Posts by Joshua Arbury
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Might be worth putting that disclaimer on all of our blogs actually....
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If you want Russell to act or think on your view, you may need to quantify "difference".
Just in the formatting really. I guess I am used to blogspot/wordpress type blogs.
This almost seems to sit halfway between a blog and a forum. Which, as I said, isn't necessarily a bad thing.
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I almost don't want to say this, but perhaps there is some truth in the critiques of the way in which PA is formatted.
I "should" love this blog and comment on it all the time. The posts are intelligent and interesting, the comments are generally from intelligent people who don't get into stupid argument with each other like on so many other blogs, the general political leaning matches mine quite closely.
But for some reason I don't comment here particularly often. In a way I'm not even sure why, but perhaps it is something to do with how "different" it is from other blogs.
Not saying that anything should be changed just beacuse of my opinion, but I think it's worth sharing my point of view.
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Surely the issue is the precedent that this sets.
"Criticise us and we'll release all your personal details... !"
Pretty scary actually. I'm divided over whether it's best for Bennett to stay as minister though - as it's almost guaranteed that she'll continue to do screw-ups like this.
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This much good PR for $9 million. Must be the bargain of the century for John Key.
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I am damn sick of the lies and blatant mis-representation of what the costs of a 40% reduction in net emissions by 2020 would be. For a start, everyone seems to ignore the difference in gross emissions and net emissions. While our gross emissions have increased since 1990 quite significantly, by planting extra forests we've basically offset that.
Now if we get an ETS in place, with some level of incentivising for planting more forests, how much of that 40% can be remove by simply having more trees to suck the CO2 away?
Everyone who says "oh we're already above 1990s levels so we need to cut back by about 60%" seems to be plainly lying.
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Sofie, good point. I can't quite imagine that National Party coming up with a version of "Red Alert", for example.
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Just to state my opinion on the matter, I'm not a fan of referendums except for certain "constitutional" matters - like the switch to MMP.
The point is that Rodney Hide has said he's really into referendums, but at the same time has avoided on on the Auckland super-city issue - presumably because this time around he is not so sure the results will go his way. If Act vote against Twyford's bill then it does show up their hypocrisy. I suppose that if/when Labour vote against any Local Government Act changes that introduce referendums then their hypocrisy might be exposed too (although it could be the myriad of other ways Rodney wants to gut local government that would make Labour vote against such changes).
However, I do think the main purpose of this private member's bill is to protect Auckland's assets from privatisation - unless the consent of the people via referendum has been obtained. This has arisen from the experience of the 1980s and 1990s when many many assets were sold off, even though typically most people wanted to retain them.
So it's a mixture of political and practical reasons behind this. While I do somewhat tire of Labour screaming "privatisation" all the time, it is perhaps only their constant cries that will prevent privatisation of central and local government assets in the future.
Off topic a bit - how come National constantly vote as a bloc on conscience issues lately? Are the MPs not allowed to think for themselves?
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It's about time the women played 5 set matches.
I couldn't agree more. And no, that's not ONLY because I want to see Sharapova play for 4 hours straight.
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Jesus fucking Christ, Joshua -- so now they don't let Twyford issue press releases, talk to the media or anyone else without supervision? Sorry, Joshua, but saying "fuck you" to Rodney Hide is a petty and piss poor use of Parliamentary time, but whatever floats your boat.
Craig surely you realise the purpose of a private member's bill half the time is to raise the awareness of an issue - either to pressure the government into adopting the bill (unlikely in this situation) or to just simply raise the public awareness of the issue (which clearly worked).