Labour in 1997 would have won regardless of its positioning. The Tories were literally that toxic, on account of the VAT betrayal, Black Wednesday, corruption, sex scandals, and the relentless party civil wars over Europe (plus Major in 1992 benefited from...
Lack of cabinet experience didn't stop Labour in 1972 (hint: Hugh Watt was the only one of Kirk's ministry to have previous cabinet experience). Eventually, voters do actually get sick of incumbents, so Labour would have returned to office at some point.* ...
That's not really an issue for Science, but rather people misinterpreting data, based off correlation/causation and other things. The actual limits of Science were established by Immanuel Kant in the eighteenth century, when he pointed out that what our ...
Wee issue here: prior to the development of Science, the West itself had systems of Natural Philosophy. Not ones based off the Scientific Method, of course, but others. Such things are interesting in a "History/Philosophy of Science" sense, but in no way ...
Socialism is a journey, not a destination, and the Mixed Economies of the post-war era tended to be built by self-identifying socialist parties. And, yes, Sweden's Social Democrats identified as such. May interest you to know that the German Social ...
Clement Attlee's 1945 Labour Government in Britain nationalised a quarter of the economy (and half of British industry). Does that count as socialism? Perhaps I would suggest that the norm for the West from the 1940s to the 1970s was the Mixed Economy. ...
The Great Crash, 1929, by John Kenneth Galbraith.
It very much did fail. The Global Financial Crisis could only have happened with deregulated financial markets, and the inherent celebration of glorified gambling. It was resolved by Government (hitherto "always the problem and never the solution") ...
Neoliberalism did fail in 2008, yes. Alas, it remains in charge because the mainstream social-democratic parties of the Left are now committed to it (no-one cares because the Left has bought into Identity Politics instead of Class). Internationally, we ...
While I honestly could not care less about use of Maori loan words, I would raise the obvious point: English is not descended from Brittonic (a Celtic language). It is a Germanic language, descended from Old English/Anglo-Saxon. Brittonic words in English ...
On 1951: it wasn't as if Labour were energetically defending the waterfront workers. Nash rather infamously declared that he was neither for nor against them. Meanwhile, the form of "voluntary unionism" enacted by Holyoake was still far more union-friendly...
Because entrenchment doesn't work, and just means you hand the high-ground to National (who wouldn't respect the entrenchment anyway). The way to stop future privatisations is to declare a Labour policy of renationalisation, at the price the asset was sold...
There are people in prison for rape who serve less than seven years in prison. Do you think a bottom pinch is worse than rape? Because that's what Three Strikes says.
It's called proportionality. Or in this case, disproportionality. Frankly, seven years for a kiss on a cheek is a greater affront to the conscience than the initial kiss on the cheek.
Three Strikes is nonsensical, evil, and stupid. It does nothing to actually deter offenders - who now have a perverse incentive to perform the worst possible form of the crime in question, since the system is now incapable of distinguishing between levels ...
Labour has centralised, but not nationalised (people need to learn the difference), and the underlying ethos of the Fourth Labour Government is as strong as ever - basically because this Government does not care about economics (in fact, every government ...
NZBORA needs to go. Of all the many evils of the Fourth Labour Government (why, you think it a coincidence that this nonsense descends from that regime?), it might be the most recently insidious.
Decreeing that a voting age of 18 (in place since 1974) is inconsistent with NZBORA (in place since 1990) in 2022 is a nakedly political act on the part of the judiciary here. It's a sign (along with the nonsense about vaccine mandates somehow breaching ...
I am neither conservative, nor anti-Maori, nor property owning, and I think this is an idiotic development on two levels. 1. I oppose lowering the voting age, on the basis that 16 year olds (in school, and living at home) are more vulnerable to external ...
But dancing on the grave of traditional industry with a glee that would make Thatcher blush, while lecturing unemployed factory workers on how racist, sexist, and homophobic they are... that is not a good look. Leave the culture stuff to the Greens, and ...
Fun fact. Westport votes like Dunedin (or did up until 2020). A Labour Party without the working class (skin colour doesn't matter) is not a Labour Party. It's the local branch of the US Democrats.
And yet it took two years into a Labour Government with an absolute majority. Five years into a Labour Government overall (and while Winston Peters is not keen on unions, would he really die in a ditch to block FPAs?). Wood is a hero, of course. But he ...
For myself, my irritation with the Labour Government has been centred on Chris Hipkins at Tertiary Education. It is not a matter of wanting socialist nirvana, but simply wanting Labour to undo the damage of the Key Government, and take us back to 2008, ...
Which part of the speech is historically contestable? None as far as I can see. Trotter is over-egging the pudding, but his underlying point is valid. The historical details of the speech are contestable. Not outright lies, but still showing evidence of ...
Kirk would not be a Labour candidate today for his social views, which were deeply conservative.
A truly wonderful development... though somewhat soured by the sense that Wood had to fight his own Government every step of the way on this. Why else would it have taken them so long?
FFS. Hamilton West is pure bellwether. It votes as the country votes (though I would note 2017 saw Sharma getting dragged in as a last-minute candidate, because of issues with Sue Moroney). National won it 2008-2017 because it won the nationwide vote four ...
Hamilton West is pure bellwether, and goes according to the country. It went National four times 2008-2017 because National won the nationwide vote four times in a row.
It wasn't a referendum on entering. Ted Heath had already done that by Act of Parliament. It was a referendum on staying, because Harold Wilson's 1974 Government was divided between Leaving and Staying.
Here's the funny thing: yes, Britain is in a mess. But it is in a mess because the Tories are incompetent. The public can vote them out at the next election. You can't vote out the European Commission. Indeed, the EU - so beloved of so many here - would ...
Stating that "Russian fascism merely replaced German fascism" rather overlooks the bullshit false equivalency inherent in that statement. We know what forty years of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. Now imagine forty years of Nazi domination of Eastern...
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