Tim Ellis said a while back;

SP, I really wish you would comment in a separate comment rather than edit my comment. It makes it difficult to track what you’ve said if there’s no comment line in it, and it allows you to make points in my post which can’t be rebutted within that post.

I agree with that. lprent and IrishBill tend to do that as well. Tane is more well mannered and normally responds in his own comment.

I’m afraid that neither of you understand the problem of moderating the number of comments that come in here every day. None of us have much available time. So we’re doing it as efficiently as possible.

We don’t read the comment threads the way that you do. We see a list of the comments in reverse chronological order (sort of like the right sidebar), but with the text of the comment showing. We can edit the comments, spam them, delete them, and a few other things. What we can’t do is to easily add a comment to a post. To do that we have to jump a couple hoops which takes time, and makes it hard to the primary purpose of the reading.

The primary purpose is to moderate the trolls, incipient flames, and look for challenges to posts. We have to read the way we do because a favorite troll trick is to add comments to old threads (ie pissing in a hidden corner). Stopping to write a comment when you have a couple of hundred more comments to scan during a coffee-break isn’t workable. So we write short notes on the comment (the exception is me when I’m persecuting a troll). All of the sites with large numbers of comments tend to do the same thing for the same reason.

If you can figure out a way to give us more time to blog, we’d do more comments than notes. But in the absence of a solution this is the way it is. In short – tough. The notes and comments are done in the most effective way for our purposes – not yours.

there was a time after douglas when mr. caygill was the minister of finance, and he admitted to not knowing what the heck was going on.. now for one of the douglas boys to not know what he should have known in that job tells us how mr. douglas did have secrets.. and no, those secrets were not reiterated last Sunday on the Radio New Zealand debate.

The language y’see had been polished, codified, rendered unto the caesar of persuading a listening electorate. If available from audio archives I’m pretty sure you’ll hear him enunciate the four conditions that MUST prevail for acter economics. Go figure, but I’ll say how they are giveaway. Trouble is it has been blown a good long time now elsewhere. Meaning to say how out of place it would be in enzed and, coincidentally, make us all the laughing stock for voting it in. If we could be so lucky!

The other point is that the whole political-economic global scene has changed dramatically and no sane administration could even contemplate the kind of derugulation that he once implemented here and cannot be trusted to even think about doing so himself or by surrogates again.

SP, I really wish you would comment in a separate comment rather than edit my comment. It makes it difficult to track what you’ve said if there’s no comment line in it, and it allows you to make points in my post which can’t be rebutted within that post.

I agree with that. lprent and IrishBill tend to do that as well. Tane is more well mannered and normally responds in his own comment.

Nice try Tim. You cleverly blurred your history lines there. Helen Clark did not become Deputy Prime Minister until well after Douglas had been dumped as Minister of Finance.

National have to take responsibility for ACT – and therefore Douglas – because without National’s help, ACT would have no chance of being in Parliament. John Key could change that in an instant, by asking Epsom voters to vote National.

Ahh but his agenda lives on – secretly – in the hearts and minds of the National Party (1990s / Hollow Men) front bench

Nice try r0b. Lest we forget that Helen Clark was deputy prime minister in the last cabinet that Douglas served in, and that she voted in Cabinet for every one of Douglas’ proposals, including flat tax. Oh, but apparently National have to take responsibility for Douglas even though he’s not likely to serve in a National-led government but we can conveniently forget that Clark supported him when he was in a position of power.

John Key is on Agenda tomorrow morning (TV one, 10 a.m.).

Here’s an extraordinary fact: this is the only mainstream TV interview of any length that he will be giving in this election campaign. In previous years, there were evening interview programmes (e.g. Kim Hill) but the networks aren’t bothering this time. The politicians won’t have to dodge the questions – they won’t even be asked them in the first place.

I don’t know of any other Western democracy in which this could happen. What a joke.

As for ACT not having any influence, that’s up to ACT, and the National negotiating team. I’ve not noticed that ACT are ones to go wet, and over the last few years the tory policy platform’s been, well, to be kind, flexible.

Key has already set out Nationals tax position post election.

So has Cullen – he’s said that the present tax path will stay in place. The mini budget will only be for fine tuning things due to the continuing chaotic state of the worlds economy.

Pick up a newspaper some time coge, you’ll see there’s a bit of a financial crisis going on. If reelected Labour will be making plans to deal with it. Sounds good to me. Cullen has already stated that the tax cuts are embedded and will not be touched. (This is where you say – but he canceled them before! – and where I say well National voted against tax cuts! – there, I saved us both some time).

With Act at 1.5% in the polls, and not having moved from that level in the past four months, Roger Douglas doesn’t look like he will be in Parliament.

Ahh but his agenda lives on – secretly – in the hearts and minds of the National Party (1990s / Hollow Men) front bench…

That Roger Douglas agenda, well it don’t come cheap

With Act at 1.5% in the polls, and not having moved from that level in the past four months, Roger Douglas doesn’t look like he will be in Parliament. Act is likely to continue to have only 2 MPs. Hardly likely that Act will have a huge amount of influence in a National-Act-United government.

Meanwhile the Greens’ support is rising, at the expense of Labour. If the Greens get 10 MPs, and are the largest party next to Labour, then they will have far more influence over a Left government.

Key has already set out Nationals tax position post election.

Losing faith in Key’s pretty smile coge? Seems to be a bit of that about.

I for one, and many other Kiwis are interested in what is likely to happen taxwise under a left leaning multiple-party coalition.

Nothing much I expect, it’s too politically sensitive to touch.

I for one, and many other Kiwis are interested in what is likely to happen to lower income earners and to the environment under a right leaning multiple-party coalition.

That Roger Douglas agenda, well it don’t come cheap…