Current Events — Category

Well, it is official. The Democrats now hold both the House and Senate. Bush called it a “thumpin’.”

The last two seats to be decided were pretty close, having only a few thousand votes between the main contenders. There now seem to be talks of recounts and stuff, so it could all last a few days.

Oh well, my interest in US politics has basically ended now.

This is when I wish I had Sky, so then I could watch CNN and see how the US Mid-term elections are playing out. But, I guess the internet is better, I have CNN.com on constant refresh and also BBC News open on another tab (just to compare the differences that they are both showing).

It is looking quite tight, and tough to call, even though it does look like the Democrats could win a majority - which is great.

Show Bush who’s boss!

Meanwhile, there are already reports of bad election booths. They are all electronic this year, and there have been some human interface nightmares in the last election. The new ones don’t look that much better.

Who designs these things? Honestly.

Creative Commons Notice: The photo used in this post is under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, which is different to the license used by the rest of this blog.

The new drinking age bill is going to parliament on Wednesday, and there is some expectation that it would go through. The point of it is to reverse the bill that went through in 1999 that dropped the age to 18 - they want it back to 20. Trouble is, it has gone down now, it won’t be able to go back up again.

This is to help curb the binge drinking culture in New Zealand, but as far as I’m aware, it has been around even before the age was dropped. Better yet, many promises were made when the last drinking bill passed - such promises as the drinking age being enforced. I don’t think that has happened as well as it should have; there have only been a couple recent stings on liquor stores and bars, resulting in most of them being closed for a couple of days.

There have been some great alternatives suggested. I like the idea where once you are 18 you can go into a bar and drink. They are responsible hosts and the drinks are a lot dearer (liquor stores sell a typical RTD at $10 for four. Bars and clubs sell only one for anywhere between $6 to $9). They are also usually pretty strict on entry.

Another thing, I thought everyone already knew that younger children are getting their alcohol mostly from their parents? So why are we punishing the 18 and 19 year olds for this?

Also, I have always said that education is the best policy - and television ads shouldn’t be the only thing. Are kids taught about alcohol responsibility in school? I don’t remember being taught about anything about alcohol when I went. That seems to be a logical place to start.

Yesterday, a new campaign Keep it 18! was launched, and is run by the youth wings of Labour, National, Greens and ACT, as well as many others. They have many compelling arguments on their website. Hopefully, these guys can all nudge their respective MPs into scrapping the bill.

• Keep it 18

Interestingly a pledge card to help fund the Darnton v Clark lawsuit has sold for $700.

A taste of the questions,

Wow, i am really interested in this piece. You don’t happen to have one of Winston’s illegal items for sale as well do you?
No. Winston’s last election pamphlet looked a bit creepy and I didn’t want it in the house.

Are these the same tired old promises, and are these pledges ever likely to be fulfilled?
The promises are not worth the paper they’re printed on. Rest assured though that the paper they’re printed on was very expensive.

Do the pleges work? I have heared this descibed by people as electioneering
The only people who have described this as electioneering are the Chief Electoral Officer, Wellington District CIB, the former Solicitor-General, the Auditor-General, and Pete Hodgson.

The money, as said, goes to the Darnton v Clark lawsuit. Bernard Darnton is the leader of the Libertarianz party, and taking Helen Clark to court over the illegal use of parliamentary funds (which has just recently been made legal with a bill shoved under urgency - yay for open and free democracies!).

David Farrar has said that there was also another pledge card up for sale to help fund the Labour whip-round. It only accrued $30.

The Auditor Generals report came back on Thursday with a thrilling conclusion. Labour owes about $700,000 of tax payers money, and they subsequently said they will pay it back. I think this is helped in part by National, media, bloggers and the general public to put copious amounts of pressure onto them.

But there is one hitch, they don’t have the money to pay it back. So what does one do? Beg! They want to pay half of that with thanks to its supporters. You can call up an 0900 number to make an instant donation, or even make an arbitrary donation on a website somewhere.

So, would they be able to get the tax payers to donate to them what they had stolen from the tax payers? I’m sure their will be enough die-hard Labour supporters out there that they will reach their goal of paying it off in nine months. Though, prodding may be required.

Earlier this week Xtra had unveiled its new range of broadband plans. All fullspeed, just different caps and upload speeds. The most interesting of which is the Go Large plan - fullspeed download, 128kbps upload, but you can eat as much as you want for $49.95. But, the catch is they manage your transfers between 4pm and midnight for any peer to peer software (which means it’ll be given lower priority). Also, if you constantly download more than 700MB between those times, expect a call from them giving you a different, more expensive, plan.

• Full details

A week ago, Helen would’ve smirked and said she asked for a taser for Trevor, with her finishing with her strange smile.

Today, she outright condemns Trevor Mallard for what he said to Don Brash.

She has been given a taste of her own medicine, and didn’t like it one bit. I find it highly amusing that it is now that she is feeling truly awful for what Trevor Mallard had said. At least Don Brash said he felt sorry for her family after recent allegations that Helen’s husband, Peter Davis, might be gay.

All my friends keep telling me to vote Labour, but now I have a whole arsenal of come-back comments.

David Farrar said how bad 3 News’ reporting was on the Don Brash saga.

Recently, Don had been accused of having an affair with someone from the Business Round Table. The media is having a field day (almost).

After reading David’s commentary on the reports, I went to TV3’s website to watch their report and see what he was talking about.

I got to the page after incredibly slow loading times, but then the media never loaded. I then copied and pasted the URL to the report into Windows Media Player and it just sat their trying to connect.

I had noticed this about a week ago when trying to watch another report. Surely they would’ve noticed?

Well, the website is the only contact with 3 News that I have. I always watch One News, and sometimes watch 3 to see what they have to say. TV3’s website has only started offering video only recently, so maybe it can’t handle?

It what appears to be Labours last ditch attempt at bringing the spotlight back onto National, they have announced that they are going to dish out National MPs private lives if they don’t have their way.

“Clearly members on our side know things about National Party members that I would describe as hypocritical behaviour,” [Trevor Mallard] said.

This is terrible. They can’t dig up anything political against National, so instead they are bringing their private lives to the fore. Is this really what Labour has reduced to? What on Earth are they thinking?
(Tip: David Farrar)

The pledge card issue is still boiling.

• David Farrar’s blog is all for Labour to pay back the money. I am too. Current tactics lead me to believe that Labour is starting to get a bit desperate, and is trying to pull rabbits out of hats.
• Tony Milne’s blog is on the other side, and finding fault with National, especially some form of alliance with the Exclusive Brethren. To be honest, I don’t see too much at fault with having a certain group use its own money to show its support for a party. I remember advertising by certain unions (like the PPTA) having full page advertisements in newspapers telling people to vote Labour.
• Russell Brown has his say on the issue.