Posts by A S
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Amazingly, A S, there are more than two kinds of cars to choose from. The opposite of a late-model SUV is not necessarily a badly tuned polluting pile of crap.
And the SUV is not the ride of satan, despite the opinion of some.
Last time I looked at stats on the NZ vehicle fleet the majority were over ten years old, and petrol powered.
If the average milage on a ten year old car is generally well over 100,000km, and if you consider how many people you know that actually service their vehicles (let alone keep them tuned), then my suggestion of smoky, rattly sh!tboxes being the norm isn't so far off the mark...
This would imply is that in fact, we should be hissing at the driver of the smoky corolla that hasn't seen a service in some years, rather than the SUV driver who is probably friendlier to the environment on the whole.
If we don't like SUVs because of a perception that they are somehow awful things, the simple answer would be don't buy one.
If the thing people don't like is SUV "drivers", I would point out that it is the driver, not the vehicle that is the perceived problem in the discussion. Attacking the symbol seems a bit pointless.
SUV's make the roads more dangerous for everyone.
You can't see around them, they are so wide they make passing very scary, and anecdotally, they seem to give their drivers a misguided belief they own the road.By that logic, we should also be banning vans, trucks, buses, tall trailers and horsefloats.
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Why should anyone give a rats if someone drives an SUV. I'd much rather someone drove a late model diesel SUV, than any of the rattly sh!tboxes, with quarter of a million km on the clock, that haven't been serviced, let alone tuned in years, which sadly form a large chunk of our vehicle fleet. I'd wager the emissions from the late model diesel SUV are a lot lower than the comparable emissions from the average poorly maintained family wagon.
And as for hybrids, their appeal seems to be driven more by hype than practical benefits in real world driving. A diesel is cheaper to run, and generally has lower emissions. Not to mention the issues around disposal of the battery packs when they come to the end of their lifespans, which noone ever really discusses. Recycling batteries is not a particularly green process.
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I mean, are you seriously suggesting we shouldnt have all been getting those nice little orange envelopes from the electoral office to make sure we were enrolled?
A fairly important distinction is needed between the two examples, surely?
The Electoral office letters are about trying to ensure compliance with a statutory requirement for eligible voters to be enrolled, whereas the other is an electioneering exercise, and has sweet FA to do with statutory requirements.
In short, whoever is behind signing off on the marketing on this made a dumb call, same as the whole John Key - Clocks one. The result is the same, message completely lost, and lack of judgement accusations abounding.
Someone, somewhere in the Labour party is probably (or should be at least) getting a monumental arse-kicking as we type......
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A Bi-Caramel system sounds sweet ;-)
Not only that, we'd get to keep our existing stash of Flakes, Jafas, Oddfellows, Allsorts and Bounty bars. :-D
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We had an upper house aeons ago - the Legislative Council. By the time Sid Holland mothballed it in 1951, it had become little more than a rubber stamp for the Parliament.
I know, hence my suggestion that it would need to be properly structured (to avoid that happening again).
FPP got booted because the elected parties came to power making many promises, then they proceeded to ignore what they had promised, and go on to do whatever they pleased. In too many respects, it could be argued that MMP is only a slight improvement on FPP. You still get two main parties promising things to get elected, which may or may not be put into effect once the reins of power have been grasped.
In terms of day to day parliamentary life, the main difference between MMP and FPP is the minor parties who can exert minor influence and extract (generally small) concessions for their own interest groups in selling their support to the party that eventually ends up in power.
Some days with MMP it kind of feels like we've been sold a slightly re-vamped FPP system in newer, flasher packaging.
There is always room for improvement, and MMP can also probably be improved too.
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And if National managed to secure enough votes - much easier to do under FPP - they could implement their stated policy of consigning the Māori seats to oblivion.
By the same token, it could equally be possible for the Maori seats to be abolished under MMP. All it takes is getting the numbers. The way I see it, should the public whim be sufficiently strong, it wouldn't take much for the Maori seats to be abolished under MMP too. Anyone remember the demise of closing the gaps? Funnily enough, I didn't see MMP as a system doing much to stop the U-turn on a fairly key equity issue for a relatively large chunk of the population at that point.
I doubt FPP is a system anyone would go back to, but there is certainly substantial validity in allowing the public to debate the system by which they wish to elect their representatives.
Perhaps a bi-cameral system could be debated. Structured properly, it might offer a very useful check / balance on the current system to restrict the ability of one arm of government running off in directions for which it never gained a mandate.
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Terence,
I suspect we are talking past each other somewhat. What I've been trying (perhaps unsucessfully) to say is that the rate of improvement in outcomes has (in too many cases) been close to zero, whilst the cost has been massive.
Putting this in a fairly cold context, at what point do people start seeing that their contribution to the country via their taxes is actually achieving what they were told it would?
On the BRT thing, I think it is very important to decouple the BRT from this particular debate, this isn't about big rich corporates sitting in their boardrooms, this is more about normal people who have legitimate questions about what they might expect to get for their already fairly significant contrbutions to the country.
The vast majority of those in the top bracket aren't the rich pricks, (the truly rich can afford accountants), the majority of the people in the top bracket are just boring old wage and salary earners who just have to suck it up when they get slapped with another cost.
In terms of solutions, that will take a lot of work, and a willingness to look at alternative solutions that the education ministry and schools have never been willing to look at. Various models have shown promise over time (e.g. acadamies, marae-based education, various alternative ed models), but have struggled and iin many cases, died due to the attitudes of the education sector who beleive that they are the only ones who should have a say on education.
Until these sorts of attitudes shift, nothing will change in terms of outcomes, but the costs to get the same crap outcomes will continue to climb.
The decrepit infrastructure point may be valid, but if there isn't anyone to run and maintain the infrastructure, you end up in the same position. It requires both.
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Terence,
Yep, teachers, doctors and nurses are paid more, which was overdue. Now when do we see some improvements in outcomes for the populace?
earlier on, I pointed out that every year roughly a quarter of the population leave school with less than level 1 NCEA. Effectively this means they have no qualifications at all. A QUARTER. There has been a negligible improvement over time, but nothing as spectacular as the increases in teacher salaries... Some years ago the rhetoric from the teachers unions was that if they had better pay, they'd get better results in terms of outcomes of students. That rhetoric has been silent for quite some time now, and yet they took the money quite happily.
I think doctors and nurses don't get paid what they are worth, and that should be fixed. By the same token, in the wider health area, I'd ask the question: at what point does making up for "under-investment" stop, and "funding black hole" start? How many more Billions being poured into health will it require to see the improvements that the population expect?
You make a good point on the aging population thing, an issue that a significant chunk of the western world also faces, hence the fierce international competition for skilled migrants.
At the end of the day, there is a finite population of skilled people, with the skills and expertise that we need to help us maintain a modern lifestyle, and we need to attract as many of them as possible. Is it really a good idea to penalise the ones we grow at home, often at great expense?
Is telling them they should be glad to uncomplainingly give till it hurts, really much of an enticement for them to stay? Telling them to feel leave if they don't agree that they should, isn't going to do much to make them feel wanted either, is it?
The point is that no-one in the top tax brackets objected to paying more in 99, because they actually thought it would address the problems facing NZ. It doesn't appear to have.
The issue at the moment, seems to be that the population is of the view that this extra has been squandered, and the original issues are the same as before or worse. I think that is a fairly legitimate concern to have about govt expenditure.
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The table is interesting too - it suggests that if we were to emulate Australia and add a new top tax band at $150,000 we could generate considerable extra tax revenue.
And spend it on what? We've ploughed Billions of extra spending into a huge range of areas, and sadly in the eyes of a fairly significant chunk of the population, bugger all has actually changed. The underclass got bigger, the rich pricks certainly don't seem to feel like rich pricks, and politicians got to waste massive amounts of resources on some fairly hare-brained ideas....
Doesn't sound like a particularly successful effort in many regards as far as I can see.
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Given the hostility from the top 20% - the bourgeoise middle class - to programmes like WFF, what chance would any program of genuine wealth re-distribution for the "undeserving poor" enjoy in the new Chile that is New Zealand? My guess is zero.
Crikey! As half of a duo who have finally made it to a point where me might be considered middle class (with the mortgage and student loans to prove it), I never realised I'd one day be lucky enough to wear the bourgoise tag too...
Does this mean I have to call the rest of my family proletariat scum, and set the dogs on them, or is there some wriggle room on this?