Posts by Keir Leslie
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
In fact, of course, coat-tailing doesn't really affect defection that much. Anderton jumped ship before MMP. So did the ACT Party. So did Peters. The only defectors under MMP have failed to use the coat-tails mechanism.
What the OST has done is allow one party to maintain another in a parasitic relationship, which is not, to my mind, acceptable. (And even weaker forms of this are distasteful.)
I just don't think that the OST does enough to justify keeping it, given that various problems it has.
-
This argument the one seat threshold empowers minor parties is nonsense, anyway. The one seat threshold empowers major parties: functionally, most electorate seats are in the gift of National or Labour, and so they can control which minor parties get to take advantage of that option.
-
Actually sometimes in the electoral situation it is: equality of vote means no one has more rights than anyone else, and that may mean taking rights away. In this case I think it is.
-
But the ground does need to be given; an unfair system is not sustainable, as you can tell from the (continually increasing) public distaste for Epsom-collusion.
-
Part of the problem is that representation is a bit zero sum-ish. If Peters can’t get in with 4%, I don’t want Banks in with 3%. It’s unfair, and to be quite blunt, I'd prefer a fair but slightly less representative system to an unfair but slightly more representative system.
(Also spooky action at a distance, privileging of certain electors, the inevitable disrepute the deal making brings, etc.)
-
Mind you if I was in charge of infosec at a gov't department, I wouldn't be worried about possible secondhand spill over from WINZ; I'd be paranoid about everything in my own area
-
OnPoint: MSD's Leaky Servers, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
I am just presuming here, but my money would be on privilege escalation being pretty much trivial on these machines. The worrying thing is that it seems like you pretty much wouldn't need to...
-
OnPoint: MSD's Leaky Servers, in reply to Sacha,
Mind you, you know exactly who could (would) do what Keith did? Bored, inquisitive, mildly anti-social young men. Where might you find a bunch of them -- oh.
-
I think it makes sense to say the deficit was caused by the Bush tax cuts and the Bush war.
The reason we look at the status quo ante is that we want to attribute causation to a thing done by someone; in this case, the obvious thing is cuts, and the someone is Bush.
-
It is perfectly legitimate to say former wing commander Logan Cudby – the capitalization attaches to the name, not the rank. Governor-General Grey, formerly governor-general.
Air force doesn’t take a capital any more than army does. They are using air force as a descriptor, not a proper noun. When they do use it is a proper noun they do capitalise.