Not What, But Who.

Where is the Pirate Party strong in NZ?

2011-11-28T15:27:00.000-08:00

This only includes the first 150 members, while the current membership count is more like 175.

The Pirate Party gets 0.54% in the New Zealand Election

2011-11-26T16:07:00.000-08:00

The Pirate Party ran 2 candidates in Hamilton East and Wellington Central.

In Hamilton East, Pirate Party Candidate Bruce Kingsbury won 0.41% of the vote with 122 votes, placing him 7th out of 8 candidates.

In Wellington Central, Pirate Party Candidate Gynn Rickerby won 0.67% of the vote with 210 votes, placing him 7th out of 12 candidates.

On average this was 0.54%, better than the Spanish Pirate Party’s result last weekend (0.41%) but not as good as the Catalonian Pirate Party’s result in the same election (0.63%). It is also better than the party vote for any party except the 8 which received seats and the Conservatives.

If the Pirate Party received this share of votes nationwide in the party vote, and there was no threshold for representation, the Pirate Party would have won 1 seat.

Spanish Election Results

2011-11-20T10:51:00.000-08:00

The results will start coming in in about an hour.

The Guardian will be tracking them as they come in on this site. It defaults to the 2008 election, so you have to navigate to the 2011 results.

Hopefully they will include the votes for the Spanish Pirate Party and Catalonian Pirate Party.

A 44% Absolute Majority & the NZ Referendum

And the results are now in! Spain now joins Scotland in the club of countries which call 44% an absolute majority. In May, the Scottish National Party won 53.5% of the seats in the Scottish parliament with 44.0% of the vote, and now the Spanish People's Party won 53.1% of the seats in the Spanish Congress of Deputies with 44.6% of the vote.

Somewhat surprisingly, and relevant to the Voting System Referendum in NZ this Saturday, both Scotland and Spain have supposedly proportional voting systems. Scotland uses MMP, and Spain uses Party List Proportional, which is what the list seats will be under SM as proposed in the referendum.

Why do these two countries' voting systems, despite being proportional systems, give disproportional results? One word. Regions. New Zealand would fall into the same trap with STV (though it would still be better than SM, PV, FPP). One lesson to draw from this though is that, once the referendum is over, there will still be much to be decided about the voting system in the next 3 years. The journey doesn't end on Saturday, there will still be lobbying and submissions on the little details for years to come. "Little details", as we see in Scotland and Spain, make big differences.

Pirate Parties in the Spanish Election

More importantly however, we now have data on the plight of the Spanish and Catalonian Pirate Parties... or should that be the Catalonian and Spanish Pirate Parties.

Pirates of Catalonia (0.63%)

The Pirate Party of Catalonia (PPCat) did very well. Not by Swedish or German standards, where Pirate Party candidates have actually been elected, but among the other ~38 Pirate Parties, a result like the 0.63% PPCat got is considered a good result. This equates to 0.09% of all votes in Spain.

PPCat has only been around for just over a year - only 3 months longer than New Zealand's own Pirate Party - and the number I have heard in Pirate circles is that a typical result for a Pirate Party in their first General Election is 0.2%. PPCat did contest a State election last November, where they got 0.21%, and local council elections in May, where they got results between 0.77% and 1.19%, but general elections are always harder, and voters are normally less willing to risk "wasting" their vote on a Party that is unlikely to get elected, so Pirate Parties normally poll lower in National elections than in Local, State and European Union elections.

The Pirate Party of Spain (0.41%)

The Spanish Pirate Party (PPEs) didn't do quite as well. If you count all votes in Spain, they only got 0.016%, however they did not contest the vote in every Region or Province. Their best Region was Navarra, where they got 52.6% of all the votes cast for PPEs anywhere in Spain, which amounts to 0.54%. This is also a respectable result, though PPEs has been around since 2006 - much longer than PPCat.

PPEs only ran in 4 Provinces: Navarre, Huesca, Teruel, Castellon. (this is out of 46 in Spain excluding Catalonia). All of them are in the North East and 3 of them border Catalonia. The results in each Province ranged from 0.28% to 0.54%. They only contested the vote in 3.39% of Spain (measured by votes), which is 3.95% of Spain excluding Catalonia. Of this, they got 0.41%. That's not a bad percentage, but it's a shame they didn't contest more Provinces. For comparison, Catalonia is 14.23% of Spain, 4.2 times more than the area PPEs contested the vote in.

If you average PPEs and PPCat together, they got 0.104% of all votes, and 0.59% of the votes they contested. If they got the same average over the rest of the country, and the Spanish parliament was perfectly proportional, PPEs/PPCat would get 2 seats between them.

Senate Elections (0.98%)

Parallel to the above election, Spain also held elections to its Senate. The Senate election uses a slightly peculiar system - each Province elects 4 Senators, but voters have 3 votes and each Party can only stand 3 Candidates. The results can't be compared to elections in other countries, but they are still interesting.

PPCat's candidates in Barcelona all got more votes than the Party's share in the Parliamentary election - 1.18%, 0.92%, 0.75%. In Total, PPCat Candidates received 0.96% of the votes in Barcelona, which I guess is the figure you would use if you wanted to compare anything. In the 3 other Provinces in Catalonia, they only stood 1 Candidate. Of these, the best result was 1.51% and the lowest was 1.12%. If you consider that PPCat is only contesting 1 vote per voter in these provinces, the total number of Senate votes PPCat got in all Catalonia was 1.00% of the total votes they contested. (with less rounding, it comes just under 1%: 0.9969%. It would have taken another 85 people to vote for 3 PPCat Candidates to cross the 1% mark)

One PPEs Candidate that I can tell so far also broke the 1% milestone in Navarra, with 1.05%. Out of all the votes contested by 3 PPEs Candidates in Navarre and Castello, they got 0.86%. Averaging PPEs and PPCat together, Spanish Pirate Parties won 0.98% of all Senate votes they contested. With 208 directly elected Senate seats, this is the same proportion as 2 seats out of all Spain.

Electoral System Referendum

2011-11-20T01:14:00.000-08:00

Just writing down a few predictions about the referendum between MMP FPP STV SM PV.

1. I think MMP will probably win the first question

2. I think FPP will win the second question

3. I think STV will come the closest to beating FPP (despite the 'vote for change' campaign targeting SM)

4. I think that, if MMP wins the first question and there is a review, the 5% threshold will be reduced to 3 or 4%, and will generally be more proportional than the current MMP system

5. I think there will be MMP supporters who vote for FPP in the second question, despite that being their least preferred option, because they think it has the least risk of beating MMP in a second referendum

6. I think that, If MMP loses the first question, and FPP wins the second question, that FPP supporters will run a much larger and more expensive campaign in 2014, and come close to winning.

If it's not clear, I am an MMP / PR supporter. I intend to vote for MMP and for STV, because STV is the next best (proportional) option after MMP, and because it has the best chance of beating FPP.

On the Campaign Trail

2011-11-20T00:10:00.000-08:00

The campaign itinerary for a small party like the Pirate Party is... well... small. Still, campaign 2011 is an improvement on the Botany By-election campaign.

In the Botany By-election campaign, the campaign started late. And by late I mean... the night before polling day. This time, we managed a few thousand percent better. We started a whole week before polling day. We also had vastly more people involved this time. As in, 7 people, as opposed to 4.

We got a lot of good reactions too, though we we're not entirely sure that's not just because they don't realize we're a real party :p

It sounds funny, but this toy-sized campaign in Hamilton beat my expectations.

More info and pics to come later this week.

No points for guessing where this one is

Oh, and did I mention, good luck to the Spanish and Catalonian Pirate Parties today. The polls are now open in Spain! Their campaign has been much better, and they even got #votopirata trending on twitter. no doubt I'll post on the election results.

Winston Peters' Plague on Both Your Houses

2011-11-05T22:06:00.000-07:00

In response to kiwiblog's post.

Winston Peters said:

New Zealand First is not going with National.
New Zealand First is not going with Labour either. We are making that clear here today.
New Zealand First is not going with the Greens or the Maori Party. …
MMP is criticized by those who believe they have been born to rule but since this system was introduced, the party with the most votes has always formed the government.
We believe that the party that gets the most votes should try to form the next government.
But there’s one condition – the one safeguard that voters have – the one get out of jail card.
And that is do not let any political party in New Zealand govern alone under any circumstances. It is too dangerous!

To be fair, this is rather unusual, though we expect that from him. The aim for minor parties such as NZ 1st in parliament is to get some of their own laws through and to get some money put into their preferred areas by making deals with the major party leading the government. Note that this involves both influencing the legislature and influencing the executive, but not trying to become the executive.

To help explain my perspective about the mixing of legislature and executive in New Zealand, I'll mention a place where the two aren't mixed: Washington DC. Over there, the President is elected separately to the legislature, and appoints all the "ministers" (called Heads of Federal Executive Departments). The executive (government) sometimes has to negotiate with the legislature (can be the opposition) to pass a budget. I call this "the government acting within the law", as opposed to making up the law as they go along.

Now, in New Zealand, we have a mixed legislature and executive, or rather the legislature not only decides the law, but also elects the executive. This is where things can go wrong. Unlike in Presidential elections, where there is always one person who is clearly the winner in the election, electing a Prime Minister via the legislature comes down not to the election, but to the negotiations afterwards.

To clarify my position, I think it's a good thing if the legislature is proportional, and if the government must negotiate with a majority of the legislature to pass a budget. My only beef is with the way a majority of the legislature has to agree on one person before there even is a government, and that the Prime Minister appointed my the majority of the legislature can be the other one of the two main contenders than the majority of voters preferred. (think of voters for all the parties that could go with either Labour or National - NZ 1st, Maori, UF, Greens - they each have a preference between John Key and Phil Goff, and not always the one the party goes with)

Back to the story, so a minor party's aim is to influence the legislature and executive by making deals, and there are 2 ways they can make such a deal - one is by offering to vote with the govt on parts of their legislative agenda, and the other is by offering to vote for the govt on "confidence" i.e. to vote for their Prime Ministerial candidate. (this includes formal coalitions)

So far the culture in the New Zealand parliament has been to combine and confuse confidence and supply, so whoever has the executive votes to become the government automatically has the legislative votes to pass their budget. In a hung parliament, this is almost allowing them to make up the law as they go along. This makes the election of the executive particularly important, and means that emotions can run high for minor party voters when the topic of "which way they will go" is discussed. This also means that the more popular and effective of the two ways to get the influence a minor party wants is to get concessions from a major party in exchange for picking their candidate for Prime Minister. Offering votes on parts of the government's legislative agenda takes second place and isn't rated very highly in public opinion - there is a perception that "you can't anything outside of government" and the distinction between executive and legislature is not really recognized.

I'll write more about this later, but basically my point is that what Winston Peters is doing is separating the legislature and executive. He is saying he will still try to achieve influence on legislation and spending, but he will only do that by offering votes on legislation (including supply), but not votes on electing the executive.

Some more of other people's quotes on this follow.

Idiot/Savant:

Winston Peters has announced that he will not back either main party on confidence and supply, and will refuse to support any arrangement involving the Greens or Maori Party. So, that’s it then. Labour’s dream of cobbling together a coalition government if it does well enough (already a forlorn hope) is now dead. The issue now is not whether John Key or Phil Goff is Prime Minister, but whether Key gets to rule with an absolute majority.

Kiwiblog:

But Winston has not in fact said definitely what he will do. At best he seems to be saying he will oppose both National and Labour. That could mean if NZ First did make 5% and hold the balance of power, he would force a new election by voting against supply and confidence.
A Government can only govern if it has supply and confidence. All Winston has said that the party with the most votes should try to form the next Government. Nowhere has he said he will allow them to.
Winston has left massive wriggle room, so he can do in 2011 what he did in 2005. The question that media should ask him is “Will he vote for confidence and supply for the largest party, against confidence and supply, or abstain?”. A related question is “What conditions will be attached to that”.
He has said NZ first is not going with the Greens or the Maori Party. That doesn’t answer the question of what if National needs (unlikely but possible) both NZ First and Maori Party to govern. Is he saying he will vote against if there are Maori Part Ministers but vote for if they are not Ministers?
Overall the only conclusion I can draw is that a Winston saying he will oppose whomever forms the Govt, and his apparent conditions on which other parties can be involved just makes new elections likely if they make 5%. Political instability is the last thing we need as Europe totters on the brink of economic disaster.

Some more rubbish from kiwiblog:

Presumably this means Idiot/Savant is calling on voters to vote ACT. Because that is the best way to have a National-led minority Government. I/S has said that the Government will be National-led. That means that extra votes for Labour, Greens, NZ First or Mana will just be wasted as none of them would support a National-led Government.
A vote for the Maori Party will not work, as they are highly likely to have an overhang.
That leaves United Future and ACT. Now those parties need 1.2% to get an second MP and 0.45 to avoid overhang. United Future is looking like it will be an over-hang seat. So the best way for people to have a minority National-led Government is hence to give ACT the party vote.
Now personally I do not endorse ACT, as Idiot/Savant has done. If the voters vote to give John Key a majority, he has already said he will offer to share Government with the Maori Party, United Future and ACT – and at a minimum a policy co-operation agreement with the Greens.

Some of my comment at kiwiblog on this particular interpretation:

as long as a vote goes towards giving seats to someone other than National, it goes towards forcing them to work with someone. It doesn’t matter whether ACT has 2 seats or 12, National is only forced to work with them if they have 60 or less on their own. I agree that parties with an overhang or no hope of getting into parliament don’t help, but nor in fact do parties with only a 63% chance of getting into parliament at all, so that rules ACT out. (or whatever the current number is on ipredict)

In conclusion, the parties Idiot/Savant is supporting by his statement, are the Greens, MANA and Labour. Maybe UF if Dunne looks better in Ohariu and their polling goes up.

I think you [kiwiblog] mistook “the government WILL be National-led” for “the government SHOULD be National-led”.

More Later. [UPDATE: No, flag that. you'll have to imagine the rest.]

You Can Vote Pirate in NZ! #2*

2011-11-04T15:20:00.000-07:00

In February this year, the Pirate Party ran in the Botany By-election. (my post at the time)
Now, we are running in the 2011 General Election.

from Elections New Zealand

Electorate Candidates for Hamilton East

These are the candidates seeking your electorate vote.

Candidate Name	Party Name
BENNETT, David	National Party
JACKSON, Robyn	Conservative Party
KINGSBURY, Bruce	Pirate Party of New Zealand
McKENZIE, Carolyn	Democrats for Social Credit
MALLETT, Garry	ACT New Zealand
MARRYATT, Nick	Green Party
ORGAD, Sehai	Labour Party
STEWART, Gordon	New Zealand First Party

Electorate Candidates for Wellington Central

These are the candidates seeking your electorate vote.

Candidate Name	Party Name
APPLEBY, Michael	Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party
BOOMERT, Laurence	New Economics Party
BUCHANAN, Kelly	Alliance
CRAVEN, Ben	New Zealand First Party
CUTTING, Reagan	Libertarianz
FOSTER-BELL, Paul	National Party
KARENA, Puhi	Independent
RICKERBY, Gynn	Pirate Party of New Zealand
ROBERTSON, Grant	Labour Party
SHAW, James	Green Party
STIPKOVITS, Paul	Conservative Party
WHITTINGTON, Stephen	ACT New Zealand

We are contesting the Hamilton East and Wellington Central Electorates. In Botany, we had the Pirate Party name on the ballot, this time we will also have the Pirate Party logo there.

* If you are enrolled in Hamilton East or Wellington Central Electorates.

Economy vs Election Results 1935-2008

2011-10-30T01:01:00.000-07:00

http://www.politicaldumpground.com/2011/10/principles-or-statistics.html

So, Labour gets in when the economy is good, and National gets in when the economy is bad. How surprising.

Also, if Key stays in until growth reaches 4%, that graph will be perfectly striped ;)

NZ Post-Earthquake Demographics

2011-10-29T17:02:00.000-07:00

data source: http://stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/population/estimates_and_projections/SubnationalPopulationEstimates_HOTPJun11.aspx

5 days ago, Stats NZ released the first population data about a time after the Canterbury earthquakes in Feb 2011. Note that it is for June, just 4 months after the quake, and that things could have changed significantly between June and now. Here I make a few observations:

Only 10,600 people migrated out of Christchurch (net). This in only 2.9% or 1 in 35. (it is 12,200 compared to what would be expected without the earthquakes - 3.1% or 1 in 31)
It was mainly young people who left, 0-14 year olds decreased 7%, and 15-39 year olds decreased 3.8% in Christchurch City, older groups actually increased (whether by natural increase or inward migration).
Using the net migration trend over the previous 4 years as a base, out of the people who left Christchurch because of the earthquake, it looks like only 28% max settled elsewhere in the South Island. 29% max moved to the North Island, and 43% min moved overseas.
The natural increase and 'normal' migration to the South Island over a year was almost exactly canceled out by people leaving the South Island because of the earthquakes. The total population of the South Island in June 2011 was the same as a year before.
Since the people leaving shakey town were young, the median South Islander is now 3 1/2 years older than the median North Islander, compared to 3 years in June 2010. (the median North Islander normally ages 2 months/year, but earthquake migrants actually cancelled this out for a year)

Now for a couple of things not specifically related to the earthquake:

Out of 43 "Territorial Authorities" in the North Island, between 2006 and 2010, 30 grew in population, Horowhenua held steady, and 12 declined. This is basically a steady overall growth plus a gradual migration from the countryside to the cities.
Out of the 23 in the South Island, all of them grew except Gore. The overall growth is slightly higher, and the urban migration is more even, so it's not as noticeable.
In the North Island, when you take into consideration only the 0-14 year olds, only 9 Territorial Authorities grew, 1 held steady, and 33 declined. This shows a bit about the nature of the population growth.
In the North Island excluding Auckland, there is an overall growth in population and decline in 0-14 year olds.

In this image, the dark green areas are territorial authorities with declining populations (2006-2010), the light green have growing population but declining numbers of 0-14 year olds, gray areas have steady numbers of 0-14 year olds, orange has numbers of 0-14 year olds growing at less than 1% pa, and red areas have greater than 1% pa growth in 0-14 year olds.

Silver Fern vs NZ Blue Ensign at RWC 2011

2011-10-17T19:49:00.000-07:00

When you fly the Silver Fern flag, here is a list of the RWC 2011 teams you could be referring to:

NZ All Blacks

When you fly the NZ national flag - the NZ Blue Ensign - here is a list of RWC 2011 teams you could be referring to, who have players or coaches from New Zealand:

NZ All Blacks
Manu Samoa
Flying Fijians
Tongan Sea Eagles
Japanese Cherry Blossoms
England national rugby union team
Wales national rugby union team
Canadian Canucks
Australian Wallabies
Romanian Oaks
Ireland national rugby union team
USA Eagles

In fact, there are only 8 teams you are NOT supporting when you fly the NZ Blue Ensign: Scotland, France, Italy, Georgia, South Africa, Namibia, Argentina, Russia.

This is (one reason) why people use the Silver Fern flag at the RWC and not the NZ flag. It doesn't mean they have adopted a different flag for New Zealand - just for a rugby team.

Fashion Police Bill 2.0

2011-06-04T19:43:00.000-07:00

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/politics/5102271/Govt-to-back-ban-on-gang-patches

Someone else (Political Dumpground) has already written something so similar to my own feelings on this, that I won't bother writing my own piece.

The main area of difference is that I think the first bill, banning fashion crimes in the town formerly known as Wanganui, and the new bill, banning fashion crimes in buildings the govt owns or rents on your behalf, probably DO in fact have the potential to permit the govt of the day to commit "serious breaches of freedom of expression". This is mainly due to the inevitable discrepancy between "organizations who have no other purpose than conspiracy to commit crime" and all groups that may fall under the scope of the law.

MMP Scottish Style: Why do Scots Call 44% a Majority?

2011-05-08T22:03:00.000-07:00

Last thursday, 5 May, Scotland elected 129 MSPs. Scottish elections use MMP - the same system as we are familiar with in New Zealand - but not the same MMP. In the Scottish election, the SNP won a 53.5% majority of seats with 44% of the vote. (representing 47.2% of party votes for the 5 elected parties and 1 elected independent, 47.7% of the party votes for just the 5 parties which got over 4% and 50.1% of the party votes for just the 4 parties which got over 5%)

Coming soon: An analysis of the Scottish election under various subtly different types of MMP.

Some summary: (detail to come later)

System (variations of MMP)	Used in	MSPs
System (variations of MMP)	Used in	SNP	Lab	Con	Lib Dem	Greens	Other	Total
D'Hondt, No Overhang, no exclusion, Regions	Scotland	69	37	15	5	2	1	129
Same only with St Laguë		64	34	15	7	7	2	129
St Laguë, Overhang, 5% exclusion, no Regions	New Zealand	64	39	18	8			129
D'Hondt, No Overhang, no exclusion, only 4 Regions	Scotland*	64	38	15	7	4	1	129
St Laguë, Overhang, Scandinavian exclusion**, no Regions	My Ideal System	58	35	16	7	6	7	129
Exact Proportion to Votes		56.8	33.9	15.9	6.7	5.6	10.0	129

* - This is if each Region was merged with one of its neibours, i.e. Region 1: Highlands & Islands plus North East, Region 2: Mid & Fife plus Central, Region 3: Glasgow plus West, Region 4: Lothian plus South

** - where the first quotient is 1.4 in stead of 1. The following quotients remain at 3, 5, 7 etc.

Keynes vs. Hayek Round Two Music Video

2011-04-29T03:58:00.000-07:00

The quality of this is just impressive. I already agreed with the message, but to come up with all those succinct yet poetic soundbites? I don't know how they do it. A definite improvement over the first one (which i also think is good), though they used the "hair of the dog" line in both videos.

Also liked the "Hayek splosives" line, and the court/inquiry theme.

Found at Not PC

ANZAC Day Blog Posts

2011-04-25T14:37:00.000-07:00

Some ANZAC day perspectives on national defense:

Not PC

Whale Oil

Don Brash for ACT?

2011-04-24T19:12:00.000-07:00

So, Don Brash has proclaimed that, if he were offered the leadership of ACT, that he would accept it and attempt a return to parliament.

Aside from the Pirate Party, which is not yet registered, ACT is a party which i also have a measure of support for. Despite the fact both parties allow dual membership, I never got as far as joining ACT because of a few areas where i disagree with them. (some policies i don't like, and some that i do like that ACT ignores, such as drug liberalization)

From what i've seen, giving Brash the leadership would be a very popular move amongst ACT supporters, though i get a feeling that this is only because it would alleviate "Hide's" popularity problem, that he would take ACT back to being principled, as opposed to "Hide's" populist shenanigans.

Would Brash be a good fit for the ACT leadership? well I think so. His personal political opinions and values closely match what you would expect "pricipled ACT" to be, and he has experience leading parliamentary parties. The thing is, i can say the exact same thing about Rodney Hide. I think Rodney is a good fit for the ACT leadership, his personal political opinions and values closely match what you would expect "pricipled ACT" to be, and Rodney has experience leading parliamentary parties.

Ok... next question. All else being equal, would i support Don Brash taking over from Rodney Hide? well, probably not. It's not gonna make any difference, ACT will still be the same. The problem was never with the leader to begin with.

So I don't think that ACT "needs" a new brand, a new personality, some fresh thought and a "principle" transfusion? well actually i do. I just think replacing the leader is like having a heart transplant when you only needed a new lung. A very healthy heart it may be, but it still won't make you better. The leader is just the leader, he is not the party.

What would it take for me to think that Don Brash taking over would be a good thing? well, it would take new blood to be infused throughout the whole current party structure. New Brash leaning former Nats on the board, mixed into the party list (at least #1, #4 and #8), possibly one or two current National MPs, new former Nat members brought in as parliamentary staffers for ACT, and new "trusted advisors". If you get new former National financiers along with that, that's just a bonus. In other words, enough new stuff to challenge the clout of the existing party machinery and get their own way sometimes (as much as this would disappoint those involved in said party machinery). It wouldn't just look like a new party doing things differently, it would be a new party doing things differently within similar principles. (as would a merger between ACT and a new post-failed-coup-Brash led party)

If it sounds like a National Party takeover, well i guess it kinda would be, but it would also kinda be a split within National, and if ACT becomes a useful, usable vehicle for the National splinter taking it over, then they won't let that go to waste. That is what I think would be a good thing for ACT supporters. Co-incidentally, it reminds me of the Libs/Nats coalition across the ditch, though unlike in Australia, you could vote for either rather than both. I would call that a win for democracy too.

UPDATE: I note Cactus Kate's opinion, which seems in a sense similar to mine (though more specific):

Don Brash's first job is to clean out the Party of anyone who comes with coup baggage. Slit the throats of every MP, staffer and Party worker who has undermined his predecessor and build a new team of people around him. I would hazard a guess all of these will come from outside ACT because ACT is far too factioned. And I doubt any of Hide's team will want to stay on to assist what is effectively a National take-over of ACT. That's right, the Party was taken over by Brash, a Nat and his mostly National supporters because ACT people couldn't collectively keep their shit together and stop infighting. I thought it would be a cold day in hell before Douglas passed the parcel to a true Nat. But there you go.

$2 Discounted Pirate Party NZ Membership

2011-04-17T01:10:00.000-07:00

This post is about changes to the fee to join the Pirate Party.

Until yesterday, the membership fee for PPNZ was a blanket $10. This value is similar to most of the parties in parliament.

Here are the minimum membership fees of some other parties*:

National: $5 minimum, expect at least $30
Labour: $5 minimum, expect $6.60 unwaged or $15 waged
Greens: $15
ACT: $20 (or $15 via the youth wing)
Maori: $2, ask for additional $8 donation

* If you have information about other parties, feel free to post it in the comments

Since yesterday, the PPNZ membership has been split: a 'standard' fee of $10 and an alternative 'discounted' fee of $2. This is very similar to the Maori Party:

Membership is only $2.00 with this we ask for an $8.00 donation.

The only real difference i think is in the sentiment. In the Maori Party, the sentiment might be that new members are followers of the leadership, and are not expected to do much after joining. The leadership is responsible for finding funds and asking nicely for an $8 donation to help them out.

OTOH, the sentiment in the Pirate Party seems to be more that new members are more or less expected to take a more equal stake in the Party, the funding, and to have some involvement. The 'discounted' fee seems more like the rest of the members helping them out to the tune of $8, out of an understanding that some people will feel $10 is too much.

I guess in a way the difference is a sign that the Pirate Party is looking for more than just on-paper members and money - they also need more people to take ownership of the party and shape it's collective opinion.

[Disclaimer: the author is involved in the administration of the Pirate Party]

Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Ammendment Bill

2011-04-13T03:20:00.000-07:00

Facebook page of the blackout in protest at this bill.
You can now torrent the bill from The Pirate Bay.

From the Pirate Party of New Zealand:

AUCKLAND, 14 April 2011

The Pirate Party of New Zealand is disappointed that the Government used urgency to pass the Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill after the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill.

"Not only is the urgency process being abused," party secretary Noel Zeng stated, "but our government is also exploiting the people of Christchurch by using their unfortunate situation to pass underhanded legislation."

Under this "three strikes bill," if anyone in a household is accused of three acts of illegal filesharing, they could be fined $15000 or, if fines are found to be ineffective, the entire household could lose their internet connection for 6 months. This bypasses due process, violates privacy, and provides the "Copyright Tribunal" with more discretionary powers. The initial draft of the bill widely criticised when it was debated in November and changes since then have failed to adequately address the concerns raised. The Pirate Party of New Zealand believes that internet access is a basic human right. The bill is unjust in violating the general principle of, "innocent until proven guilty."

The Pirate Party is not the only group that opposes this bill, Tech Liberty, InternetNZ and the New Zealand Open Source Society are just some of the prominent organisations that have strongly criticised it. Major ISPs and Internet users have also voiced concerns.

The Pirate Party is pleased to note that the Green MP Gareth Hughes was vocal in his opposition to the bill during debate and should be commended.

About The Pirate Party of New Zealand

The Pirate Party of New Zealand is a political party which seeks to reduce the unfair monopolies perpetrated by the oppressive copyright and patent system in New Zealand. It is our aim to improve individual privacy and civil rights as they apply in the modern digital age. You can find out more about The Pirate Party of New Zealand at http://pirateparty.org.nz.

Exclusive: Judith Tizard resigns before taking up her seat

2011-03-31T16:14:00.001-07:00

received on 11:50pm GMT.

Judith Tizard has announced she will not take up her list spot as MP due to an incident early this morning at 4:30am in Wellington when a young naked female student was seen running into a waiting Police car in front of camped out paparazzi.

She has also had any portfolios she would have received removed, effective immediately.

Phil Goff says while he can not confirm or deny if a Police investigation has started due to legal reasons, he says he is pleased at how very quickly the Labour Party has resolved this current incident. "The fact we got this sorted out well within 24 hours shows how much stronger the Labour Party has grown since the Darren Hughes case which bodes well for the November Election" says Phil Goff.

Kiwiblog Spindoctoring on the Offenders' Levy

2011-03-16T13:57:00.000-07:00

In response to this piece at Kiwiblog:

To summarize the situation, this offenders' levy is a $50 fee charged to all convicted offenders at time of sentencing. National introduced it (it was in their 2008 campaign) and considers it a significant and worthwhile source of new income for their victim support scheme, while Labour considers it a "gimmick" which will not raise significant new income because of the cost of collecting it. From here, it is one big argument about the numbers.

From Simon Power's announcement:

The levy is collected after reparation and before fines, and is in addition to any sentence or court order.

This is the main point that i feel Kiwiblog has willfully ignored. How many of the 55% of offenders from which the levy has been collected have outstanding fines? In my view, any money raised from such people is not new income and should not be included in the figures when working out whether the levy raises enough to cover it's own set-up and administration costs. Rather, since the offender has not earned an extra $50 anywhere, it will mean he will pay $50 less off his fines. It is simply a transfer of funds from the account to which the fines are due into the levy account.

It is the same smoke and mirrors as when Kiwiblog says things like "The government has saved $X Million in spending cuts and redirected them into higher priority areas." This is looking at a spending reshuffle and trying to sell it as a spending cut, which it is not. With the offenders' levy, DPF is looking at (specifically in the case of offenders with outstanding fines) a spending reshuffle, and trying to sell it as a revenue increase, which it is not.

Discussion on the numbers coming soon. [EDIT: or maybe not]

Re Goff's "firing squads" comment - It wasn't that bad

2011-03-10T13:16:00.000-08:00

Kiwiblog and Whaleoil often have interesting things to say, which i appreciate when i read. Other times, they are partisan beyond sense. One example i can't ignore:

This is all about a quote from Phil Goff (source: here)

“I saw the army out in the street and I thought court martial, firing squads you just can’t believe how low a small minority of people can get,”

Which imo means the idea crossed his mind, a normal human instinct in such a situation. DPF even admits to having this reaction here. Note what Phil Goff did not say - anything about considering such a measure, or even actively thinking about it. There is really nothing he said that DPF didn't, so it is odd that DPF said the following: (also here)

"Interesting that Phil Goff on radio said that army should shoot looters. Wonder how his caucus feel about his law and order policy?"

Now this looks like a quick joke at Goff's expense, especially considering it was only on twitter. Although it does misrepresent what was said, it's not an accusation. This is in contrast to Whaleoil's post (here) where he says:

I wonder perhaps if he will ask Phil Goff he similarly regrets his comments made on BFM on 28 February where he said:
I saw the army out in the street. I thought, okay, court martial, firing squad. You just can’t believe how low a small minority of people can get. You know, to exploit people’s misery in this way is just beyond forgiveness.
As you can see that is a whole magnitude worse than anything Judith Collins suggested, which was a long prison sentence. Phil Goff meanwhile was considering firing squads.
The media really needs to ask Phil Goff what he meant by thinking of firing squads. I mean seriously they do. “Beyond forgiveness” and “court martial, firing squads” for looters!
Will Grant Robertson ask Phil to retract?

Now this also misrepresents what Goff said, although the actual quote and context was provided, and is an accusation. This is what i mean by "partisan beyond sense." DPF involves himself in this accusation by linking to it with the statement here:

"Talking of due process though, Whale Oil has a quote from a senior politician calling for looters to get court-martialed and a firing sqaud. Go check it out – you may be surprised with who the politician is."

Whaleoil then continues his behaviour here. An extract:

"It is clear that he isn’t joking. And even if he was he shouldn’t have been."

I don't think Phil Goff was joking either when he suggested firing squads - his comment was never a suggestion!

I don't find it enjoyable to read such false accusations all in the name of partisanship. Stick to something i do enjoy - partisan critique of Labour's actual policies.

Borders and administration and Australia

2011-02-19T23:29:00.001-08:00

This is an interesting point. Basically blaming copyright law for what's happening to Borders in Australia. Haven't decided whether i think it's right yet, but it's interesting. Not sure how applicable it is to NZ though, although Borders is under administration in NZ and everyones complaining about vouchers losing their value.

http://brendanscott.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/copyright-strikes-borders-au-angus-and-robertson/

Updated: Elections in Tunisia and Egypt

2011-02-12T17:36:00.000-08:00

AFP report Reuters Interview Constitution CNN report

[UPDATE: Tunisia had their first ever free elections on October 23, 2011. This was 10 months after the beginning of the revolution and 9 months after the departure of the former dictator. Elections in Egypt start on 28/11/11, 10 months after the beginning of their revolution and 9½ months after the departure of the former dictator - and just 2 days after NZ's own election. | 01/11/11]

It has been a month now since Ben Ali was removed and escaped, with the Tunisian constitution requiring "the obligation to call for elections within 45 to 60 days".

There is still no date for an election, though there is a "proposal" to have an election in mid July - 4 months late, and some want to extend it even further. In the meantime, the caretaker government is still keeping a tight grip on the judiciary, which wants to be independent, and the main labour union is still calling the situation "explosive."

Meanwhile in Egypt, there still not been so much as a mention of planning elections, but only a request that the people respect the police again. Thousands of Egyptians were in a still electric Tahrir Square yesterday, vowing to stay there until, as one protester put it, "Egypt is ruled by a civil government, not a military one."

Many people have been celebrating "victory" in Egypt recently, but this victory is still many months away, and even then it is not guaranteed. This is not the time for people in those countries to go home or become complacent.

The Greens Fail Party

2011-02-09T05:16:00.000-08:00

In the Howick and Pakuranga Times on the 1st of Feb, the day before nominations opened: (emphasis added)

The Greens are planning on standing a candidate with its selection closing this week.
The party’s Auckland campaign manager Neil Miller says it has received expressions of interest from members keen to stand.
He says the Greens are waiting “to the last minute” so it has “as much of a chance as possible”.

How the hell did they work that out? something always goes wrong when you try things like this. If a bad workman always blames his tools, does a bad Greens politician always blame the traffic? it seems so.

In the Howick and Botany Times, this time on the 9th of feb, the day after nominations close:

Richard Leckinger thought that everything was fine when he first arrived at the office of the returning officer [...] “We got there at about 10.10am [on Tuesday],” Mr Leckinger told the Times. [...] “But then we realised one of my nominees no longer lives in the Botany electorate". [...] “We had to change everything, and go and find someone who lives in Botany and could be a nominee.
“I got killed by the red lights on Ti Rakau Drive".

In contrast, the Pirate Party selected it's candidate on the 30th of Jan, 3 days before nominations opened, and first arrived at the office on the 3rd of Feb, the day after nominations opened. Despite the fact that things went wrong, as they always do, and different people had to go back to the officer of the returning officer two more times, The Pirate Party candidate was registered with 3 days to spare - not that it was easy!

The decision to have their candidate selection at the last minute was an unfortunate one for the Greens.

It's Official - You Can Vote for PPNZ*

2011-02-07T18:44:00.000-08:00

from Elections New Zealand

Candidate Name	Party Name
AL-SAADY, Hussain	Pirate Party of New Zealand
BIGGS, Leo	Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party
BRIGHT, Penny	Independent
CAITHNESS, Robin	Join Australia Movement Party
GOH, Robert	Independent
MURPHY, Lyn	ACT New Zealand
ROSS, Jami-Lee	National Party
WOOD, Michael	Labour Party
YOUNG, Paul	New Citizen Party
YOUNG, Wayne	Independent

We are contesting the Botany by-election - and the Greens are not. Best of luck to Hussain Al-Saady.

* If you are enrolled in Botany electorate.

Economics of the Queensland Flood

2011-01-28T08:27:00.000-08:00

Seen here:

The Government will also save A$1 billion by deferring work on road projects in Queensland and other states, releasing skilled labour for rebuilding.

This is something normally only seen on libertarian and Austrian blogs, so i was quite surprised and pleased to see it coming from Julia Gillard.

It is a recognition that government spending crowds out and has a negative effect on other activity(though arguably not always a net negative effect). Because of this, a billion dollars of government spending is being deferred, specifically work in areas which use a lot of the same resources - in order to crowd out the rebuilding less.

There's seemingly only one step left before they think about government spending crowding out the private sector, and the implications that "stimulus" government spending does more harm than good, and that government projects in general - including broadband network spending -come at a higher cost to the country than is currently accepted, and that in many cases these projects are simply not worth it.

People who don't know the difference between "contribute" and "facilitate"

2011-01-17T18:46:00.000-08:00

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10700427

Auckland Airport could contribute nearly a fifth of national gross domestic product

And how do they justify that statement?

The Market Economics study, commissioned by Auckland Airport, said [...] The airport was projected to generate and facilitate 14-19 per cent of national GDP

Well, all that means is that 14-19% of businesses will use *something* that gets flown in or out via the airport. Hardly surprising. The journo makes it sound like 1/6 of GDP will be made just operating the airport.

The whole study appears to be an exercise in vanity, and the article appears to be a repeated press release with nothing of substance.

On a lighter note, things look promising for Tunisia. I just hope they can work through things peacefully and resist the desire to get revenge. Congratulations particularly to the new secretary of state for the youth.

John Campbell and Samoa

2010-11-01T03:03:00.000-07:00

I was watching TV3 this arvo, Campbell Live (video here) was pretending to investigate what happened to $152 Mill of money donated to the Samoan government by the likes of the IMF after the tsunami. Now i DO believe that this money trail is an issue worth investigating, but what John Campbell did is a shocking abuse of his viewers.

About 7.35 minutes in, he visits a new house (shack really) built from government money, in a small village in rural Upolu. He makes a big point of there being "no toilet, no bathroom, no kitchen, no running water, no glass in the windows" - the point being that the government should have given them all these things as part of the tsunami response.

My problem with this piece, is that he makes this point by taking the situation completely out of perspective. He knows that most of his viewers in their cozy western houses in New Zealand will compare this shack to what is normal in New Zealand. Now i have been to Samoa - I have seen normal samoan villages, where people live in fales. There are no toilets, bathrooms, kitchens, windows made of glass, water pipes. We are talking about Samoa here - a third world country. It is normal in Samoa to have none of these things. In Samoa, if you have these things, you are rich. Here is a building somewhat similar to where a lot of samoans outside the capital live. Note the polas mats which are used basically as window shutters. In actual fact, the shack built by government money looks roughly similar to the normal standard of living in Samoa.

Contrary to my initial thoughts, the people here did have these things before the tsunami - they had western style houses financed by overseas relatives - they were rich samoans. Nevertheless, once put into perspective, the question is "When a rich person get's their uninsured property destroyed, should the government provide them with everything they had before?" In a New Zealand setting, imagine there's a tsunami on the former North Shore, and a row of $10 million cliff-top mansions fall into the sea. A few in particular did not have any insurance. What would you expect the government to build for these people? a normal house, or a brand new $10 million mansion?

I am not trying to provide an answer one way or the other on that question, and yes there are questions to answer about the Samoan governments bookkeeping, but John Campbell's angle on this - that these are appalling conditions for anyone in Samoa to be living in - is completely illegitimate and he has done a disservice to his viewers by intentionally misleading them in this way.

He also comes off as extremely arrogant at about 12.15 minutes in when he approaches and harasses the samoan prime minister - in english - when he had said the previous day that something more important had come up than talking to John Campbell. I just have to imagine what we would think of some foreign journalist accosting John Key while he was carrying out his duties and harassing him in french.

This piece was worse than fluff news - it was a "story" created out of thin air by intentionally misleading their viewers, with a meek attempt to attach legitimacy to it by association with the question about missing donation money (which he never answered). The real shame is that there was a good topic right there which he could have spent his time investigating. I consider what he did do to be an abuse of Campbell Live viewers.

UPDATE: Here is a perspective from someone with much closer ties to Samoa than me. Like he says, John Campbell's story did do some good by shining a light on the missing money, given the legal limitations of homegrown Samoan media. I just wish he had done more of that and less of the off-topic misleading sensationalism about the houses.

Cheers also to Samoa News and Cafe Pacific for mentioning NWBW.

The arrogance of government

2010-10-13T16:09:00.001-07:00

Increased GST rate applied to September bills - National - NZ Herald News

But the Government introduced legislation to allow companies to charge GST at the lower rate for invoices up until October 11 for goods and services provided before October 1. Revenue Minister Peter Dunne said it was regrettable that companies had decided to ignore the new legislation, which would have saved their customers money.

They go out of their way to make things complicated. Do they really expect everyone in the country to learn their whole new system just for one invoice in one particular month? what difference does it make anyway?

GST is charged on everything all the time every month. Every time anyone buys anything anywhere, GST must be calculated and handled by people who need to be paid to do this - twice in fact, once by business and once by bureaucrats. If you really want to complain about GST, there are much better targets than businesses who don't hire extra accounting staff every time the government has a whim.

The fuss about Paul Henry

2010-10-11T02:32:00.001-07:00

This has blown all out of proportion - it seems everyone's talking about it. Here's one article in particular.

His resignation is being framed as a "freedom of speech" issue. It's not.

If he had been charged with a crime for what he said, that would have been a freedom of speech issue. If he had been sued for something he said, that would also be a freedom of speech issue. If he had been fired for something he said in his own time, that would arguably also be a freedom of speech issue.

This is about something he said at work, as part of his job, representing his employer. This is about how he does his job, and whether that is acceptable for his employer.

In the article above, Wallace Chapman explains that, while he hates what Paul Henry said, his job should have been protected from any consequences of what he says. I have the opposite opinion. I have no problem with anything Paul Henry has said (though I never watched his show), and while i agree that all speech should be protected from legal consequences, employers should be able to direct employees in the way they do their job - including the way they represent their employer while at work.

There was nothing wrong with firing Paul Henry.

Ipredict

2010-10-08T04:04:00.002-07:00

Well, I think i'm doing pretty well...

This is all on a $20 base, the x axis runs from 26 april 2010 to 9 october 2010. I have so far made an 88% return, in just under 6 months. Not much compared to other ipredicters, but i'm happy with it.

Look at all the dust here!

2010-10-05T15:41:00.000-07:00

Well folk(s), as evidenced by the fact that i have not posted here since july, i have been busy. Fourth year engineering is not my friend. Thankfully, the worst part of it is now over.

So much has happened in the last few months, so i'll have a lot to write about now when (if) i get around to it. Here is a list to remind myself if i feel like writing in the next few weeks. The clever part of this plan is that, if i don't feel like writing - i won't be reminded. Perfect.

1) Lois Bujold's Sci-Fi books. Once i got started, i read 6 of them in 3 weeks. Yes, the same 3 weeks i was writing my all-important 50% report for my engineering project. I recommend all the ones i haven't read yet - because i want to read them after you.

2) Developments within the Pirate Party have been slow, but they haven't been non-existent. My outlook for the future of the party roughly follows a sine wave with a wavelength of 2 weeks and an offset 0.3 times its amplitude.

3) Chang'e 2 is cool. Especially how much media access there has been, compared with Chang'e 1.

4) I just reached +80% on Ipredict :D (Check)

5) I decided astrophysics might make a nice little career diversion for me. Well, if my application is successful. I already know i like Western Australia. EDIT: My application was successful, i am going to Perth for 3 months to find distant galaxies :D

6) I'm trying to work out how to fit a bicycle powered propeller on a boat - in a way which allows the boat to be carried on a bike on land.

7) This guy, and different ways things could have been different.

Icosahedral Spherical Approximation Mapping

2010-07-07T22:08:00.000-07:00

Soccer World Cup Final Places

2010-06-25T17:33:00.000-07:00

Places 1-16 based on:

- Highest round

- Goal difference in highest round

- Goals for in highest round

- Time of the last goal (earlier goals count for more)

Places 17-32 based on:

- Place in group

- Points

- Goal difference

- Goals for

Teams in green can still win

Place	Team	Highest Round	Goal Difference	Goals For	Time of last goal for(+) against(-)	FIFA Ranking
1	Spain	Winner	+1	1	116"	2
2	Netherlands	Final	-1	0	-116"	4
3	Germany	Semi Finals	-1	0	-73"	6
4	Uruguay	Semi Finals	-1	2	+92"	16
5	Ghana	Quarter Finals	-0	1	P.S.O. (2-4)	32
6	Brazil	Quarter Finals	-1	1	-68"	1
7	Paraguay	Quarter Finals	-1	0	-83"	31
8	Argentina	Quarter Finals	-4	0	-89"	7
9	Japan	Round 2	-0	0	P.S.O. (3/4-5/5)	45
10	USA	Round 2	-1	1	-93"	14
11	Korea	Round 2	-1	1	-80"	47
12	Slovakia	Round 2	-1	1	+94"	34
13	Portugal	Round 2	-1	0	-63"	3
14	Mexico	Round 2	-2	1	+71"	17
15	England	Round 2	-3	1	-70"	8
16	Chile	Round 2	-3	0	-59"	18
Place	Team	Position	Points	Goal Difference	Goals For	FIFA Ranking
17	Côte d'Ivoire	3rd	4	+1	4	27
18	Slovenia	3rd	4	0	3	25
19	Switzerland	3rd	4	0	1	24
20	South Africa	3rd	4	-2	3	83
21	Australia	3rd	4	-3	3	20
22	New Zealand	3rd	3	0	2	78
23	Denmark	3rd	3	-3	3	36
24	Greece	3rd	3	-3	2	13
25	Serbia	4th	3	-1	2	15
26	Italy	4th	2	-1	4	5
27	Nigeria	4th	1	-2	3	21
28	Algeria	4th	1	-2	0	30
29	France	4th	1	-3	1	9
30	Honduras	4th	1	-3	0	38
31	Cameroon	4th	0	-3	2	19
32	Korea DPR	4th	0	-11	1	105

Who pays the price for taxes?

2010-06-09T20:06:00.000-07:00

Go here, read this. This is something i have felt strongly for a while.

Pirate Party Election Results in the UK and North-Rhein Westphalia

2010-05-14T05:09:00.000-07:00

The Pirate Party UK took part for the first time in the Westminster elections a week ago. They stood candidates in 9 out of the 650 constituencies. This is their result:

Andrew Robinson, Party Leader (41) - Worcester - 173 votes (0.35%)
Finlay Archibald (19) - Glasgow Central - 128 votes (0.42%)
Tim Dobson (19) - Manchester Gorton - 236 votes (0.62%)
Shaun Dyer (26) - Leicester West - 113 votes (0.32%)
David Geraghty (19) - Derby North - 170 votes (0.38%)
Graeme Lambert (19) - Bury North - 131 votes (0.29%)
Luke Leighton (40) - South West Surrey - 92 votes (0.16%)
Jack Nunn (24) - Cities of Westminster and London - 90 votes (0.24%)
Alexander van Terheyden (29) - Bethnal Green and Bow - 213 votes (0.42%)

Total Votes: 1348
Percentage votes in seats contested: 0.35%
Percentage of all votes: 0.0045%

Piratenpartei Deutschland took part in the State election in North-Rhein Westphalia 3 days later. They got 119,518 party votes (1.54%), including up to 3.6% in some electorates. This is a decrease from what they got last year in the federal election (1.95%).

Alcohol laws, Drinking and Death - James Webster

2010-05-11T01:27:00.000-07:00

James Webster has been all over the news lately in a way that only violent murderers and white middle class people are.

He was a goody good, went to Kings, had hardly drank alcohol before one particular party where he drank himself to death.

There are numerous things that jump out at me about this:

1) he had a low alcohol tolerance, because he had no experience of alcohol, because he wasn't allowed to drink.

2) he felt that on the very odd occasion that he did drink, he had to drink a lot to compensate for how he usually didn't drink, because he wasn't allowed to drink.

3) he had no idea of what his limit for alcohol was, because he never drank in moderation, because he wasn't allowed to drink.

4) he saw drinking as an attractive activity, because it was something he usually wasn't allowed to do.

5) he was drinking unsupervised, because he was not allowed to drink while supervised.

6) had he been allowed to drink under supervision, he would have had a higher alcohol tolerance, he would have had a more mature attitude towards alcohol, he would have known what his limit was, he would not have seen drinking to excess as an attractive activity.

7) Had none of this made a difference, people with more experience with drinking would have been around and identified the situation much earlier, preventing the damage going to the extreme that it did.

James Websters death was tragic and avoidable, but the lesson to learn is not that no one should drink ever, but that it is important that we think about what people know about alcohol, and that it is important that we don't exclude youth from our society, drinking included.

UK Conservatives missed opportunity with UKIP

2010-05-10T01:14:00.000-07:00

http://www.actoncampus.org.nz/blog/why-the-conservatives-really-lost

From ACT on Campus Blog:

In November 2009, UKIP offered to not contest the UK general election at all if the Conservative party promised, in writing, a referendum on the EU Lisbon Treaty. The Conservatives ignored the offer.

They go on to make the case that, had UKIP not contested the election, David Cameron would have had a majority. By my reasoning, the results would have been like this:

Party	Seats	Majority	Seats w/o UKIP contesting	Majority w/o UKIP contesting
Conservatives	307	16 short	330	Majority of 15
Labour	258	65 short	242	81 short
Liberal Democrats	57	with Conservatives: Majority of 83 with Labour: 8 short	50	with Labour: 31 short
DUP	8	with Conservatives: 8 short	8	with Conservatives: Majority of 31
Others not including Sinn Fein	15		15

note: Majorities calculated assuming Sinn Fein do not take their seats, and assuming the Conservatives will win the one remaining constituency, Thirsk and Malton, which is a safe Tory seat. The speaker is included in the conservative tally.

Bottom line: The Conservatives lost because they refused to promise a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

This was done assuming all UKIP votes would have gone to the Conservatives if UKIP had not contested, which is nearly fair judging by how similar their other policies are. To be fair, i will also show a table of what would have happened if only half of the UKIP vote is given to the Conservatives: (assuming the other half vote evenly, vote for other 3rd parties, or stay at home):

Party	Seats	Majority	Seats w/o UKIP contesting	Majority w/o UKIP contesting
Conservatives	307	16 short	321	2 short
Labour	258	65 short	248	75 short
Liberal Democrats	57	with Conservatives: Majority of 83 with Labour: 8 short	53	with Conservatives: Majority of 103 with Labour: 22 short
DUP	8	with Conservatives: 8 short	8	with Conservatives: Majority of 13
Others not including Sinn Fein	15		15

So even in this case, they passed up an opportunity for an easy coalition with the DUP and a referendum, for an almost unworkable coalition with a centre left party.

The argument for Man Made Global Warming is so powerful, We don't need to talk about it (we have a "consensus" you know)

2010-03-30T05:17:00.000-07:00

Every post I (Pervach) made in this thread was an honest reflection on my views.
http://tartarus.forumotion.com/the-underworld-f1/eddison-hour-unjammed-t529.htm

This post is about the meme i'm sure you have already heard about, from Rick Giles, while talking about Earth Hour, who was quoted as saying:

I think my argument is so powerful that it's not necessary to talk about it

In the context, "It" meant "whether or not you believe in climate change".

I can't find it now, but someone, somewhere was saying something to the effect of:

If there is an argument so powerful you don't need to talk about it, please tell us

Now, i have to admit i do like this little meme, and i sincerely believe our culture is richer for it. Whoever said it was just joining in, but i feel like bragging anyway.

Initially i had no intention of getting in an argument, but each step got more involved and i was enjoying it, so i kept going. I was arguing based on the assumption that climate change is real and man made, and that Earth Hour was nevertheless futile. The argument covered two topics, from which Psalter's positions were:

1) Symbolism can't be futile.

Psalter Yesterday at 9:36 pm
Pervach wrote:There are good arguments that adaptation is preferable to rationing, but that was definitely not one of them.

Oh, I do heartily believe that we should be using R&D for the benefit of the planet... but seriously, earth hour is about symbolism not a short-term reduction in waste.

He conceded after 3 posts (I had help from Rick Giles).

2)The most responsible thing to do is conserve resources like in Earth Hour.

Psalter Yesterday at 11:00 pm
Pervach wrote:
Psalter wrote:No, I am arguing that earth-hour doesn't promote anti-adaptionism, I am saying that it promotes an awareness of our currently excessive and wasteful use of resources.

Don't place words in my mouth/fingers.

That's a Gilesian approach.
The point still stands, which is that this is an argument about whether or not it is futile to use less resources, not about whether earth hour is just "symbolism" or not.

So, let me just get this straight... you and Bardan believe that more responsible use of resources is not necessary in the progression and survival of humanity?

After 6 posts, he was lost for words.

And then my victory lap:

Pervach Today at 12:50 am
And i never even had to talk about whether or not global warming is man made.

I know i'm being a bit arrogant, but i'm gonna be on a high for a while because of this.

I also want to give Psalter credit where it's due, he stuck to the topic and mainly played the ball not the man. Thanks for being a good sport. I'm serious.

Why Piracy is Supposedly Costing the Record Companies $2B/yr

2010-03-26T12:36:00.000-07:00

And for the record (no pun intended) that figure they always come up with is irreparably flawed, because to get to that figure they had to assume that every single time a file is pirated, a sale was lost. This is flawed for several reasons

- People pirate when the original is too overpriced to buy

- People pirate when the original is unavailable

- People who buy buy it once and hold on to it, while people who pirate often delete the file after using it, and possibly download it again in the future.

- There is no feasible model that would ever have predicted that the "rightful" profits would be so high. Their actual profits have not changed much, whilst the quantity of files pirated is similar to the quantity of files bought.

This all suggests that the vast bulk of "pirated" files would not have otherwise resulted in sales. IMO the loss to the recording companies is probably less than $100M, and artists are pretty evenly divided over whether piracy has a net benefit for them. On the other hand, the benefit to society of being able to get files that are otherwise not available, that people once owned but lost, and the increase in variety of art people can now find, are much much more than $100M.

To Aggregate or Not to Aggregate, That is the Question

2010-03-25T20:27:00.000-07:00

http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/economic_indicators/GDP/GrossDomesticProduct_MRDec09qtr.aspx

manufacturing activity, up 4.5 percent, the first increase after seven consecutive quarters of decline

So Manufacturing went down, and now it's back up again. Right where it was before, if you judge it on the aggregate figures.

A key point about the Austrian school of economics, as championed by the Mises Institute Blog, is that during this time, the "dead wood" has been flushed out and the new manufacturing consists of more realistic, more (economically) sustainable ventures. None of the data i have seen shows any indication of whether or not, and if so to what extent, that has happened.

I now add on to my statistical wishlist, some sort of dataset that compares - for individual factories or companies - how much their level of activity changed from the peak to the trough, with how much their level of activity changed from the trough to the recovery.

If there is a very strong negative correlation in this data, it would mean that using aggregate figures for economic activity is perfectly fine, as the economy is doing the same thing as before. If the correlation is not that strong, it would mean that the economy is doing the same amount of activity, but to an extent it is doing different activity - that unsustainable activities were reduced and substituted by better ones, that the economy is in a better position than before, that there are merits to the claims of the Austrian school of thought.

Pick any number. Do these calculations. Your answer was 3, wasn't it?

2010-03-25T14:26:00.000-07:00

http://raytomes.posterous.com/cycles-cycles-cycles-usuk-exchange-rate

step 1: get a noisy time series

the exchange rate between the US Dollar and UK Pound

step 2: filter out everything that doesn't come in 9 year cycles

UK/US exchange rate 1791-2007 less 9 yr. mov.avg

(emphasis added)

result: you got something with a 9 year cycle, didn't you?

an 8.25 year cycle

Just the same way wind instruments work. Make white noise, and pass it through a tube of a certain length, an it filters out all the frequencies that don't resonate, leaving just the frequency you want and some of its harmonics.

What people mean when they say "High effective marginal tax rates"

2010-03-23T23:15:00.000-07:00

http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2010/03/earnign_less_by_being_in_work.html

Christchurch woman Cassey Quy, 29, quit her job in a flood of tears after three months.
As a single parent looking after her four-year-old son Riley, she gets $357 a week on the domestic purposes benefit (DPB), with some bills being paid by Work and Income.
Struggling to make ends meet, she took a part-time job as a laboratory assistant at Canterbury University in January.
After advice from a Work and Income case worker, Quy believed she would be better off by $100 per week.
However, her part-benefit, part-wage income left her $10 a week worse off.
After the Government changes were announced yesterday, Quy said she was scared she would fall back into debt.
“It doesn’t make sense, working but not earning money,” she said.
“It’s like the Government is punishing us.

This should be very high on peoples lists of things that are wrong with the world. Her work at the university was helping other people, even though she was doing it purely for her own reasons. That way, everyone wins. However, government has gotten in the way, and her incentives have been perversed so much, that she stopped producing her labour. Because of the government, she has had to take an action that benefited herself, to the detriment of everyone else.

Such extreme cases like this one should be the first thing to be fixed.

Don't listen to anyone who tells you producers will never stop producing.

Government gives Councils money, makes their balance sheet look better

2010-03-17T15:42:00.000-07:00

http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/government_finance/local_government/LocalAuthorityStatistics_MRDec09qtr.aspx

The deficit this quarter is $45.4 million smaller than the September 2009 quarter deficit of $65.6 million

Oh good, Councils are being slightly less irresponsible and accumulating debt on our behalf slightly more slowly.

Local authorities recorded a seasonally adjusted operating deficit of $20.2 million in the December 2009 quarter

But there's still a little way to go.

The main contributions to the increase came from government grants and subsidies (up $26.7 million) [...]

Oh wait, that's not councils being more responsible, that's just government bailing them out so they can continue being irresponsible. Well that number is smaller, so they are still being $18.7 million more responsible, which is good.

and investment income (up $26.0 million). The rise in investment income was driven by an increase in revenue from dividends (up $27.9 million).

And the rest of their good fortune is down to things beyond their control (dividends). So the effect of their responsibility or otherwise on the operating deficit is $45.4m - $26.7m - 27.9m = -$9.2m, a further $9.2 million of debt per quarter, on top of what they were already doing. Of course this doesn't even include the increases in rates and their effect on society, which is what the problem really is.

MMP? FPP? STV? PV? SM?

2010-02-15T23:55:00.000-08:00

Well, i have to say, that looks like a very short list. Really they should be asking for suggestions that weren't on the list in 1992.

as far as those 5 go, the things i would find acceptable are MMP with PV electorate votes and no 5% threshold, or alternatively STV with either a single nationwide "multi seat constituency" or at most 4 or 5 huge electorates (so that the south island and Auckland become 1 electorate each).

What i think would be better is the Most Open List. You get your party vote, you get your proportionality, you get to vote for your local candidate if you wish, but you're not limited to voting for the one and only (your party) candidate in your "electorate". You can vote for anyone on your favorite party's list, be it the preferred local candidate, another local candidate you like better, a candidate from a neighboring electorate or even someone from the other end of the country if you feel they represent you better.

And the icing on the cake for people that follow politics closely, you can if you want to rank everyone on the list yourself, which means you can effectively "un-vote" someone you don't like, all without losing your party vote and proportionality.

And yet it is not on the list of finalists, despite no one even asking whether there might be a better option out there. Instead we have what feel like the same hand picked straw men to make the government's favorite system look good especially when the info given about the options is whatever they could pull off wikipedia in 5 minutes.

Have a look at the descriptions of the 5 systems on www.elections.org.nz:

Some STV systems[...] Other STV systems[...] Yet another alternative[...]

You would think that whichever 2 of them they aren't considering were irrelevant, and they could tell us a bit more about what the actual option for NZ was, or at least just tell us which one to think about. Would be nice if they explained the formulae too instead of saying "just trust us".

What do i have against MMP FPP STV PV and SM?

MMP - list members no one wants, and how important the party organizations become, being 100% in control of the party list. Worries about "wasted votes" give minor parties a huge disadvantage - both in electorate (2 horse race) and party votes (5% threshold). Not proportional in the case of overhangs.

FPP - not proportional, nationwide (not concentrated in few areas) minor parties have no chance (Greens, NZ 1st, historically Social Credit). Worries about "wasted votes" give minor parties a huge disadvantage.

STV - only proportional within electorates, so a party needs to get up to around 10% of the vote before they start getting MPs, so this and worries about "wasted votes" give minor parties a huge disadvantage. Depending on how 2nd votes are transferred, this either results in elections depending on chance (random selection of winning candidates surplus voters) or calculating fractions of votes quickly descending into an obscenely complicated process of re-counting and calculating fractions. Multi seat constituencies will be about 3 times as large as current electorates (in rural areas) so some areas will be without adequate local representation e.g. the west coast might plausibly end up with 3 MPs all based in Nelson and Blenheim (Although currently it would be entirely plausible for the MP to be based in Motueka)

PV - not proportional, nationwide (not concentrated in few areas) minor parties have no chance (Greens, NZ 1st, historically Social Credit).

SM - not proportional, minor parties disadvantaged in electorate seats. Party organizations become too important, being 100% in control of the party list.

Update:

Some people are talking about one change that might be made to MMP if we keep it is to open the lists. This would be great, but i should specify that my vision of the Most Open List was to abolish electorates altogether and let voters use their list rankings to ensure local representation.

I also want to point out that current "independent"candidates would be free to run as a 1 man party, and in this case using the current Saint-Lague formula and assuming 2.4 million votes, independents would only need about 10,000 local votes to get their 1 and only list candidate into parliament, about the same number it takes for an independent to win an electorate currently.

My favorite part about this is that those 10,000 votes don't have to all come from within an arbitrarily delineated "electorate" but can come from anyone who feels represented by the independent. An example is if someone from Queenstown-Lakes district wants to run as local representation, he could have 7000 votes from Queenstown and 3000 votes from Wanaka. Currently these towns are split by an artificial electorate boundary.

This would also work for Maori electorates. If Hone Harawira got kicked out of the Maori Party but can still get 10,000 votes from Maori in Te Tai Tokerau, he can go to parliament and represent Maori in Te Tai Tokerau. Even better, this still wouldn't stop Maori Party voters ranking their local candidate at the top of the list and getting a Maori Party MP for Te Tai Tokerau too.

More GST will improve saving: Bullshit.

2010-01-22T14:19:00.000-08:00

I hear everyone saying this. Supposedly, when people have money and are deciding what to do with it, they think "I could spend this money, or save it. If i save it, it will accrue a little bit of interest, less income tax, less inflation so i will have more money later, but if i spend it i'll be penalized with GST".

Well, not quite. People only see GST inclusive prices, and they aren't coming down any time in the near future. Avoid GST now, have more money later, spend more money later, spend more GST later. Increasing GST has no effect on time preference, in other words, won't make people spend any less now.

What WILL make people spend less and save more? reducing the tax paid on interest.

Either:

A) reduce income tax

B) exempt interest and dividends from income tax

C) allow people to count the depreciation of the dollar (inflation) on all their assets and cash holdings as a loss against their income.

P.s. It is true that, as part of a take-neutral reform, more GST will mean income tax is lowered, but the improvement to saving rates this creates should not be attributed to GST, and will only remove a small part of the distortion in the time-preference market that government policy creates. The only real ways to improve productivity are to cut bureaucracy, cut regulation or cut government spending.

What do i think the tax-neutral reform should involve? abolishing 2 or 3 types of tax altogether, and compensate with the remaining taxes (preferably GST or flat income tax). This will at least get rid of some bureaucracy and reduce the cost of hiring accountants. Oh and end the GST exemption for rent, that will go a long way to solve the preference for housing.

The Death Penalty?

2010-01-06T14:17:00.000-08:00

For a while, i have been confused in my own mind about whether or not i support the death penalty. I knew that i didn't support keeping people alive who have no chance of ever seeing the light of day again, and no respect for other people's lives. In that regard i support the death penalty. I also knew that i couldn't support any justification for granting such power to the State, that they have any control over the live or death of it's citizens. In that regard i don't support the death penalty.

Until now, i have never been able to reconcile these seemingly contradictory positions. Now i realize that having the death penalty doesn't necessarily mean giving the state control over it.

I now believe judges should have the power to sentence someone to death if the following conditions are met:

1) The judges office is not one subject to political appointments

2) A specific request was made for the judge to consider the death penalty

3) The request was made by a person representing the victim

4) The person who made the request was not a representative of the Crown, the State or any government agency

5) The victim does not contradict the request

6) The level of certainty of the accused's guilt meets some criteria that is higher than "beyond reasonable doubt"

7) The victim retains the power to pardon the victim and save them from the death penalty

8) No political or state office has a similar power to pardon, except higher courts if they believe the original verdict, level of certainty of guilt or sentence was in error.

N.B, in murder cases, the next of kin assumes all rights and responsibilities of the victim.

Any system of common rights relies on pairs of individuals mutually respecting each other's rights. If the accused has not respected the victim's rights, then violation of the accused's right to life is moral if and only if it is at the request of the victim, the one person for whom the requirement to respect the right is void.

Avatar

2010-01-05T05:33:00.000-08:00

I loved the inclusion of organic-organic DNI and global distributed transapience. Loved the whole baseline/indigenous conflict and the level of conflicting interests for the apologists, needing to survive in both bodies despite their inclinations. Too much reliance on transapient intervention though. They went out of their way to make it realistic, with the cryo, splices, uploads and everything. They almost succeeded, it was only the use of unobtainium that really screwed them up on the realism front. Apart from that, there were too many similarities between Pandora flora and language and kiwi bush flora and language. Can't they use something a bit more exotic? The nanotech was a little absent too considering it was sci-fi. Eywa is officially my new favorite transapient.

Happy New Year!!!

2009-12-31T03:40:00.000-08:00

To everyone in New Zealand. And early happy new year to everyone else! :p

Conservation Conserves Nothing. I Disagree.

2009-12-22T21:45:00.000-08:00

This is a reply i made to a post over at Mises Blog

The situation was that the author re-used a plastic bag in a shop, and the cashier charged him 25c less because of this. The authors premise was that this was of no benefit to the environment, as the unseen consequences of his action fully negated environmental benefit of the seen consequences. e.g. he would consume another resource of similar price and environmental effect with the extra 25c, and someone else would make use of the marginal plastic bag he saved anyway.

My Reply:

The seen is that you conserve a bag and consume an extra mint. The unseen is that, as 25c has been added to the money supply, prices rise so that 25c worth is conserved by someone else.

This would be negated if the plastic bag producers lower their prices enough to sell the marginal bag you did not consume. In this event society is wealthier by exactly the amount of utility someone else gets from the use of one plastic bag.

Someone else consumes a plastic bag instead of a mint, mint producers and plastic bag consumers consume 25c of goods that would have otherwise been consumed by plastic bag producers and mint consumers.

However, if the plastic bag producers chose to produce one bag fewer, then society is wealthier by the value of whatever the plastic bag producer does with his extra one minute of time, and one bag is conserved.

The plastic bag producer must conserve the equivalent of a mint to compensate for his reduced income, negating the one extra mint that you consumed.

Say each case happens 50% of the times someone conserves a plastic bag with no loss of utility, then you have effectively conserved half a plastic bag outright, and enriched society by half a plastic bag and half a minute. If your aim was to conserve the environment, you HAVE helped your aim, but not to the extent one might originally think.

I also wanted to explore the consequences of the author choosing to work for 30 seconds less, and compensating the lost income with the 25c he saved in the shop, but i wanted to keep my reply short. I will explore this another day though.

Yeeha!

2009-11-24T00:13:00.000-08:00

New Zealand Wins!

NZL 2300 - ROW 2228

This beats the All Whites! It's a very rare event these days that New Zealand scores more kiwis than the rest of the world. Note where the big slide starts: November 2008 ;)

Climategate

2009-11-24T00:09:00.000-08:00

I was away from the blogosphere for the weekend. (namely in the Wairongomai Valley, walking through the hills looking at the remains from the 1800s mining era). This meant that i missed the whole climategate saga. (which just got a mention on TVNZ 7 news).

My observation on the whole saga so far:

There is nothing new here! Everything that was "revealed" was already known. The fact that the globe has been cooling for 10 years, the fact that the raw climate data was doctored and covered up. In other words these things:

concealing real doubts about the theory of man-made global warming (AGW);
concealing inconvenient facts that don’t fit the theory of AGW;
misdirecting attention away from the truth (a tactic being used as we speak by the Real Climate bluffers;
confessing that PR trumps truth;
massaging raw data to fit the AGW theories;
massaging models to make the data fit AGW theories
destroying the very data on which the world’s temperature record is based;
conspiring to avoid releasing public data to the public under Freedom of Information requests;
turning peer-reviewed science journals into shills for warmism;
using supposedly “neutral” climate blog Real Climate to control the message and hide dissent;
cynically blackballing climate skeptics to avoid confronting their arguments.

(which are listed at Not PC).

Every single one of these (except maybe the FOI requests) had already been revealed on the blogosphere, complete with at least anecdotal evidence. More often than not at the Climate Science Coalition's blog.

Yes, so maybe the evidence supporting these claims is better than it has ever been before, but the story is a re-run of old news. Nothing to see here, move along.

Some Brilliant Humour from Kiwiblog

2009-11-10T18:00:00.000-08:00

This is great! bus sadly, far-fetched.

I’m looking forward to the following deal “informally mediated” by Joris:

1. [Hone Harawira and the Maori Party] would write a personal letter of apology to [Pakeha New Zealanders]
2. [Hone Harawira] would offer to meet with the [Leaders of the Pakeha community]
3. The Race Relations Commissioner would be invited to address a seminar for [Hone Harawira and the Maori Party (and any other MP)] on race relations
4. [The NZ Parliament and the Maori Party] would in general uphold the complaints it had received rather than contest them before [the NZ public]
5. [The Maori Party and Hone Harawira] would continue to look at ways to promote positive race relations in New Zealand
6. [The Maori Party] would adopt a new policy for its [MPs] who were in a position to lead and shape opinion, that judgments based solely on race, colour or creed were offensive and would not be tolerated.

I especially love the last one. It would effectively leave the Maori Party without any policies left.

$50 Million Photo Op?

2009-11-10T15:02:00.000-08:00

At $50,000,000.00, is this the most expensive photo op in New Zealand's history?

tens of thousands of tourists he expects to visit long-term as a result of the initiative.

I'll believe that when i see it.

"That was really a big part of the idea behind the cycleway, to open up the countryside and bits of NZ that are harder to access and people hardly ever go to."

So it's going in places no one ever goes anyway. Great idea - no one will ever find out what a waste of money it is, because, although it will be empty, no one will see it.

Green Party MP Kevin Hague, who rode 30km from Cambridge for the sod turning, said[...] "If visiting overseas cyclists feel unsafe riding on our roads their enthusiasm for our cycle trail back home will be muted at best."

Except for people that already cycle on the road currently. For which the cycleway adds nothing a road wouldn't.

Mr Hague said cycle trail projects were highly successful overseas, with 386 million journeys recorded last year on the UK National Cycle Network.

Let's have a look at the UK network. From Wikipedia:

Many routes hope to minimise contact with motor traffic

So it isn't in places no one used to go. It is providing a facility for people who already were using the routes.

70% of them are on roads

Yes, you read that right. John Key's cycleway is being justified by how many people use Roads. I don't know about the NZ Herald's so-called journalists, but to me this says a cycleway is unnecessary, brings no benefits, and is totally the wrong way to go if you want to attract tourists and make life easier for cyclists.

H1N1, Ukraine, Havoc and Elections

2009-11-07T14:48:00.000-08:00

I'd like to point out this post at trancy.net. H1N1 is now well into its second wave in North America and Western Europe, and is hitting Belarus and Ukraine particularly hard. Parts of Ukraine are under quarantine, and there is a ban on public events in the entire western part of the country.

"The presidential election in Ukraine might be delayed by the epidemic of H1N1 influenza, a government official said Friday.

Igor Popov, the deputy head of the presidential secretariat, said candidates from opposition parties would not have a level playing field trying to campaign if the flu outbreak is not brought under control, Itar-Tass reported.

“The flu epidemic drastically changed the course of the presidential election campaign, and the equal possibilities of presidential candidates and voting rights of citizens were called into question,” Popov said. “The ban on public events affected opposition candidates, while candidates in office could still visit sites under quarantine and meet with their voters and the media. That is discrimination.”

The first-round election is now scheduled for Jan. 17, 2010, but Popov said it could be delayed until May 30."

Trancy is a very good resource for anyone worried about or interested in the pandemic, what effect it is having, or where it's headed.

Thar be Wind in our Sails!

2009-11-06T17:41:00.000-08:00

Avast. Ye scurvy copyright fiends beware! Th mighty fleet o' th Pirate Party is hoisting the anchor to begin a new age of plunder and pillaging o' th strongholds o' th empire around these lands. Those who join their ranks have a promising future of freedom from arbitrary extortion by th lords o' copyright and the patent office.

Set sail with us and stop them scurvy inspectors boardin' yer private vessel! They shall not be patenting no scurvy thing no more.

The Fleet
Mat's ship	J's ship	Geoff's ship

Netanyahu's UN Speech

2009-09-30T01:08:00.000-07:00

I just watched Netanyahu's speech (which i found at Not PC). I interpreted it slightly differently to most commentators. specifically this part:

"a Palestinian state must be effectively demilitarized. We don't want another Gaza, another Iranian backed terror base abutting Jerusalem and perched on the hills a few kilometers from Tel Aviv. "

When you put this in the context of how any attempt to control arms only ever ensures that the unlawful are better armed than the lawful, what it means is that there can't be a Palestinian state which is immune from the consequences of it's citizen's actions.

more later.

Ok, so i didn't add more later. Basically what i was going to say, but never found the words for, was that there are 2 different messages depending on whether the reader believes in UN disarmament. If they believe you can permanently keep criminals disarmed by putting restrictions on the law-abiding, the message is that the ball is in your court. If they believe that this is a fallacy, the message is one explaining why Israel can't accept a Palestinian state.

The Time of Day

2009-09-17T12:42:00.000-07:00

I have a slight problem with the conventional way of describing the time of day. With am and pm and the idea that there's only 24 hours in a day and that every day exists. This way is based around when you sleep, when you get up, and when you're awake. Only it's not when i'm awake. Ifyou ask someone what day it is between midnight and 2am, how often do people get it right? is 4am early or late?

I come to this point today because, being a uni student, and having everything due over 4 days, my sleeping patterns no longer resemble the convention. On wednesday night i stayed up late working on a project. Late enough for it to become worthwhile to stay up a bit later and hand it in, rather than getting 2 hours' sleep and risk sleeping past the deadline. Bythe time i got to bed it was midday thursday. Up untill then, i was still saying "today" and meaning wednesday.

The next morning, i got up at 8pm thursday and started working on the next assignment, that i'm still working on now. It's due at 5pm on friday (today) and i'm guessing i'll be there till the bitter end. The question is, what day is it? thursday or friday? and if it's friday, where did thursday go?

one day later

It's now saturday, i ended up staying awake late enough to go out last night, so i was up untill just after midnight. I conclude that there are certainly more than 24 hours in a day, time is only limited by being 24 hours times the number of days, including those which you don't experience. Also, experiencing any particular time of day is mutually exclusive with its congruences of 24 on certain other days.

Following on from this logic, i experienced wednesday's am, pm and "qm" (hereby defined as being the first 12 hours after pm ends). experiencing wednesday's qm is mutually exclusive with thursday's am. I then experienced friday's "pre-m" (hereby defined as the last 12 hours before am starts), am, pm, and a few minutes of qm. friday's pre-m is mutually exclusive with thursday's pm. I did not experience thursday at all. Nor did i experience the first few minutes of saturday's am.

So how long is a day? well if you're up before pre-m you would just call it the previous day, so the day starts at 12pre-m, or rather at whatever time after that you get up, but before 11.59pm otherwise you would call it the following day. From here the day continues through qm, rm, sm ad infinitum until you sleep (beziehungsweise stop sleeping, if you want to call wednesday night a part of wednesday). Any individual day can be any length of time. On average, it will be 24 hours if you experience every day exactly once. It will be more if you skip days, it will be less if you have days twice, e.g. on monday you have a siesta, after which the day becomes monday(II). The longest day i have ever experienced was from 6am (when i woke up), through 2.30 sm (when i finally went to bed - 2.30 am the morning after next) to some time in the "tm" (when i stopped sleeping and woke up the "next" day), so was either 44 hours (if you don't include time spent sleeping) or about 60 hours (if you do).

According to this way of describing the time of day, you only have to cross the calender when you wake up and you will never be confused about what day it is. This seems much more logical. My problems are solved.

Swine Flu

2009-07-30T18:00:00.000-07:00

The mainstream media stopped reporting it a while ago, even the tireless e-reporters, voluntary wikipedia editors, barely update any more. you could be forgiven for thinking that the pandemic is over.

Swine Flu:

Orange = Lab confirmed cases, Black = deaths, Grey = no confirmed cases.

This map, and most of the info on swine flu i have been following are from wikipedia and its cited sources.

To compare this with bird flu and SARS:

Bird Flu:

light red = outbreak in birds, dark red = outbreak including people.

	SARS	Bird Flu	Swine Flu		7 months later
People infected:	5,328	436	181,509	(+~3,000/day)	1,629,955
People killed:	775	262	1,272	(+~50/day)	17,173
Countries infected:	16	15	165	(+~1/day)	212
Countries with deaths:	7	12	40	(+~1/day)	120
Countries with no infection:	207	208	58	(-~1/day)	35

While everyone ignores swine flu because it isn't new any more, some things are still developing. A new country is being infected every day, and someone dies in a new country almost as often.

In the United Kingdom:

The NHS is not ready for a second wave of swine flu cases expected this autumn, a House of Lords committee said. It warned hospitals do not have enough intensive care beds to cope and predicted the new A(H1N1) flu helpline could be overwhelmed with calls.

In the United States:

The U.S. military wants to establish regional teams of military personnel

to assist civilian authorities in the event of a significant outbreak of the H1N1 virus this fall,

according to Defense Department officials.

And since no source i have found lists the countries that are still swine flu free, here is my best attempt: (including inhabited territories and antarctica only)

Asia: 9 (now 2)

Uzbekistan

Turkmenistan

(originally included Pakistan - infected 3 Aug, Timor Leste - infected 12 Aug, Kyrgystan - infected 24 Aug, Tajikistan, Mongolia, Armenia, North Korea)

Europe: 5 (now 4)

San Marino

Vatican City

(also Helgoland, Svaalbard)

(also Faroe Islands until infected)

(originally included Moldova - infected 30 July, Liechtenstein - infected 6 Aug, Belarus - infected 8 Aug)

North America: 4 (now 1)

(St. Pierre et Miquelon was added)

(also Montserrat until infected)

(originally included Greenland , Anguilla and Saint Barthemly- later infected)

South America: 1 (now 0)

(French Guyana was infected on 31 July)

Australia/Oceania: 8 (now 6)

Tokelau

Niue

Pitcairn Island

Norfolk Island

Christmas Island

Cocos Islands

(originally included Kiribati - infected 6 Aug, Wallis and Futuna - infected, Tuvalu - infected 12 Aug)

Africa: 31 (now 21)

CAR, Guinea, Burkina-Faso, Guinea-Bisseau, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Niger, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Benin, Togo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Gambia

(also Comoros, BIOT, FSAT, St. Helena, Asencion, Tristan da Cunha, Spanish North Africa)

(also Ghana, Rwanda, Burundi until infected)

(originally included Mozambique - infected 31 July, Zimbabwe - corrected, Angola - infected 4 August, Madagascar - infected 14 Aug, Cameroon - infected 14 Aug, Democratic Republic of the Congo - infected 15 Aug, Mayotte - infected, Djibouti - infected 15 Aug, Lesotho - infected 1 Sept, Malawi - infected 10 Sept, Nigeria, Congo, San Tome and Principe, Somalia, Senegal, Mali, Chad)

And Antarctica: 1

This is pretty cool

2009-06-30T19:15:00.000-07:00

On June 16 2009, the International Space Station (ISS) happened to be falling over the Kuril Islands northeast of Japan. (I would have said "flying", but falling is a more accurate description of an object in orbit. Not to be confused with "falling out of the sky") The crew of the ISS have a camera with them. As they were falling over the Kuril Islands, they would have been very glad they have this camera. Here's why:

Before you say it, no, they weren't just lucky the clouds parted at the right moment to give them a view of the volcano, the clouds were parted by the shockwave of the eruption. Scientists might even be able to learn new things about powerfull volcanic eruptions from this photo. As far as i know it's the first ever photo of an erupting volcano taken from space.

If you want to see the effects of this eruption first hand, click here to find out how.

Students don't watch TV

2009-05-19T19:01:00.000-07:00

Melissa Lee just made another fuck up.

I'm at the Auckland Uni debate with the 4 main Mt Albert by-election candidates.

When asked whether she stood by her comments that a motorway would divert south auckland criminals away from auckland, she said:

"Well you guys are all students, so you probably don't watch TV..."

What an outcry... the whole audience started yelling at her.

One call i heard was "that's the second group you've offended now"

She really doesn't have a clue, does she?

Banks and the OCR

2009-05-05T15:57:00.000-07:00

"the OCR, not counting last week's 50 basis-point cut, has fallen 5.25 percentage points. Variable residential mortgage rates by comparison fell from 10.9 per cent to 6.41 per cent over the same period."

This presumably shows that

"major banks have been dragging their feet in passing on OCR cuts to business borrowers."

The RBNZ lends at 0.5% above the OCR and borrows at 0.5% below it.

This means that when the OCR is above the free market intrest rate, like it was when it was at 8.25%, it artificially inflates it to its borrowing rate, so 7.75%. When the OCR is below the free market rate it artificially deflates the free market rate to 0.5% above the OCR, so 3.50% before last week.

so the artificial intrest rate had gone from 7.75% to 3.50%, a decrease of 4.25%. Over the same period residential mortgage rates fell from 10.9% to 6.41%, a decrease of 4.49%.

Since 4.49% is greater than 4.25% I conclude that major banks have not been"dragging their feet in passing on OCR cuts to business borrowers."

(http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10570612)

P.s. i have seen no data on actual wholesale credit rates, which would be interesting.

UN Peacekeepers from Fiji

2009-04-28T03:39:00.000-07:00

Damn Helen Clark works fast. Her first day working at the UN and she's already kicked the Fijians out. Maybe they'll be replaced by "private security companies", judging by who her heir apparent is. And you know, that wouldn't be such a bad thing.

Phil (In) Goff Says:

2009-04-27T18:06:00.000-07:00

From http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10569090:

He said having 30 community boards with no power was totally irrelevant, "you need six or maybe a dozen quite strong local councils under the region wide Auckland council".

Oh, you mean like, exactly what we have now only without the community boards? Then why did we bother having a royal commission in the first place? Nanny Helen should have just abolished the communities and been done with it.

What a good way to "keep the local in local government".

The Depression

2009-04-25T12:46:00.000-07:00

In mechanics, systems can be analysed in a stationary frame of reference, or a rotating frame of reference. Both have their unique axes, vectors, forces and methods, but they both end up saying exactly the same thing. There is a centripetal acceleration, thus the equator bulges, or, there is a centrifugal force, thus the equator bulges, but not both. Different methods, but they agree, as they are analysing the same, real system.

In economics, there is only one, real system. It can be analysed in a Keynesian frame of reference, or an Austrian frame of reference. both have their unique terms, concepts and values, but for a given course of action, the system will only do one thing. With a stimulus, entrepeneursand investors will have liquidity, so the economy will boom. With a stimulus, the phoney money starts expanding faster and incentives get distorted, so entrepeneurs and investors think that some loss making activities are actually profitable, so they borrow money from China to fund them. The economy booms with dead wood.

Different methods, but they both agree. So far...

First, the Keynesian model:

Liquidity is maintained with a low OCR. The economy maintains high growth. Western consumers borrow money from china so they can spend the profits their investments are making, without withdrawing money from the investment. Western entrepeneurs borrow more and more money from western consumers, paying them back when Chinese firms buy their products. Chinese firms buy more and more western equipment to enable them to meet growing demand from Western consumers for their products, whilst lending the profits, through various governments and banks, to Western consumers, backed by the growing value of their assets.

Occasionally, the business cycle goes into a downturn, with a few of them becoming a recession. Lowering the OCR and increasing government spending takes the sharp edge off the recession and the economy starts growing again.

The West lives happily ever after, and China gets rich.

The End.

Now, the Austrian model:

The phoney money supply keeps accelerating. The economy keeps growing with dead wood, and the West's external debt to China keeps growing too, while the real value of the Western economy continues to stagnate unnoticed.

Periodically the expansion of the phoney money supply slows, the tip of the iceberg of dead wood is revealed, Wall St. crashes. In a panic Western governments do anthing they can to make it like it was before and end up accelerating the phoney money supply again. Even more dead wood develops. Each bubble and partial burst is larger than the previous one.

The West lives happily, borrowing from the unsuspecting Chinese to pay for Chinese goods. China's credit keeps growing. Eventually, this will reach a limit and stop.

The two models still agree. But what happens when China stops lending, or loses faith in the US dollar?

Keynesian model:

This is a crisis. The economy stagnates at it's ultra high level and consumers cut back to pay their debts. Because the economy is so huge and profitable, this doesn't take too long, and then the economy starts growng again on it's own and the world keeps living on happily ever after.

Austrian model:

The acceleration of the phoney money supply can't be maintained without the dollar becoming worthless. Incentives find their way back to their rightful place. Almost the entire economy is now realised to be the unprofitable dead wood that it always was, and stopps. The value of investments is now a fraction of the debt that WAS borrowed against it, but that debt was in US dollars so is now worthless anyway. China feels ripped off but can't do anything about it. the West can't afford the Chinese imports that they depend on (Oil included in this category) and Western civilization can't be maintained. The West reverts to an agrarian economy in crisis and starts over, back on a solid foundation. For Now.

China has to completely re-arrange it's economy too, so is in a temporary crisis. But they still have the ability to maintain relatively basic lifestyles, and find they can get Western goods and services for a much reduced cost in terms of Chinese goods. They are also starting over, but they have a reasonable productive economy, and can still afford oil. They still go through hell, but not as bad as the West.

The End.

The two models don't agree after all. But they are both modelling the same, real system, which only has one outcome. Which is it? is there a yet-to-be-discovered centrifugal force in Keynsian economics, or a yet-to-be-discovered centripetal acceleration in Austrian economics? If the models are to agree, one of them needs to be found.

No doubt it will be in due course. It still won't make things that much easier.

This is what inspired me to write this:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10568628

A Keynesian summary with almost Austrian conclusions.

The Real End.

Is the Auckland Supercity a good thing?

2009-04-12T16:36:00.000-07:00

(prescript: This is just a rant of mine that i'm not expecting anyone much to read. Please don't take it too seriously.)

It all depends on whether the community boards can approve resource consents, and whether you can join a rates revolt without being threatened with violence.

All good things, including a super city, would happen voluntarily if people had a way of acting on their own decisions. If there was a conscientious objection option for local govt and councils weren't limited by wellington it would have sorted itself out by now, with no wellington involvement.

The main problems i want sorted out before i support it are

-People that have never been to your suburb (the supercouncil) doing "district plans" and shooting down resource consents for profitable development

-People in an even bigger bureaucratic bubble charging rates for unprofitable development and wealth redistribution, with even less concern for the ratepayer because he can't get out of it anyway

-Wellsford and Mercer being part of it. They don't want our council controlling them, we don't want them on our council. look how long it took before Whangaparoa rd was upgraded. The border should be within a few k's of the current urban limit. The royal commission's Rodney and Hunua are better off as unitary councils or under Northland and Waikato regions. Get Gt. Barrier out of there too while you're at it.

Sort them out and the supercity will be an improvement in every regard.

I'd also like to point out that the commissions conclusions about social spending - Auckland councillors controlling government money (albeit in an "advisory" role) - is an improvement on the status quo. The less wellington controls Auckland the better. Better still would be to divert all tax revenue from Auckland to the supercouncil and then let Auckland and wellington sort out national spending matters by treaty. That alone would do more good for Auckland than any harm the most bungled supercity could do.

The governments plans for the number of community boards are an improvement on the royal commissions ones, but another improvement i'd like to see would be for every community board member to be allocated (completely undemocratically) an area of the community to represent, preferably with about 5000 people in each area. This should allow discussions with residents to be informal. Hopefully this would lead to apathetic people having some clue about what the community boards can actually control.

Well, that sure caught on.

2009-03-21T06:06:00.000-07:00

OK, so i knew i wouldn't do much blogging this month. But i didn't think it would only be one post, and that one being mainly about not blogging!

Especially given what's happened in the meantime.

5 days after my "Hello World" post, which is now 2 weeks ago, i finally moved out of home. A big enough deal to blog about, you would assume. Well yes, i always meant to blog about the multitude of reasons behind that, but fell into my usual cycle of procrastination.

I have so much more i want to blog about on this topic (probably in april, possibly may), but for now I'll just add my main observation:

It's not such a big deal.

All the hype, all the scaremongering, the disbelief from people. All this led me to expect more of a challenge, led me to expect more of a transition, something that i would think about.

So many times when i was talking about thinking of moving out, people (of my parents' age) told how it was so hard, such a challenge, that i wouldn't last the first week, I'd be coming home to do loads of washing. It was a waste of money, it was pointless, i already had everything etc. etc.

It does influence your thinking, and your decisions reflect it. For years, it put me off.

Eventually, i insisted that despite what everyone else was telling me, my own logic told me it was the right thing to do. I was moving out.

Suddenly, they all change their tune.

They start talking about the lighter side of it. How much fun it could be, how much it opened up your options, how it it wasn't really so bad after all. how none of the problems were a big deal anyway.

Not only is that a much better description of how I'm finding it, i barely even feel like anything has changed. The main difference is that now, i know exactly what i have and where it is, and i now have complete control over what i do and when i do it. Everything in town is so much easier to get to now as well.

My only regret is waiting so long.

Hello World

2009-02-28T18:11:00.000-08:00

I now have a blog. Wow.

That was unexpected.

I have to say, I'm pleased with the name i managed to think up on the spot. I was kind of expecting to end up with some meaningless combination of words, but it turns out i have something meaningful to me. Not What, But Who. It's about how the difference between what is and what otherwise would have been, comes about because of decisions individual people make.

Yay.

I even got a rather logical URL :D

I don't expect to be adding much to this blog any time soon, but at least i no longer have the excuse that i don't have a blog.

Hello World!