Posts by Rich of Observationz
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As somebody isn't into rugby, maybe I could suggest an alternative approach.
There are several hundred thousand people in NZ who *are* really into the sport, enough to buy tickets to quite a few games. Plus all the people (including tourists and expats) who will turn out for NZ/England or whatever.
That equates to maybe $100 million in gate money (plus sponsorship), which should be enough when the cost of the stadiums (which I think the taxpayer has mostly already forked out for as a sunk cost?) is taken off to finance the game quite adequately.
So perhaps the rugby authorities should just cut their coats according to the cloth and accept that they'll never be able to pay the players Beckham type money?
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Well, it's kind of breaking up with itself at the moment. The Flemish have decided they don't like the Francophone Belgians, and it's looking more and more like there won't be a Belgium to move to in the next few years.
The piece of land between France, Germany and the Netherlands will still be there. It might just be two or three different countries. They'll still have the same currency, open borders and free movement of people.
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Michelle Obama's Democratic convention speech.
I thought she was incredible.She isn't running though. And the US constitution doesn't call for a couple to be elected.
I'm not knocking Obama, but I do find a system where the candidate and their partner are assumed to be a political team somewhat presumptive.
It'd be nice to have a Democratic women president whose girlfriend's a Republican, one day.
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...it is absolutely in the interest of the private partner to load all the risk onto the government, and obscure the arrangement behind confidentiality.
As somebody who has worked for various suppliers in the past, it's my view that commercial confidentiality isn't as necessary as is made out. I don't believe that if all public sector contracts were required to be made public, companies would close down their public sector divisions. Costs would maybe increase slightly as suppliers made sure everything was double-checked, but that might be no bad thing.
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I wonder if the Business Roundtable or the Employers and Manufacturers Association would be happy with finding they've hired a member of RAM? Or Density Church with employing a Satanist (or even a genuine Christian).
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If you took a big national or international company, they're unlikely to shut down their whole business because one project ran over.
What they do is to set up a separate company "New Kiwi Rd Building" that can be left to go bust if it all goes wrong. A sensible government would rightly distrust this and demand a guarantee from the parent(s), but governments can be real mug punters in this regard.
See Metronet, one of the London Underground operators, which went bust while it's shareholders rolled happily on.
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Can National categorically promise that it will not sign a deal whereby the government has to pay out any part of the road building costs in the event that the project goes bankrupt?
Even if they didn't sign a deal, would a government really leave a road in a semi-built condition? I don't believe so - they'd have to step in and finish it whatever the contract said.
The only way round this would be to require a performance bond in advance, but I don't see that happening.
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Thanks Sofie (& Steve). I should have expected that Mr Knight would pronounce.
I didn't know that the common law rights of way still existed in NZ and stand corrected.
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If you want an example of what's wrong with our monopoly newspapers, look at this article today in the Dom Post, headlined:
Riot cops quell fighting in inner-city mallThe first para is:
Riot police had to control fights among a crowd of almost 200 people as they tried to arrest a suspected thief wielding nunchaku in Wellington's Manners Mall.
Sounds like large scale rioting eh? I saw this and thought "OMG, what happened last night". Then I saw it was at 4:30pm, when I was at my desk, less than 100m from the carnage. I did notice three police cars around that time - they stopped by the mall for five minutes or so with their lights on before driving off.
What actually looks like happened was that one of our local community care cases, when rumbled for shoplifting, decided to take on store staff kung fu style. When the cops arrived to deal, the crowd of kids that hang out there gathered round to watch the fun (apparently yelling "Taser, Taser"). I'm guessing there was a bit of the usual playground fighting amongst the punks (they do this all the time, as kids tend to).
But our quality local paper pumps it up into the Brixton Riots. Mind you, I'm impressed that they know the correct plural of "nunchak".