Posts by Keir Leslie
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Legal Beagle: Voting Referendum: Jus' Sayin', in reply to Ben Austin,
I don’t think it was so much a “blatant power grab” as the fulfilment of a general desire to effect voting reform, a programme that had been widely discussed and desired for several decades before the referendum.
The form of voting reform Clegg extracted in a back room deal from the Tories worked out to be the voting reform likeliest to elect more Lib Dems with the least actual reform , and then they campaigned using words like the `progressive majority', viz, electing more Lib Dems.
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I would have thought the main lesson of the UK referendum was that framing it as a referendum on the government / or its junior partner, rather than the actual issue was the way to get a result.
To be bitchy, a referendum on the Lib Dems was the actual issue. AV was a blatant power grab by the Lib Dems, and they knew it, the Tories knew it, Labour knew it, and the voters knew it.
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Certainly the overall population figure doesn't need the census. You take one, then proceed by dead reckoning.
But the census involves questions more complex than that, and it would be awkward to collect a lot of that data.
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Various countries such as Germany and Switzerland have moved away from a census and used sampling and official records instead. I’d guess this would work well in NZ where the baseline exit and entry numbers would be pretty accurate.
There are pretty serious privacy implications there in terms of `official records'. Not saying I'm against it absolutely, but.
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Actually Charles oversteps the line frequently, and has been publicly rebuked by RIBA over the Chelsea Barracks affair which lead to a rather embarrassing lawsuit.
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This was the concern in the Whitlam affair --- that Whitlam would get through to Buckingham Palace while still Prime Minister, and advise the Queen to withdraw Kerr's commission, at which point Kerr becomes meaningless. (I am unsure what would have happened if Whitlam had told Kerr to his face that Whitlam was advising him to resign.)
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Well, Danyl’s 33% correct, which must be some comfort.
One out of three ain't bad.
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In fact Fran Walsh has a BA in English Literature from Victoria University of Wellington, while Phillipa Boyens has a BA in English and History from Auckland.
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Danyl, are you seriously denying the possible bottom-line utility to New Zealand of studying the LOTR? We made a very large amount of money off precisely that cultural studies crap you reckon is a waste of money.
(PS. would you please get around to noting that the only easily testable claim you made in this thread was false? There's a reason most people disagree with you.)
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Anyway, I’ve made my points and short of any new arguments, I think we’ve covered the subject. I get that people are defensive about the premise, because my assertion means that they’ve wasted years of their life and quite a lot of money, but defensiveness, outrage and accusations of barbarism are not arguments. Ben – you’ve made some good arguments, and in making them make a good case for the validity of a philosophy degree.
Danyl, it would be polite to acknowledge that you made a factual mistake.
(PS.
Thanks for bringing it to my attention, since it helps my assertion that these are mostly just hobby courses for the privileged and not valid investments of the taxpayers money.
Are you seriously arguing that courses on the LOTR could have no monetary return to New Zealand? Seriously? Is this like `why study the Beatles in Liverpool'?)