Politics The Hangar Politics Thread

[faible]

I may be off the mark but in my view the Alfa male behavior is behind the violence towards women and the brawls you see where blokes get hit and knocked out or killed.

This idea that to be an 'alpha' (which in and of itself is idiotic anyway) you need to behave in a dominant or violent manner is definitely problematic. A real 'alpha' male IMO is one who is confident enough in themselves not to have to resort to violence or putting down others to make themselves feel better or like a big man.

If your first response to conflict with a partner is to punch them, that's a problem, not 'alpha' behaviour.

 

[dank420_]

I prefer alfalfa behaviour

 

[faible]

I prefer alfalfa behaviour

 

[mcgrath_truther]

seeing "alpha" male "influencers" post their s**t online is always remarkably hilarious because they're almost always legitimately the dregs of society, have nothing of value to offer except for being a "high value male" and yet they're popular because losers will look up to them because they think they're special. something i have noticed this year, no student i teach has mentioned andrew tate and it's the start of term 2. last year i constantly got asked questions about him and s**t.

 

[Old Campaigner]

He’s probably not able to put as much s**t on tiktok from the inside of a Romanian jail cell

 

[Darealrath]

feeling depressed and mad at a seeming escalation of violence towards women from men. ballarat this week and sydney just yesterday. what the * is wrong with people that they dream and eventually create violence and hurt for no real reason. it makes me ******* mad.

what sort of education can we bring young people to prevent crimes like this from constantly occurring. it's absolutely sickening, and the racist and anti-semetic fear mongering that occurred after the bondi mall stabbing makes me furious. have we really regressed that far as a society? that something bad happens and it's always a non-white's fault? it's despicable, and the fear mongering losers who stoke those fires for interaction bait deserve to be publicly shamed and vilified for their actions.

Steven Pinker is worth a read if you want to feel a bit better about the world and the historical trend of violence decreasing.

 

[Phone]

I was gonna post this in the non-Essendon thread as it relates to the Tassie stadium , but it's political so I'll do it here

I had a quick look and this was my only post about the Tassie stadium on this forum: https://www.bigfooty.com/forum/thre...all-thread-xvi.1315716/page-249#post-78938894



So I bring this up today because last night, the City of Hobart rejected an application for the construction of a 5 storey social housing project aimed at providing housing for homeless women.



The application was suggested for approval by Council Officers but the Councillors rejected it. The concerns from the local community and hence the Councillors who voted against it, as recorded in the article above, relate to lack of parking and the height of the proposal, which is of course no surprise. The opposition that nearly every housing development has faced since the 1970s across the anglosphere can almost always can be narrowed down to local residents' concern about car parking, traffic and the character of the community (ie new tall buildings will ruin the character).

During this whole Tassie debate there's been an awful lot of chat about how the money dedicated for the stadium should instead be spent on the real problems in Tasmania, mainly health-care and housing. On the second part, as my original post above suggests, invoking housing has never been a serious thing to do. Nearly anyone who follows the housing crisis knows that we have a housing crisis across the anglosphere because new housing in the form of anything other than a single family home is all but illegal in many many parts of the anglosphere. That applies to multi-dwelling private and social housing which almost always requires the consent of local and/or state governments to be allowed to be built, and then that has the flow-on effect of making multi-dwelling public housing all but impossible to build too, because what politician is gonna go from joining in with a "stop over-development!" protest aimed at a private developer to then walking in that same protest and saying here is my idea to build a 6 storey public housing building. The idea that Tasmania could solve their housing crisis by rejecting a stadium was never remotely serious.

One of the Councillors who voted against the proposal went on twitter and tried to do some sob story about how he simply had to vote against it.



Of course, this same Councillor invoked homelessness when criticising the stadium and has a website that says "invest in public housing". And when the time has come to support a social housing incentive, they voted against it. And that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. This is the same pattern we see all across the anglosphere. People who, when it comes down it, don't care about homelessness or housing affordability as much as they care about car parking spots, traffic and stopping tall buildings. In this particular case, we're having a national discussion about violence against women, and then a local council is voting against providing shelter for homeless women because the 5 storey building is too big.



I hope anyone who showed concern about Tasmania's housing crisis can learn a little bit from this. It's not some mysterious person in the shadow that's responsible for the housing crisis. It's the system we've created since the 1970s. And it's the system across the anglosphere

*except for Auckland and Wellington who bless their souls are changing their planning systems

edit: lmao the Councillor in question, Ben Lohberger, has locked their account, no doubt because everyone is slamming them

 

[yodellinhank]

What's your solution, Phone?

 

[Phone]

just this week the NZ housing minister made official a new Wellington District Plan that upzoned a lot of Wellington. this follows Auckland's upzoning in 2016 which has led to a whole lot more housing being built, and rent increases being lower than other parts of NZ

The Post

www.thepost.co.nz

Housing advocates said the plan was probably the most ambitious in the country, going beyond Auckland’s 2016 unitary plan. With the minister’s decision, boundary set-backs for developments of one to three units have been removed, the city’s character areas of villas cut back from 306ha to 85ha, and six-storey apartments allowed within a 15-minute walk of the central city and a 10-minute walk of train stations.

Even in the suburbs where six-storey apartments were not allowed, three medium density townhouses of three storeys would be allowed on most sections.

that's basically the end game. to start upzoning areas that currently don't allow apartments and instead protect sole family buildings. everything else (including nearly every single demand-side subsidy that federal governments put in place) is just window dressing. to be clear, there's a whole bunch of different levers to pull and they should be pulled (I could probably list 15 if I really thought about it), but ultimately it's about allowing for more housing to be built where people want to leave. NSW is making baby-steps with their new TOD program but I question how committed they are to it. local governments and the opposition are obviously opposed, how hard will they fight for it.

in the case of this Hobart one, the proposed development is 1.2km from the Hobart GPO. if a 5 storey building 1.2km from the GPO of Hobart is too high, then I'm not sure Hobart has much hope of building enough housing. Another factor here is what purpose does exposing this social housing proposal to the community consultation serve? Again, it's no surprise that they think it's too high and it'll impact car parking too much. All it does is add barriers to the approval of the housing, which obviously here has led to it being rejected. Any social housing project should be handled differently to other development proposals, and they should be handled by the State Government, not Local Government.

Speaking of Government, although the NZ Housing Minister was able to approve the Wellington Housing Plan, there needs to be acknowledgement that Federal politicians in Australia are basically not able to solve anything. Albo can't upzone parts of Sydney or Melbourne. Q&A the other week had an episode on the Housing Crisis. It had 3 Fed politicians, 1 State Government politician and zero Local Government reps. Unsurprisingly, the panel was mostly useless. Federal politicians seem to face the most pressure to do something about it, but they can't really do much, which is why we get demand-side subsides like the First Home Owner Grant and maybe using Super to fund housing purchases. When you've got 3 people fighting for a slice of pie, it doesn't really matter if you give each of those 3 people an extra fork or two.

Local and State Governments are the politicians to pressure to start doing the change we need. In Sydney, we've had about 50 years of local government pollies complaining about over-development - and win elections.

the whole "Battle of Wellington" saw the local politicians overrule an "Independent Hearing Panel" to ultimately allow for more housing to be built: https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/0...y-thinks-about-the-independent-hearings-panel - that's another we thing we need. To vote for politicians to actually fight for housing. In Sydney, we've had about 50 years of local government pollies complaining about over-development - and winning elections. Many of those places that first fought "over-development" still fight it...and while being whiter, richer and older than the rest of Sydney. I live in a pre-1970s apartment building that is now illegal to build on my street. The sole family home 3 doors down sold for 2.2M and will stay as a sole family home for a very rich person. That's no good.

 

[yodellinhank]

just this week the NZ housing minister made official a new Wellington District Plan that upzoned a lot of Wellington. this follows Auckland's upzoning in 2016 which has led to a whole lot more housing being built, and rent increases being lower than other parts of NZ

The Post

www.thepost.co.nz

that's basically the end game. to start upzoning areas that currently don't allow apartments and instead protect sole family buildings. everything else (including nearly every single demand-side subsidy that federal governments put in place) is just window dressing. to be clear, there's a whole bunch of different levers to pull and they should be pulled (I could probably list 15 if I really thought about it), but ultimately it's about allowing for more housing to be built where people want to leave. NSW is making baby-steps with their new TOD program but I question how committed they are to it. local governments and the opposition are obviously opposed, how hard will they fight for it.

in the case of this Hobart one, the proposed development is 1.2km from the Hobart GPO. if a 5 storey building 1.2km from the GPO of Hobart is too high, then I'm not sure Hobart has much hope of building enough housing. Another factor here is what purpose does exposing this social housing proposal to the community consultation serve? Again, it's no surprise that they think it's too high and it'll impact car parking too much. All it does is add barriers to the approval of the housing, which obviously here has led to it being rejected. Any social housing project should be handled differently to other development proposals, and they should be handled by the State Government, not Local Government.

Speaking of Government, although the NZ Housing Minister was able to approve the Wellington Housing Plan, there needs to be acknowledgement that Federal politicians in Australia are basically not able to solve anything. Albo can't upzone parts of Sydney or Melbourne. Q&A the other week had an episode on the Housing Crisis. It had 3 Fed politicians, 1 State Government politician and zero Local Government reps. Unsurprisingly, the panel was mostly useless. Federal politicians seem to face the most pressure to do something about it, but they can't really do much, which is why we get demand-side subsides like the First Home Owner Grant and maybe using Super to fund housing purchases. When you've got 3 people fighting for a slice of pie, it doesn't really matter if you give each of those 3 people an extra fork or two.

Local and State Governments are the politicians to pressure to start doing the change we need. In Sydney, we've had about 50 years of local government pollies complaining about over-development - and win elections.

the whole "Battle of Wellington" saw the local politicians overrule an "Independent Hearing Panel" to ultimately allow for more housing to be built: https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/0...y-thinks-about-the-independent-hearings-panel - that's another we thing we need. To vote for politicians to actually fight for housing. In Sydney, we've had about 50 years of local government pollies complaining about over-development - and winning elections. Many of those places that first fought "over-development" still fight it...and while being whiter, richer and older than the rest of Sydney. I live in a pre-1970s apartment building that is now illegal to build on my street. The sole family home 3 doors down sold for 2.2M and will stay as a sole family home for a very rich person. That's no good.

The flip side of that is the laws we've got in Victoria to bypass planning. My own experience of this is a nearby mental health facility built almost directly across the road from a primary school. The neighbouring properties have been totally stuffed by overlooking and overshadowing.

I think planning is important, but it needs to be suitable. Driving around the Geelong suburb of Waurn Ponds shits me to tears. It's all 3 bedroom every houses with lockup garages well over half of which are repurposed as gyms/bedrooms and the streets and nature strips are absolutely littered with parked cars. There should be higher density living with communal parking in the area but just isn't.

As someone who hopes to build an accessible house however, I'm inclined to push back against people complaining about big single level homes, preferencing a society where we all live in a more vertical neighborhood. People just don't realize the extra space that needs to go into a house to make it acceptable for people with disabilities.