Posts by Rich of Observationz
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Hard News: The sphere of influence, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Yes. Constitutionally, MPs (including list MPs) are elected as individual representatives accountable to their electors at the next election. Sending a letter on their MPs letterhead indicates that they are writing in this capacity (assuming they don't state otherwise in the text).
The chair of a school board, OTOH, should not imply that they are writing on behalf of the board (such as by using letterhead) unless they have been delegated authority to do so.
If an MP who is also a school board chair discovers an issue, it's entirely reasonable that they take that up with their "MP' hat on.
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Speaker: Why we can’t just fix secondary…, in reply to Matthew Poole,
I have seen that 3/23 thing hardcoded into a large NZ enterprise's accounting system :headdesk:
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Hard News: The sphere of influence, in reply to Russell Brown,
1. Opposition MP <> Minister
MPs are put there by their constituents to, amongst other things, investigate and advocate with public bodies on any issues they feel fit. The only thing they mustn't do is take a corrupt payment to do so. Ministers have authority over public bodies, and have to be clear about working within the agreed structures and not attempting to exert control through back channels.
2. Police operations <> Police policy
The course of individual cases is rightly an area where politicians are restricted in intervening. Anything else to do with the police, such as application of resources in a local area, is a matter of public policy and fully within an MPs job to enquire and criticise about - it's no different from an MP urging that a local library isn't closed
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Having zero or multiple GST rates is not a big problem. Most people filing accounts in NZ will already have some zero GST inputs, such as bank charges and low value imports (like web hosting and so on). And supermarket systems are sufficiently complex that adding zero rating would be a fairly small percentage of the total - they already need to account for dozens of different supplier discount schemes and pricing models.
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Hard News: The sphere of influence, in reply to Rob Stowell,
Not only does that reveal the initial offence, but then her lying to parliament and, given John Key would have been privy to all that documentation, his complicity in the poor excuse for a cover-up. (I assume Keys excuse will be that he took her word for it and didn't seek to look any further).
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It would be pretty bad if having a relationship with someone who was related to a political activist would be considered in any way in assessing someone's suitability for the police.
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That's fairly obvious to me - the more you earn, the higher your effective tax rate, hence if you have more than one job, you'd underpay tax. So you need to pay more on that job to avoid winding up owing tax.
The real problem is that most New Zealanders are functionally innumerate - estimating weekly take-home from an annual salary, even without any complications, is beyond most people.
Maybe we should fix that.
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Hard News: Friday Music: The Superstar Economy, in reply to Robyn Gallagher,
It's a total abuse of power, and I say that as a firm believer that gangsta rappers are a bunch of knobheads. But everyone's entitled to due process. Hopefully their management will find a way of suing INZ for this.
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Hard News: A Big Idea, in reply to BenWilson,
There's no law that says they have to
The OCR is the rate the Reserve Bank is willing to lend to NZ banks at, (secured against the banks required government bond holdings). It thus sets a ceiling on the rate they will pay on (overnight) retail deposits (as at the margin they could borrow from the RBNZ instead). That in turn also sets a floor on the amount they can profitably lend at.
Normally, the floor is below the ceiling. Sometimes not, if a bank wants to gain business at the expense of profits.
Fixed term lending is different. I'd recommend reading Stigum, all 1200 pages of it.
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Kiwisaver isn't going to give most peoples much of a retirement income: if you put in 4% for 30 years, then you'll have a fund (in real terms, with returns matching inflation) of 120% of your average (not final) salary.
At an annuity rate of 7%, you'd get an income of less than 9% of average salary. Which might be ok, if there's still national super and you've paid your mortgage off.