Funny I find that’s something that’s usually the preserve of right wing commentators. After all they’re usually the most linear and black and white in their thinking.

I reckon he’s a bit older. Maybe 13, or 14 even. But anyway, how immature do you have to be to not understand that you can’t take part in a debate and be the umpire at the same time???

Stop it Sam, thats too funny! Declaring victory on a blog site comments section – are you 12?

BTW, its not a victory if you just ignore all the points that figuratively kick you square in the nuts.

As opposed to Labour who declared it over, sent troops to occupy and then called National callous for declaring it over.

Fuck, it’s shaping out to be too lovely a Friday to disagree with that. How ’bout we all meet up at the pub for a cold one and thrash out the rest there?

How like the left to decide and impose its decision on everyone else.

I agree. Its contrived bullshit.

No need, he’s clearly the victor here. You’ve used your standard cop-out and run tactics when confronted by a superior argument that can’t be defeated by a Wikipedia search, Philip John

We can afford whatever will win an election, or whatever provides enough of a diversion to take the public focus of something unpopular. Mallard’s Monument was a very effective diversion of public attention away from Labour’s pledge card difficulties, and the retrospective validating legislation.

Interestingly enough, I scored relatively close to where I was expecting to score – squat bang in the middle of the compass. -0.12 towards Left and 0.31 towards Authoritarian.

The questions on that is rather ambiguous though. For example:

“The prime function of schooling should be to equip the future generation to find jobs”

The prime function of schooling should be to develop reasoning, thinking individuals and to maximize their potential in areas they are interested in. This would naturally equip them with the abilities to either find or (indirectly) create jobs, but the question does not read that way. So while, to get my true position on the compass, I would have had to answer “Disagree”, in response to the strict interpretation I would had to answer “Agree”.

The second one that tickled my fancy was this one:

“Mothers may have careers, but their first duty is to be homemakers.”

What about Fathers? Can we be homemakers as well and allow the women to work? I’d be perfectly happy with that and thus my answer needs to be “Disagree”. But the principle of the question seems to refer to a sexist, authoritarian viewpoint in which case looking at it from an non-gendered basis the answer is actually “Agree”.

It’s an interesting test, but ultimately I don’t feel any more englightened than if I’d done one of the “Who is your true love?” or “What character from Shortland Street are you?” questionares that bloggers love so much.

The questions are open to too much interpretation and again anyone who thinks can work out what to answer to place them wherever they want to be on it.

I think it’s more fundamental than that. Most of these arguments basically deny the existence of human nature (and are at the same time prime examples of human nature: usually self interest or greed or laziness) and fail to recognise that there is such a thing as individual motivation.

Classic examples are the arguments against performance-based pay.

Well heres hoping that you meet “Mr head on” on the way home this evening, take an instant 20% pay cut, spend the next several months flat on your back in agony, another year or more hobbling around, never regain what you’ve lost and then after years and years of fighting with the “mandarins” they assess you as being able to grade eggs or the like. Arsehole.

In order to save the world from enviromental destruction China and India must triple their populations through accepting unlimited immigrants, do ‘regime change’ to Philipines, Central America & Cuba, suffer a Great Depression and win one Civil War & 2 World Wars?

Mind you, if globilisation is curtailled and those half billion are sacked from their export sector jobs – having a War is quite likely. Probably better in the interests of world peace if we ignore that suggestion.

What is the right level of tax?

How big would the surplus be before we gave tax cuts?

How about Labour tell people their sinister plans to increase taxes by 25% over the next 5 years, the ones they are hiding from the electorate and implement by stealth when the average joe isn’t looking?

roger nome, I’m constantly surprised by most lefties inability to understand cost-demand dynamics. Or, putting it a different way, pricing signals and incentives. I find most left-leaning arguments tend to assume a very static model of people’s behaviour which just doesn’t stand up to experience.

A simple example … look at Abano Healthcare’s share price over the last 12 months (hint: it’s up about 350%). All because some bright spark in ACC decided to start funding audiology clinics & products. “The number of applications for audiology is so small it won’t cost us anything”. Yeah right, another great piece of commercial reasoning from a public sector mandarin. What’s happened? Big increases in referrals to audiologists (hey, it’s covered by ACC now …) and audiologists prescribing the top-of-the-line digital hearing aids (hey, ACC pays for them now …).

And a massive transfer of wealth from the public sector to Abano shareholders.

“Possibly this is because the social democratic philosophy isn’t so worried about retaining maximum individual economic freedoms at the expense of everything else.

Not essential – but they do tend to have higher petrol taxes – they also tend to be more environmentally focussed than the free-market countries. Possibly this is because the social democratic philosophy isn’t so worried about curtailing individual economic freedoms at the expense of everything else.