There is a loss of innocence that such a calculated campaign of violence can happen in a European city to people like you, rather than to people who live in a different culture in another part of the planet.
I found these reflections from across the Tasman by Ghassan Hage useful about thinking about this issue in the context of living in New Zealand.
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Deafening silence on TV ONE and TV3 news bulletins on Hillary Clinton's comments about the TPPA. Putin's success at Ice Hockey far more important! I really hate conspiracy theories but am beginning to wonder. Political journalists hijacked for a trip to Iraq?
This really only leaves Jeb Bush out front in favour of the TPPA - and, thus, I guess, Wayne Mapp's favoured candidate for POTUS.
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It is interesting to note that, on the same day, Wayne Mapp says
The US legislators will also know that TPP is about US leadership in the Asia Pacific. Failure to ratify would be tantamount to abandonment of any such ambitions. And any presidential contender worth his or her salt will know this.
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Hard News: 2015: The Budget of what?, in reply to wendyf,
In answer to your first question:
Are people on 5,10,15 hours work a week included in the employment figures?
From Statistics NZ:
The ‘working-age population’ is the usually resident, non-institutionalised, civilian population of New Zealand aged 15 and over. We count people as employed if, in a week, they:
work for at least an hour for pay
work for at least an hour unpaid at a family business
don’t work because of sickness, holiday, etc, when they usually would have worked at least an hour. -
Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to bmk,
I think it was clear, beyond a shadow of a doubt that the public don’t want Cunliffe to lead them. Therefore he should resign. To ignore the will of the public and then say it’s democracy when the membership of the party is much smaller than the general public seems bizarre to me.
1996: Labour, under Helen Clark (who had had nearly 3 full years as leader), went from 36.8% to 28.19% losing 6 seats in the process. NZF went from 8.85% to 13.35% gaining 15 seats in the process (first MMP election).
2014. Labour: under David Cunliffe (who has had precisely 1 year as Leader), went from 27.48% to 24.69%, losing 2 seats in the process. NZF went from 6.65% to 8.85% gaining 4 seats in the process.So, we want Cunliffe to realise something that Helen didn't: "That the public don't want him". Why?
The essential issue for me is the one raised by James's letter: it is not whether the public want him but whether the Labour Party, in all its wonderful variety, want him. Clearly a year ago, significant portions of it did but not a majority of the caucus. Now, clearly and obviously, the latter remains the case but the rest of the party is not where it was a year ago. Where it is is a matter for speculation. What is troubling, for me, is that an openly disunited caucus is not a good basis for being a runner for the next election let alone an effective opposition. Can the caucus, having aired what it has over the past few days, even function with Cunliffe as the leader? And is the purpose of this `airing' to ram home to the rest of the party that they cannot function with him as leader? We may not like the message (and I don't) but there is no doubt about what we are being told.
One could argue that caucus needs to just suck it in and live with what the rest of the party wants. In an ideal world, this would happen: but, realistically, its gone beyond that. There is so little `respect' left.
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The number of `undecideds' dropped significantly, from 15% to 10%, in the latest Colmar Brunton poll (pg.5). And it doesn't seem to be going Labour's way.