It is National’s time for the brown trousers

Written By: - Date published: 11:26 pm, August 9th, 2017 - 92 comments
Categories: labour, mana, maori party, national, nz first, Politics, TOPS, united future - Tags: ,

If you want to know why the right is farting so much personal smoke, why David Farrar appears to now be panicking over at Kiwiblog, and why our old trolls appear to have suddenly awoken from their somnolent state at the sewer and started re-appearing here to the irritation of our moderators.

But swordfish has an good explanation in comments. He has also put in the links in this comment.

Lets look at swordfish’s numbers in a couple of public polls. I’ve tidied it up a little..

Poll Comparisons (2011-17)

UMR (One month out) Aug 2017 Aug 2014 Oct 2011
National 43 45 50
Labour 36 27 28
NZ First 8 6 3
Green 8 15 13
 
Newshub Reid Research (One month out) Aug 2017 Aug 2014 Oct 2011
National 44 48 57
Labour 33 29 27
NZ First 9 5 3
Green 8 13 10
 
NRR Preferred PM Aug 2017 Aug 2014 Oct 2011
National English: 28 Key: 44 Key: 55
Labour Arden: 26 Cunliffe: 10 Goff: 6

Of course this doesn’t paint the quite the whole picture. But for the purposes of electoral success it hardly matters for most of the remaining tiddler parties. There used to be a number of smaller parties that were also polling OK in those older polls. None of whom seem to be polling much these days.

Act and United Future seem to have become electorate client puppets of National. The Maori party is clinging on to their one seat by their fraying fingernails and appear to have no hope of cracking 5%. Even the new party of the block – TOP – appears to have little chance at either a seat or 5% as they are currently polling at less than 2%.

Like carnivorous spider with a short-term perspective about future prey, National appear to have squeezed the life out out of their possible coalition partners. Unless they do some kind of evil empire deal with NZ First, who they tried to demonise and kill off in 2008, they can’t win the treasury benches. If they do, then the residual demonising effect is likely to cause both parties considerable indigestion issues.

Sure the Greens just took a hit. But I suspect that they are just going to recover quite nicely now that they have raised the issues that causes the non-polled to get active (it has certainly made me more interested in voting for them). And Labour is likely to catch some of that benefit as well from those who are more cautious than I am.

But it isn’t hard to see why National and their dirty politics subsidiaries are worried. The trends are against them and appear to be getting worse.

It probably also explains why I’m having to watch my core temperatures  and fan speeds as the volumes of pageviews, comments, a our moderator irritation levels rise to unprecedented levels such a long way out from the election. But sysops of political blogs tend to see politics from a rather different perspective. 😈

It looks like this. While the numbers tend to be small compared to the national media websites, they are pretty damn high when you consider that this site has a monthly operational cost of $134 per month (feel free to donate).

And causes this (when I arrived home tonight) and looked at the CPU temperatures.


fan1: 1997 RPM (min = 10 RPM)
fan2: 2265 RPM (min = 10 RPM)
fan3: 1220 RPM (min = 10 RPM)
fan4: 2812 RPM (min = 10 RPM)
fan5: 0 RPM (min = 0 RPM)
temp1: +38.0°C (low = +127.0°C, high = +127.0°C) sensor = thermistor
temp2: +65.0°C (low = +127.0°C, high = +127.0°C) sensor = thermal diode
temp3: +64.0°C (low = +0.0°C, high = +90.0°C) sensor = Intel PECI

It caused me to do some rapid shifts in the fan and pump/radiator response heuristics. The trade offs between having a quiet apartment and a functioning webserver tend to be somewhat tricky.

92 comments on “It is National’s time for the brown trousers ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. Exkiwiforces 1
    9 August 2017 at 11:35 pm

    I hope your systems don’t crash, as I think this election is going to a tight one this time round. BTW did you that email I sent to you guys IRT Hybrid Warfare by Janes Information Services on by the Russians?

    • lprent 1.1
      9 August 2017 at 11:44 pm

      Yep. Unfortunately I’m by far the best author to comment/post on it here (apart from maybe Macro). But I don’t have much time between finishing a project at work, doing a bit of moderation and trying to keep the systems online. This weekend looks like it will be consumed with putting another server online because we are way above the levels we were in the lead-up to the 2014 election.

      Hopefully that shit isn’t going to blow up until after the election.

      • Exkiwiforces 1.1.1
        9 August 2017 at 11:57 pm

        Jeez, looks like you have your work cut out if you are already the 2014 levels. If I make over to NZ either late this yr as us Tankies are having a big bash in Plamy and that nameless place or sometime next time yr and if I come though Auckland I like to make a wee donation if that’s possible?

        That Janes stuff was more for interest for this yrs elections and possible dirty tricks from that other mob.

        • lprent 1.1.1.1
          10 August 2017 at 12:06 am

          No problem. We peaked at 46,921 page views on September 18th 2014 a few days before the election. At roughly this time before that election we were peaking at about 21k page views. There appears to be a bit of a difference in the interest this time around when we have had two days at over 38k page views in this week.

          And those are just the humans. There appear to be a whole lot more bots sniffing around as well.

          • Exkiwiforces 1.1.1.1.1
            10 August 2017 at 12:32 am

            mmm’m that’s very interesting that a few more bots are sniffing around and we are what 1mth out from the election.

          • ianmac 1.1.1.1.2
            10 August 2017 at 9:51 am

            Last night I counted 626approx. comments on TS from Open Mike till about 9pm. Is that a record?

      • Johan 1.1.2
        10 August 2017 at 7:54 am

        Hoping that my small financial contribution helps. Also, it’s probably like teaching grandma how to sux eggs, but I have a habit of removing my computer cover once a year, to get rid of collected dust, especially around he CPU. The fan(s), do have a habit of moving dust from outside the case onto computer components. Cheers

        • lprent 1.1.2.1
          10 August 2017 at 7:58 am

          I buy cases with external dust filters for power supplies and case fan entrances these days. They get taken out and washed every couple of months and the areas attacked with a dust buster. The inside of the cases stay pretty clean. Just a quick sweep with a dust buster at least once a year.

  2. mosa 2
    9 August 2017 at 11:48 pm

    All we need is for Labour to tie with National in the party vote for it to become a edge of your seat election.

    Give Jacinda a few more weeks and for the first time since 2008 we will have a real contest.

    The Nats are looking buggered, smug , arrogant and old.

    The tide is running out Bill.

    • Matthew Whitehead 2.1
      10 August 2017 at 9:00 am

      If Labour is tying with National in the Party Vote and the Greens and New Zealand First are still in the picture then it’s not “interesting,” it’s “National are toast.”

      Right now we’re somewhere close to neck-and-neck between Labour + Greens and National, with UMR saying the left is ahead, and Reid Research saying the right is ahead. I’ll wait on the Roy Morgan before commenting I think.

      Labour hasn’t really eaten much of National’s lunch just yet, most of their shoring up came from the Greens and NZ First, which is not really ideal on the former front, but there’s still time. This is just the start.

  3. swordfish 3
    10 August 2017 at 12:27 am

    Bear in mind, too, that – according to both Farrar and Hooton – National Party strategists credit Kim Dotcom’s “Moment of Truth” with the relative ease of John Key’s third election victory. Apparently, Farrar’s last two Curia Internals for National showed a 2 point swing to the Blue Team during the final 5 days of the 2014 Election Campaign (in the immediate wake of the “MoT”).

    Which suggests – all things being equal / in the normal course of events – that the Nats were heading for 45% in 2014.

    • lprent 3.1
      10 August 2017 at 12:54 am

      I think that the much hyped but under performing blowout was damaging. The atmosphere in the press conference afterwards was hostile as it was possible to imagine. That was reflected in the next week’s press and the abrupt dropoff in support across the left afterwards. Extremely damaging.

      The difference this time is the lack of viable partners and the sheer lack of interest in English. I think. There is nothing to indicate anything to form a public interest around for National.

      Feels quite different.

  4. adam 4
    10 August 2017 at 12:45 am

    It’s been extremely nasty this time around.

    Mind you the Tory’s in this country are not gracious losers.

  5. eco maori 5
    10 August 2017 at 5:25 am

    This web site is a real brellaint it looks like its been run with the kicks way of running things keep it simpull . and from my exsperance the kicks way of running orgnisations is the best way to run them The site is user freiredly on lap top and phone .
    I have seen two buniness doing the same job the one using the kicks princables will have less staff the staff will work less ours and prouduce more profets .
    some people make thing to complex and stuff it all up .
    I do support labor but i like Gareth polices no bull shit strait to the point but that can be
    Tops weekness because NZ is not ready for polic that are resherched and are base on porviding a good future for everyone not polices just to win votes .
    I email Tops and said that Natinal will use every Trick they can to win this election cheat lie steal and that if they want to win they will have to do the same. The thing about the rich is they have been conning the people for centeries Key i will not rise GST the 1 cent in a dollar treaty settlements its right in frount of our faces Key used the seabed issiews to dived and conker labor voters The diffrent mine set of rich and poor is in the news now Metiria tells the truth she is cruserfide mean while Bennett sitting there and thinking the only way anyone is going to see my winz history is by a court order.
    And Tod and Bill you see people I is true that the rich laught at the poor being honesset
    I will most likely vote labor as Natinal are fucking up our country and need to be kicked out

    • Bob 5.1
      10 August 2017 at 8:19 am

      Great to read your views Eco Maori, your on the ball. The lies have been too much for too long, and the arrogance is really annoying. Yes Materia has made the subject open now & that’s good.
      Helen Clark was INCLUSIVE & so is Jacinda, Bend over Bill is from the old school and MIST GO.
      NZ needs youth at the helm for 21st Century progress. & Labour & the greens have plenty of Youth.
      #letdothis

      • eco maori 5.1.1
        10 August 2017 at 9:21 am

        Thanks Bob its sites like the standard that have given me the info on what the National is all about the . The main media outlets are all manipulated by National
        We need to make it compulsory to vote like Australia and compulsory Kiwi saver

  6. eco maori 6
    10 August 2017 at 5:53 am

    I will make a donation soon great work standard

  7. lurgee 7
    10 August 2017 at 6:59 am

    I do not see Winston coalescing with Labour and the Greens. Sorry, just don’t see it happening, unless Labour continue to eat up Green support and reduce them to the level they’re almost insignificant. But if they were in the coalition as near equal partners with Labour First and Labour, I think Winston would want nothing to do with it.

    So – ironically – the Greens’ current mood for self immolation may slightly strengthen that possibility.

    But can Labour increase further?

    Are we in the ‘sugar rush’ phase of Ardern’s leadership?

    How will the media portray any variation or Labour fall back in the polls?

    Remember the good old days when we used to fantasise about a Labour-Green coalition, without NZ First? I’m not comfortable with the Winston love. It smacks of a sort of Stockholm Syndrome.

    • lprent 7.1
      10 August 2017 at 7:28 am

      I am aware of the issues with NZ FIRST with the left. However think of it from the other sides.

      National with NZ First is way more of an issue. For both parties. All of those trade liberals cheek to jowl with a classic Muldoonist party. A party like NZ First whose economic policies look like the Greens ones. And whose members largely look like socially conservative ex-Labour members.

      It is a match made in hell. Because despite common perceptions about power hungry and baubles for both National and NZ First MPS there is a clear ideological split at a economic level between the two parties, it is far greater than those between NZ First and either Labour or the Greens,

      That is what I am talking about.

      It depends what the voters give parliament to work with, But voters will in effect demand that a government ishould built with what is given. Or the recalcitrant group will suffer.

      • Kaurinui 7.1.1
        10 August 2017 at 7:46 am

        Dear Labour (and supporters). If you really want to change government, tear up the MOU and cannibalise the Green vote. If you can get up to mid to high 30s, greens around 6-7 and NZ First double digits you may be able to rerun the Clark era. If Labour keeps propping up the Greens via MOU, you’re doing yourselves and the country a disservice.

        • Carolyn_nth 7.1.1.1
          10 August 2017 at 8:30 am

          For a change that isn’t really a change.

          Not a great win at a time when the Nats and their leader are pretty weak, for a third way party to change the government, and not have the heart or the strong left wing support, to make the big changes NZ needs for the future.

          Labour cannibalising the Greens is just repeating what the Nats have done to their allied parties.

        • Matthew Whitehead 7.1.1.2
          10 August 2017 at 9:04 am

          You’re forgetting that the MoU is propping up confidence in Labour as well. At 33% with no guaranteed coalition partner and trying to eat the Greens’ votes, (which they’ve probably already done as much as possible) they would be in serious trouble, especially as it’s entirely possible some of those voters will come back to the Greens over the course of the campaign.

          • Draco T Bastard 7.1.1.2.1
            10 August 2017 at 11:49 am

            I’m still hoping that a large chunk of the ‘missing million’ will vote Green. The ones that don’t get polled because they tell the pollsters to fuck off.

            • RedLogix 7.1.1.2.1.1
              10 August 2017 at 2:24 pm

              For a start there is only about 750,000 of them. And the only research I’ve seen suggests there is a range of reasons they don’t vote, by no means all of them due to your ‘fuck off’ factor.

              And even if you do get them into a booth there’s no particular reason to think they’ll overwhelmingly vote left, much less Green specifically.

              Such a strategy means energising around 100,000 new voters ticking the Green box to be counted a success. An unknown fraction will tick other boxes. Doable but high risk.

              • Draco T Bastard …
                10 August 2017 at 2:36 pm

                And the only research I’ve seen suggests there is a range of reasons they don’t vote, by no means all of them due to your ‘fuck off’ factor.

                I was only referring that to them not getting polled – not that that’s their reason not to vote. In any polling situation a number of people will simply refuse to answer the questions. These people don’t show up in the polls because ‘refused to answer the questions’ isn’t reported and probably isn’t even recorded.

                And even if you do get them into a booth there’s no particular reason to think they’ll overwhelmingly vote left, much less Green specifically.

                I’m thinking that these types of people would probably change to voting because of Metiria’s stand and would thus most likely vote Green.

        • Draco T Bastard 7.1.1.3
          10 August 2017 at 11:47 am

          If you really want to fuck up the country economically and environmentally then re-run the Clark era.

          We should have learned by now that the Clark era really wasn’t that great. It’s where the housing bubble started for one thing.

          • Andrea 7.1.1.3.1
            10 August 2017 at 8:37 pm

            Had nine years to do something helpful with the whole social welfare nightmare and redress the misery from Richardson and did – very little at all.

            Agree, DTB. Very much so.

            • NewsFlash 7.1.1.3.1.1
              10 August 2017 at 11:01 pm

              Yeah, but unemployment was only 2.7% under clark, and they produced a surplus each year, there weren’t that many beneficiaries cause most had a jobs, hence the surpluses.
              Name one Govt in the last 40 yrs that did more for NZ than the Clark govt, good luck with that.

              This applies to DTB and Andrea

        • Robert Guyton 7.1.1.4
          10 August 2017 at 5:36 pm

          Confidence-eroding troll alert1

    • marty mars 7.2
      10 August 2017 at 7:29 am

      yep winnie will be loving the green situation – not so much the Jacinda surge – he won’t be liking that one bit I think. There can be only one and winnie likes to be that one.

    • peterh 7.3
      10 August 2017 at 7:31 am

      You are in hopeland or dreamland, Kelvin, Shane, Winston all mates, all at the front of running the country, all with the same ideas, that’s where its going

    • BM 7.4
      10 August 2017 at 7:57 am

      Yep Labours water policy pretty much ruled out an NZFirst/Labour government.

      Great for sucking in disillusioned Green voters though.

      • ScottGN 7.4.1
        10 August 2017 at 8:15 am

        You’d have to think though BM that Winston’s attempt to take down English over the Barclay Texts is a bigger stumbling block to a workable coalition than Labour’s fresh water policy.

        • BM 7.4.1.1
          10 August 2017 at 8:43 am

          Winston is just trying to grow his vote so is going after National voters attacking English is what he perceives to be the best way of achieving that.

          The more National voters he pulls across the more clout he’ll have in a National/NZ First government.

          Unfortunately, it’s a double edged sword for Winston, the people he’s pitching at are National voters, they don’t want a Labour/Greens/NZ First government, by sticking it to English and National all the time it creates uncertainty in the mind of the wavering National voter and so they won’t commit because they think there’s a chance he’ll do a deal with Labour.

          Going forward Peters needs to come out strong against Labours water policy and dial back the attacks on National a bit, I think the endless attacks are actually costing him votes, time to be a bit more statesman than muck raker.

          • ScottGN 7.4.1.1.1
            10 August 2017 at 8:53 am

            As I said earlier in the Newshub Poll post I reckon it’s likely that some recent acquired NZF voters are already moving back to National as the possibility of a Lab/NZF coalition government increases. This has masked the switching of urban soft National voters to Ardern in that poll. Clearly with Labour on an upswing there’s not many more votes for NZF from that quarter. Winston needs to keep hammering National in the regions.

            • Matthew Whitehead 7.4.1.1.1.1
              10 August 2017 at 9:48 am

              That’s an interesting take. I had assumed that the NZ First collapse was going directly to Labour, but that’s a legitimate direction of travel too. Likely the truth is that it’s a mix of both but with polling you never know exactly what mix!

              (Actually, that would make a really interesting polling experiment: you get yourself a representative panel of 1,000 people and constantly re-poll them to track how they move through the election campaign. It would be a very different statistical creature to a normal opinion poll, but unlike those it would tell you a lot more about what political tactics and strategies are actually working)

              edit: actually, you’d probably want to start with more than 1,000 as likely some would drop out.

          • Matthew Whitehead 7.4.1.1.2
            10 August 2017 at 9:23 am

            So wait, is he definitely going for National or not? Because if he is, his perceived alignment with Labour and the Greens should be a stumbling block to overcome which he can do by inching his alignment right, not an impenetrable obstacle. Overall your analysis is confused and sounds like trolling.

            My take is that Winston knows his preference and that of his caucus, and they are deliberately playing their cards close to their chest so as not to upset voters who would support either type of coalition so he can eke out that extra few percentage points in playing the centre, and he is doing reasonably well in winning more left-wing parts of regional New Zealand.

            I honestly don’t know what his preference is- I know if I were somehow transformed into a principle-less nationalist egomaniac that I wouldn’t trust National with a ten-foot pole, and that I think there are very rational reasons for them to be solidly in the Never National camp, but that doesn’t mean I really understand Peters’ motivations, beyond seeing that there is a very large element of unprincipled political pragmatism to them, and some elements of Muldoon-style centrist social conservatism. (which tells you how far to the right the overton window has moved in NZ since the 80s that “muldoon-style” can now be “centrist”) I also think there’s good evidence that his vote is much more likely to collapse afterwards from a National coalition than a Labour one, but it’s hard to tease that out from the Shipley death spiral, so I can concede that alternative takes at least have arguing room on that particular point.

          • McGrath 7.4.1.1.3
            10 August 2017 at 10:04 am

            When it comes to Winston though, it really is a case of “Brown man speaks with forked tongue”. He must be loving the Greens demise and will be hoping it continues. A straight Lab/NZ First arrangement really opens his options.

          • Tricledrown 7.4.1.1.4
            10 August 2017 at 10:22 am

            Winston water policy is similar charging exporters returning royalties to the regions.

      • Glenn 7.4.2
        10 August 2017 at 8:17 am

        NZ First water policy..
        Water is a common good and cannot be owned by any person or by the Crown.
        The Treaty of Waitangi does not confer rights to take or use water upon Māori which are greater or lesser than the rights of any other New Zealander.
        Maori have shared guardian status and therefore have a right to shared governance in some areas of water management.
        Any such rights residing in any person must be established under the common law through existing legal processes.
        Priorities for granting water rights must place public benefit before private benefit.
        Requirements for domestic supply of water must prevail over all other takes and uses.
        The current first in – first served approach for commercial water rights must be abandoned in favour of a strategic approach which places national needs in order of priority for the granting of water rights.
        Requirements for the use of water for industrial purposes, electricity generation or agricultural irrigation (including forestry) must only be met to the extent that both the requirements of the RMA are met and sustainable agricultural outcomes are also met, including optimisation of water use efficiency.
        Rights to take and use water are available only to New Zealand people (citizens and permanent residents) and New Zealand owned companies, and must not be alienated to overseas persons or interests whether directly or indirectly.
        Water must not be taxed or subjected to any charge beyond the recovery of capital, and the operational costs (including a fair rate of return) of taking storing and reticulating it for the uses intended.
        The special character of New Zealand’s remaining wild and scenic rivers must be protected by clearly identifying and listing them and by adopting specific policies for this purpose

      • lprent 7.4.3
        10 August 2017 at 8:49 am

        Labours water policy pretty much ruled out an NZFirst/Labour government.

        Have you actually read the NZ First water policy? Or is this just you repeating some one else’s line?

        It makes the Labour one look tame. Hell it makes the Greens policy look insipid.

        It is obvious that it would. NZ First isn’t great on having assets being stripped or polluters getting given free pollution rights.

        • BM 7.4.3.1
          10 August 2017 at 8:56 am

          I didn’t read anything about charging farmers.

          • lprent 7.4.3.1.1
            10 August 2017 at 9:02 am

            So you expect that they can do the things that they want to do without charging polluters? Like the report on Lake Ellesmere today. At the rate we are going every body of water near farming land is heading in the same direction

            I suspect that you are reading what you would like rather than what would have to happen to achieve the desired outcomes.

          • Tricledrown 7.4.3.1.2
            10 August 2017 at 10:28 am

            town and city businesses pay for water so why not bottlers and farmers.
            Farmers money being used to clean up rivers they have degraded.

      • Draco T Bastard 7.4.4
        10 August 2017 at 11:55 am

        http://www.nzfirst.org.nz/new_zealand_first_tables_water_royalty_bill
        http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/336793/labour-promises-to-make-commercial-water-bottlers-pay

        Seems pretty much in-line with each others actually. They’re not exactly the same but they’re both going in the same direction which means that they can talk and get a policy that’s acceptable to both parties.

        Meanwhile, National still simply plans to poison it and give it away free so that their donors can get maximum profit.

      • Robert Guyton 7.4.5
        10 August 2017 at 5:37 pm

        Eroder alert!

  8. Cinny 8
    10 August 2017 at 7:28 am

    I’ve been thinking….. with everything that has been happening, when Bill finally realises that the Barclay saga is bringing down national and exposes Bills lies, will he stand down to save his party? The opposition parties take action, but national does not when things go wayward.

    Hooten just said on the wireless that Jacinda will probably be the next PM. His admission explains the brown trousers situation from the right wingers that Iprent illustrates so well in this post.

    • lprent 8.1
      10 August 2017 at 7:31 am

      The best political tactic for National at present is to try to make themselves look like the underdog and run scare tactics.

      • Cinny 8.1.1
        10 August 2017 at 7:36 am

        that makes sense, just like how they are perpetuating the water announcement, by attempting to scare growers and farmers

        • mac1 8.1.1.1
          10 August 2017 at 9:38 am

          The underdog ploy is a part of Kiwi sporting success says the NZ soccer All White’s coach, Anthony Hudson. “He also wasn’t disputing the underdog mentality, synonymous with Kiwi sporting success, has its place.”

          National have the same ploy now to motivate its own troops and whistle up support.

          It also has the effect of making loss more bearable, and explicable, and for a section of society heavily into blame, less blameworthy- the “It was them” routine.

          The them of course will be the media, communists, sinners, unpatriotic, yellow, red, black, green, whiteanters, subversives, fifth columnists.

          We on the Left have to avoid the same error. It’s why being ‘relentlessly positive’ is a wise attitude. Blame is for those losing.

          • ianmac 8.1.1.1.1
            10 August 2017 at 9:58 am

            The underdogs could try “blaming the 9 long years of the Clark Labour Government?”

            • mac1 8.1.1.1.1.1
              10 August 2017 at 10:55 am

              I attended a meeting recently where a fellow delegate and fervid National member did blame Clark for the ills of the health system.

              Also, ianmac, we mustn’t forget the “They did it too”, much observed by teachers of adolescents.

      • ianmac 8.1.2
        10 August 2017 at 9:48 am

        Probably, about the underdog, but what a miserable position for a Government party to be in. How sad. 🙂

  9. Stephen Doyle 9
    10 August 2017 at 8:14 am

    Two things,
    NZ First have dropped in the polls, anyone calling for Winston’s head….didn’t think so.
    On the other hand, the head of Federated Farmers, on the Nation a couple of weeks ago, said that Winston was going gang busters in the provinces. What happens if National’s rural vote collapses?

    • Delia 9.1
      10 August 2017 at 9:39 am

      NZFirst was a threat now shedding support. All Labour needed was a more appealing leader.

      • Stephen Doyle 9.1.1
        10 August 2017 at 1:07 pm

        I am so hoping that Labour get up to high 30s, and the Greens recover to low teens. Then we don’t need Winston.

  10. esoteric pineapples 10
    10 August 2017 at 8:18 am

    Keep up the good work!

  11. Enough is Enough 11
    10 August 2017 at 9:40 am

    I don’t think “panic” is a bad thing when running into an election. You need to be hungry and desperate for every last vote. For too long I have seen supporters of the left seem to dismiss poor polls and have this almost “she’ll be right” attitude that things will come right on election day.

    The Nats have always appeared more desperate at election time and history shows what that desperation and panic has brought them.

    I think Labour panicked in a big way last week and the result was Jacinda and this huge surge of grass roots support. That act of panic (which was criticised by many around here) has been a winner.

    So my message is be very worried about a National Party that is panicking. They will do anything to cling onto power.

  12. Carolyn_nth 12
    10 August 2017 at 9:50 am

    Curwen Ares Rolinson’s latest post on The Daily Blog is worth a read. He is a kind of slightly idiosyncratic NZ First person.

    He puts some of Turei’s demise down to a baying pack of media hounds, pointing to NZ First’s similar drop in last night’s polls. He does lean towards NZ First’s future outlook being better than than for the GP. But, along the way, I tend to agree with much of his analysis.

    He points to long term polls saying that when Labour support drops, the GP support goes up, and vice versa:

    For much of the last week, I’d been watching the increasingly frenzied baying from various quarters of our commentariat and political establishment in relation to Metiria Turei, and the concluding lines of T.S. Eliot’s excellent ‘Difficulties of a Statesman’ just kept ringing in my head:

    “Oh Mother
    What shall I cry?
    We demand a committee, a representative committee, a committee of investigation

    RESIGN RESIGN RESIGN”
    …
    Between Patrick Gower almost seeming disappointed that Turei had resigned before he could spend this evening’s newscast haranguing her himself to do so, and the rather pointed connections being drawn between the Greens’ 4.7% drop in their latest poll and the timing of Turei’s resignation … viewers were left in no doubt that Newshub felt itself to be rather akin to an inverse of The Sun for the UK Conservatives in 1992 – “It Was The Sun Wot Won It“, indeed.
    …
    Importantly, I’m not saying that Turei’s ongoing quagmire’d imbroglio had no role to play in the Greens’ recent negative fortunes. Simply that this was ONE factor amidst several, and pretty patently obviously not the most important one (although for obvious reasons, inarguably the most publicized – not least because it’s a simple and straightforward narrative).

    • ianmac 12.1
      10 August 2017 at 9:56 am

      Paddy introduced his poll result with a comment that this poll caused the Materia resignation. Materia decided in a taxi on Tuesday morning long before she heard about the Poll. Paddy is really an idiot.

  13. tsmithfield 13
    10 August 2017 at 10:49 am

    Your analysis above may well be correct. Time will tell on whether history repeats.

    However, one issue with using the past to predict the future is that it includes an inherent assumption that the same preconditions are present on this occasion as in the past to justify the repetition of the trend. However, things are considerably different this time around.

    I think Jacinda is doing a great job for Labour, and is likely going to improve their position considerably. However, the polls referred show very little, if any evidence that she has started eating into National’s vote. She also hasn’t really been tested yet, and has had a lot of uncritical media attention. It will be interesting to see what happens when the blow torch goes on a bit more.

    Also, National was on the pointy end of some fairly major negative stories in the last few elections that could have affected their result. This time it doesn’t seem to be the case in any major way. Whereas the Greens seems more affected in that respect this time.

    A lot will depend on factors such as how the NZ First and Green vote is affected. For instance, will the Greens end up making the 5% threshold or are they fatally damaged? Will the protest vote element in NZ First redistribute itself to the main parties as voters question whether they should play it safe given the changing dynamics?

    Certainly one of the most interesting elections for a long time, and the result is far from certain.

    • lprent 13.1
      10 August 2017 at 11:54 am

      I think that you are mistaking minor shifts for structural ones. It simply doesn’t matter where the polls move if National doesn’t get votes back again to get 60 MPs or more with their existing coalition partners.

      The problem for National is that they aren’t moving except downwards compared to previous elections.

      Their coalition partners have withered in National’s embrace to the point that they really don’t seem to exist any more as anything except as a trophy room of desiccated corpses.

      I’m pretty sure that NZ First doesn’t want to go there to be sucked dry and added to the National’s wall of short-term thinking.

      So at best National could wind up with a confidence and supply agreement with NZ First. But the Muldoonist NZF vetoing much of the legislation that large factions inside National would like to move forward on.

      So what exactly would National be trying to achieve ? Be the walking dead government who are there for perks for their MPs?

      The votes are moving around the opposition parties, but they certainly aren’t heading back to a limp, tired, and clearly a National party with few new ideas and no mandate to do much.

      • tsmithfield 13.1.1
        10 August 2017 at 12:41 pm

        Like I said, you could be right….

        However, I see this sort of analysis as similar to technical analysis for predicting movement of stock prices. Lots of patterns are identified historically (e.g. head and shoulders, golden cross etc).

        However, they often show little in the way of predictive value when predicting the current price movement of a stock. This is due to the fact that historically it is always possible to find evidence of certain patterns if one looks hard enough. But those previous stock movements have been on the basis of whatever factors which were at play then, but may not be at play now. So, technical analysis has largely been discarded as unreliable by many for this reason.

        Same with this situation. There is so much different this time that no assumptions can be made. I could see National conceivably as low as 38% or as high as 47% depending on what plays out.

        What are your thoughts on the Maori seats btw. Do you think Labour will encourage split voting, or will they try and kill the Maori party off to remove a potential ally for National?

  14. Infused 14
    10 August 2017 at 10:58 am

    Just fund rack space in a dc. Why you host this shit at home on ufb.. wouldn’t be all that much more. 300 400 a month. Or vm it.

    • Muttonbird 14.1
      10 August 2017 at 11:11 am

      Hard concept for you to grasp, I know, but have you considered he might enjoy it?

      • infused 14.1.1
        10 August 2017 at 12:36 pm

        Yet he constantly complains about it.

        • Muttonbird 14.1.1.1
          10 August 2017 at 12:45 pm

          Really? Isn’t he just sharing his experience with the users? I feel involved even if you feel like an outsider.

          • infused 14.1.1.1.1
            10 August 2017 at 12:51 pm

            I run datacenters, have machines at home – and I hate them being on. So yeah, I don’t think he enjoys it *that* much.

            • lprent 14.1.1.1.1.1
              10 August 2017 at 1:04 pm

              The reason I mention this stuff here is because it is important that people have some idea about how such things happen. After all they may want to do this themselves.

              But I suspect I work differently to you. I like eliminating problems rather than perpetuating them.

              I spent some time over the last few years (once I had some time to do it) working on how to make machines silent even when they are shoving through a lot of air. At home in my partners 54 sq metre apartment these days the compressor on the new fridge is way louder than the 6 machines (3 servers and 3 laptops) that could be running.

              I’m still getting used to the sound of rain now that I have moved out of the my apartment cave.

              My rack servers at work just irritate me when I have to pull them out to work on them (there is no way that I’d actually work in the IT area). Stupid tiny fans whining at high speeds.

              It is pretty amazing how the well configured systems these days with low tip speed large fans, water coolers, silent smart HDDS and SSDs have changed computer noise issues of yesteryear.

              • RedLogix …
                10 August 2017 at 1:43 pm

                Stupid tiny fans whining at high speeds.

                Over the past 6 years I used a lot of the Intel NUC boxes. Typing this on one right now.

                Sure they aren’t servers, but I’ve always enjoyed the very low power, low heat and almost no fan noise. Especially good in dirty plants and factories.

                • infused …
                  10 August 2017 at 2:11 pm

                  Well, the Skull NUC’s are approved by VMWare to run test labs. They are pretty decent machines. We use them for all our work pcs.

                  • RedLogix …
                    10 August 2017 at 4:38 pm

                    Yeah. The place I’m at now has done the same after I suggest the idea. All the desktop boxes are gone; it’s either laptops or NUC’s exclusively now.

                    One model even supported vPRO which was incredibly useful in our usage scenarios. Sadly they’ve don’t seem to have carried it forward into their current generation.

                • lprent …
                  10 August 2017 at 5:35 pm

                  I was planning on getting a NUC a couple of months ago to try one out. I have a antique mail server running Server 2003 R2 on a VM and I’d like to run it standalone off the servers. Usually I’d use a raspberry pi for teeny jobs like that. But it is bloody windows and I realized that I need a x86 instruction set rather than Arm and a NUC looked about right.

                  But my partner brought an apartment, so I used a old sony laptop from 2009 to save money for any setup and moving costs 🙁

              • adam …
                10 August 2017 at 2:13 pm

                I take it you are not a gamer then lprent.

                We are still stuck with the “Stupid tiny fans whining at high speeds” with graphics cards.

                • lprent …
                  10 August 2017 at 4:46 pm

                  Not that kind of game – at least not for a couple of decades.

                  Although I do have Asus Radeon RX480 in my workstation but that is mainly for playing with using GPU code for solving certain types of algorithms. But that doesn’t have stupid little 40 or 80mm fans like a rack. Not sure what it does have fan wise. But it is pretty quiet even when I push the temperature up a bit.

    • lprent 14.2
      10 August 2017 at 12:54 pm

      I think that you have a rather limited understanding of the scale that the site runs at.

      The existing main server is running 8 cores at 4.7-5Ghz. It was striking 80% CPU yesterday – 6 weeks before the election. I have two other systems that I can call in to increase capacity if I need it with 8 and 16 cores respectively, and no additional costs for anything apart from my time. Outside of short election time they get used for other purposes – one for my programming and the other now repurposed to making video,

      If needs be I can get additional capacity using AWS. But I don’t expect to need it.

      As it stands, the site costs $134 per operational month plus some minimal annual costs ALL of the time. The only variable cost is my time. More importantly I don’t have to expend ANY of my valuable time chasing funding to keep the site alive like I was doing when the site was hosted.

      So in my small amount of spare time outside of work and relationships, I can concentrate on the important issues. Capacity, development, authors, moderation and the odd post are all of way more interest than scratching around for money. They interest me far more than scratching for cash.

      When I last had it hosted with AWS back in 2014, it was cost more than $900 in July before the election. I was having to add more capacity for August because I was up to average cluster of 2 high CPU systems + database server and spiking up to 8 additional on-demand webservers during the day – and still having issues due what turned out to be bots.

      The local costs to host a similar capacity started at about $600 per month before adding in traffic costs – and didn’t have anything like the flexibility of AWS.

      More importantly it was frigging hard to debug what was driving the increases in traffic and getting it under control when I was having to remote in. This had been a continuous issue for the previous 6 years on various hosted systems.

      Fortunately I was able to finally get UFB online in August 2014, had the site shifted in a weekend to a moderate capacity single system with a backup warm server and a offsite S3 cool store. The cost then was over $200 pm for a business 50/50 and 1Tb/mo. Over the last 3 years, each time I renew with voyager I get more capacity with less. Now it is 100/100 and unlimited data for $134. And I get to use the line for Netflix.

      Once I had local access, I took a few days off and had the site debugged and the irritation bots crushed (along with some persistent human trolls). It didn’t falter over the election period. And I stopped having to break out from my work projects to go and fix issues. Just the saving in my development time has been incredible. It has allowed me to bug off a number of work trips to Europe because I’d had an ability to do more work in less time beforehand.

      Throwing open-ended money at an issue as you’re advocating is always a stupid response outside of real unexpected emergencies. Who is fuck has spare time to do that? I sure don’t. This is a peripheral part of my life that is done because I think we need this kind of debate.

      The smart way of doing anything is to plan on making sure that have capacity in advance, figuring out how to make it scale without any cost increases, and minimizing at all points the total degree of effort required to achieve the desired results. That covers all areas of operations from the hardware through to the moderation systems and how to handle relatively open commenting systems.

      I just made a choice in 2013 that continuing to escalate the chase for money to maintain the site was a waste of my time and was likely at some point to compromise the integrity and independence of the site.

      You don’t have to look far to see sites that do have such ethical issues – Whaleoil being the obvious one. But I think that Kiwiblog and even The Daily Blog have similar problems at various levels. For that matter virtually all of the media sites in NZ have similar ethical complications.

      By dropping the requirement for funding after moving it on to a business fibre at home, we avoid all of that.

      • infused 14.2.1
        10 August 2017 at 2:10 pm

        Yeah, you don’t use cloud (aws or azure) for big workloads. It’s expensive.

        But you could shove 1-2 2u servers in a datacenter and split load using some apache/docker stuff. I suspect it would lower load significantly.

        Use aws route 53 for dns/cache to take load off (it costs bugger all). I actually bet a ton of traffic would disappear using something like route 53.

        I just checked and you’re already using their dns, so I suspect you’re doing this?

        • lprent 14.2.1.1
          10 August 2017 at 5:29 pm

          I use route 53 already, plus CloudFront which pulls most of the graphics load off my server.

          But I also have the aws load balancer (whatever its name is) if I need it. Plus I have all of the automatic creation of memcached machine instances running back to NFS at home if I need it. The site also sends encrypted delta backups every hour to S3 from the warm second server at home, which has a replicated database and filesystem. The S3 is the cool and/or overload backup.

          Problem is that the load is pretty lumpy. Most of the electoral cycle I need just a couple of cores. I have run the site using a i5 laptop. Coming into an election I will need a lot of cores. Hiring a server becomes waste.

          Plus what is on my local system are the sections that are privacy sensitive (ie the database) and what I use for site development. It is way easier to fix and develop using slickedit directly on the local NFS drive or even a local drive for the test sites than it is using remote NFS or SFTP.

          The trick is not to use any AWS and just have cheap local general purpose hardware that I can use for TS or for other purposes. And I have a lot of other purposes.

          Like doing gcc compiles using -j24, running video conversions for my partner, having terabytes of local storage for innumerable processing backups (like the 500 odd backups of TS or complete dd copies of my old laptops and other devices), playing with long renders or using GPUs to solve simulation space issues, testing software systems, storing every book, CD, or Bluray I ever buy, and just any other crap that I feel like doing. After all my profession is writing software. That involves learning about it by playing with the bits that I don’t currently use professionally (like HTML, CSS, Javascript, and the web stuff like aws or weird arse things like haskell). Sometimes I even just write code for the sheer exercise of learning. It is how I have kept moving fields inside programming in Nz over the last 30 odd years since I got more interested in building code than I was in running people.

          Basically hardware is pretty cheap if you buy it component wise. Outside of laptops and phones, I doubt that I spend even a grand a year on my box systems. Mostly in the odd hard drive or SSD that fails. This year I was extravagant and spent a lump of $980 for a motherboard, ryzen processor and DDR4 to replace my 2013 workstation (which is now the TS server).

  15. NZJester 15
    10 August 2017 at 2:41 pm

    In regards to the fans making a lot of noise, I have heard using a liquid cooling system with good pumps hooked up to a few external radiators with low RPM fans controlled by an independent heat sensor on the radiator can cut the noise a lot but do take up a lot of space.

    • lprent 15.1
      10 August 2017 at 4:36 pm

      They do. However it doesn’t help a lot when you have a factory overclocked 220W CPU getting up to over 80% for several hours. You can either hear the fans in the background competing with the fridge compressor or get the CPU getting hotter.

      I use a quiet pump with an internal radiator with a large pusher and puller fan. That means that the fan tip speed is low and lot of the fan and pipe noise is handled by the foam on the inside of the case.

      However the issue is more that I had to adjust the fancontrol speed profile to make sure that the CPU temperature didn’t get anywhere close to its automatic shutdown temperature. Normally it isn’t an issue because we don’t have activity burst that long except at election time. Last election I just put the fans to full on a 125W CPU and lived with it for a few weeks. This time I have much quieter fans and more precise control so I want it quiet even at high loads while making damn sure I don’t get shutdowns.

      • NZJester 15.1.1
        11 August 2017 at 10:41 am

        Speaking of fridges there are mini refrigeration devices to go in computers. The Thermaltake Xpressar RCB400 Series – The bay-drive unit refrigeration system for CPU and VGA released back in 2009 takes up 8 X 5.25inch drive bays for instance.

    • Draco T Bastard 15.2
      10 August 2017 at 5:05 pm

      Heh, did that once – and had an undetected leak chew out my motherboard for me 🙁

      • lprent 15.2.1
        10 August 2017 at 5:50 pm

        I don’t roll my own. Too much work.

        • Draco T Bastard 15.2.1.1
          10 August 2017 at 9:21 pm

          I did that one back before water cooling was more a hobbyists option than a commercial one. Kept the CPU nice and cool. At idle it was @39 degrees and at full load it was @39 degrees – and that CPU was OC’d by about 1GHz (Better than 50% OC – Best I ever got).

          And it was quiet.

          Still, the busted motherboard put me off doing water cooling again.

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