Posts by Luke Williamson
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Hard News: Reporting Afghanistan,
"But ... those who pay the top personal rate fit into some core and critical categories for our economy. They include doctors, entrepreneurs often, scientists, engineers, lawyers, accountants, school principals, nurses," he said.
Ah, hello . . . I'm married to a nurse and therefore know quite a few of them. Show me the nurse that falls into the income bracket of any of these people (excl school principals who might go over 70k in big schools). JK is so fundamentally out of touch with anyone earning less than 250k pa that it makes me sad to think of him calling the shots.
Between my incredibly well-paid part-time nursing wife and I, we bring in just under 100k total and our tax break will be 3.67% of sweet FA. We don't struggle but we don't get ahead either. On the last tax cut, when JK suggested that I put the extra into shares, my tax actually went up by $9 a fortnight because of a change in ACC. However, they are doing what they said they would do when voted in so can't complain about dishonesty. Just getting a bit sick of all the platitudes around tax cuts that are meaningless to those that need them - that's folks earning less than I do. -
Hard News: What we have really lost,
| it's my understanding tuhoe accepted money from crown for lake waikaremoana 3 times, 1919, 1940 and then in the 60s or 70s.
Easy. If I owe you a million bucks, but I tell you all I'm going to give you is $100, take it or leave it, maybe you'd take it but keep coming back too. It's not a negotiation between equally powerful parties, so one solution for the weaker party is to keep chipping away.
Quite right. And JK saying, "No, sorry" doesn't magically make the issue go away or resolve once and for all. It merely delays the process of sorting this claim out. Tuhoe have waited 150-odd years and a few more won't matter.
I do find it disturbing that they were obviously given the impression that the deal was done and they would get Te Urewera back, only to have it pulled at the last moment, thus making the situation worse rather than better.
Was this going to be treated in the same way as the return of land around Okahu Bay where it was returned to Maori then gifted back to the people of Auckland? -
NZ On Air also does things like Nick Ds excellent travel/music show (forgive me, I'm hopeless on names) doesn't it? That represented a good mix of modern media at work.
With respect to the unit cost of the albums - surely the point is that you can't predict who will be successful and who won't. The Gin Wigmores bring down the average cost for everyone else. Are you trying to say that it is SO obvious that some of those funded won't make a return on the investment that they shouldn't have received grants in the first place? -
To a hip hop beat . . .
"He's got to go!
We all know dis,
We all know dis,
Only difference is,
He's not my mate,
Or someone i need to curry favour with,
So I scream it from the hilltops
But whats the point,
If no one else echoes it through the valleys of power.
(Fading) He's got to go,
We all know dis." -
Hard News: Experiment have seen collisions!!!!!!!!!!!,
I have a gut feeling that Burkhard Heim may yet be proven to be correct. Now that would be very interesting.
Great link thanks.
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Hard News: Experiment have seen collisions!!!!!!!!!!!,
Also, I have an urge to make a joke around the phrase "Higg's Bosoms". But I feel that would be an adolescent thing to do.
I resisted and resisted and then you did it for me Russell. Had something in mind like, "I hear Mrs Higgs' Bosons are enough to put one in a spin".
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Hard News: Transferring wealth to Wellington,
So all those civil service jobs, the 10% higher than Auckland salaries and the whopping extra funding for anything in the arts/culcha in Welly are all paid for by . . . Peter Jackson? Just take some responsibility as the capital city - it's not personal. We all know and like at least one person from Welly.
SORRY! cancel all that - don't want to start an Aucks/Welly battle. -
Hard News: Transferring wealth to Wellington,
A plus for CCOs would be seeing somebody actually make a decision about something in Auckland without running a public "competition" first. "Hey, I know, we're going to come up with a budget for Super Auckland for 2011 but let's have a competition first and see if someone out there can come up with a really good one. Come on kids, get your calculators out and we can all have ownership of the new Super budget." Then we can discuss it sensibly in the pages of the NZ Herald.
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Hard News: Transferring wealth to Wellington,
And by the way, if significant savings wasn't the point of super sizing the city, what was?
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Hard News: Transferring wealth to Wellington,
On the one hand, I really don't want to pay anymore rates than necessary but, on the other hand, I see this transition cocking up so badly that it may just lead to National losing the next election - and that pleases me greatly. Throw in some mining in conservation land, some renewed commercial whaling, a bit of beneficiary bashing and it all looks good for another change of gummint. All we need now is a credible opposition to get off their arses and exploit the opportunity.