Posts by bmk
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Hard News: Friday Music: An Outstanding Evening, in reply to TracyMac,
WINZ seems to be an exception. My memory may be wrong but I always see that spelled in all caps yet pronounced as one word. In most other situations the rule seems to apply. Maybe that's just an exception that makes the rule :)
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Hard News: Everybody's Machiavelli, in reply to Russell Brown,
It seems the Herald have made nearly all their columnists look stupid today. You'd almost think they've done it on purpose - maybe some people enjoy watching them make fools of themselves.
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Legal Beagle: Council Elections: STV Q&A, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
I think it's related to their compulsory voting. If you want to final result to reflect the real preferences of the entire voting population, then mandatory exhaustive voting is the way to go about it. I don't think the intention is to increase the invalid vote, but to encourage voters to vote for everyone so that the final result actually reflects what people want
Yeah, that's what I imagined too and certainly the intention wouldn't be to increase invalid votes. But why it hasn't been undone I guess is what I don't understand.
I certainly am glad we don't have it, or compulsory voting here. I don't like the idea of either being compelled to vote, or if choosing to vote then being compelled to rank every single candidate. -
Legal Beagle: Council Elections: STV Q&A, in reply to Steve Todd,
Thanks, that too explains it really well. I did actually read Graeme's entire post but didn't quite grasp the maths (I guess as there was a lot of other information to take in at the same time) but both Graeme and your replies to my post have explained it clearly.
On a semi-related note what is the rationale behind the Australian system making it compulsory to rank all candidates (ignoring the above-the-line option) doesn't this just make it harder for people to vote and increase the likelihood of people not voting or just going from top-to-bottom? From my perspective the NZ option of allowing people to simply rank as many or as few as they like seems far preferable.
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Legal Beagle: Council Elections: STV Q&A, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Thanks that explains it clearly, I knew I was missing something just didn't quite understand it and you've explained it really well.
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Legal Beagle: Council Elections: STV Q&A, in reply to Steve Todd,
But, to win two seats in a 3-seat ward, requires a party receiving 50% of the votes (quota 25%).
Sorry, I'm probably being dense but could you explain how to win two seats in a 3-seat ward you would need 50% off the vote? I would have assumed that 33.3% would be needed for each seat and to get two would need 66.6%. Or am I missing something?
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Hard News: Event Season, in reply to BenWilson,
LOL, Nah, we should make them metric. 10 hours per day, 10 minutes per hour, 100 seconds per minute.
ETA: Also, rename them to second, centond, millond. If we had 10 days per week, and 10 weeks per month, we'd be reaching the limits of what we could do with it.
Yes, I've wanted this so long. It's so annoying the moment you have to multiply/divide something involving time. I used to regularly have to do this and when for example you have to work out how long 20 * 7m34s is - it's a real pain having to divide 34 by 60 first so that you can perform the multiplication.
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Hard News: And one war ends?, in reply to BenWilson,
It does have the major disadvantage of being easy to grow, and thus hard to tax.
And beer is easy to brew but most people, other than hobbyists, are content to simply purchase their supply. Cannabis is also an annual plant so unless you use artificial lighting (with the added hassle and expense that entails) you won't have a year round supply without good management (making sure you grow enough to last till your next crop) which again implies a certain level of commitment.
If it were to be fully legal I imagine the vast majority of people would prefer to purchase it taxed than bother to grow their own.
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Hard News: Moving from frustration to disgust, in reply to Yamis,
The teacher of my 5 year old said that after a year at primary, students should be at a reading level of 15 according to national standards BUT she felt that level 13 was fine for students at that age. They are just numbers to me but I realise that they are code for the difficulty of book that they can read.
And this is at a decile 9 school where most kids are being read to every night.
We are a reading household, with hundreds of books and my daughter loves them, so if she's below the national standard then where is the bar being set?
Same here - except my daughter is 6 and 1/2 and at decile 5 school. We read to her every night and she seems to be getting there (just slower than other students). Her reading level is 14 which is below where she is supposed to be. But her teacher tells us we don't need to worry that she is improving and will get there. She can read failing though and understand it. So is that what she's going to see from National Standards?
In the past we got great, detailed reports listing overall comments. And even more helpful a list of skills and her aptitude at them. Positively framed so that it went something like Got It, Mostly There, Getting There, Still to Come. People may say those are meaningless phrases but as parents we understood exactly where she was with every thing (counting backwards from 20 etc) and it was worded in a way that wouldn't lower her self-esteem which of course will hinder further learning.
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Hard News: Drunk Town, in reply to Tom Semmens,
If we want to curb liquor consumption, get the stuff out of supermarkets, stop all off-licence sales after 9pm on Friday to midday on Monday and set a minimum price for alcohol.
I don't think the supermarket idea would work and would inconvenience many people. From my experience teenagers buy their alcohol from liquor stores. Also I find liquor stores are far more likely to sell alcohol to people under-age than supermarkets. When I was under-age, my friends and I would always go to certain liquor stores we knew would sell to us; we knew not to even try supermarkets as we'd get nowhere.
If you are going to allow alcohol to be sold then I don't see why supermarkets can't sell it. If price is the problem then you increase excise tax, mandate a minimum price etc.
But really as others have mentioned this isn't the type of problem that can be fixed by simply passing a law.