Posts by Bart Janssen
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Speaker: Living under bridges, in reply to Mikaere Curtis,
Because people taking to the Skypath for a view of the harbour and a 3 day water festival involving 4 million people are exactly the same.
psssh next thing you'll be using data like some radical scientist type :)
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Speaker: Living under bridges, in reply to Russell Brown,
I still think it’s reasonable to consider the interests of the small community at the base of the bridge.
Absolutely. And nothing I've seen from the plans suggests that such consideration isn't happening.
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... if its execution is flawed ...
This is the key point for me. The NIMBYs (and yes I will label them that) have argued that because of the possibility of flawed design then the project must be stopped.
They haven't engaged with design to make it a good design, nor have they considered that the folks designing it have a pretty good track record, nor have they seemed willing to compromise.
For them the only option has been opposition at all costs.
Of course, it needs careful design at each end. The way to get that is to participate not oppose.
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Polity: The overconfidence man, in reply to Grant McDougall,
National won the party vote
Nope. Labour lost the party vote.
The key fact of the last election is that National gained almost no extra support in total votes. What happened is Labour voters stayed home.
Yes the effect was the same, a National government, but realizing that Labour lost support is a critical step in changing the outcome of the next election.
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Polity: Gay marriage, weed, and death…, in reply to Andrew Geddis,
Well, pot doesn’t raise an issue of constitutional rights, so there isn’t a Bill of Rights path to the Supreme Court. Which means it has to be fought State by State through the political process.
Except it's becoming pretty clear that by legalizing it those states have been able to tax it. Nothing like a source of revenue to make a politician sit up and take notice. My bet is most states will have legalized it and taxed it to death within 5 years.
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Polity: Gay marriage, weed, and death…, in reply to Andrew Geddis,
Loving v Virginia
I regularly listen to a podcast called Stuff you missed in history class and they did a two part podcast on this case. It really was interesting both for the efforts to allow interracial marriage and for the view of society at that time (noting that some places are still stuck in that time).
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Polity: Government votes not to improve MMP, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
of course, this isn’t the reason Labour supports abolishing the one-seat rule
Who gives a rats arse WHY they want to do the right thing.
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lowering the threshold is that it could lead to instability
Which begs the question of whether stability is a good thing. Dictatorship for life is very stable too.
Essentially if you can't get agreement in parliament to get laws through then you probably should have another election rather than having the current situation where National passes whatever it likes into law ... or kills whatever it dislikes.
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Speaker: Abortion: morality and health, in reply to BenWilson,
So as far as I can tell what you are saying is somewhere there is a line and you don't want abortion after that line. Which is fine. I have opinions you have opinions.
The key thing for me is that the assumption should be that at no point is the mother a criminal or committing a criminal act (with exceptions allowed), which is the current law.
I'm happy for at some point the medical system may step in and say "no, an abortion is not appropriate anymore". So long as all the way up to that point the mother is choosing a legal act that is, under law, her decision. Even at that point there must be no suggestion that the mother is a criminal.
Such a state would make abortion legal (with exceptions).
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Speaker: Abortion: morality and health, in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,
So I’m glad we persisted with this discussion.
Same. I never felt we were going in circles, so it was always worth talking it through.