Posts by Keir Leslie
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Yeah we need to clamp down on billboard vandalism, it's Just Like Domestic Violence. Honestly Pete could you just get out your own head for half a minute and think about what you're saying?
-
Hard News: Not doing justice, in reply to Matt Crawford,
Eh can we not be insulting to the mentally ill right now? Apart from anything else, many, if not most, delusional paranoiacs manage not to post boring and offensive nonsense on the internet.
-
Hard News: Not doing justice, in reply to Tom Semmens,
You are assuming he was knowingly anti-semitic, which he says he is not. On what grounds do you challenge his word?
Yeah look the guy used a racial slur. Sure maybe he was just a complete idiot who had no clue that racial slurs are offensive, or maybe not! I don’t really care, I expect better from Labour Party candidates.
[Also the absurd line about a constituent! I mean really.]
-
That interview was atrocious. Gibson’s clearly been given a bollocking, but he just came across as absolutely clueless in a “I’ve never had to think about why being a dickhead’s a bad thing” way. Just a train wreck. Should never have been selected in the first place.
[Edited to add: And Greg Presland might have been bright enough to twig that a candidate using racial slurs on Presland's Facebook page was something that needed some kind of response, especially if it's true that comment remained up until a few days ago.]
-
Also! I don't care if calling out anti-semitism is on message or not, it's the right thing to do . Racism is absolutely unacceptable in the Labour Party and if holding that line means a few bad headlines I'm OK with that.
Cunliffe left a massive hostage to fortune when he ran his mouth about Rangitata, and I think there was a bit of a panic when the deadline for candidate selection came and went and no-one put their hand up, and a few negative stories appeared about that.
-
It's not possible for Labour to not stand someone in any electorate. But there's no reason you can't stand, a Christchurch based activist who travels down at the weekends and for the month before polling day, say. Which is what we have done in the past, when Tony Milne stood in Rakaia. If they're just a name on the ballot paper, that's better than this.
Part of the reason it's unwinnable blue is that pre-MMP, many provincial areas had a blue rural seat and marginal red/blue urban seat, which are now just mushed into a safe blue blue seat, particularly in the South Island.
-
Hard News: Steven Joyce: Prick or Treat, in reply to Matthew Poole,
The R&D tax credits go nowhere near the value of the CGT plus increase in top rate, which is intentional. And yes, I think the long run idea is to open room to possibly make the overall tax take more progressive by cutting tax on low/middle income earners, or to possibly pay down debt faster, or possibly improve services --- those choices won't be made until late 2016 at the earliest, so it's hard to forecast what they'll be.
But the actual policy on the table in this election has Labour increasing net government revenue over the foreseeable future, with any (and only possible) tax cuts only occurring in the second term never-never.
-
Labour is proposing an increase in net tax. CGT plus increase in the top tax band, and there's no major corresponding cuts. It's how Labour pays for all the spending promises.
-
Their actual policy is bizarre though. 15 page long meanderings about how electronic health records will shorten waiting lists and so-on. Even their IP policy is pretty meh, I think. Still, it's very well packaged.
Also while I don't think it's Nazi-like, "fuck John Key" is never going to play in Taihape, which is fine, I/M don't need those votes, but it does open up a lot of space for the Nats to bluster and whinge. Remember, no-one on the right really cares about Internet Mana --- the point is to maintain a Key government, and that means keeping the focus on the scary black guy and the scary fat German and the scary possibly sexually immoral woman and away from anything else.
-
This is actually absurd. Saying rude words is maybe rude, but it's not immoral.