Posts by Paul Williams
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Or you're a blogger prone to accusing your political and personal enemies of various forms of heinous skull-duggery and douche-bagosity? Personally, I'm still not giving a shit about Mr. Slater's affairs but it's an endless source of amusement how often those who dish the bitch and demand transparency and accountability at the top of their voices, can't take it back.
And to think Kate's the smart one of the trio...
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What Craig and Ben said. The three names mentioned in relation to the site are three people I'd happily continue to ignore. Not that I don't appreciate Keith's forensic work, I do. The pathology of wingnuts is interesting.
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I was blissfully ignorant of this development. Now that it's not, a development I mean, and I'm aware of it, am I wiser? Spondre's odd, like Where Isn't Wally-odd.
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Who'da thunkit.
Most definitely not me. I read it waiting for a journalistic not even ow but it didn't come? WTF?
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I was cowardly waiting for Jackie to post so I could write: "what she said". Will be hanging out for updates.
Me too.... and then I read to the end of the thread and discover all PAS's combined arohanui might just have helped. Warm-feelings-all-over.
So glad you seem on the upside of the de-Adricisation Emma.
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I'm pretty confident that's not true. I was VUWSA treasurer once and I helped reject an application. There have been other rejections.
It was true around 1993/4/5. I was president of WSU in '94 when the Laws bill was drawn and we quickly caucused practice at other unis. At the time, VUWSA typically exempted people on application and without much fuss. As I said upthread, I regret we didn't do the same.
I'm not sure that's true. Let's send the bill to select committee and see - if Labour come out in favour of "tell the university you want to leave and get your money back" I have every confidence National would back that compromise.
Perhaps, I don't doubt the sincerity of your views but my experience with others is that their agendas are far more political. Hence my sense that the status quo represents a reasonable position.
Of course it wasn't. The Bill is Heather Roy's; she is now a minister and can't have a bill in the members' ballot. Now that it's been drawn, Roger is now proposing a bill about parole. Probably not his favoured pick either.
It is also a bill which can actually be advanced through members' legislation, and his party is part of the Government. Many of Roger's other ideas will be more complicated economy-based measures that he will try to feed into government legislative processes.
I understand that Graeme, I've some experience in parliament, but coudn't resist the opportunity to point out how tragic Roger appears (at least from my perspective).
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Which is why I would support an opt-out model, which is what we seem to have right now if I’ve understood Paul’s point, rather than a forced voluntary model where we gut the existing unions on the hope that we get the best of both worlds re freedom from association and effective student representation.
Ben, my memory is that most SAs in the 90s operated this way. The one I was most associated with, WSU, did but I confess it wasn't well administered and applications were routinely rejected. It was an error. I referred to VUWSA because, I recall, they pretty much automatically exempted people (but typically required a payment). A much smarter and fairer approach.
It frustrates me that a simple solution to this longstanding debate can't be agreed. The status quo seems reasonable and gives students that power to change the membership arrangements without undue hassle.
I can't help but think how frankly pathetic it is that Roger Douglas's return to parliament is to prosecute this issue.
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Can you do school vouchers next?
I can in four sentences. Here goes.
1. The New Zealand school system currently provides significant choice for parents by comparison with most first world western nations.
2. New Zealand schools are currently improving, in absolute and relative terms, as measured in terms of student achievement.
3. There's one - count them, one - study that shows positive educational outcomes related to vouchers (US, Washington DC from memory).
4. Almost all the support for vouchers in NZ relates to a Swedish study relating to their transformation from a centrally controlled system to a system that still doesn't afford parents the level of choice available in NZ.
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Because leaders doing stupid things is not a reason for things being compulsory or not.
I agree. This is an argument for greater scrutiny, not an argument about membership. Still, Ben's point rankles with me too. I resented being tarred with the incompetence -brush when, more often than not, some idiot had acted well outside their authority (every third or fourth AUSA president from memory).
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I don't think anyone is arguing against this. The one "right" I'm trying to remove from the student community is the right to force me to be a member of an incorporated society of which someone may not want to be a member - feel free to argue their doing so is a reasonable limit on an individual student's right to freedom of association, but elevating that choice to the level of a right seems a little far-fetched.
So the current position is that the freedom of association rule doesn't mean freedom from association in all cases and/or that the ECHR has found that compulsory student unionism either doesn't breach the rule or is a reasonable limitation? Possibly that's overly ellipitical but that's my quick reading of the discussion (and I'd rather not read the cases, it'll trigger horrible memories of my inadequacies as a law student).