Posts by Eddie Clark
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I notice that Farrar happily cites the endorsement of National by Jones and Tuigamala without referencing their rather anti-gay views. The Herald article reporting the endorsement said "Jones and Tuigamala criticised Labour, saying it had undermined the moral values of Pacific people by decriminalising prostitution and allowing civil unions."
Come on, DPF, is that the sort of endorsement you want? Given that he genuinely worked hard to get the Civil Unions bill through, I am a bit surprised that he wouldn't at least mention some personal disquiet with their views. I guess party politics trumps principle (and I'm aware that this can equally apply to lefties, before you say it, Craig. I'm just a little disappointed in DPF).
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Meanwhile, on the other side, the ASA has come out with a decision saying Labour's two John's ad is misleading.
This is interesting for two reasons:
First, it shows how the internet changes things - TV and radio political ads are outside the ASA's jurisdiction, and the only reason they could look at the ad in this case was because it had been posted on youtube. Of course, the decision doesn't affect what Labour can do on TV, but it's a bad look to keep running an ad that's been deemed misleading.
Second, the decision itself is... shaky, I'd say. Not necessarily wrong, but I've had a look at some of their previous decisions on political ads, and this doesn't quite seem to square with those decisions. The Nats' Iwi/Kiwi billboards were seen as perfectly acceptable, even admirable, advocacy of political views. The truth or otherwise of the implied message was to be left to the voters to decide. Same with a Nat billboard essentially saying "OH NOES LIARBORE IS STEALING YOUR MONIES TO FUND TEH MAAARIES AT TEH WANANGA."
And, in the non party-political area, a newspaper ad from the people opposing Meridian's wellington west wind development that featured giant scare windmills as physically impossible as barbie's tits was ruled fair advocacy. Given this background, it seems odd to rule that "cut kiwisaver in half" is misleading cos it only applies to MOST of National's kiwisaver policy, not all of it.
The decision was also a minority one, and the majority made a couple of factual errors. I'm not sure how consequential they are, but they're there. Will be interesting to see if Labour bothers to appeal. The media's all over this at the moment, but this and the John Key slippery thing might well cancel each other out.
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If there's any "Don't bother voting" sentiment out there, its most likely to harm the Nats. If the weather is gross on election day, and a good proportion of soft nat voters think things are a foregone conclusion, well they might just not bother voting.
From what I've read, this is one of the very few things the Obama campaign thinks could lose them the US election - voter apathy in states that are closer than some polling indicates. And I think things here are closer than the Herald's poll indicates...
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This thread makes me think we should have a nerdy Public Address book club. There seems to be a common enough core of interest (if Ian Banks is a decent touchstone), and if we can all have civil discussions about politics, why not about books?
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Re Ian (M) Banks:
Deborah, even if you're not much into sci fi, Use of Weapons is a must. I think its his best book in or out of genre.
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Yes, I saw that 'dirty elections' piece linked from Kiwiblog.
Am I an idiot for being disappointed that, rather than say "this is absurd, false, and insulting to my country to be lumped in with Zimbabwe and Nigeria", he used it as an excuse to say "Liarbore is teh evil and even the nasty liberals in the US think so!!!!"?
I mean, I know he's a Nat, but false is false, and I don't think its in anyone's interest to have NZ's electoral integrity smeared.
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Crazy-ass congresswoman Michelle Bachmann may find that crazy-ass ranting on national television has consequences.
Short version - her opponent in the district has raised six hundred thousand dollars in 48 hours since said rant aired!
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thanks for the update, Craig - I was overseas when all that was going on so I wasn't 100% sure on how it ended up.
And yes, Simon, the best bit of Borders is the email coupons - I don't think I've ever bought a full price book/cd/dvd there. Full price books is what Unity is for!
Likewise, I have bought about 75% of my CDs from Real Groovy... and about 5% of those are for full price. As long as the bargain bins stay there for me to pick over, I'll be happy.
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I can but hope that either - or preferably both - Borders or JB Hi-Fi open in Dunedin before too long.
You certainly won't get a Borders, Grant. Borders has drastically pulled back its overseas business and is concentrating on America. It's been trying to sell its NZ stores for a year, and whitcoulls almost bought them but I think the deal fell through at the last minute. Either way, they're not going to be opening more NZ stores.
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Emusic is great for most indie stuff - oddly, they're most lacking in the lower profile major label bands. And their back catalogue of older stuff isn't great. If you want to keep up with current indie music, I can highly recommend.
Also, if you join then quit, every 3 months or so they offer to let you rejoin and give you 75 extra songs. So I just join for a month, quit, sign up again for another month later in the year. Gives you 200 odd songs for the price of 50.