Posts by BenWilson
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Although experts don't have intrinsically superior values, they can offer more effective solutions to the problems that society confronts. I suppose one of the problems lies in the fact that expertise cannot be easily separated from pre-existing normative outlook.
Perhaps so, but I don't think politicians are those particular experts. Their expertise is not in solving problems, it is in manufacturing them. And they certainly do manufacture them for pre-existing normative outlooks, unless they are totally fringe.
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It was Brash's supine acquiesence to the the McCully-inspired 'mainstream' hogwash - something he plainly couldn't have believed but was was wiilling to compromise himself by endorsing - that killed any remaining respect I might have held for him.
I can just imagine him thinking "Do family values really have to be mainstream?"
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Broad church? LOL, a lovely oxymoron. So everyone who goes to a mosque, synagogue, temple or is secular is excluded? That does seem to sum Howard up quite nicely.
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I guess it was if you were white, well-educated and middle-class (and being a heterosexual with a penis didn't do any harm either);
That's a surprisingly large demographic in NZ.
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I was going to weigh in on this discussion about the core values of the two main parties, but the more I thought about it, the less sure I became.
It used to be that National was to the 'right' of Labour. But the 70s and 80s flipped that, creating the need to measure left and right in more than one dimension. Social and economic dimensions are popular choices. So you make a score for how much they believe in government control in the economy and one for how much they believe in government control of other aspects of life, assign weightings to each score and calculate and overall left-right score (although it's not really left-right anymore). On that, Labour in the 80s could be shown to be to the right of Muldoon on the economic dimension, but to the left in the social. The overall score could actually have been the same. Clearly the policy was almost diametrically opposite, so that shows the uselessness of the left-right dichotomy.
Now even making a choice about their respective positions along those dimensions is problematic. More dimensions are needed, and when they start getting really specific it's not entirely clear whether one is the more natural position of either party, so giving it a 'left or right' tag starts becoming meaningless. I would even struggle to place myself on such a chart (or n-dimensional space, more like), much less parties which won't tell you their policies. Do I favor high or low inflation? Actually, I don't care. In fact for most economic questions I don't care. On the social issues I do care, but neither party represents my position, nor appears to differentiate themselves from the other. They all say they're x-friendly, where x is any group, and the manifestation of that is almost entirely in the economic policy, whether they really do care.
Thinking further through it, I start to wonder if such placing is even a worthwhile task. The answers to some questions are so highly nuanced and situational that very small differences in wording will flip my position.
So the whole thing comes down to sweeping generalizations and trust. Either party will actually do whatever they think is necessary at the time, whatever their deliberately vague promises were. And the battle for the government becomes engendering trust that what you will do will not be too far from public opinion, unless it's really necessary. That unless is important since it's almost guaranteed to happen. But the 3 year term means they've got enough time to work on convincing people that it really was necessary (or hope they forget).
Which again sums up representative democracy for me. It's not about voting for specific policy at all. That's just a carrot dangled during election year. In truth it's about trust and sweeping generalizations, prejudice and belonging. The party which can bundle all of that will tend to win.
It's extremely hard to hold onto the trust for long periods, simply because given enough time you'll do something that fucks off almost everyone at least once.
For me, Labour finally lost it when they banned BZP. It's not like I want BZP, it's just that it's symbolic of the vote grabbing suckup to old people living in whatever part of the South Island it is that Jim Anderton represents which shouldn't impact on Auckland, but does anyway, that I can't stand. Next might be something I really do care about.
For Maori it may have been the F&S Bill. For hippies it might have been the GE thing. Eventually it all starts to hurt, and people just want change, even if it's unknown and possibly worse. I mean National will probably be even more into banning liberties, confiscating Maori land and letting farmers introduce whatever they want into the ecosystem, but at least they never said any different.
So, in summary, I actually don't know what the core values of either party are. To me they're a Grand Old Coalition with leadership that changes every 6 years or so, and the minor parties that are grudgingly allowed to exist are the only ones for whom core values means anything.
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No, I think it's a great story once you untangle the double (triple?) negative - because if "John Key's wiki isn't being vandalised hardly at all" - doesn't that mean it's being vandalised quite a lot?
It's not a double negative. Not hardly at all doesn't necessarily mean lots. It could mean not at all. And that's the usual interpretation. It's emphatic, rather than negating. It's making the point that it's nothing, not just close to nothing. Rather like "I wouldn't give you 2 cents for that". Popular culture is cleverer than you think, sometimes. There's a difference between something that's worth jack, and something that ain't worth jack. The difference is ain't worth jack, but it's there.
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Yeah but its a bit like the WMD thing. You can bang on about something all you like but once the curtain is pulled and the stage is revealed to be bare then its you who look stupid.
So long as the curtain is pulled after the election, or after the war in the case of WMDs, would they care?
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And I'd also like the Nats to tell us what they want to do when they get into power, but since they're slaughtering the government in the polls but dip a little in popularity every time they open their mouths I'm not holding my breath.
Me neither. The more that Labour make pinning Key down part of their strategy the less we will hear from Key. It's not over yet, Key's silence could start turning against him, but I'm expecting that's exactly when the Nats will start releasing policy statements, not a moment before. And they will be the kind of statements which aren't much more elucidating than silence. They'll just sound better.
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Thats why it is more important, to me, to start trying to get some answers out of National in general, and Key in particular in regards to policy.
Personally it's important to me because they might be the next government. If the answers are good then perhaps they should be.
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Yeah, but was it an affair or 'just' some 'inappropriate emails'?
I don't claim to know. Must have been damned inappropriate to put his marriage in jeopardy, I'd think.
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