Movie Review: In Time

Last night I went and saw In Time, and despite the name of this post I wont really review it, I’ll just discuss some of the concepts that the movie brought up.

The one film criticy thing that I will say though is that Justin Timberlake the worlds best actor. All though the movie was better than I was expecting.

Well the basic concept of this film is that, every single person on the planet has been genetically engineered to have a biological clock inside them, except the time on people’s clock is transferable. So in this world time has become money. The way it works is that when you are born you have one year on your clock, which starts ticking at the age of 25 at which point you stop ageing. So you and me and most people hear that and realise that means that the average life expectancy is going to be 26 (baring accidents) which makes me suspect that the people who genetically engineered this system into us were arseholes.

And now a bit of a plot summary which I will hopefully hide so as to not spoil the movie for anyone (I’m not sure if this will work for e-mail subscribers so stop reading now if you want to see the movie)

Supporting the Locked Out ANZCO workers.

 A little over a month ago, management of CMP Rangitikei a subsidiary of ANZCO locked out 111 of their workers. The reason that these workers are not allowed to go back to work is because they refused to take a 23% pay cut, instead offering a ‘mere’ 10% pay cut. These workers are now struggling  to out last the management at the lamb processing facility. ANZCO has sales in the region of $1.2 billion a year, while the average worker earns between $43,000 and $46,000 a year.

It is this simple disparity that gives this multinational corporation the advantage in this struggle and why the workers need the help of people like you. Money is of course essential, the easiest way to donate is to call 0900 lockout to make a $5 donation. It is also possible to adopt a family giving them either food or money to sustain themselves while they are locked out of work, more details ca be found here.

Another way you can help out is by joining a picket at noon this Saturday outside McDonalds five cross roads. MCDonalds is one of ANZCO’s largest customers and we hope that by putting pressure on local franchise owners that McDonalds will step in to straighten out their suppliers ethics.

Election Campaign Roundup

 Well the election is over, I have very mixed feelings about the result I am very happy with the Green party result, very surprised by NZ First and very disappointed about what looks like being the next government.

Personally I am holding out hope for the specials delivering the Greens another seat at National’s expense and turning Peter Dunne into an overhang MP, if that happens there is a decent chance that we can take the hard edge of some of National’s policies. I’m also waiting on the specials in Hamilton East, it will only take a few more votes for me before we get my candidate fee back, which would be nice.

In Hamilton East we managed 11.3% of the vote which is certainly not a number to be sneezed at. Of course very little of this is down to me and I would like to thank a few people, firstly D. (I decided not mention people’s names in case they do not want the world to know them) for co-coordinating our leaflet delivery and all the  people who went out delivering them. L. who organised the sign waving on the sides of the road, sorry I couldn’t be there for more of them but a big thank you to everyone that did make it. Then there is Ms. J. Who organised the putting up and taking down of billboards and again a large number of people who did the putting up and taking down. A really, really big thank you to C. for her awesome fundraising efforts, I feel that fundraising was one of our success stories in Hamilton this election and I have to thank everyone who came to one of our events and gave us even a little bit of money, every single cent was well used. GoC as a whole also deserves a big thankyou for getting out and doing so much as well as trying to engage with student population throughout the year at a variety of events and stalls, keep up the good work guys. M.R. also deserves a thankyou for organising the scrutineers, I am sorry that I threw it upon you at the last-minute but I am glad that you managed to make everything go really smoothly, at that point in the campaign I simply didn’t have the time or energy to organise much of anything. And again the scrutineers need to be thanked.

Finally I have to thank S. my campaign manager who was absolutely exceptional, I really could not have done it without her, for the last week and a half of the campaign we were both putting in 18 hour days and it doesn’t matter how hard I am willing to work I can not make a day 36 hours long. So a big thank you to S. she is at least as deserving of any credit for our success as me.

I’m sure I have forgotten some people, but I am just so grateful to so many people and I still have a massive headache from stress and lack of sleep so you will have to forgive me. I would also like to thank the Hamilton Greens for their present to me, Mr Greenheart (pictured) and a book, with a lot of very lovely comments in it.

Now on to my favourite bit, the number crunching. I set as my personal target 20% of the vote in South-East Hamilton, I felt that if we could get this sort of result then we might be able to get 10% of the party vote across the Waikato. Unfortunately I fell a bit short, the Green party managed 17% of the vote south of Boundary road, which while not quite as high as I was hoping for is still a significant improvement from the 10.9% in that area in 2008.And for those interested the Waikato wide party vote was 8.3%

For those interested the vote in Claudelands went from 9.3% to 14%,  Hamilton East 11.4% to 18%, Hillcrest 11.4% to 19% and Silverdale from 11.5% to 16%. Interestingly this difference broadly follows the areas I doorknocked, I put the most effort into Hillcrest, then Hamilton East, Claudelands and in Silverdale I talked to comparatively few people. I was afraid that my doorknocking would work to get me votes but not my party but it seems like this was not the case.

I think this is a great platform to build on for the next three years, I have a few idea on how to go about building from here but they can wait for another day…

The difference between the Greens and Labour

Quite often through this campaign voters have asked me why they should support the Greens over Labour, and every time I give them a very simple answer that i believe goes right to the core of  each party. I tell them that it doesn’t matter which party wins the election The Greens will spend the next three years trying to get our policies implemented, on the other hand Labour will either win and bring in a lot of their policies or lose and do nothing for the next three years.

You see while the Greens are focused on policy Labour is focused on government, every policy we get implemented we celebrate as a victory. Labour’s victories can only possibly come three years apart.

Sue Moroney from labour has been going around saying that only a vote for Labour will stop asset sales, because Labour is the only party to have ruled out working with National, of course if Labour do not win the election then they will not be able to stop National selling our assets, of course if National win the Greens will still be there trying to get National not to sell them, and of course when the Greens succeed Labour will try claiming it was somehow due to them.

If National win on Saturday Labour will not be able to do anything to bring in their policies because they are dinosaurs, they are stuck in the FPP mindset. It simply would not occur to them to compromise, to work with parties across the house to try to get their policies implemented. Labour have managed to slowly adapt since the introduction of MMP, but they still see parliament as being made up of two camps, national and their minor parties and Labour and their minor parties, this tribalism has no place in a proportional representation system and is holding National and Labour back from making policy gains while in opposition.

Of course the Greens have only ever been in opposition and we have still managed to consistently get policies implemented and we will continue to do so whether we are in opposition or government, that is why the Greens are a more useful vote than Labour.

Thoughts on the MMP Referendum

 Long time readers will know that as well as being a big supporter of the Green message I am also really interested in the referendum on MMP, At the moment my intention on Saturday is still to vote to Keep MMP, it is the only system that treats all voters equally, and STV for my preferred alternative.  However  since becoming a candidate I have gained some new insights on how I think these systems will work in practice.

Essentially before I was a candidate I preferred MMP to STV but not by much, I thought that MMP’s simplicity was almost outweighed by the greater control that STV offers voters in selecting their representatives. I now believe that I was wrong, MMP is clearly the best system in the referendum New Zealand.

The major problem I see with STV is the sheer number of candidates, at the moment a candidates meeting in Hamilton  has 3-8 candidates each speaks for between one and five minutes presenting their platform. Under STV there would be 4-5 candidates from each of National, Labour, and the Greens with a smaller number from the other parties, since each candidate would be in competition with their own party as well as with other parties candidates meetings could well have 20+ candidates, at which point they would be down to 30seconds-two minutes to present their platform with less time for questions. I think that the greater power given to voters is heavily outbalanced by the lesser amount of information they will have available to make their decision.

In terms of the other systems FPP and PV do not give every voter an equal say in determining how parliament is formed and both marginalise people who do not agree with the views of the two major parties.

Then there is SM which has party lists and all the issues that goes with that and like MMP requires two votes, but unlike MMP does not treat everyone equally, ie. it has all the problems of MMP but it doesn’t have the benefits.

SM is of course the system preferred by the vote for change campaign, I think their  hope that is the people who want to keep MMP will choose it as their second choice and then they have three years to convince all the FPP that SM is actually worth trying out, which will fail because most of the people who prefer FPP do so because they know it and it is simpler than MMP, while SM is unknown and just as complicated as MMP (which is to say not very). Funnily enough the SM people also rely on a bit of misinformation to get people to try to support that system.

Firstly they seem to think that electorate MP’s would be more responsible to their electorates under SM than under MMP, of course candidates for electorates are selected by the party so not following the party line  could lose an MP their seat without regard to whether it is a list or electorate seat. that is why their have been very few instances of electorate MP’s voting different to their party. SM would make no difference to the way parties select candidates and so would make no difference to how electorate candidates currently vote.

Then they seem to think that under SM parties would suddenly start using their party lists to promote people that represent ‘minority interest groups or have certain expertise’ instead of ‘party hacks and failed electorate MPs sneaking back into Parliament’. Again I have to point out that parties lists are determined by those parties who have a variety of reasons for doing it the way they do, this will not change under SM and I doubt that the political parties will suddenly start using party lists differently.

Of course if MMP gets more than 50% of the vote we can suggest changes to it, hopefully including what counts as a ‘democratic’ selection process to try and shift the behaviour of parties and MP’s thereby nullifying two of vote for change’s objections.

I was going to criticise the vote for changes criticism of MMP but instead I will leave you with one of their quote (emphasis theirs)

MMP is labeled as a proportionate system.  In process it is – if a party wins say 10% of party votes, it will win approximately 10% of the seats in Parliament.  But a proportionate process does not mean proportionate results.

Actually it does…

Then there is a very misleading advertisement put out by the vote for change, basically claiming that MMP will only work with at least 120 MP’s while all the other systems can work with 99. Obviously vote for change haven’t heard of the National Assembly for Wales which has 60 members and uses MMP, but I’m sure I heard them say something about the Welsh assembly earlier this year, oh I remember they got a wee bit confused and started using it as an example of how much better SM is to MMP. So I suppose they can still plead ignorance, after all they don’t even check which system the Assembly uses before they start talking about it. So the electoral commission is looking like it will issue a media statement about it soon.

An update on oil

An oil spill of the coast of Brazil, this photo was taken on the 12th, on the 15th the Chevron admited it might be coming from their rig (the red dot) currently the spill is growing at a rate of 300 barrels a day, and this is not the only oil spill in the world at the moment.

Yesterday we released our oil spill protection plan. it is a solid plan that recognises the importance of our coastal environments to our economy and identity. there are five main points

1. Introduce a moratorium on deep sea oil drilling – You all saw the difficulty the Americans had in stopping a leak at the bottom of the ocean when they have a lot more skilled workers and a lot more money and equipment than us. If there is a leak at a deep sea oil well we will simply have no hope of containing the environmental damage. we need to come up with better techniques for dealing with these situations before we can even think of risking our environment in this way.
2. Set up an independent inquiry into the Rena response- Really I expect this is something any party will want, it is a chance to learn from our mistakes.
3. Implement Higher standards for  New Zealand coastal shipping – Foreign flag of convenience ships have been legal since the early 1990′s in New Zealand,basically it is a way of getting around our maritime standards, quite often these ships have poor health and safety and labour standards, obviously some reform needs to be made in this sector.
4. More resources for Maritime New Zealand – Last year Maritime New Zealand turned down a multi-purpose response vessel as being too expensive, they have also had trouble recruiting and retaining staff because of the costs involved. by ring-fencing the fuel excise tax for recreational boat users and increasing the oil pollution levy we can get maritime New Zealand the resources it needs.
5. Reduce the risk to the taxpayer- it is unfair that we the taxpayers of New Zealand have to pay when a private company starts wrecking our coastline, we want to increase the maximum liability of a shipping company like the Rena’s from $12 million up to $29 million and support efforts by countries like Australia to increase this further. we also want to increase the compulsory insurance for oil rigs from $30million up to $200 million.

Seems fairly practical to me and clearly designed to put the interests of New Zealanders and their environment first. Compare that to National’s secret talks with Anadarko one of the companies behind the deep water horizon spill

And then there is the government’s energy strategy, it actually acknowledges peak oil and rising fuel prices, drill for more oil in riskier places. the problem is that we are too dependent on oil, the plan should be to wean ourselves off the fuel while protecting ourselves from the worst environmental impacts of the substance. Instead the government wants more oil.

No one has ever quite smoking by buying more packs and we will not quit oil untill it is too late if our solution is to keep on drilling for more.

Today was a good day

I thought people might like to know a little bit about what it is like being a candidate so I thought I would share my day with you.

I suppose my day really started when I was having a shower and I got a text from Robert Moore the Taranaki King-Country Green candidate, telling me that he was crook and couldn’t speak at a hospitality forum at 10am. Unfortunately I couldn’t do it because either myself or my campaign manager had to meet the returning officer at the same time and my campaign manager couldn’t make that. Our Taupo candidate was in Rotorua for the morning and Cameron Harper was representing us at the University of Waikato’s Library opening, so unfortunately that meant that there was no Green party speaker at that meeting. *sigh*

Anyway then I race off to talk to my returning officer, I get told all the terrible things that could happen to me or my party if I or someone on my team screws up on election day. My campaign manager makes an appearance, just long enough to tap me on the shoulder before she has to leave, it is good to know that she cares.

That finishes about 11:30 so I wander down to garden place where there is a media stunt to try and get the importance of voting across to more young people. There were representatives of the Youth council, Young Labour, the Greens on Campus, the Campaign for MMP and myself, Cameron Harper and Tim Macindoe representing the Greens and National. I have to say that it is great to see cross party support on encouraging young people to vote, I’m a great fan a appropriate decision making and although my preferences are clear the more people vote the happier I will be with the result of any election.

Which brings us to about quarter to one, Cameron and I head on over to uni where the Greens on Campus are having a stall, talk to a few members of the public but with uni on holidays and the library now open the crowds have moved on, if the WSU weren’t having a sausage sizzle right next to us we may have got no one come by. But I hang around for a bit, let some of our amazing Green on Campus volunteers have a bit of a break, while I’m here I also get a phone call inviting me to another speaking engagement (which reminds me I have to e-mail her).

Anyway I couldn’t hang around for ever I had another public meeting on tonight at the Discovery Christian Centerwhich I needed to prepare a speech for and since they had given me some topics that would be asked I figured I should do a bit of research around them, plus I needed to have breakfast.

So I get home about 3:00pm around 30 e-mails have arrived since I left this morning, work my way through them, I then get my speech from the Taurima Hostel and my speech from The St Andrews Church meetings combine them and modify it slightly to get my Discovery speech (which I wont post because it is very similar to those two) I have time for a bit of policy reading before I start rehearsing my speech/ watching the news.

Then off to the Meeting, not the largest meeting I have had, nor was it the friendliest audience I have ever had but tonight’s was my favourite meeting so far, I’m not entirely sure why I think it might be because there was actually some decent policy discussion going on and you could see quite clear differences between the parties coming through. I think also the fact that I could choose not to answer questions relaxed me a bit more than usual, I was quite nervous, the podium they gave us was small and I noticed about a minute into my opening speech that my hand was causing it to shake, then I couldn’t think of anywhere better to put my hand. I have been to a dozen of these meetings now and I still get the shakes.

But what made this a good day was that after the meeting when I was talking to people in the audience, the person who had organised the event comes up to me and tells me that he overheard some say that their opinion of the Greens had changed because I seemed like such a good young man. And frankly to me that makes all the work and the shakes and the awkwardness and being a huge huge distance out of my comfort zone worth it.

So yes today was a good day.

Speech at St Andrews – 6/11

Below is the speech I gave today at St Andrews church, It was probably the largest meeting so far and it was stressful. The thing was at the end of the speeches there was an hour and a half of questions, each question was supposed to be brief and was to be directed at three of the seven candidates who only had 30 seconds to answer them, so there were a lot of questions on a variety of topic and the Greens being the clear third party I probably had to answer about 2/3rds of them, maybe half David Bennett had a lot asked to him directly. And they weren’t just generic questions either, “would you support a move to make the appeals process more inquisitorial and bring in a better public defence service based on the recommendations found in a report you haven’t read by a society you haven’t heard of?”  30 second answer of the top of your head, go.

Still I think I did okay, I realised about half way through that the front  row were mostly supporters of the  right but once I started looking past them there were a lot of faces that were agreeing with what I was saying. I also learned that I have a Grey power meeting tomorrow morning, with under 24 hours notice I will not be preparing another speech for that one.

 

I’m Nick Marryatt from the Green Party, I’m here to tell you all what the Green party intends to do with you party vote after the election.  We have three priorities this election

Our First priority is to create more jobs for New Zealanders. We have produced a pragmatic economic plan that to do this, by investing in the clean technology sector we can make our economy more prosperous while enhancing our clean, green image which is our greatest asset on the world market.

We intend to create jobs by expanding the home insulation scheme to rental properties. As well as creating jobs this will allow people to save money on their power bills and improve the health of the nation.

We also want to dramatically increase the funding for conservation, Hiring more staff to work trapping pests, protecting our rivers and preserving our natural environment.

Which brings me to our second priority, to clean up our waterways. Currently many of our rivers and lakes are not safe to swim in.

This is a very sad legacy to be leaving to future generations. And that is why the Green party has a broad range of policies to try and clean up our Rivers and Lakes. These include tougher regulations around what goes into our waterways and planting trees along stream banks to limit the runoff that enters our Rivers.

Our final priority is to try to dramatically reduce child poverty in New Zealand, currently about 1 in 4 children live in poverty, this is unacceptable and has to stop now.

Too reach this goal we are committed to immediately raising the minimum wage and keeping  it pegged to 2/3 of the average wage so that the poorest members of our society will never again be left behind while the rich get richer.

We intend to extend the Working For Families scheme to beneficiaries. At the moment a person who loses their job and has a family dependent upon them faces a double blow, first they lose the income from their job and then they lose their income from the working for families scheme, of course this comes at a time when the family probably needs more support from the government not less.

And to pay for all of this a number of our proposals are revenue gathering, we want to bring in a capital gains tax to spread the tax burden around more equally, we want to end the subsidies to polluters that are currently in the Emissions trading scheme. We can also raise money by charging for the use of our natural resources, the Green party would like to increase mining and oil royalties and bring in a charge on commercial users of water, this would also help to ensure that these resources are used more wisely.

It is our hope that by creating a sustainable and prosperous economy, cleaning up our waterways and reducing child poverty that we will create a New Zealand that everyone can agree is richer, where everyone has a far greater quality of life.

If you are of a like mind then I hope that you give the Greens your party vote this election.

Student radio frequency in Hamilton

Totally stole this from the facebook page but isn't it awesome.

If you haven’t yet heard the future of the 89.0fm frequency has been decided and it is going to community radio. Unfortunately this leaves Hamilton as being the only major city in new Zealand without a high power student radio frequency. But don’t worry some bright sparks have started a campaign to try and get a decent frequency for students.

I only really listened to student radio for a short time, I discovered the original ContactFM the year before it became UFM(due to the stupid National Party and VSM), contact was absolutely amazing and since UFM was not that much worse I stuck with the frequency during it’s slow decline through the Generator and Backbeat before I finally gave up after a little bit of RushFM.

Unfortunately this left me with no radio station to listen too, I live too far away from uni to get the new contact, although I have tuned in while near campus. The commercial radio stations are simply boring. The music they play is unoriginal, I have no problem with radio stations playing popular music but every once in a while I like something a little bit different just to push people a bit out of their comfort zones otherwise how will we ever find new genres that we like? And do not get me started on commercial radio DJ’s. I actually ended up listening to National Radio pretty much all the time.

But beyond that there is the local cultural benefits that have a student radio station will have, local bands will get more exposure and a wider audience, as will university events and culture. Frankly both are in need of a wider audience there is IMHO a lot of talent that is going unnoticed and far to many developments in student life that remain unknown by students.

So yes, like this Facebook page, I am eagerly awaiting the next step in the campaign for a student radio frequency in Hamilton.

My Speech to Forest and Bird- Waikato Environment Center 27/10

I’m just back from a ‘vote for the environment panel’ that was held tonight, we were asked to discuss the opportunities we saw coming from climate change with particular regard to our environment and the necessity of social equity. This is my attempt to represent the Green party on this issue, it seemed to go down well although a couple of people did come up to me afterwards and told me I should speak slower, which I will try to do in the future.

I think probably the best measure of my success was that the Hamilton East MP David Bennett chose to start his speech by saying that he would like to agree with almost everything I said.

There were also some good questions asked, on the cuts to DoC staff, the MMP Referendum, why National and NZ First candidates described climate change as ‘contentious’ , one on New Zealand exporting our rubbish and recycling, and the final question on what effect the possible sale of state owned assets will have on the environment. Apologies if I have forgotten one.

___________________________________

I’m Nick Marryatt from the Greens and I’m here tonight to tell you all what opportunities the Green party sees resulting from dealing with climate change. As you all can imagine this wasn’t easy. If the Simpsons are to be believed the Chinese have the same word for crisis and opportunity, and personally I have found it a good exercise to think of climate change as an opportunity rather than a crisis.

So I came up with a few of what I think are opportunities that may result from climate change.

First I would like to talk about the environment and conservation side of this issue. The conservation problems in New Zealand are large and complex, climate change will not make them any simpler. The only environmental good that I can see resulting from dealing with climate change is that we will have to be very good at preserving our ecosystems and that seeing the costs of doing so will hopefully get society more focused on ensuring that our actions are sustainable.

There is also an opportunity here to create jobs for New Zealanders, it is Green party policy to employ a lot more conservation workers. I have to mention that this is counter to the current government’s action in conservation. We need more conservation workers not less.

These aren’t the only jobs that dealing with climate change could create; principally there is the clean technology sector which is growing internationally at a dramatic rate. I had a look on the business.govt.nz  website last night and this is part of what it had to say about clean technology

“New Zealand is well positioned to take advantage of the global transition towards clean technology. We have abundant resources for renewable energy, smart ideas and the engineering and scientific capability to deliver cost effective cleantech solutions.

It goes on to say that a number of New Zealand firms are already finding success in the international market. It is the Green parties plan to get behind these companies and others that could also perform well internationally to create jobs while creating a much cleaner and sustainable New Zealand.

Tonight you will probably hear people talk of finding a balance between the environment and the economy. What this viewpoint fails to see is that our economy and our environment are not two competing entities. In most respects our environment is our economy and our economy is our environment. Creating a sustainable environment will lead to a sustainable economy.

Our biggest money earner is now tourism; a lot of the tourists that come to New Zealand do so because of our environment. Dairy farming relies on clean water, clean soil and a stable climate to succeed, we cannot afford to separate our economic success as a country from our environmental success, and I mean afford in every sense of the word.

But  this is not the only way that being Green enhances New Zealands economy, being seen as clean, green and safe is an important driver of much of our export success, Even when it is slightly inaccurate, being a leader on climate change could enhance this brand.

A strong lead on climate change will also give us the chance to enhance our diplomatic image, we are often seen as a country that will stick up for the small nations, many of whom will face some of the most devastating consequences of climate change. An improved diplomatic image is an opportunity for New Zealand

I would just like to mention one final point which is very important and I have so far neglected to mention explicitly, that is the importance of equity in finding a solution to climate change. We all know that there are huge inequalities in our society and that in dealing with any problem those with more resources have a greater ability to avoid the downsides and a greater ability to take advantage of the opportunities. It would be unfair for a government to allow something like climate change to make the gap between the rich and the poor even larger.

I have spoken a lot about the creation of jobs in dealing with climate change, but it is important to note that these jobs must be well paid and the money gained from higher export returns must be distributed fairly, otherwise we will not see a more sustainable future. The desire for a decent standard of living will continue to be an excuse for environmental degradation and short term thinking so long as inequality remains.

And with that note I would like to end, but just know that there are silver linings to climate change and that with decent government action and co-ordination we can make the most of these opportunities. That is why I hope you will all give the Greens your party votes next month.