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The party is called The Rationalist Party Of NZ

We now need 497 more members. You can register your interest by emailing me. In space of just a few hours we have started membership, we have a name and we have the beginnings of our first internal schism (one wussy member doesn’t like the idea of the death penalty! hahaha OK, we’ll have to discuss this one at our party conference later on).

When the web site is up and running our members will be the first to know, so join now and be a founder member with all the huge privileges that this entails.

It’s the study of ideas – effectively philosophy, but as applied to government and politics. Quite worthy of study if you ask me. It’s *not* a simple training course on how to be politician (i hated people saying ‘oh you want to be Prime Minister eh?’ when I was doing it), however it will naturally attract those interested in politics. Also known as “who gets what, when, how”

I honestly don’t know the answer to this one even though I voted for them in the last 3 elections. It beats me, frankly.

They were obviously quite popular once but no idea what’s happened to them. The big parties represent a certain orthodoxy in NZ which while one might be opposed to what one or the other represents, one at least knows what one is going to get based on past experience. The same certainly can’t be applied to ACT, or even the Greens really. A lot of ACT-oids seem pretty confident that the vote is going ‘up up up!’ since National is ‘getting so socialist’, so maybe things are looking up in that respect

BUT I do think that the time is right for a new party to be established along the lines I outlined previously…. and maybe it HAS to be *new* in order to connect with the electorate in a fresh way, untainted by all the dancing, yellow jacket roger-the-dodgerism that ACT carries around.

Splits (effectively what you propose) from a party with a very similar platform (but stronger brand) have not gone well in the past, witness the Progressive Greens.

Remember how huge the New Zealand Party was?

Before my time. But I know of it – it seems the large votes the NZP and SC got were to an extent the electorate being pissed off with the two big FPP parties though.

Then, even if you do somehow make it work you will find that the “common purpose” will probably become many purposes that start to pull in all directions.

I think it’s better to try and get better results with the existing parties. Find ways to get more communication and influence between voters and politicians. And accept that you will never get everything the way you want.

make me 0000003!! As for not having policy knowledge, who cares? Isn’t that why we have a bureaucracy in the first place? They look after the details.

What we need is people who speak “common sense” which is what you did in your earlier post. Most people are sick of politicking and politicians in general. It is why Labour got annihilated at the last election, almost the whole substance of their mp list is professional politicians. Certainly their caucus.
On that note, who created “political science” as a topic for education???

To pinch a phrase from Billy Connelly ( though he was talking about accountants) “The desire to be a politician should bar you from every actually becoming one.”

Maybe ACT combined with some less off-the-wall supporters of the Libs could combine under a new banner and connect with the electorate? Separately I don’t think either will achieve much because voters tend to immediately write one off as fringe dwelling unrealists and the other off as Butlins holiday campers. This is unfair, of course, but life is never fair.

If you are being facetious and pointing out that green jobs won’t save the world or the economy I didn’t say they would, but what they do will be beneficial all around. One of those rare win/win/win situations. What is your solution to creating jobs that are actually productive to replace the thousands we are losing all around the world on a daily basis, more bureaucrats? Maybe more consultants? Politicians? I’d be interested in your thoughts.

stephen, ACT has a problem too. Why is it that they are languishing at the bottom of the polls despite having been in existence for so many years? Why have they failed to connect with the electorate?

I honestly don’t know the answer to this one even though I voted for them in the last 3 elections. It beats me, frankly.

I am serious when I say that I do not want to start a political party. I don’t have the huge policy knowledge that would be required for a start…. BUT I do think that the time is right for a new party to be established along the lines I outlined previously…. and maybe it HAS to be *new* in order to connect with the electorate in a fresh way, untainted by all the dancing, yellow jacket roger-the-dodgerism that ACT carries around.

Remember how huge the New Zealand Party was?

Owen, the atmospheric methane (CH4) concentrations have increased by about 150% (1,060 ppb) since 1750. The present CH4 concentration has not been exceeded during the past 420,000 years. The increase over that period isn’t due to wetlands, given the amount of wetland has anthropogenically decreased since 1750. The increase is clearly due to human activity, and in particular, agriculture.

And when you talk about agricultural animals “recycling” carbon as methane, you are seeking to misdirect. One kg of methane has the same greenhouse potential as 25 kg of carbon dioxide over a 100-year period. So it’s not “recycling” at all. Every kg of atmospheric carbon dioxide fixed by grass from the atmosphere and converted by agricultural animals to methane has, over a 100 year period, 25 times the impact of the carbon dioxide it replaced.

Therein lies the problem.

edit: …though convincing Alan Gibbs and Doug Myers to help you instead of ACT might help a bit

Those have occurred on a regular basis since the time of Noah….What this was supposed to be about was heating all over the globe. Instead we have COOLING!.

KAYA::::::::Germany sounds a good role model. How are their un-employment figures going with all those jobs created.?

The chuckle comes from the fact that all of this political backstabbing and playing off of “special interests” was always on the cards ever since we signed up to the useless and moronic Kyoto Treaty. It was inevitable because the whole AGW “solution” had, at it’s heart, two mutually contradictory ideas. The first was that this was a problem created by all of modern society. The second was that it therefore required a society-side solution, meaning that everyone would have to share a likely equal burden, either directly or indirectly.

Several years ago on this site I got into a squabble with righteously outraged warminister and compared the AGW debate with the “Population Bomb” and “Club of Rome” doomsayers – which prompted this comment:

I love the way you’ve tried to draw parallels between the global scientific (and growing political) consensus about global warming with some specific now discredited ideas from days gone by. Like they’re even comparable!

and my response:

Where they’re comparable is that an entire movement took up the arguments en masse and used them to relentlessly promote watered-down socialist claptrap about how to control a society.

Where they’re comparable is that a mainstream media that consisted largely of people with no scientific training or qualifications and that was increasingly operating on the “if it bleeds, it leads” approach fell over themselves to tell their audiences about the fearful, doom-laden future that awaited us unless we did what the movement suggested.

Where it may be comparable is that the vast masses of “the people” pretty much tuned out the hysterical squawking, agreeing only in opinion polls and dinner parties where it could result in warm, gooey, mutual admiration that cost nothing. When it came to, pardon the expression, – the rubber meeting the road – people just were not prepared to sacrifice their lifestyle.

It’s happening again and while I sympathise with those who are angry with Key I would also point out that one of the things that traders are noted for is not fighting against idiocy but figuring out how to make a buck from it. The variation here in NZ is that votes, not dollars, are at stake. But the principle is the same.

In short, John Key probably realised a long time ago that there was no point in allowing either the Greens or Labour to create a wedge issue when the fact was that they would be the ones who would have to wear the punishments inflicted by the public when the real costs of ‘fighting climate change’ turned up.

That will be the case in spades should the wet dream of many lefties come to fruition in future election – a stronger Green party and a weakened Labour party in a Coalition government that continues on down the ‘sustainability’ track – with all that implies for additional taxes and regulations on private transport, massive ‘investments’ in public transport, harsh restrictions on conventional power generation and subsidies/tax incentives on sustainable power. All of this with massively increased costs for every single person in NZ.

Of course a lot of lefties know this and are shit scared of the public reaction, which is why it has always been so important to have bipartisan consensus.