Posts by rodgerd
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I think there's some reasonable evidence that Prince Andrew is corrupt.
Well, the bit where he carpeted the Special Branch to breate them for investigating BAE would rather suggest some of the most extraordinary behaviour by a royal since Edward VIII divided his time between Mrs Simpson and von Ribbentrop; indeed, if anyone could be called a traitor, wouldn't it be someone who was assisting sales to Saudi Arabia, who are documented as funding al-Qaida?
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Yet it's not unreasonable to scrutinise him personally
I'm pretty disappointed that you seem to think "Julian may be a mean man" is the most interesting thing in all of this, Russell.
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The cry of "treason" has been rather revealing. Even otherwise nominally lefty Americans seem to be very deeply confused about how much the rest of the world owes the United States.
The most interesting bombshell that could come out of this, I suspect, would be if it were confirmed that some of the more sensational claims of the mid-80s were confirmed; if there were evidence that the US & UK obstructed NZ efforts to catch the French terrorists who bombed the Rainbow Warrior, for example.
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And isn't there structural unemployment in NZ anyway?
This is the bit that gets up my nose. English has been on Morning Report saying that there will always be unemployment to a certain level, and it's better for his vision of how the economy needs to run. If it makes the people he cares about richer, they can fucking man up and pay for the "collateral damage" of those polices.
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I hope that as well as looking after those left behind, the two men who survived get the care and support they will undoubtedly require.
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From an old tweet: National Super - 65% of primary benefit spend. Unemployment: 5% Bashing the unemployed is worthless but popular (source).
That's the primary benefit, of course. But that's the fundamental reality: fucing over the unemployed and single parents will save us next-to-nothing in the big picture. It will further entrench the underclass that was grown in the 90s by the market fundamentalists of Ruthenasia. If we were serious about ending "welfare dependency" or reducing the spend on benefits, we'd do something about where two-thirds of the money goes. We aren't. We're interested in kicking the shit out people we've decided to hate, many of whom are victims of structural unemployment we've created to keep wages down for the benefit of the 3% of the country who own 50% of it's wealth.
I've always favoured a Universal Basic Income.
We have one if you're over 65.
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Either methane explosions are an uncontrollable reality of coal mining, in which case the mine should never have been allowed to open at all.
Could you do us a favour by boycotting your computer (made with steel, which requires coal) and power supply (high-tension steel cables require coal) until there's a perfectly safe way of extracting coal? Thanks.
And Sophie, it's good to see there's no tragedy you can't use as grist to the mill that is your hatred of the police.
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Speaking of which, did I really hear that someone in Parliament asked John Key why New Zealand's mine standards weren't up to Australian standards, such as including oxygen supplies?
That was certainly how the CEO put it in the press conference.
If companies that contract to Watercare Services have wee robots that go down our sewers (with cameras attached for viewing), why can't these also go down the mine to get an idea of wtf is going on down there?
Can it go 2.5 km on batteries? Can it do the job without throwing sparks and blowing any survivors to kingdom come? Can in haul cable and so on?
I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'd expect that the teams involved - and, heck, the Watercare people themselves - will have asked those sorts of questions, too.
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to Raymond A Francis,
Something like this, that shows the dangers of mining, is more likely to have an effect on future mines than anything the Greens can wheel out It is a dangerous business
If I were a cynical shitbag looking to use the situation to drum up support for, rather than opposition to, a mining agenda, I'd be (mis-)using it to argue that open-cast mines are much better than shaft mines.
And mining is, indeed, dangerous. I can only respect the folks who got down into tiny holes in the ground to sustain the rest of our lifestyles. I'd likely freak out a few hundred metres in.
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Yeah, I’ve been pushing the Institutional Racism
Pushing the idea that people of Chinese descent are incapable of doing their jobs without resorting to corrupt practise is, indeed, a pretty racist notion.
To further address the whole "MPs must be treated like employees", well, if only.
I'm employed by a financial institution. The rules around perks, travel, etc include:
* Any work with remuneration outside my job must be declared and permission recieved before it's undertaken.
* It can never conflict with my main duties.
* All gifts of value over a trivial amount ($100) must be declared on the corporate gifts register and reported to my manager. I may or may not be allowed to keep them.
* Travel requires a business case, approved by appropriate managers.
* All expenses must be properly reciepted and enumerated, or I have to pay them back.Note there's complete transparency betweent he people paying me. Where can I, as a taxpayer, find a register of all gifts and donations each MP recieves? Who signs off on whether MPs can recieve gifts and donations? Where's the register of expenses? Where are the business cases, if you like, for travel registered, along with the costs realised? Are the claims ever subsequently justified?
Because, you know, if MPs want to be treated like employees, I'm all for it; bring it on.
(My constraints are incredibly loose compared with the average non-MP civil servant; at this year's linuxconf a government employee won the draw for a laptop and couldn't accept it. No ifs, no buts, no maybes.)