Posts by 3410
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I desperately want to use the phrase 'a little bit of howdy doody' at some point today.
I'm guessing he backed out of "a little bit of how's-your-father" at the last moment and then had to go somewhere.
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I was only less-than-confident at 106/3. By the time Taylor fell (175/4) they were within a hundred ftw, and I never stopped thinking they were odds on, from that point.
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NZ's made a habit of beating Austraila in the last few years (In the five or six years of the Chappel/Hadlee we've now -- I think -- won more matches than they have!).
All on for Saturday at in Akl. Styris is firing; Guptill won't fail, I expect. We could very well beat them again.
Those commentators sure like saying "Dougie", but who doesn't, I suppose.
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Hadyn,
Would it've killed you to mention this? -
Spend / Vote
*declared advertising (not including candidate advertising) + costs of broadcasting paid for by the Electoral Commission.
Only two parties beat the "big 5" in 2008.
Bill & Ben acheived the cheapest vote of the top 16 parties (@ $0.92 per) by being the only party on the list to spend almost nothing ($3,777); ten times less than the next-place-getter, ALCP (22k @ $2.32 per); heavy media presense also helped.
Excluding those two outliers, National (@ $3.04 per) comes in first, spending three-quarters of Labour's $4.10 per. In third place the Maori Party @ $7.77.
The next ten places are all held by parties that spent between $10.00 & $15.00; these include, in order, NZ First, Greens, Family, United, Progressive, Kiwi, Act, Alliance, Workers, and Pacific.
Of positions 4 to 16 (lowest spend / vote), only 3 parties spent more than $500,000 total; namely NZ First (1m; 6th), Act (1.2m; 12th), and Greens (1.7m, 7th).
(Labour and National each spent 2.2m).
Make of that what you will.
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Because you think it generates votes, even though it doesn't.
If you believe that, your entire column is pointless. :)
If you are concerned about the influence money has on politics, then your solution will be found in changes to the donation laws, not lowering the spending limits of parties you don't like.
That's true, as long as the limits are not prohibitively high.
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My guess is that there are people within the Green Party who fear that if parties are able to spend their own money on election broadcasting,
okaaay...
that in some future election,
You mean, like, the next and subsequent elections?..
ACT will have a lot of money,
They already have more money relative to their popularity than anyone else, because their policies are designed to benefit the business sector and wealthy individuals. Hence, those groups are more likely to support Act with their considerable financial means; that's a no-brainer.
and will be able to out-spend (or at least spend to the same level as Labour and National) other parties.
Not necessarily; the question is whether their financial muscle would significantly outstrip proportionality, which it clearly would.
That this massive spending will get them lots of votes
Well, naturally. People don't just blow millions of dollars for no good reason. More spending helps to generate more votes, otherwise why do it?
and they'll use their power/influence to embark on the second revolution.
Basically, yes. They're entitled to whatever power and influence they can generate by fair and equitable campaigning. They are not, IMO, entitled to generate greater support than that simply by virtue of having greater financial resourses.
Allowing that would distort democracy. We already have quite enough of a plutocracy, thank you, without encouraging it further.
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I find the ideas of the ACT party to be 1.57079632
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Well, it seems there'll be no Friday mufti thread today, so I'm just going to revive this old one for a couple of top tips:
a) Simon Grigg has compiled a very interesting discography of iconic local record label Zodiac. Blog post about it is here.
b) Enzology, RNZ's epic history of Split Enz is now available as podcasts (507 minutes @256!) -
If that's a lie of omission, then so is almost anything.