Why is New Zealand such a powerhouse of morality?

The Queen of England is your Head of State...right??

giggle

 

You should learn to giggle over stuff that actually matters. The Queen of England doesn't.

And if you want to laugh out loud watch the GOP contenders for the prezzy race.

 

The Queen of England is your Head of State, right?

If I'm wrong, please tell me...

I is just a dumm American and I aint gots no edumacation

 

Also, NZ doesn't have checks and balances between the Executive and Legislative branches.

 

is that meant to be a good or bad thing?

 

I see it as a negative.

 

And you guys buy our lamb after we have fiddled with it.

Besides which, even our sheep have morals. They insist on marriage first.

 

uh...oh...

Awryly is about to open a whole can of whoop azz on you!

 

That's hilarious. You do? Your prezzy belongs to one of your two parties. That's what gets him elected.

We have lively public opinion. If the party in power gets out of hand, we dump it. They know the force the electorate can bring to bear and, with a few exceptions that are catastrophically punished, they behave.

It's called participatory democracy.

 

The President and Congresspeople, however, are not always answerable to the party and vice versa (crossing the floor happens far more frequently in America than in many Westminster governments) and you also get situations where the President governs when his or her own party has a minority in the legislature.

New Zealand does have a saving grace in that, like most Europeanised countries, the populace are on the whole more politically involved than their US counterparts. But from a constitutional standpoint the American model is in many ways superior.

 

a serious question for NZ'ers...do you have 24 hour cable news similar to us in America?

 

A serious answer. We even get Fox News round the clock, unfortunately. You guys don't even get Al Jazeera.

 

A cultural artifice, not necessarily ingrained in the system.

It actually does, American history is constantly marked by contests between Congress and the President - how often do Parliament and the Prime Minister argue? Never.

The American political system needs a bit of tailoring, yes - but the American Republic to date is the oldest functioning democratic republic and has continued to persist through crises that lesser governments would have succumbed to. The Founders knew what they were doing when they wrote the Constitution.

"Barely working" is a better descriptor of the French Third Republic, not the First American Republic.

 

Al Jazeera, we can watch it on the Internet...if we choose.

actually I was wondering if NZ has it's own 24 cable news networks...or are they all from overseas?

 

What's New Zealand? Is it like an amusement park or something?

 

It's a ski-resort.

 

Is there an Old Zealand?

 

Funnily enough, there is!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeeland

 

Wrong. Our government and its opposition(s) argue, in full televised view of the public, all the time.

They all know they are on trial all the time. And that their missteps will be punished.

In an election cycle that is only 3 years, they learn to tread carefully.

 

No no, the government and the opposition may argue - how often does the Prime Minister go against his or her own party?

You are aware of how long American electoral intervals are, right?

 

We have a variety of local TV channels. Many of them just regurgitate Americana but there are a couple that give us flavours that are uniquely New Zealand.

Refreshingly, they relieve us of the unremitting boredom we are doomed to receive on some media from American pulp TV.

 

Interesting...John Key, current Prime Minister of NZ, attended Harvard University in the US.

Apparently he didn't get Awryly's memo that the US sucks....

 

That's a pointless test. The real test is how often a party goes against public opinion. And survives.