Posts by Gareth Ward
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I imagined bands of them roaming St Stephen's Ave, clutching bottles of pinot gris
Ha.
"Braaaaains... lovely-lamb-brains-sauteed-in-a-little-white-wine-from-Antoines..." -
So Auckland Central's becoming a slightly hipper Epsom?
You can tell by the houses: made-over villas, freshly painted in tones of grey with a cement garden for OSP and a stone-clad wall to keep the natives out.
Excuse me you two but that's my neighbourhood you are taking potshots at so kindly piss off (but yes, I hate the beige and concrete villas myself)...
I'm not (yet) appalled by Kaye - while I understand there's an automatic mistrust of anything National around these parts, having a young woman who claims marine reserves and the environment as her focuses in National will be a positive thing if she's genuinely of some of those views.
I freely accept she could just be another young Nat who worked out what marketing means in this electorate but until I find out the real answer I will at border on the hope for the better... -
However, the Greens overreaction to GE wins them few friends and squanders their credibility
Ya know what I like about the Greens this time round? My wife said the other day "but they've said nothing on economic policy", to which I replied "thank God" (all due respect to our Green members of course)
If the Greens specifically stick to sustainability, Kyoto-responses, environmental cleanliness etc I'd certainly be ticking them just to try and overweight those views - and this time round they seem to be more in that mode. Sticking to their organic, put-on-this-jumper-instead-of-the-heater knitting if you will...
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Well I'm not sure about that because the amount that we collectively save will grow at a rate that will not grow as fast as debt servicing.
So you think Kiwisaver plans need to be made compulsory and slowly ramped up to some level above 5%?
ME TOO! :> -
Credit controls, and more government intervention in the macro-economy generally.
Credit controls? Yikes, they've been out of fashion for a very long time...
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I'm with you that someone (of whatever political ilk) needs to stand up and say "our current account deficit and international debt is appalling and we need to do something serious to fix it up".
Labour have not done a good job on it at all, although I think it's fair to say both Kiwisaver and the SuperFund will directly reduce private debt in the longer-run.
You talk about Skilling et al - if you read their papers they are all very very much in favour of compulsory savings as a vehicle to improve our savings and our subsequent debt position - i.e. Kiwisaver.
A short-term debt-reducing policy of Nationals will be the legislated overweighting in NZ of the SuperFund I suppose - but it has longer-term growth implications and distortion impacts that I don't like. -
Bryan Gould's Rescuing the New Zealand Economy has quite a bit to say about this.
What's his suggestion?
Most of the joint inflation/growth mandates given to central banks (e.g. in the US) use employment as the growth figure for measurement. If we'd adopted a similar approach here we would have seen no change in the moves from the Reserve Bank as we've had record employment - there's been no need to cut interest rates to stimulate "growth" (as measured by employment) -
Jim - re debt I agree that it's a disaster for us, but you're laying it at Labour's feet?
National will take certainly us even further the wrong way on that by handing out tax for consumption, and funding it by slashing at savings. So you've got both major groups largely ignoring it, but National is the one that is actively going to make it worse...
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My biggest worry about a Nat-led government is that, despite being pragmatic, they'll simply miss the boat policy-wise and the country will slowly slide backward. It won't be a malicious or ideologically-driven thing, it'll be the fact that conservativism will stop us from adapting quickly enough to deal with the challenges ahead
Bang on the money.
The problem is, Labour have been just as bad with the maritime timetable in this last term (2nd term, now THAT was something to behold)...
I'll be voting in Auckland Central in about 20hours or so and still don't know who'll get my party or electorate vote. I'm trusting Jeebus will let me know some time this evening... But, like RB said in the post, I just can't vote in that policy platform. And the DNA thing? Bloody hell... -
Do we feel sorry for her?
I did at first, but then you read things like this from Newsweek and question whether all that nastiness was straight from her, not from the "McCain campaign":
Palin launched her attack on Obama's association with William Ayers, the former Weather Underground bomber, before the campaign had finalized a plan to raise the issue. McCain's advisers were working on a strategy that they hoped to unveil the following week, but McCain had not signed off on it, and top adviser Mark Salter was resisting.