Posts by Deborah
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Lewis' law: the comments on any article about feminism justify feminism.
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it does need to explain how it will increase the performance of teachers, as well as the number of them.
From the fact sheet that comes with the education policy:
Labour will:...
- raise the standard of entry into the teaching profession by pre-screening entry into all initial teacher education programmes.
- establish a comprehensive school advisory service to share best practice and act as mentors and advisors to teachers throughout New Zealand.The policy announcement is here: Backing quality education. You can find a link to the fact sheet on that page. Or just click here: Backing quality teaching fact sheet - pdf.
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Hard News: Labour's Fiscal Plan:…, in reply to Swan,
There are a number of reasons for introducing a CGT, Swan, including having another tool for slowing down housing prices in places like Auckland. It's one tool among a number there ie. no one is expected a CGT be the sole solution for Auckland housing problems.
And it's just one reason for a CGT. Another one is straight out fairness: why is it that income that we earn quickly (eg. wages) is taxed, whereas income that we earn slowly (increases in value of assets) is not taxed at all?
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Hard News: Labour's Fiscal Plan:…, in reply to Brent Jackson,
I’m not sure what the plan is wrt farms. If the farmer/owner lives on the house on the farm does that make it their primary residence and thus immune to CGT
The usual thing with a CGT worldwide is to exempt the family home. On a farm, that means that the house and curtilage would be outside the CGT net.
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Hard News: The Letter, in reply to Hilary Stace,
I spent the day with Tamati on Tuesday. He's smart and insightful ie. not just a pretty face. I think he will be a great MP.
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Hard News: He Panui: Media Take, in reply to Russell Brown,
Tāke (or Taake) also means “tax” – as in the Department of Island Revenue’s Māori title, Te Tari Taake.
Except that the "Taake" in Te Tari Taake is a transliteration, rather than a word that existed in Maori. A perfectly good way for words to come into a language, of course.
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I've written a bit about abortion, and I've almost never gotten it perfect.
When it comes to disabilities, then if we worry about the extent to which aborting a foetus with disabilities is problematic for the sorts of reasons that Hilary is referring to, then in effect, we are making an individual woman, or just one family, responsible for a solving a systemic problem, the problem of society not valuing disabled people. The long term answer lies in valuing disabled people as we value abled people. But I don't think that the short term answer is to force individual women, or individual families, to take on responsibility.
In terms of gender selection, then I've only written about female foeticide, not gender selection per se. In respect of female foeticide, the problem is societies that don't value women.
But the bottom line is: if we think that abortion is morally permissible, then it is morally permissible for any reason.
So if it is morally permissible for a person to choose an abortion because she is 17 and she just can't take on responsibility for another human being, then it's also morally permissible for a person to abort because the foetus is disabled and the parent(s) just can't take on responsibility for another human being who is disabled.
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Hard News: Meanwhile back at the polls, in reply to Pete George,
Mike Smith has now posted his follow-up. He begins:
David Cunliffe badly needs a new stump speech. On Thursday in Whanganui I heard him depress a large and sympathetic audience for ten minutes with tales of national woe, then promise a positive campaign but give no details.
I was in Whanganui last Thursday night too, and I thought that the crowd was enthusiastic and even inspired by David Cunliffe's speech. Maybe I was seeing what I want to see, but I think that explanation could very much apply to Mike Smith's report too.
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Potato and bacon hash:
Diced potatoes, cooked for about 10 minutes in a frying pan, with frequent turning so they don't catch, then add some diced bacon and let it cook some more, while poaching an egg. Mound the potato and bacon on a plate, lay the poached egg on top, then add a good handful of rocket.
Steak sammies are always good too.
But I very rarely eat alone. And recently, when all the girls went to my parents' place for a few days during the school holidays, my husband and I went out every night. We felt very frivolous.
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Speaker: Why we can’t just fix secondary…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Hmmm... it's a bit non-specific really. Not so much tax advice as generalised observations about the tax system.