Posts by webweaver
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Up Front: What if We Held an Election…, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Hell, just being a scrutineer – with incredibly strict rules about how you conduct yourself in a polling place – was *cough* character forming. :)
I find the “you may not speak with the voters” one particularly fun in terms of its consequences. There’s always gonna be at least one friend or acquaintance coming in to vote if you scrutineer near where you live – in my case it was three or four people during the course of the day.
The first thing that happens is that you catch their eye – because that’s what you’re trying to do with everyone anyway, and you know this person so it would be rude not to…
And they recognise you and go “Hi webweaver! How are you? Go the Greens!” and you smile broadly and say “I’m terribly sorry I’m not allowed to talk to you…” and they go “Wuh? Oh!!” (sudden realisation dawns)… embarrassed grin as they do the ‘zipped mouth’ sign and apologise with an “Oh yes! I won’t say another word! Oops!” and other general awkward shufflings ensue.
After they’ve voted they catch your eye again, give you a big grin and a thumbs-up and off they go.
The first time it happened in our polling station was very soon after we opened and a friend of one of the Labour scrutineers came in. All smiles and “hello how are you?” – expecting a response in return.
The poor scrutineer lady (because I guess hers was the first of the day and we hadn’t quite established our non-response response protocols by that point) looked completely horrified, clamped her mouth shut, looked around wildly for assistance and/or support and finally managed to squeak out “I can’t talk to you!!!!” to her friend – who then did the whole “wuh? oh!” zipped mouth rigmarole thingymajig. Brilliant.
*sigh* I do love people-watching. It’s fascinating.
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Me: …and when you’re done, the papers go…
Voter: *walks away*
Me: IN THE PORT HILLS… fuck.
Voter: *comes out of the booth, walks past the Port Hills boxes, shoves votes in the Chch East boxes*
Me: *head thunks dully into cardboard table*
The exact same thing happened in the polling station where I was scrutineering. It was fascinating to watch. Of the four polling officials only one seemed to have figured out how to prevent this from happening...
Her technique was multi-stepped and went something like this:
1) Very confident voice, made eye contact with voter, had the whole spiel down pat right from the get-go.
2) Carried on doing the talk while she was writing the number on the voting paper, handing this to the voter first while folding the referendum paper (so they could see something else was coming and they should wait for it), meaning that timing-wise she was still holding onto the referendum paper by the time she got to the bit about going behind the screens.
3) Voter stays put and looks obediently towards the screens as she points them out like an air hostess pointing out the emergency exit.
4) Still holding onto the referendum paper but now proffering it to the voter, she finishes her spiel with the bit about the voting boxes at the same time as finally letting go of the paper, does another air-hostess point towards the boxes while they are paying attention to grabbing hold of the referendum - which means that again they look obediently towards where she's pointing before finally shuffling off to vote with an "oh right - thanks..."
Brilliant. Worked every time. I bet she practiced in the front of the mirror for days beforehand :)
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I've spent a very cool day scrutineering on behalf of the Greens at Northland School in Wellington. Smiled at every voter whose eye I could catch in an organic, environmentally friendly and ecologically sustainable manner :)
Realised I was one of a very select group in the country allowed (required by law actually) to wear my party colours on my sleeve today.
Had great chats with the National Party scrutineer sitting next to me (crazy I know!) who turned out to have tons of lefty mates, rides a bike to work, recycles everything and doesn't really agree with asset sales. I reckon he's a closeted lefty who hasn't quite admitted it to himself yet.
Didn't mind that out of the three party scrutineers at our polling station (Greens, Labour and National) I was the only one not to get deliveries of food from party central throughout the day. Decided I'd much rather the Greens spent their funds on electioneering rather than feeding us. National guy shared his food with me instead. Heh.
Decided to stay to watch the count once the doors closed at 7pm. Fascinating process - neat counting method actually - and felt very happy to have played my part in our democratic process on behalf of a party of which I'm very proud to be a member.
Now watching TV One and surfing the net and trying not to think about Banks and Dunne both getting back in. Not to mention Winston First. Sigh.
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Here’s what I wrote in my Facebook status the other day:
In Saturday’s election I’ll be voting Green for my party vote because they focus on taking care of our environment and all our people in a sustainable, socially responsible, community-based way. In short, they care about the things I care about.
I’m voting for Grant Robertson because I think he’s done a great job for Wellington Central over the past 3 years.
I’ll be voting to keep MMP because I believe that our representatives in Parliament should reflect the diversity of the people of New Zealand – and that the fairest and most effective way of governing is by consensus.
Rich said:
I would have voted Green, if they removed all the equivocation from this page and just said that they will not support National on confidence and supply during the next parliament and will consider any legislation against their policy and principles.
This is how I see it. There is a possibility that National might not get enough seats to govern alone (please God make it so!).
If Banks loses in Epsom (a strong possibility, looking at the gap between him and Goldsmith in the polls) then ACT is toast. If Charles Chauvel can roll Dunne in Oariu (running neck & neck in the polls) then UF is toast too. That leaves the Maori Party as National’s only buddy in Parliament.
As Winston has already said he won’t work with either side (and assuming he can resist the baubles of office if they do get over the 5%), I can see some scenarios where National might actually need the Greens to at least abstain on C&F in order to get things passed.
Initially that completely freaked me out – the thought that the Greens might actually help National. OMG. However, I now see it in a much more pragmatic light. My biggest concern (of many) about National is that they will try to get asset sales pushed through Parliament. The Greens have said that “no asset sales” is an absolutely bottom-line issue for them – one that they won’t budge on.
This means that a strong Green vote, with as many Green MPs as possible, may be a powerful foot in the door that prevents National from having the numbers to get asset sales approved. Labour won’t be able to do anything to prevent it happening directly, because they’re the opposition – but a strong Green Party in a position where National have to bargain something away in order to get something else from them – just might.
I trust the Greens not to bargain away any of the big things that really matter to me – opposing asset sales and opposing deep sea oil drilling for example – and they have already shown that they can work with National on things like home insulation without selling their collective soul to the devil, as it were.
Although ideologically I guess my preference would be for the Greens to stick to making agreements with other left-wing parties, if it’s a question of agreeing not to disagree with some policies that you may not like much but which you can live with – in exchange for getting the really really really bad policy (asset sales) off the agenda, I think I can live with that.
ETA: Of course in an ideal world I'd like to be looking forward to a left-leaning coalition winning the day tomorrow, but that ain't gonna happen, so having a strong Green party in place to mitigate a really really bad result (for me) is the best outcome I can hope for
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Hard News: Last Words, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
The Greens got my party vote
Craig, you have no idea how inordinately happy I felt when I read this. You rock!
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Hard News: A week being a long time in politics, in reply to Caleb D'Anvers,
"The sky doesn't matter. It's the issues"
Completely brilliant - I've never heard that version before. Thanks for sharing! Still giggling at it.
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Wait – what? You get given a pension automatically when you turn 65 – whether or not you’re still working? I did not know that. How odd.
I’ve been working on the assumption that there won’t be any money in the pot to pay for my pension by the time I retire (assuming I ever do retire!) so I need to be self-sufficient – which means saving money now in order to keep myself in the manner to which I’ve become accustomed later on. I’m very lucky that I can afford to do that – and I think I owe it to the community to pay my way independently if I can – whether or not I’ve “earned” a pension.
Having said that, I’ve got no plans to retire anyway – I love my job and I love working so I think I’ll probably just keep on going as long as I possibly can. And if I am lucky enough to be still working whenever the retirement age happens to be, I won’t be drawing a pension – because I won’t need it.
Personally I’m with Richard Aston on the means-testing thing. I think those of us who can afford to keep ourselves afloat without requiring state help might like to consider doing just that. If there’s not going to be enough money around to help everyone anyway, I’ll be more than happy to put my bit (my pension) back into the communal pot so that it can be given to someone who needs it more than me. It’s good kharma.
It requires a mind-shift away from “I earned it so I’m taking it” to “someone else needs it more than me so they should have it”, but if you look at it from a community-based perspective, IMO it’s the right and proper thing to do.
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Back to the issue of domestic violence again (it's something I've been doing a lot of reading about recently).
There have been a couple of comments in this thread about the relationship between alcohol and domestic violence and I wanted to clarify something...
One of the (many) myths around domestic abuse is that "the drink made him do it". It's an excuse you hear a lot from violent men - "I was so drunk I didn't know what I was doing" or "I was drunk and I just lost control" or whatever. What they are implying is that the violence is not really their fault - that it was caused by an external force (in this case alcohol) and that they are therefore not really responsible for their actions.
From the First formative research project report on the Are You OK? website (PDF, page 12):
While those working with perpetrators accept that alcohol can be a contributing factor to violence, it is generally not accepted as a justification or reason for violence
When we say that domestic violence is caused by alcohol, we're allowing the perpetrator to excuse his violent behaviour. Research with domestic abusers clearly shows that domestic violence of all kinds (physical, psychological and sexual) is all about power, domination and control. It's not at all about "losing control".
People who abuse their partners are not blinded by rage, judgmentally impaired by alcohol or pushed to breaking point by their partners. They each make a choice about whether or not to behave abusively, and while some might go off and get drunk before they finally choose to explode, alcohol is neither an excuse for domestic violence nor the primary cause of it.
By accepting the myth that alcohol causes domestic violence we are tacitly allowing perpetrators to absolve themselves of responsibility - and if we're to make a dent in our appalling domestic violence statistics, we have to work as a society to change attitudes across the board - and that includes examining the accuracy of the myths that surround it.
By the way, the It's Not OK campaign (big ups to Russell for his involvement) appears to be working:
An article recently published in the international journal Trauma, Violence and Abuse, and identifies "It's not OK" as a leading example of effective behaviour change campaigns aimed at perpetrators of domestic/family violence.
OK, end of PSA. Back to the rugby :)
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Hard News: Winning the RWC: it's complicated, in reply to izogi,
I'm loving the World Cup - I've got my rugby mojo back! Hooray!
I'll be a nervous wreck on Sunday though. Never underestimate the French - even tho they've been mostly shit so far this time.
And can I also make a (slightly off-topic) point?
It's fine for it to be culturally important and I enjoy seeing a good game too. I'm just not sure how healthy it is when the entire national mood, election outcomes, crime rates and particularly (so I hear) domestic violence fluctuate depending on whether a particular rugby team is having a good season.
Domestic violence does not increase as a result of a team having a bad game or season. A bad game can be used as an excuse for domestic violence, but the abuse is always a choice made by the perpetrator. If his team hadn't lost, it would be that you burnt the dinner or looked at him funny. There's always a convenient excuse, and it's important to make that distinction.
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I never ever imagined I would say this but...
The Sun's report on Tindall's night out with the blonde in Queenstown was pretty darned accurate, if the CCTV footage is anything to go by.
Oopsie!
Not that I read or watched any of it, of course :)