Posts by steve black
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PEEDA sounds even worse than PEDA.
As long as no-one finds a file, I'll be happy.
Ha. Graeme beat me to it. I was at lunch (not paid for by taxpayers). As soon as I saw this discussion thread and the PEEDA, I remembered an episode of the IT Crowd where Jen gets a new boyfriend called Peter Fyle...who then gets paged in the airport.
Is it common for a private company to have "Agency" at the end of its name? The first time this story reached me (budget day -- publicaddress.net) I wondered if the name was supposed to sound like a "Government Agency" so the unwary might not spot it in the budget.
Thanks Russell for spotting the bogus poll statistricks. That sort of poor practice is called SLOP.
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A first level analysis of my situation (highly unusual perhaps) using the tax change calculator suggests that I am going to be worse off by $162 per year under the new regime. Does anybody have nice links to speeches by National leaders promising "everybody will be better off" or "nobody will be worse off"? Or were the promises always qualified by "almost" or "hardly anybody"? So who do I complain to? :-)
How I managed to be worse off: I'm retired but a little young to get Super (thus no compensation for the GST rise). I spend all my money on living because I'm past the age of saving. I get no other government assistance because I have too many assets. My pre tax income is about $30,000 so the new regime says I get $275 more per year. Except that a chunk of my income is derived from a rental house and the removal of depreciation means I will pay $437 more in tax with that change. Net loss $162 after reducing my taxes. Big brother has raised the chocolate ration again. The rental house has no mortgage and has run at a profit for years. It makes up about 25% of my portfolio of investments which provide me with income to live on in retirement.
If that isn't enough, I am also facing a huge increase in my ACC levy because I drive a veteran BMW R65. This has a 650cc engine which is less powerful and slower than many modern 250cc motorbikes. But they measure displacement not power (as if either of these that were an adequate measure of risk anyway). I have over 40 years of motorcycle riding with no crashes. Now I don't think I can afford to keep it, and the resale value will have been wiped out. Not amused.
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WHAT?!? I'm shocked to hear that the Crown does a run of commemorative pens.
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Parliament could ultimately tell them to stuff off, but the sight of self-interested politicians messing with the independent recommendations of an expert body ... might get people riled in a way that might not happen if the jack-up occurred inside the machinery of Government.
I'd like to think so, but I live in an evolving super city. I'm not convinced that riled undoes fiddling with independent recommendations of an expert body. ;-)
But more seriously, I'm wondering if you can amplify your comments about the two definitions of what is covered ("an advertisement in any medium" vs "means any form of words or graphics, or both") so I can understand it. Is one broader than the other? Easier to interpret than the other? Is something excluded from one but not the other? Does one automatically adapt to novel ways of communicating which the other one doesn't? Where does music (or just sound -- say a recorded voice message) come in? Thanks.
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Did anybody else notice that
$3.22 - $2.62 = $0.60
which is easily misreported as a 60 percent increase rather than 60 cent increase?
I lack a fake PhD from the UK (mine's real and from the University of Auckland) so I don't think you really need one to spot a likely source of reporting error. But you do need an open mind.
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Ewe-Toob seems to have pulled the trigger and I can't see the other one now either. But have no fear. I was following up something yesterday and came across this gay and feel good response to the ABBA song Dancing Queen. It should cheer you up...