Posts by Rich of Observationz
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The issues people are having with secondary ISPs kind of validates my call not to mess about and just go with Telecom. I know some people regard IT acquisition as an opportunity to make a political point, but I prefer to just live with my single point of blame.
Course, if you need to download a terabyte a month, I can see one might be a bit stuck.
Also, I think this also tends to support my view there will always be an incumbent telco which is almost, if not entirely, a monopoly. So the regulation regime should bite that bullet, accept that pricing and service standards need to be regulated and stop pretending that lots of little ISPs will spring up and provide magic green fields of competition.
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If you look at Tiwai as exporting renewable electricity, then it's a good thing for the economy and a good thing for the planet. Unfortunately we aren't at 100% renewable, but we could get there.
I think the answer is to close Huntly, not Tiwai. Genesis should have a business plan to do this. Solid Energy, on the other hand, should have a business plan to shut itself down. We can reconsider coal mining when the oil/gas has run out and we need alternative hydrocarbon feedstock.
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Personally Shep, I would go a lot further and actually introduce a statutory Queens Chain, with public access to a 5m strip along the coast with very few exceptions (container wharfs, main family homes, railways and the like). Having thus ensured public access to beaches, the Foreshore and Seabed laws would have no real purpose and could be repealed.
I guess it would piss off Michael Fay if people could go play on his beaches. Utu, I say.
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The current pseudo-market model for deciding which generators to run doesn't help. It's perfectly feasible to have a computer model that optimizes CO2 output whilst maintaining safe dam levels - that would give a more optimal allocation that a "market".
We also need to have a long term plan to get to 100% renewable. That can involve home solar and the like, but mostly it means a lot more wind and a bit more hydro. There will be an inevitable loss of landscape value from this. I'd favour giving each regional council an energy quota to fill in their choice of locations (those failing to do so would have a wind farm built on their rugby grounds).
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The thing with Tiwai Pt is this. If NZ was on its own separate planet *and* we didn't use any aluminum here, then closing it would help carbon emissions.
As it is, if the smelter shut, then presumably a new or upgraded smelter somewhere else would take up the load. Which would quite possibly run on fossil fuels (unless it was somewhere that has 100% renewable electricity and capacity to spare, it would certainly displace other renewable energy consumers).
So closing the plant wouldn't help global CO2 emissions, and would be most likely to increase them.
(See also: is more immigration an environmental negative? Depends where they come from).
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This is the same fallacy as assuming that government ownership of a company is better because the government doesn't need to make profits. The true cost is the opportunity cost for all that capital, which in this case would be investing in a profitable non-subsidised company with a similar risk-profile
The government is able to borrow money at a substantially lower rate that any other borrower in NZ dollars. That matters to a capital intensive business.
Also, with essential infrastructure the government is providing an implied guarantee of a bailout (as happened with Air NZ).
There is also the argument that the government has accountability for the entities successful operation through the ballot box as well as to the customers, which a private firm does not have. Regulation attempts to replace this, but often doesn't work well - but then nor does the SOE model when it gets to the point that companies pretend they are owned and controlled by management (Solid Energy).
Incidentally, I assume the 2003 "deal" was not on paper - otherwise why is the government not suing Toll?
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That would be Won Kees, I think.
I was thinking more of the local in my old village. Roast duck in black bean sauce and Szechuan King Prawns. Nomm nomm.
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Vesuvio's is still there - at least the one in San Fran was when I last looked. Did NZ have one as well?
I miss English Chinese Food (which is different from Chinese Chinese food, which I think is what we get here).
I don't mind the cafe style familiarity thing. Like getting up at the end of the meal to pay (EFTPOS requires that you either have that, or an expensive and lose-able wireless machine. In Switzerland that causes a culture clash issue, since people *expect* to pay at the table). I think it's when a place creates an expectation of class service (as opposed to nice food) that problems occur. Or if they have some wierd foreign imported kaupapa.
BTW, Wagamama has a *good* foreign imported kaupapa, and is coming to Wellington RSN.
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There is a Texas Lone Star in Wellington. And it sucks.
I'm with Tom on the Floriditas rec. And Fidel's does the best pizza in Wellington. And Rosa the best Malaysian.
The General Practioner does good slightly-ponced-up-Kiwi food, but what is a $70 a head place doing having sports TV on?
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The Swiss are throwing a high-speed railway under the Alps.
The TGV is rated to a 4% gradient. The Raurimu spiral has a maximum grade of 1:52 and, per-wikipedia a straight-line replacement would be 1:24.