Posts by Tom Semmens
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OnPoint: Budget 2013: Bringing Down the…,
Whilst I understand the frustration of having students with debts flitting off all footloose and carefree on their OE, threatening to put them under some sort of house arrest if they dare set foot back in their homeland is a really, really bad idea. However, it is a near perfect distillation of the hubristic, vengeful and authoritarian spirit which animates this government from top to bottom. For a start, the ones who will not be coming home at all anymore represent the best and brightest of their generation, who we can ill afford to lose. Whether we like it or not, parental income is an excellent indicator of your future income and banishing pretty young Sarah from Epsom to foreign exile in London or Sydney or Hong Kong is to also permanently impoverish the future tax base. The bottom line is the country needs these young people more than they need New Zealand.
Also, applying the sort of punitive measures that get Paula Bennett all moist when she does it to beneficiaries is not going to play well in the middle class suburbs, where such ill-thought out punitive measures are only applauded when they don’t apply to them. Our eponymous Sarah tearfully trecounting how she was detained trying to return to her high flying lawyer’s job in Hong Kong after attending her granny’s funeral because she owes 20K (which she won’t be able pay back on the dole in NZ) might get the superannuated tall poppy losers of the right wing talkback Taliban frothing in their baying approval, but it is going to be as popular as a pork chop in synagogue in places which are National party heartlands.
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Joyce has now confirmed in interviews that the 230 is a negotiated figure
Last night Mary Wilson had an interesting interview with the Aussie dude who heads Sky City. 230 was a political number, symbolically no more than the number agreed under the Clark government. However, it was clear that the real prize from Sky Citys POV was the extension of the license. He also hinted there may be a guarantee that no one else will operate a casino in Auckland. So 25+ years of monopoly control of gambling in Auckland is what Sky City really wanted, and got.
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Craig, what I have had enough of is exquisitely detailed attempts to beat up a story about the Labour party finances masquerading as the PAS “legal beagle”. Graeme Edgler has managed to find the time to craft almost 1350 words on this non-issue, yet he is completely silent about the law being for sale to Sky City, or the outrageous extension of the criminal law to target anti-mining protesters. AFAIK this post would be far more at home as a guest post on Kiwiblog (where, hey presto! it has been more or less reproduced in toto, approvingly).
Even better, every party donation should be accompanied by a photo of both sides of the credit card with the donor’s name, address and PIN, available for public browsing.
Heh. Actually, what would be better than that would be if the only source of party financing allowed came from party membership fees. that would force our political parties to actually care about having members.
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Labour said they were not sure, then they declared it, the Electoral Commission accepts that. The end. The only one getting his knickers in a twist over it is you. I am not interested in your "questions", because I'm not buying what I think is a partisan attempt to hawk a beat up. Try it on with Patrick Gower, that dork always seems interested in making mountains out of molehills.
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I'm sorry Craig, but I'm just not buying these sorts of pious little Goody Two-Shoes routines that always just coincidentially happen to focus on Labour's finances anymore.
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First, Labour’s Party Secretary is...
Blah blah blah.
Personally, I think you are blowing sanctimonious smoke out of your arse for party political reasons.
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OK, with the (honourable) exception of I/S, who retains a charming ability to appear to be as outraged at a local city councillor double parking and wiggling off the ticket as he is over the use of chemical weapons in Syria.
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Political parties in NZ tend to run on the smell of an oily rag and don't have money to retain legal departments for interpretations.
The Electoral Commission has accepted there was no intention to deceive, and as a bequest it hardly falls into the category of corporate donations that National launders through it's so-called "blind" trusts, which is a real, actual ongoing political corruption scandal. Like I said, the only people who seemed interested in trying to whip this up are National's online dirty tricks brigade and their usual cyphers.
BTW there appears to be no donuts. :(
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which has disappointed a number of people.
This number of people being exclusively made up of online National Party activists.
I am so concerned that now I am wondering if the boss is going to bring in donuts for morning tea again today or not.
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Hard News: Competing for Auckland,
I don’t believe has declared any intent politically
New Zealanders have traditionally had a strong anti-establishment mentality and I suspect a Dotcom party party opposed to the massive extensions to the surveillance state proposed by our friendly fascist prime minister could do quite well with the youth/geek/libertarian crowd, especially looking at how such “pirate” parties have become repositories for anti-establishment youth votes overseas. Also, if Kim Dotcom managed to get elected I suspect he would prove to be a natural politician and politically the idea of extraditing a serving member of parliament to the United States for anything short of murder is explosive. The public wouldn’t stand for it. So if I were he, I would consider getting electedas another way to twist the knife into the Key administration and a great way to help avoid extradition.