Posts by Matthew Poole
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Given that Wills is remaining as a pilot in the RAF, one cannot help but wonder if Kate is ready for life in military housing. Even officer housing ain't that flash when one is merely a flight lieutenant. Or does the rank of "Your Highness" carry its own housing allowance?
[ETA] I guess Commodore-in-Chief and Honorary Air Commandant entitle one to some super-grade housing too.
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One thing that's particularly interesting/disturbing about this whole thing is that National hasn't even finished its first term this time around. There's a very significant entitlement mentality at work in terms of Wong's behaviour, and one cannot help but think that one doesn't normally see it until at least a second term, if not a third.
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You shouldn’t lose your superannuation for anything other than defrauding the superannuation system.
Sweet, so I’m still entitled to retire at 60, then. After all, I’ve been paying taxes since it was 60, so it should be impossible to ever make any negative changes!
Not what I meant, and you bloody know it. My comment was in the context of stripping someone of their super as punishment for misbehaviour.
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Hard News: Moving targets, in reply to Neil Morrison,
Neil, MPs do a pretty piss-poor job of behaving like employees in most other respects (we can’t cut short their “contract” for misbehaviour, for example) so I don’t see why we should pretend that the remuneration is something cast in stone. Especially since allowances come and go mid-term.
If they can lie their way into power because their true agenda would never fly with the electorate (pretty much a verbatim quote from Douglas), then we should feel no qualms about demanding retroactive alteration of whatever perks were offered with the job. We’re not touching their gold-plated super scheme, just their limitless opportunity to suck the taxpayer sav for jaunts overseas.I don’t buy the suggestion that post-Parliament trips do the slightest bit of good for NZ, either. If they’re good for NZ, they’ll be being funded by someone, be it a private sector employer, or MFAT (courtesy of an ambassadorship or the like), or by the UN or some similar international body. If they can get someone to fund it outside the auspices of their ex-MP pork, it’s probably worthwhile. If not, I don’t think it’s worth much more to NZ’s profile than any other tourist jaunt to climes foreign.
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Hard News: Moving targets, in reply to FletcherB,
Taito Philip Feild who was found guilty in court of abusing his position should also not be able to draw on any perks he “earned” access to in his time in that position.
He can't. The Speaker ruled that conviction for dishonesty offences related to the office of MP or the perks themselves (I think it was that narrow) is grounds for the perks to be revoked. Which is how Field and McClay were stripped of their travel entitlements.
Obviously, both draughting such a rule, and making it retrospective, are fraught with issues of fairness, etc. You’d also have to set some sort of “level” of transgression to trigger it…. you shouldn’t lose your superannuation for a speeding ticket.
You shouldn't lose your superannuation for anything other than defrauding the superannuation system. I don't consider any other offence to justify interfering with someone's pension, no matter how excessive I may consider that system to be. Travel porks, though, are a whole different story and are totally fair game IMO if you abuse them or abuse the office of MP.
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Field and Roger McClay lost their entitlement when convicted.
It took a ruling from the Speaker for that to happen, though. Field initially stood to retain the perk despite his conviction.
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Hard News: Moving targets, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
It's OK Craig, we know that your message was a verbose, and probably profane, version of "A pox on all their houses. Including the media."
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It's nice that the heads of parties are calling for this pork to be stopped, but the problem will remain for a long time given how many past MPs remain eligible. How many other jobs come with subsidised travel once you leave? Or even while you're employed?! Even those in the airline industry don't get subsidies, they merely get very hefty discounts.
Given the messages we've been getting from our elected overlords about sucking it up in these tough times, I think they should just be stripped of the perk and not remunerated for the "inconvenience". They're paid, at a minimum, over three times the median wage (or four times the median income), and in the case of Double-Dipton at least ten times the median income. How much more money do they need to be able to afford their overseas holidays? Other people manage it on far smaller incomes!
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Oh, oh, oh. Point of order, Mister Speaker. One does not, ever, write 15:37PM! 3:37PM or 15:37, but never, ever, 15:37PM. To be fixing, please.
Also, I see that there's a per-blog RSS for comments but not an aggregated one for the entire site. Is it possible for this to be offered? Going back to my comment earlier about using PAS's RSS to track comments to threads of interest without having to delve into the site proper and without, now, having to maintain an RSS feed for each blog of interest.
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Hard News: Do you like what we've done…, in reply to Petra,
I don't think you're being too picky. It used to be that external links had a target=new value so they opened in a new window/tab. That's one of the things I like, though I do normally just middle-click links so that they open in new tabs in the background.