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Post by pim on May 22, 2020 7:56:08 GMT 10
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Post by KTJ on May 22, 2020 8:04:45 GMT 10
The Nats have dropped in the polls to only 29% support and now the knives are out for Simon Bridges.
The Nats caucus are voting on their leadership at lunchtime today.
Jacinda has been steamrollering the Nats and under our MMP system, if the polls are an indicator of real support (or lack-of), the Nats will lose all of their “list” MPs, including their deputy, the new deputy if the challenger wins today, their finance spokesman, their foreign affairs spokesman, their health spokesman, their education spokesperson and many other high-ranking Nats MPs who chose to stand on the list instead of for electorates.
Roll on September's general election. I hope the rightie bastards get humiliated.
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Post by KTJ on Jul 27, 2020 18:08:46 GMT 10
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Post by Yassir Rebob on Jul 27, 2020 18:30:22 GMT 10
Macron in France tried something like the 4 day week, not sure it worked to well over there.
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Post by Gort on Jul 27, 2020 18:37:32 GMT 10
A four day working week is good stuff. Improves productivity, creates happier workers. Working from home should be much more widespread too ... I used to avoid a 3 hour daily commute when I worked from home with IBM ... Mind you, there are traps! I sometimes worked 60 hours a week but was paid for only 37.5 hrs. Of course "time off in lieu"* was supposed to be provided ... but somehow never seemed to catch up. * Wait for the loo jokes.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jul 27, 2020 19:04:55 GMT 10
The new economy will require progressive thinking...conservative economic thinking is for the dinosaurs.
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Post by Gort on Jul 27, 2020 22:35:45 GMT 10
BTW ... in the good old days, there was a lot of one-on-one on the job training in paid work as opposed to degrees landing a job. Perhaps society needs to look at that? ... else we could end up with a lot of over-qualified baristas.
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Post by pim on Jul 29, 2020 13:45:37 GMT 10
Rogue poll or not, all the signs point to a tectonic shift in New Zealand politicsRichard Shaw, Massey University. July 28, 2020. theconversation.com/amp/rogue-poll-or-not-all-the-signs-point-to-a-tectonic-shift-in-new-zealand-politics-143529Strong team. More jobs. Better economy. So say the National Party’s campaign hoardings. Only thing is, last Sunday’s Newshub-Reid Research poll – which had support for the Labour Party at 60.9% and for National at 25.1% – suggests the team is not looking that strong at all. Nor will it be having much to say on jobs or the economy following the general election on September 19 if those numbers are close to the result. As you might expect, National’s leadership dismissed the poll as rogue, saying the party’s internal polling (which hasn’t been publicly released) puts it in a much stronger position. But this latest poll is consistent with three others released since May (June 1, June 25 and July 15). Averaged out, these polls put support for Labour and National at 55.5% and 29.1% respectively. That is quite the gap. Assuming they are broadly accurate, what do they tell us about the state of politics in Aotearoa New Zealand? The centre is now centre-leftFor a start, the political centre appears to be shifting to the left. Across the past four polls, support for Labour and the Greens sits around 62%. When nearly two out of three voters in a naturally conservative nation support the centre-left, something is going on. Correspondingly, as the notional median voter shifts left, parties on the right are being left high and dry. The Reid Research poll put the combined support for National, ACT and New Zealand First at 30.4%, a touch under half the level of support for the centre-left. In 2017 National secured nearly 45% of the party vote. Nearly half of that support has bled away – and most of it hasn’t gone to other conservative parties. New Zealand First is on life support; the right-wing ACT party is at 3%; and the other centre-right parties (including the New Conservatives, the Outdoors Party and the conspiratorially inclined Advance NZ/Public Party coalition) are well off the pace. The leadership gapThen there is the question of leadership. Judith Collins was installed in an attempt to re-establish National’s bona fides as New Zealand’s natural party of government. But she has not had the impact Jacinda Ardern did when she took Labour’s reins several weeks out from the 2017 election. In fact, while 25% of those polled by Reid Research support National, the party’s leader sits at only 14% in the preferred prime minister stakes: nearly half of those who would vote National do not rate Collins as the prime minister. The polling suggests that Collins’s penchant for attack politics is not resonating with voters. She has not been helped by the recent antics of (now departed or demoted) caucus colleagues Hamish Walker, Michael Woodhouse and Andrew Falloon, but the buck stops with her. National’s default claim of being the better economic manager also took a blow in the most recent poll. Asked who they trusted most with the post-COVID economy, 62.3% of respondents preferred a Labour-led government and only 26.5% a National-led one. Could we see an outright majoritySomething may be about to happen to the shape of our governments. Under New Zealand’s previous first-past-the-post (FPP) electoral system we saw a string of manufactured governing majorities. For the better part of the 20th century either National or (less frequently) Labour would win a majority of seats in the House of Representatives with a minority of the popular vote. Indeed, the last time any party won a majority of the popular vote was 1951. That may be about to change. Since the first mixed member proportional (MMP) election in 1996 we have not had a single-party majority government: multi-party (and often minority) governments have become the norm. That is because MMP does not permit manufactured majorities in the way FPP does. To win an outright majority you need to enjoy the support of a (near) majority of voters. Labour may be on the verge of doing precisely that. If it does, it will be a very different kind of single-party majority government to those formed after FPP elections. In 1993, for instance, the National Party formed a single-party majority government on the basis of just 35% of the vote. If Labour is in a position to govern alone (even if Ardern looks to some sort of arrangement with the Greens) it will be because a genuine majority of voters want it to. Rogue poll or outlier on the same trend, Collins has had her honeymoon (if it can even be called that). In a way, though, neither Ardern nor Collins is the real story here. Much can and will happen between now and September 5 when advance voting begins. But something bigger and more fundamental may be going on. If the pollsters are anywhere near right, New Zealanders will look back at the 2020 election as one of those epochal events when the electoral tectonic plates moved.
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Post by caskur on Jul 29, 2020 16:17:04 GMT 10
lol... you know more about NZ than you do about WA.
Don't you think you should know more about the state that supplies 40% of Oz exports?
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Post by KTJ on Aug 19, 2020 20:26:10 GMT 10
from The Dominion Post…No more frolics: This is not the House of funBy JANE BOWRON | 5:00AM — Monday, 10 August 2020“Just because there have been reports that a hitherto certain louche culture existed within Parliament … we have instigated a rolling maul of policies to stem any further lewd activity.” — Photograph: Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images.GOOD MORNING and a warm welcome to all possible new entrant MPs.
I hope you have found your accommodation agreeable and that you spent a comfortable first night in our orientation units.
You are gathered here today to undergo our recently updated screening process to judge whether you are of sufficient sound and moral character to become an MP.
As you know, from the recent behaviour of a few of our miscreant representatives, certain boundaries have been breached, and as a result, loose sexual misconduct will no longer be tolerated.
A first cull has already been made. While you were at dinner last night, with your written waived consent, we conducted a baggage search and were dismayed to discover that some of your suitcases were laden with prophylactics and pornographic material.
Those entrants were obviously still harbouring wrong ideas about what to expect from life as an MP. They have already been dealt with. Last night a snatch squad removed them from their units, bundled them into the back of a military aircraft and dropped them off at the Chatham Islands to attend re-education camps operated by NZ Family First commissars to straighten out their ideas.
Let me make it clear. Just because there have been reports that a hitherto certain louche culture existed within Parliament, the bad news is that you have joined after the CC (Copulation Crackdown) and we have instigated a rolling maul of policies to stem any further lewd activity.
For MPs working late at night, the corridors of Parliament will now be patrolled by fornication officers trained to keep an ear out for copulatory grunts and orgasmic shrieks.
Mixed flatting for out-of-town MPs is under review, and new entrants will be encouraged to board only at the lodgings of approved-of retired MPs.Jane Bowron: No more tribal intermingling will be allowed between MPs and the press gallery.So conscious are we of the immense strains put upon MPs, who have to spend long periods away from their families, that we have purchased property near to Parliament Grounds for the specific purpose of turning it into spousal barracks.
Every effort has been made to furnish these bespoke barracks for ‘‘weekend away’’ reunifications.
To encourage a family-friendly atmosphere, we will be offering a Wellington-based boarding school international style service for children from all political hues. To stop factionalism and bloody encounters in the playground, classes in kindness, tolerance and understanding will be a core part of the curriculum, while extremist sectarian religious instruction will not be offered.
It goes without saying that we expect strong debating teams to emerge out of this exclusive educational facility.
To prevent tribal intermingling, we have met with Bellamys bar management staff to request a redesigning of their seating arrangements. To stop the press gallery from socialising with members of Parliament, we have asked for cordoned-off areas, not unlike sheep pens, to be constructed so never the twain shall meet.
We have also met with print, TV and radio journalism editors, and, in the interests of goodwill, have offered all journalists an endless supply of free vapes, flavoured with anti-aphrodisiac chemicals to lower libidos and prevent corybantic camaraderie.
Thank you for your corrective compliance. In these times of confused moral choices, we appreciate how hard it is to find clean skins. Now that you are fully conversant with the protocols and have been cautioned, you have our blessing to go forth and live without sin.__________________________________________________________________________ • Jane Bowron is a freelance journalist based in Wellington. A columnist for The Dominion Post and The Press, she has also been a TV reviewer for both of those publications as well as for The Evening Post, the Sunday Star-Times, Radio NZ National's Nine to Noon, Radio Live and Newtalk ZB, a feature writer for the Sunday Star-Times, and, as Dawn Dusk, an agony aunt for The Dominion. Her poetry collection “ Scenes Away from the Crime”, was published in 1984. Her book, “Old Bucky & Me: Dispatches from the Christchurch Earthquake” was first published in 2011, with a revised edition being published in 2012. www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/opinion/122380159/no-more-frolics-this-is-not-the-house-of-fun
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