Posts by Kyle Matthews
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Hum... I see a rather interesting argument that the British Government and the Windsors owes the Catholic Church compensation (and 465 years of interest) for goods and property alienated (or destroyed) during the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
Yeah, but then someone's going to start pointing out some of the interesting places that the Catholic church got it's wealth from and that's not always pretty either.
I don't mind the TV tonight. It's a significant event, big coverage, though I don't think I'll watch much of it. Highlanders vs Blues could be a rockin' good game and the Breakers game last week got crazily incredible after 37 minutes of being shit.
It's the coverage every night on the news for the last two weeks and in the papers. Truly awful journalism, if it can even be called that.
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You've got to be extracting the urine. Do you know anyone involved with ACT, or are they the Higgs boson in your model of the political universe?
The question really is, to what extent have significant people in the National Party been consulted, and to what extent do they support him. Brash says that he's spoken to people on the inside, which isn't surprising given that he was (still is?) a member two days ago - and a significant one. He's ruled out Key's inner circle. But has he spoken to national MPs? Senior campaign staff? Significant people in electorates? Professionals in advertising etc attached to national?
Over the next couple of months we'll see if him taking over ACT is going to have any significant impacts upon National in terms of members changing over, people switching. A major coup would be a sitting MP or two changing to ACT.
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Given the John Banks angle, I’m not convinced that’s the plan.
Yes possibly. But probably not going the other way. For such a small party, it's really had to build a pretty big tent to fit all it's arms in.
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I am assuming that National will want to keep ACT in play as a colation partner and will not attempt to take over its supporters as it tried to when Brash was leader.
The impact upon the overall right vote and where national positions itself is the interesting thing out of today.
If Act positions itself as a more philosophically right-wing liberal party - economic and socially, then they may pick up people who would otherwise vote Labour. The ones that they lose (socially conservative?) will either go to National or NZ First?
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We should feel glad that Assange’s attempt to limit the publication of the files on the basis that they were his commercial goods never got anywhere
There's some crazy irony going on there that he apparently missed.
This is a US-based plea in which an accused person can agree to plead guilty whilst maintaining innocence.
Reason #58 why the death sentence makes no sense at all.
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And I can confirm, for the record, that Game of Thrones is awesome.
I thought it showed promise, but certainly wasn't great 1st episode. I'll keep on trucking with it to see how it goes. Haven't read the books.
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Hmmm Brockville -
well he's not over the hill yet, then...My partner grew up along the road from Shane Carter. She tells a good story about him wandering along the road with no pants on as a toddler.
(Live at Helen's version is particularly brilliant - actually that entire album is).
+1
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I happen to believe that having a National government is a “sub-par outcome” per-se, and that moderating their stupidity just makes the continuance of their rule more attractive.
I agree with the former. The second is a pretty hard question to know yes or no, and I have no doubt that it's keeping Labour Party strategists up late at night as well.
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Yes, it would be worse law, but not “due to [Labour] voting against it”; due to National introducing it and garnering enough support to have it passed.
True. But I suspect there's a lot of people who get into parliament to make things better. And they might not be going the right way about it all the time, but their party is in a hole and they're looking at another three years in opposition so they're probably going to take what they can get at some stage so they can go back and say "we made this better than it was going to be, but not perfect".
If they hadn't done it, there'd probably be just as many people saying "why the hell did you stand on principle when you could have been practical and made it better. now look at this even crappier law we're stuck with". It's an age old principles vs practicals in politics game.
It's more unusual here with strong whipping, but in the USA this sort of horse trading happens all the time as people can vote how they want. I don't see that as always a bad thing, here it's just been a caucus-wide decision.
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I think there are studies showing that cannabis smoking has been a factor in lung disease, to take one example.
And presumably asthma doesn't like it?