Posts by Kyle Matthews
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Is the fact that it is possible to get some seats with less than 0.83% also the (ultimate) source of overhangs, or am I mixing up two entirely independent features of the system?
The overhang is caused by having won more electorates then your list vote entitles you to. It's the instance in which it's impossible to maintain proportionality. So no, it doesn't really relate to the low threshold of list votes.
If we no longer had any 5% threshold and a party won 0.5% of the vote, therefore getting one list seat, there wouldn't be any overhang. If they won 0.2% of the vote, but won 1 electorate seat, there would be an overhang however.
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2. SM does not take the MMP wasted votes and re-allocate them. This statement is so wrong I have know idea where the suggestion comes from. And compared with MMP, it does not minimise the wasted vote.
I presume they're referring to the electorate vote, which is basically a FPP vote. Not fair to compare MMP with anything by picking up the FPP electorate vote however.
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Ironically, I would massively prefer a giant garden gnome on the top of the hill.
I hope if it does get built (and I can't really raise myself to care either way), that rather than destroying it, the trend is to add things to it - a gnome, a big hat on an "O", massive y-fronts on the "Y". Way better use of idle time than this planking thing that is the trend this week.
People are actually trying to do something or not. Wouldn’t it be nice to see a bit more of this attitude with regard the country as a whole and the direction we are going there. Further up someone mentioned being an example of democracy if the protesters influenced a change of mind. Yes I think that would be refreshing.
I see it as the opposite. If the only thing which gets people up in arms is a sign which, when it comes down to it, has no real effects on anyone, rather than the umpteen things that are seriously wrong and which people could devote themselves to being up in arms about, then participatory demoracy isn't looking too good. I don't hold any hope that this will lead to larger numbers of people suddenly caring about all the other issues.
The airport is perfectly entitled to brand itself – when they say they’re wild at heart a) nobody cares and b) it doesn’t reflect on the rest of the city.
Maybe it's because they're wild at heart, that they felt able to put up the Wellywood sign despire that fact that almost everyone in the city didn't want it?
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For a bit of light relief, was this (h/t 3410) meant to veer between lame and outright offensive, or am I just more hip replacement than hip nowadays?
Pretty awful isn't it. Dunno who approved that as "good campaigning".
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In response to Kyle: While I can’t guarantee that they don’t use a ghastly amount of energy, Santa Monica has an outdoor ice-rink in what passes for ‘winter’ there. While I don’t think it gets much sun on the ice, the outdoor temperature probably passes for summer *cough* in Dunedin (daily highs in the 15-20 range).
Sun doesn't help. Alexandra has sun on the ice for several hours during the day, and they often have to schedule their activities to finish by about 1pm, or start after 4pm. The bit in between the machinery can't keep the ice cold enough. Tekapo has parked their rink right in against a hill and surrounded by trees to prevent this being a problem.
It's possible to have an outdoor rink in chch, but you should plan most of a million dollars to set it up, and over $100K for a winter of ice.
Christchurch does need a second rink, but it should be a proper indoor rink. You can't book ice at the current rink unless you book about 6 months in advance, or want to get ice at 1am.
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You may not be aware that they had an ice-rink in Cathedral Square last winter (in a tent) – it was brilliant, in my opinion.
If you moved it 300 metres up Colombo Street to Victoria Square, you could use the Avon River as your heat sink. The Avon stays cooler than 8 deg C throughout winter, and the low heat rejection temperature coupled with the superior heat transfer properties of water (in comparison to air heat rejection) would make for about as efficient a refrigeration system as you could design for those conditions.
Let's just assume that I'm the PAS ice rink expert.
Alexandra, Naseby and Tekapo have outdoor rinks, but they're all significantly colder than Christchurch over the winter. Alexandra just got ice down last night, Tekapo has had theirs for a couple of weeks, I think Naseby are still working on it. It's quite difficult to get water to freeze when it's not freezing cold in the air, and takes significant amount of electricity.
A rink in a tent is not the same as an outdoor rink. The tent helps cool the air inside and limit the expenditure on keeping the ice frozen, but it's no longer outdoors, it's inside a tent. Completely different from the one that New York has that most people will think of.
I wouldn't imagine you could use water as your heat transfer system, as the water needs to be below zero degrees to keep the rink frozen - typically about -5 degrees. Dunedin ice rink uses glycol as their heat transfer system.
The heat that you take off the system tends to get used for two things - melting the snow that you take off the ice in the zamboni - you might take as much as 30 cubic metres off a day depending on how busy the rink is. Resource consent will typcially mean you can't just dump that, you need to melt it using the warmth off the cooling system and then into the drain.
The second thing is that you need freezing pipes under the ice, but you need a ring of warm heat around the outside to prevent the ground outside freezing and warping - this distorts the whole structure and can be a disaster for ice rinks. If there's more than that you can use it for something else - Tekapo uses it to help keep their hot water pools going for example.
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Apparently there is enough in the public kitty for a tax break just for rugby organisations and professional players
What the hell? Are they going to offer tax breaks to other organisations who organise sports tournaments? I've got about 150 ice hockey players from 6 countries coming to Dunedin this summer and could do with a tax cut to make the finances work out better.
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new CERA CEO Roger Sutton mumbled something about his vision for an ice skating rink in the centre of Christchurch, as a focus, it could be a paddling pool in the summer, a place for people to “gather”
A paddling pool would be possible, an ice rink very difficult in Christchurch. Not cold enough for an outdoor rink, you'd spend ridiculous amounts of money to keep the ice frozen.
Christchurch needs a second rink, but it would need to be covered.
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So you’re advocating spending $1B at a time when the government is in the biggest financial hole it’s ever been in because you’re sure that something will be developed eventually. Why not wait until it has been developed? Or at least thought of? And again, why is this speed increase so special that it will produce something we can’t even imagine yet?
I'm not in favour of improving our internet speeds not because of some magic applications that will come from them, though I think that will happen. Fibre to the home will change how we receive entertainment into the home over time.
I'm in favour of them because our internet access in NZ is shit, and expensive, and we should try and approximate having first world internet access. It's important for business, education (universities have developed their own high speed network to get around the fact that NZ doesn't have one), and participating in society.
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Except I know of two workplaces where staff not in Kiwisaver were given pay rises while those who were weren’t because their employer told them they had got their pay rise through Kiwi Saver. This may not be legal but I think will become increasingly common. So my advice would be that if you don’t sign up to Kiwisaver your employer is likely to look more favourably on giving you a pay rise.
There'd be a lot of work places that couldn't do that. I work at a university and the employer couldn't offer a differential pay increase based on kiwisaver or not. The structure doesn't allow it. I'd imagine many large employers and most public service institutions would be the same.