Posts by Rich of Observationz
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Hard News: You down with TPP?, in reply to Chris Waugh,
I think most of our milk (powder) exports to China still go in bulk to those untrusted local companies who package and sell it. I think you're referring to a small grey market of NZ domestic product that sells at a premium, but ISTR those exports are technically illegal.
But yeah. And the other things is that as overseas producers raise their game, our advantage will lessen. How much milk could Africa produce if it was less fucked up?
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You know, in many businesses over 30+ years, I've *never* come across an instance where having a free trade agreement has helped make a sale. Sure, it became much easier to sell inside Europe once the Single European Market came in, but that's a total abolition of customs backed by a political union (sending a package from London to Amsterdam is the same as sending it to Brighton).
Generally, if you make stuff people want to buy, they'll buy it, even if our governments hate each other. (and even if X won't buy from Y, they will from Z, so W buys less from Z and winds up buying from X. If you see what I mean).
And on specifics, people buy our milk powder because they haven't got the skills/pasture/weather to farm cows themselves, and they buy our trees because they haven't got the land/weather to grow their own. The US has plenty of the above, and will *never* buy large amounts of primary produce from NZ.
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Hard News: This is Your TV on Drugs, in reply to Russell Brown,
The Supreme Court has already found (Gonzales v Raich) that the Federal government has power to proscribe marijuana (or anything else, except guns presumably).
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Hard News: Looking at Leveson, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
The British royals whole existence is "unreasonable and over the top".
Charles insists that everyone he meets, including senior people that he works with everyday, call him "sir". When they came here, rather than (like all our elected politicians) travelling on Air NZ's perfectly comfortable services, we had to lay on personal flights for them. They extract billions of dollars from UK and commonwealth taxpayers (in cash, unpaid taxes and use of vast estates usurped from the state). And they seek to influence without accountability - when, some years ago, the Guardian wanted to interview a royal, they got to the 66th in line before anyone would talk to them. But they're happy to secretly interfere in everything from town planning to defence.
They aren't prisoners, you know: if William, for instance, doesn't like the job, he has a simple course. Abdicate from the line of succession, work as an ordinary Air Force pilot (or go off to Switzerland or Belize with his billions). The publicity and intrusion would die off (as it has done for the Hohenzollerns and Hapsburgs).
If they all did that until the line of succession dropped down to some obscure mitteleuropean with broken English, we'd get a republic by default and be a lot better off.
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Hard News: Looking at Leveson, in reply to Chris Waugh,
I don't think such laws apply to overseas deaths, just to NZ.
But anyway, I'm surprised that anyone hasn't suggested that fault is with the British royals for being so fucking precious that putting through a prank call is a big issue?
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I think it's mostly about the cops asserting their authoriteh. A bit like wandering round town in a Mongrel Mob jacket.
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proletard
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Hard News: Looking at Leveson, in reply to Kumara Republic,
Although most of the worlds newspapers have public shareholders, they're pretty much under the sway of a few megalomaniacs, who have set up structures that let them exercise control while using the dollars of pensioners and the like as capital.
Exceptions are Fairfax, where the depredations of a fresh-out-of-Harvard Warwick Fairfax almost destroyed the business and INL/APN where Tony O'Reilly is primarily interested in money, rather than having his views on the breakfast tables of Sligo or Hamilton.
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I think the point of Leveson is that News International systematically committed criminal offences to obtain news stories, the Metropolitan Police conspired with them in this (motivated both by individual financial gain and to advance a shared authoritarian agenda) and that UK governments of both parties connived in this (from fear of Murdoch and a similar agenda).
That's about as far from a blogger posting a scurrilous piece as it's possible to get.
My question for Mr Gould is if there's any way the UK government to break out of this circle of corruption?
My suggestion for a method would be for a government to keep quiet till elected, then use the Companies Act to declare News International against the public interest* and shutter all the newspapers and Sky TV.
* basically the same laws used to put South Canterbury under statutory management
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Hard News: Friday Music: Summer Live, in reply to bob daktari,
vineyard
I reckon somewhere more industrial, like a disused coal mine..