Random Politics

[Golden Teapot]

I don't see a lot of point in voting for a party that, no matter what, can have no influence over the government. Winston is an artifact of the past - best taken to the taxidermist now whilst a viable pelt can still be recovered.

[cEvin]

not being in a governing coalition doesn't mean you have no influence

[A Corpse]

Winston's the reason there's a 5% threshold. He's a waste of skin.

[Ab]

Originally Posted by cEvin

not being in a governing coalition doesn't mean you have no influence

Winston doesn't want influence. He wants a taxpayer-funded salary and taxpayer-funded superannuation and a taxpayer-funded "Party Leader's budget" and a taxpayer-funded car with a taxpayer-funded driver and a taxpayer-funded office with a taxpayer-funded liquor cabinet and a taxpayer-funded expense account. Influence is only a side-effect of being in Parliament, it's not Winston's end goal. His end goal is the same thing it has ever been: looking out for Winston.

[StN]

[crocos]

Originally Posted by Golden Teapot

Winston is an artifact of the past - best taken to the taxidermist now whilst a viable pelt can still be recovered.

Pelt to be made into the covering for a dart-board?

[Lightspeed]

Seems like a fair pitch...

[fixed_truth]

^^Too bad those youngins cbf voting eh?

When the responses of youth voters (aged 18 to 24) are looked at in isolation, Labour has turned the tables on National, with the support of 46 per cent of young voters against National's 29 per cent.

The Green Party, traditionally favoured by young voters, surprisingly drops a percentage point from its overall result to 13 per cent support in the youth vote.

[leadinjector]

Originally Posted by fixed_truth

^^Too bad those youngins cbf voting eh?

When the responses of youth voters (aged 18 to 24) are looked at in isolation, Labour has turned the tables on National, with the support of 46 per cent of young voters against National's 29 per cent.

The Green Party, traditionally favoured by young stoners, surprisingly drops a percentage point from its overall result to 13 per cent support in the youth vote.

[aR Que]

Fucking stoners!

[A Corpse]

"Whoa man, when was that election thing?"
"Dude! I haven't had an erection in years!!!, Don't ask me!"

[Juju]

So the greens have resorted to vandalism to get votes:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/ar...ectid=10766168


Surely this shit would fall foul of the elections office or whatever department oversees campaigns?

[cyc]

Originally Posted by Juju

So the greens have resorted to vandalism to get votes:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/ar...ectid=10766168


Surely this shit would fall foul of the elections office or whatever department oversees campaigns?

It is. It's against the Electoral Act to make election statements without disclosing the person authorising the statement during an election period.

[Furry Crew]

Ohh shit!
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/poli...gh-on-benefits

[Torka]

reminds me of the governor of florida Rick Scott spending tens of millions of dollars in state money this year drug screening welfare recipients to look tough for his constituency

only for them to test positive at rates much lower than the general population (2% tested positive, justice department estimates national rate of usage at 6%)

[Skanks]

Though from what I read it's not like the Florida one, if you apply for a job and part of getting the job is a drug test and you refuse or fail it then your benefit is denied. The Florida one was just testing beneficiaries themselves wasn't it?

[fixed_truth]

This was reported on Campbell Live last night.
Early Epsom voter says forms are biased - http://www.3news.co.nz/Early-Epsom-v...4/Default.aspx

Margot Nicholson is a lawyer and Epsom voter who voted early.

“I had expected to see them all in a line, but in this case there was one party at the top a gap, then another party, and another gap and then a group of all the other parties,” she said.

“It just happened to be that the top was ACT, and the other National, which made those two parties stand out. That surprised me.”

Margot says she felt “anger and shock”.

[Saladin]

The electoral commissions explanation seems sound, so not sure what the issue is? Unless you're accusing Penny Bright and Mathew Goode of cunningly conspiring to run as independants with exactly the right names to create the gap?

[[WanG] Wandarah]

Anger! Shock!

[CCS]

Ah, the old subliminal vote influencing ballot paper. CONSPIRASISING!

[GM]

I wonder if Ab will turn off the comments section in Politics to avoid the wrath of the Electoral Commission

[A Corpse]

Why are ballot forms not randomly compiled? Expense?

I should run for MP, my last name starts with A and I live in a poor (hence poorly edumacated) area. I'd be a shoe-in.

[Ab]

lol, Conservatives first on my list.

[CCS]

Originally Posted by A Corpse

Why are ballot forms not randomly compiled? Expense?

Because only retards worry about such things. The same retards who call TVNZ and say that because Guyon Espiner is wearing a blue tie, he must be biased towards National.

Originally Posted by Ab

lol, Conservatives first on my list.

Zomg don't accidentally vote for them!!

[crocos]

I don't disagree with the Electoral Commission's comments, but I thought the Greens* comment that - if it wasn't a significant extra cost - the forms could be randomised, is actually fairly sensible, and the complaint that party vote should be disassociated from the candidate vote does have some merit.

On the other hand, enough to warrant actually doing anything? I'm not so sure.

*not that it says who from the Gs

[Savage]

Originally Posted by Random email fwd

An economics professor at a local college made a
statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently
failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and that
no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on
socialism".. All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same
grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A.... (substituting
grades for dollars - something closer to home and more readily understood by
all).

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The
students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little
were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied
little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they
wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

The second test average was a D - no one was happy. When the 3rd test
rolled around, the average was an F. As the tests proceeded, the scores
never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard
feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that
socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the
effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away,
no one will try or want to succeed. Could not be any simpler than that.
These are possibly the 5 best sentences you'll ever read and all applicable
to this experiment:

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy
out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work
for without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does
not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work
because the other half is going to take care of it for them, and when the
other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else
is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any
nation.

[Ab]

snopesline

[chubby]

http://www.kiwipolitico.com/

* Huhu grub cake made of rolled lemon sponge filled with fresh cream and bush honey, lemon cream cheese icing. Yeah, colonial-bourgeois Kiwiana is how we postmodern Gen-X long-spoon suppers roll.

[leadinjector]

Originally Posted by Savage

email thing by savage

you know thats a fake email right?

[A Corpse]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/6092128/

The gap between New Zealand's rich and poor has widened more than in any other developed country during the past 20 years, according to an OECD report.

Cue fingerpointing from both main political parties that it was the other one's fault.

[[Malks] Pixie]

Originally Posted by A Corpse

Cue fingerpointing from both main political parties that it was the other one's fault.

The amusing thing is that they'll both be right - they're both to blame :-)

Pixie

[A Corpse]

Well, they'll both be wrong in purely blaming the other side.

[[Malks] Pixie]

Originally Posted by A Corpse

Well, they'll both be wrong in purely blaming the other side.

True! Hadn't thought of it that way!

Pixie

[doppelgänger of someone]

This is an idea that came to me first thing when I got up this morning, it is pretty random so it goes here.

My impression is that there is a growing underclass in NZ. Everyday there is another baby bashing. Sure it is part sensationalist reporting, but something like that is pretty much unimaginable in even a middle class neighbourhood, where most people are exceedingly polite to each other, let alone to family members.

National's solution is more hand holding/make them jump through more hoops. While Labour's solution is "here is a (small) bag of money, go crazy". I don't see evidence that either one solution is going to lift up that underclass. That underclass doesn't spawn in one day, this problem has been simmering for a while and finally came to boil, none of those "solutions" are long term plan to tackle the problem.

Made me feel kind of sad when I woke up today.

[chubby]

Remember the aging population? Treasury expects NZ Super costs to double in 10 years. The only way to lower this is to raise the retirement age/reduce entitlements very, very soon, or if we got rid of a lot of old people... somehow. Well, Key refuses to do the former, and we probably signed some stupid UN conventions against the latter. So, NZ Super costs are going to double. And if total government spending is capped, then where is the money going to come from?

Oh you know, education, health, stuff.

Putting this spending cap into Treasury's Fiscal Strategy Model, it shows that real per capita Core Crown expenditure (excluding NZ Super, finance costs, unemployment benefit, asset impairments and spending on natural disasters) will fall by 8.9% in 10 years.* To put that into perspective, that's roughly the Law & Order and Defence budgets combined, or a bit more than a third of the Health budget.

http://publicaddress.net/onpoint/spe...scal-anorexia/

[Ab]

Pfft it's all academic unless you actually still live in NZ.

[A Corpse]

They know that that cap will never last. But it won't be their problem. Labour will nuke it when they get back into power in 3 or 6 years, then National will go "Ah well, we tried being responsible, but they refuse. They must hate the country!".

[chubby]

Originally Posted by Ab

Pfft it's all academic unless you actually still live in NZ.

yes ab.thats true.

[fixed_truth]

Phil Goff: 'I don't intend to stand down'

Yeah you won Mt Roskill, but FFS piss off already.

[fixed_truth]

Divided Auckland: NZ tax on rich among lowest in the world

The book's author, Professor Rob Salmond, a New Zealand-born political scientist at the University of Michigan, says New Zealand has a tax system of extremes.

"We charge less tax than any comparable country on high incomes, dividends and capital gains," he says.

"Our GST, however, is bigger than most, both as a proportion of taxes and as a proportion of the economy as a whole."

A structural shift in the tax and welfare system has been a major driver of the widening gap between rich and poor in Auckland. Suburbs whose average incomes were bunched together, mostly within 10 per cent of each other in 1986, now have average incomes that vary up to three-fold.