Posts by Kyle Matthews
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Also, in the more common of the examples you've given (walking down stairs, wet floors) noone's making money off them.
Fucking Big Cleaners. Exploiting us by making floors wet that we have to walk on.
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In the latter case, voters have a far better chance of over-turning the party’s decision. If, say, 60% of Helensville voters despise National’s choice for Helensville, they have a very good chance of getting someone else. If 80% of party voters despise National’s #1 list candidate, they have next to no chance of keeping them out of Parliament.
I suspect the more likely scenario is a high ranking list candidate in one of the major parties, after the lists are set, being accused of something serious - lets say sexual assault.
That's a serious problem for the party and would likely affect their vote, but the person would likely still get elected under their list position, even if the accusation meant that they didn't win their electorate. Under FPP that wouldn't have happened.
The MP might subsequently resign (or even indicate that they would do so before the election), but less control to the voters.
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In my opinion:
(Dominic Sheehan and co. are wrong, wrong, wrong in finding that the 240 light years vs. 240,000,000 light years issue was not material to the item and, frankly, it is such a stunningly dumb decision that their credibility is shot with me.Not material I believe means 'not central to the story'.
The story was about this young person finding the phenomena, the distance was considered not to be the focus of the story.
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FPP makes it really hard to throw the bastards out. That’s the problem with it.
I don't think that's true - relative to others.
It was under MMP that we had Winston picking who to go with and the baubles of power.
FPP tended to make changes of government based on the marginal voters in marginal seats. You wouldn't tend to get a strong swing away from a government who then held onto power by forming a coalition with someone that was from the opposition - that's happened under MMP.
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Yes, I think Kyle is mathematically wrong, even given his assumptions. If someone wants to work it out, the formula is here.
Not maths, reading. I saw five words, and read five letters :(
As you were.
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If you choose a five word password from a 40,000 word vocabulary you get ~10^23 total passwords. To get the same security from an ascii password you’d have to have to remember 12 random characters.
That makes no sense to me. If you choose a 5 word password from a 40,000 vocab you have less than 40,000 passwords, not 10^23.
If you use dictionary words or names or anything else common as your password you really need to keep your username secret. Brute force attacks which have only 10K or so possibilities will fall over real quick, unless the system is otherwise secured (limited number of attempts etc).
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It’d be a mint job though, wouldn’t it?
Payment only comes in kitchen appliances though, so you're constantly on trade me fobbing them off.
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No, I missed that, sorry. I think I get your argument now. That the youth minimum wage should be topped up to the adult minimum wage? That’s not such a bad idea.
I'd struggle to find a good argument for why the government should subsidise employers to discriminate against young people.
re: National's welfare announcement. I'm not at all disappointed that they've announced welfare reform, you expect that from a national government at some stages. What's disappointing is that it's just age discrimination - attacking young people who can't vote, and who are a popular electoral target, and 2, that I doubt there's any evidence elsewhere that this strategy actually helps.
Dog whistle indeed.
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Also, does anyone know if the Jim Anderton Progressive Party are contesting the next election in the absence of their leader?
He's also endorsing the local Labour Party candidate.
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I’d say it’s a different but significant systemic crisis/challenge, especially if you take in the unrest in other places like the middle east over similar factors like poverty, food prices, youth unemployment and political disengagement.
What's been happening in the Middle East has yet to reach the significance of the post-war end of colonialism, which ruptured much of Africa, South and South-East Asia, along with parts of the Middle East, along with the spread of communism to various parts of the world. Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, India-Pakistan, wars between Israel and its neighbours.
Over the past year we've seen significant change in a couple of countries, and attempts in several others to bring about change. I'd struggle to compare that to the significance of Vietnam falling to communism and America targeting it as its cold war battle ground, let along the umpteen other things that were happening around the world at the time.
I also don't see any connection between what young people have been doing in the Middle East, and what young people have been doing in London. During the 1960s those connections existed - Weatherman broke away from the mainstream to bring the war home to America and bring down an imperialist empire that they directly connected to colonial empires that had been collapsing. The leaders of that group had been to Cuba, and to Vietnam and developed plans with NLF leaders.
What did you make of the Will Davies article that Stephen linked to?
My impression is that what's been happening in London will pass by with nothing changing. There's no structure, ideology, group etc behind it. Might just be a flash in the pan that we're getting big coverage of because it's in England and we get good media coverage and have links with England. The developments in the Middle East are ten times as significant.