Posts Tagged ‘polity’

Polity: “Promoting” vs “endorsing”

Written By: - Date published: 8:22 am, March 12th, 2014 - 16 comments

The Orivida mess smells worse by the day for National. Yesterday, it turned out the Cabinet Office’s advice clearing Judith Collins of any wrongdoing had failed to even look at the most important piece of the evidence – the Chinese text of Orivida’s website. It had to rush out new advice to cover that off, which Key still won’t release. That is why today John Key will spend much of question time dancing on the head of a pin…

Polity: Why announce the election date this week?

Written By: - Date published: 2:30 pm, March 11th, 2014 - 18 comments

Rob Salmond at Polity has a look at why National surprisingly announced the election date yesterday. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that it was a deflection from something. Rob thinks that National was worried about where a look at donations to National’s campaign would lead. He may be right, as in the past National has had some legally and morally dubious donation regimes

Polity: Minimum pass rates at University are silly

Written By: - Date published: 11:55 am, March 8th, 2014 - 21 comments

The government has imposed mandatory minimum pass rates of tertiary education. If Universities (and Polytechs, Waananga, and others) do not meet a government-imposed minimum pass rate (which ratchet up every year, and may go as high as 85%), then the institution risks losing some of its government funding. That is crazy town.

Polity: X more thoughts on poll bias

Written By: - Date published: 11:36 am, February 26th, 2014 - 26 comments

Whenever the media report on polls, they get accused of all manner of biases by the blinkered commentariat. Most of it is nonsense, of course. But some criticism of the polling methods themselves may have more merit that Rob Salmond first thought.  While he is not yelling “fire” at this stage, he does think there may be smoke. Something that he did not think that three years ago.

Polity: A bad week

Written By: - Date published: 9:11 am, February 24th, 2014 - 142 comments

There’s no skating around it – Labour didn’t have a good last week. And the biggest shame is that beltway errors have been allowed to eclipse real progress on issues that actually matter to New Zealand families. The lack of direct relevance in the errors does not matter, because these issues matter for perceptions. If Labour is perceived as bumbling, or as lacking self-awareness, that will certainly be reflected at the ballot box. But there were a few bright spots.

Polity: Chris Trotter – “gaseous exhalations”

Written By: - Date published: 11:37 am, February 20th, 2014 - 71 comments

Yesterday, Rob Salmond offered Chris Trotter a bet based on Chris writing an over-excited interpretation of an online poll. Who writes posts on the basis of online polls of less than 400 people? It is the same problem as interpreting small junk “markets” like iPredict which are rife with idiots of the right trying to push the odds away from reality with small amounts of cash. Really!

Polity: Key practices 56% truth inflation

Written By: - Date published: 3:48 pm, February 19th, 2014 - 21 comments

John Key makes up the figures during a session of parliament for the expected unemployment in coming years when he took office. The apparent reason is to make his governments piss-poor performance running the economy look better. Of course there is that problem that Rob Salmond can link to the December 2008 projections from the Treasury which show John Key to be lying (yet again).

Polity: Fizzy drinks: Tax or no tax?

Written By: - Date published: 2:48 pm, February 18th, 2014 - 80 comments

There has been some discussion recently about whether we should tax fizzy drinks as a threat to public health. Otago University public health people say yes. Various anti-tax groups say no. Here’s Rob Salmond’s 2c worth.

Some interesting arguments

Polity: Kim Dotcom’s 5% gambit

Written By: - Date published: 8:39 am, February 12th, 2014 - 92 comments

Rob Salmond looks at the implications of the Internet party failing to poll 5% and DotCom throws his support behind another party. A bidding war from competing parties? For the left this would be being both hypocritical and a bit icky. One of the reasons they worked hard to make election funding fairer in the late 2000s was to limit the ability of individuals seeking to buy government policy for cash. The right disagreed but is now caught by their own logic that it couldn’t happen.

Polity: Moral mandates in Europe

Written By: - Date published: 1:16 pm, February 10th, 2014 - 37 comments

Rob Salmond at Polity highlights John Key’s naivety in politics. It isn’t hard because he is a poor amateur and largely unskilled.  If he ever raised his eyes from golf and photo-ops for long enough to exercise his brain, then he could look at the governments of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark

Polity: National hypocrisy about hypocrisy

Written By: - Date published: 10:11 am, February 3rd, 2014 - 38 comments

Somehow questions about how Metiria Turei wearing clothes from expensively ravaged visage of Judith Collins seem somewhat hypocritical. But Polity politely asks the second obvious question…

Polity: The truth about the gap between the rich and the rest

Written By: - Date published: 1:31 pm, January 24th, 2014 - 61 comments

John Key was careful in his speech. He and his government have helped themselves and their affluent mates while screwing everyone else. It is pretty clear who has been getting the benefits – since 2010 just the households with at least a hundred thousand dollars income. The bigger the household income, the more National helps. John Key – a liar with numbers.

Polity: Some evidence about welfare

Written By: - Date published: 7:44 am, January 22nd, 2014 - 106 comments

This post by polity certainly adds some grist to the debate on unconditional basic income (UBI) and kids. It looks at the example provided by the Cherokee in a natural quasi-experiment in North Carolina on how kids grow up. Being generous and acting early pays off.

Polity: Who believes in climate change?

Written By: - Date published: 10:22 pm, December 29th, 2013 - 84 comments

Cool-yet-depressing finding on why some people change their mind on climate change from one day to the next.

It can be summarised by saying Republicans in the US are scientific morons, and many Americans decide based on the previous days weathers.

Polity: Herald poll mirrors Poll-of-Polls

Written By: - Date published: 11:33 am, December 20th, 2013 - 63 comments

These days even the polls that have traditionally biased towards the right are moving left. Rob Salmond at Polity has a look at the latest NZ Herald poll. It is no wonder that National’s PR people including Audrey Young are spinning randomly like tops on a rough surface… National is up less than a point over Labour + Greens

Polity: Turnout in the referendum

Written By: - Date published: 3:57 pm, December 16th, 2013 - 72 comments

Rob Salmond at Polity has had a look at the effectiveness of National’s deliberate strategy to discriminate against Maori and Pasifika in the asset sales referendum. National chose a postal ballot for the referendum knowing it would disproportionately disenfranchise Maori and Pasifika communities. I hope they’re proud of themselves. Here is a chart of turnout […]

At least 225,000 Nats said “No” to asset sales

Written By: - Date published: 10:19 am, December 14th, 2013 - 90 comments

Rob Salmond runs the Polity blog and has given us permission to syndicate his posts. Long time readers will remember him from the brilliant posts on 08wire.org during the 2008 campaign, so expect us to often find something of interest.

Like this post looking at who voted No on the referendum. That number of previously National voters must be scaring the National party at present.