Posts by Rich of Observationz
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Legal Beagle: Q&A: John Banks' judicial review, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Even so, and without spending my morning parsing election results, I'd think that area has voted around 50% for right-wing parties in recent elections. I'd assume that the tendency of middle-class people to opt out of jury service might then bias the pool to the left.
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Legal Beagle: Q&A: John Banks' judicial review, in reply to FletcherB,
One would assume that a central Auckland jury pool might be 40% Tory. The defence gets objections, so could possibly get this over 50% by rejecting likely lefties.
You need 11/12 of the jury for a conviction, so there's a reasonable chance of getting two hard-core righties and a retrial, which would probably not be listed until after the election. (Unless there's some provision that retrials go to the front of the queue?)
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He would always have the option to run again for his seat at a subsequent by-election to see if his electorate were comfortable with the conviction.
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Revenue (2012) 440 million. Operating expenses. 185 million. Interest costs 73 million. Depreciation and amortisation 180 million.
Return on equity - (0.8%)
I don't see a problem with that.
The water infrastructure belongs to its users (the people of Auckland) and is more or less adequate for the current population. Costs of rebuilding it as it reaches end of life are covered by the depreciation number.
As new consumers are added due to development, the costs of additional infrastructure should be paid for by the developers, who benefit from it.
The alternative is either that existing residents should subsidize development, or that water should be taxed to encourage conservation.
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Graeme's argument would have more weight if Radio Live was some sort of open agora where all ideas got an airing. It isn't.
Like all NZ mass media, Radio Live is owned by a foreign multinational with a definite agenda and interests to promote. Their preferred broadcaster is a full-on righty, like Leighton Smith. Recognizing that such views might not work with some sectors of their audience, their fallback position is to find a pseudo-labour figure willing to promote an agenda filled with bigotry and division.
Hence Willie & JT. Hence also Shane Jones - who was enthusiastically promoted by the right wing media as Labour leader despite having values that entirely diverged from the party norm and negligible support from the membership.
Any action that undermines mainstream radio is thus fine by me. One of the things that gives me hope is that the financial underpinnings of all ad-financed broadcasters are increasingly shaky, and it might not be that long before they're gone.
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Hard News: Housing: the Feudal Model, in reply to Socraates,
I'm not trying to troll, and I totally take your point on the mismanaged PPP.
But it remains that if a (rural) community chooses to allow widespread subdivision and development, then it will need expensive services and that every property owner (including those with original 50 year old baches) will benefit financially from increased land values. If the community chooses to restrict subdivision, then it probably won't need those services and shouldn't have to pay for them.
Of course, it's a problem when those decisions don't get made by the community, but by the aggregate views of a huge area with different attitudes.
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Then you have people like the residents of Mangawhai Heads, who, I understand, object to a few thousand dollars per property in council borrowing and consequent rates to provide a modern sewage plant. (Whilst, of course, their million dollar beach houses are no doubt mortgaged to the hilt).
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Hard News: How a thing happens, in reply to Kumara Republic,
Does anyone not install a band converter? (although for $25 plus fitting, a new head unit might be more attractive).
But even with a band converter, all the stations are in the wrong place.
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What would be the advantage of using [3G] instead of FM?
For the broadcaster:
- not having to pay for spectrum
- reaching an audience not limited by geography (and being able to tailor ads to the individual, though this doesn't happen much if at all yet)For the listener:
- Not being limited to stations within range - e.g. once outside a city, losing all but Hick FM -
they're also the people who pay tens of millions of dollars for the use of spectrum
Yeah, but if the government leased one of the mainstream TV channels to a pr0n broadcaster, they'd make loads more dollars, possibly.
I guess FM broadcasting as it exists now has only a couple more decades to go. I'm wondering when car radios will go all-internet - it's technically possible to listen to the radio over 3G, in countries without our level of price gouging it's economical so it can only be a matter of time.