Posts by Ben Curran
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Munted. It can be applied to so many parts of the year. Earthquakes, politics, economics, sanity ....
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Hard News: Where are the foreigners?!, in reply to Russell Brown,
Some of the weekday dearth of business in Kingsland is, I think, being made up for by it being nuts for a couple of hours before game time. Not sure if it's completely making up for it though, it's dead during the week atm.
OTOH, I'm not entirely convinced that the numbers on opening night were as spectacular as everyone seems to think they are. We had guestimates from the police, the council and the government, none of whom are particularly neutral or have a particularly good history at estimating numbers.Then there were the widely ignored numbers from an actual statistician
Though it would be rather sad indictment of our party planners if the best they could do was getting the numbers vaguely right on opening night.
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to Russell Brown,
It could be strongly argued that Labour should back the hell out of this social media nonsense, and manage communications in a more formal fashion. Or at least exercise some quality control.
Alternatively, it could be argued that competence with communicating with the public via social media is one of the requirements they should be looking for in new candidates. In the long term, I think it would do the party good to be more connected to the general populace. Having said that, some training for the MP's still around wouldn't go amiss.
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Hard News: Fixing Auckland, in reply to Sacha,
I've got a friend doing a planning degree who was looking at that area late last year. Apparently there is, or was (I'm not sure) quite a strong residents lobby that in the past has jumped all over any application to hold events/markets that sort of thing as soon as they appear, combined with really strict noise control, pretty much kills any street life that tries to take hold.
In other cities that do have that mixed environment, the residents don't really expect the streets to stay nice and quiet, noise is part of the city. Tis a pity, you would thing that markets open till early evening down the viaduct way would be grand, letting residents pick up their dinner stuffs on the way home.
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I wouldn't be to worried about future protests impoverishing the book selection at paper plus and whitcoulls. Their current selection's tend to be appallingly limited already.
The small niche book stores (while they survive) mean there will always be somewhere where you can get some thing. -
I find it annoying that there's only ever talk of wholesale change, never the option of tinkering with what we have. It seems rather excessive when with a little tinkering we'd have a system everyone but Garth George would be happy with.
I'd love a version of MMP where parties had to get over the 5% threshold to get any list MP's.
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Hard News: Doing battle alone, in reply to Steve Withers,
Though sadly it's also a trait that pops up in some of the more liberal areas of the academic spectrum as well. Though not as often or at least not as publicly as it does in conservative politics. It's an extremists tool that has been being adopted by many politician's who I don't think have fully thought through the consequences. I would have thought there would have been enough lawyers in their ranks to eschew the tactic, when two lawyers battle in court, one is usually more right than the other.