Posts by Keir Leslie
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Brash did get chucked under the bus by Muldoon in that election.
ETA: er Simon, could you lay off the stupid digs at Labour for the moment? I don't want to brag, but we're doing marriage equality right now and it's pretty fucking awesome.
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Up Front: Choice, Bro, in reply to Emma Hart,
I don't actually think we do. I would say that the Labour Party can be pretty pleased with its track record on managing that conflict. I think that the Labour Party handles the problem pretty well already, by letting a few MPs that don't matter go off the reservation occasionally, and otherwise by handling the conflict in the same way that we handle all conflicts within the Party: by a complicated, schlerotic series of committees and sub-committees that leave a huge amount of space for negotiation and compromise.
(Or, guys, we've been doing this for a long, long time.)
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Eh I think Labour would be fine in South Auckland if Sio (and Robertson), voted for the Bill. I think there's a lot of noise about marriage equality being a vote loser, but to be honest I don't believe it.
Damien O'Connor I accept the logic even if I don't like it.
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To be honest Sio could be discovered to actually be a goat and would still win Mangere. Hell he could be a goat, die the week before polling, and provided everybody knew he was the Labour dead goat he'd win Mangere.
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The two Chch MPs against were NZ First, I think.
Winston's stance on this is super scummy.
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As for Brownlee --- all the Chch Nat MPs voted for, basically. I think some people on the other side of the fence may have engaged in some quite effective lobbying.
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That article is awful. One lawyer says x. Other lawyers say not-x. Ok, fine, I don't know which lawyer is right*. But I do know that there's a controversy that should be reported, not some simple `a lawyer has pronounced'.
* although I do reckon that opinion's pretty shoddy, the whole argument turns on a bare assertion at C 1 (f) that s 29 doesn't allow for discrimination. Which, yeah, sure, possible, but there's arguments the other way that Just Aren't Dealt With, which is quite amateur. Hilarious handling of Quilter. (Mind you Quilter is super awkward all round anyone 'cause it's so obviously bad.) And no discussion of the Canadian experience, which is again pretty weak. And he fails to give Lousia Wall the proper post-nominals.
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Armstrong was never even arguably the greatest of all time
In cycling, there is only one greatest, and that is Merckx.
(Merckx: 5 Tours de France --- including 69 when he wins the General, the Points, and the Mountains, 5 Giros, 1 Vuelta, more classics than anyone remembers, the hour record, world champion (amateur and professional) and so-on. He is almost as absurdly dominant as Bradman was.)
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Hard News: Media3: Where harm might fall, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I think that's not really true. If you go and look at the Summary Offences Act or the lower reaches of the Crimes Act, which make up the bulk of criminal work in NZ, most of the offences there are only prosecuted when the offending is towards the serious end of the scale within the offence.
A good example is assault. I can assault you by tapping you on the shoulder if I know you don't want me to. But very rarely does anyone end up in court over that, even if it is brought to the attention of the authorities.
(Of course, those are criminal things, and this is more or less civil.)
But I am quite rule-skeptical anyway: I don't think that rules make anywhere near as much difference as they are credited with.
I definitely agree that there's massive problems with discretionary enforcement of the law within a racist, sexist, generally discriminatory society.
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Most laws are only enforced sometimes, it's kinda the whole point of prosecutorial discretion.