Had to add this...

It took me an hour on google yesterday to get a half-pie answer.

Wikipedia says "Because environmental conditions have a strong impact on boat speed, FISA, recognizes world best times instead of world records. A world best time is one recorded on a regatta course that has previously held the World Championships, Olympic Games, or World Cup since 1980."

In practice, for rowing, they appear to be used interchangeably, even on the FISA (world rowing's governing body) website.

Not so in other sports, where it usually means the event was deficient in some way (too much wind assistance in a long jump event, not enough corners in a marathon course).

So sayeth the internet.

And of course, if you disagree - please submit also. Your supporting reasoning will help better make the case for a position that may not be well argued at present.

If you're reading this thread, and thinking 'mm. Graeme has some good points, and has expressed them more eloquently than I could, so I don't need to submit.' please please reconsider, and add your voice.

I had not intended to submit until I heard, with one ear, David Farrar on Jim Mora this afternoon talking about what the political parties had included in their submissions (could you guess that they want to keep the status quo?). I duly submitted, noting the vested interest established parties have in keeping the threshold high.

I then spent a bit of time reading through some of the other submissions - they are all publicly available on the website - and some of them are pretty disappointing. From the several who want MMP changed so it becomes supplementary member (including one fellow who argued that, like him, everyone who originally voted for MMP thought they were getting supplementary member and were surprised after the 1996 election), to the numerous references to the 'tail wagging the dog', and my favourite (?!) the chap who proposed increasing the threshold to 10% so we wouldn't get the 'anomaly' of the Greens getting into parliament even though they only got 6.7% of the party vote. I take some comfort from the fact that most 'keep or raise' submissions don't include any reasons for their recommendation, while 'drop or abolish' submissions do.

While I'm sure the electoral commission will consider the chaff appropriately, and will consider the issues rather more carefully than some submitters have, numbers are still important. Even if you only take 5 minutes (there is a quick submission option) to opine on the threshold (which is IMHO the most important issue), it will increase the chances of a better outcome.

</exhort>

Just to add to the list of Do What You Gotta Do covers, there's an Okkervil River version available for free download too. Link here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Opportunities_Mixtape

There's John Cale, Serge Gainsbourg, Joni Mitchell, Sandy Denny and Randy Newman covers too.