Posts by Bart Janssen
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Football seems to take a different view of these things.
I've always viewed diving as part of football so a really good acting performance gets rewarded as much as the athleticism. Much like rhythmic gymnastics.
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Great pics Russell ... and since you appear to not be dead they can't have been Cybermen ... unless ...
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Hard News: On the Clark candidacy, in reply to Sacha,
um, Whanau Ora
It is possible that The Maori Party is neither everything to all Maori nor nothing to any Maori.
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Hard News: On the Clark candidacy, in reply to Sacha,
When you hear about Treaty settlement negotiations for various iwi like Tuhoe or Nga Puhi, it’s often noted that they have a different sense of urgency than our brief governments do. That’s not something about a particular political party.
I agree. But the refusal to endorse Ms Clark came from a political party that would like to be seen as representing ALL Maori.
While I certainly agree that many Maori are justifiably pissed off with the Labour Party and Ms Clark over those issues it is simply wrong to translate the comments of a The Maori Party as applying to all Maori. I think we've already seen that many Maori have a much more nuanced response to Ms Clark's UN candidacy, expressing their disappointment that she has never apologised for fuckups yet also supporting her as the best candidate for Maori.
The equivalent would be to suggest that because I'm white middle aged and male then John Key represents me.
I have no problem with anyone's opinion on this but I don't like the way The Maori Party pretends to represent all Maori and I tend to feel their actions and statements are more political than heartfelt.
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Hard News: On the Clark candidacy, in reply to Sacha,
Maiki Sherman offers a concise summary of historic motivations.
That’s not very long ago in Maori terms ...
Which is all true except that I would say "... in Maori Party terms ...". This is a political party choosing not to support an old enemy. It's what political parties do.
But as I said before it's their call to make.
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Southerly: A Tale of Two Iceblocks: Part…, in reply to David Haywood,
I’m certainly not suggesting “getting a new tax put in place worldwide” – exactly the opposite!
Yeah I get that you aren't asking other countries to put in place the tax, but you are expecting to be allowed to apply tariffs to imports which is just as difficult.
I guess for I look at what you're proposing and my immediate thought is how quickly will the big accountancy firms set up a business unit whose sole function is to provide advice on how to avoid the tax.
No matter how you structure it the accountants will figure out a way around it. That's why I really hate economic solutions to real problems.
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The Maori party are entirely right to have a negative opinion of the Labour party that passed the foreshore and seabed legislation and of Helen Clark who led Labour at the time.
What bugs me is the idea that she could not have learned from experience and perhaps might be a better now in her role in UN - having learned from past mistakes.
It's their call to make. I just get the feeling it's being made looking backwards rather than forwards, but that's the The Maori Party's call.
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Setting aside the impossible task of getting a new tax put in place worldwide ...
It occurs to me that don't you have a problem that once this is in place then governments have an incentive to increase greenhouse gas emissions in order to increase their tax take.
This would be such a large portion of the government's revenue that it might become very difficult to do the thing you want them to do.
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Southerly: A Tale of Two Iceblocks: Part…, in reply to Shaun Barker,
Yeah it is pretty clear that NZ the best thing to do would be switch the bulk of our transport to electricity since that would convert gasoline use into (renewable) electricity use. Bearing in mind the energy costs of building new cars.
But there are two things about solar electricity generation that make it slightly better - the first is the value of generating power close to the site of use, that acts to make the network more robust and reduces losses in the distribution network. Not a huge plus but still a plus.
The second is that by adopting an new, but not yet perfect technology, you drive the improvement cycle and there is still a lot of room for improvement in solar electricity generation.
That said NZ sucks for solar power, it's not hot enough for A/C to be relevant in summer and it is just too cloudy for really good energy production.
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Hard News: DNC 2016: Beyond weird, most…, in reply to Tristan,
They can afford a protest vote and don’t much care about those that can’t
The key therefore is to make sure those that can't afford it actually do vote - that will take a committed focused democrat machine.
Disrupting that machine is the key to Trump winning.