Posts by Matthew Poole
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Jake, that the stadium in question serves as a focal point doesn't make it a public space. Public spaces are, by definition, open to the public not just to paying customers. Auckland's waterfront is littered with areas that are closed to the public, be it for safety reasons (Ports of Auckland), security reasons (the customs areas), or just because someone's built on it and thus the area is already used.
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Trouble is that this very attitude cost us the V8's to name but one thing "We" didn't want to pay for.
Whether or not ratepayers wanted to pay for it, it was at least Auckland councils that put in the bid. Also, the objection, as has been pointed out, was much less about the direct cost and much, much more about the indirect cost of having to shut down a portion of the CBD and a major transport arterial for a week.
RWC was bid for by the country, not by any region. Eden Park isn't even owned by the local council, unlike many of the other stadiums around the country, which makes it that much more offensive that McCully is demanding Auckland ratepayers' money to subsidise the do-up.
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Looks like the Auckland Chamber of Commerce is falling out of love with Central Gummint, over the way Megatropolis is being imposed from Wellington with precious little regard for what Aucklanders want or what will actually be in the best interests of the city (as opposed to a select bunch of major contractors). About time. The more angst we get from the right-wing business lobby the better, because if Rodders et al will listen to anyone it's that crowd. Sure as hell they've shown absolutely no interest in listening to anybody else.
Edit: Oh, and C&R are also less than enamoured with how these changes are being rammed down Auckland's collective throat. So even National is falling out of love with the current regime. Bet John didn't see that coming when he appointed Rodders as Monster of Local Government.
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Kingsland station can only take one train every five minutes
Two, if the plans to run trains in the same direction on both sides of the track come to fruition. Shut the Western Line west of Kingsland and send duplicate services to Kingsland on both the "inbound" and "outbound" tracks from Britomart. Dunno why they don't do it from Newmarket and minimise the disruption to the rest of the network, but these are the fuckwits who came up with the plan in the first place.
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govt dictates change, but Aucklanders get to pay for it
Auckland's paying for a hell of a lot at the moment. Like doing up Eden Park, if McCully has anything to do with it. As I put it to a friend, fuck McCully and fuck Central Government. Auckland's not going to benefit from a do-up of Eden Park, why should ratepayers' money be spent on it? It wasn't Auckland that bid for the RWC, after all.
All this in-secret back-room spending on Megatropolis' tab is distinctly odoriferous, in a "state of Denmark" way rather than a "Chanel Number 5" way.
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In the absence of a better place, and since this thread is tangentially related to health, a study by Canterbury researchers suggests that men's health is getting very short shrift on the funding front, for a number of reasons but not least of which is a lack of advocates within the system. Not helped, either, by a Minister of Health who thinks that it should be good enough for men that money is spent on general health matters that happen to affect them, such as heart disease, cancer, and primary care. Wonder what women's health advocates would say if he tried to spin that with them.
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Don't know why people are so shocked by National's ideological blinkers, even in the face of saving money. This is the same National that cut the Police budget in favour of pouring many multiples of the cut into prisons, despite solid evidence that the biggest deterrent to many crimes is the likelihood of being caught not what'll happen to you if you are.
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If Power is really interested in having wars on drugs, he should look at what America's war on drugs has achieved over 50 years: massive prison muster, massive state spending and increased drug offences.
Exhibit A, Your Honour. Privatised prisons. 'nuff said.
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Wage and salary earners have no deductions available to them in relation to that income,
Not quite true. Charitable donations and donations to schools are deductible but we were talking GST.
They're rebated, not deducted. That is, you claim them back from the IRD rather than putting them as deductions in an IR3.
And I did say "You cannot claim expenses incurred in earning income that has PAYE deducted" which is absolutely correct irrespective of the availability of rebates for charitable donations. -
and you can't register [for GST if] you are part of the PAYE tax system
You cannot claim expenses incurred in earning income that has PAYE deducted. Which means you cannot register for and process GST if your income is solely wages/salary. If you're a sole-trader who has a part-time job you can register for GST and claim it back, but only for expenses relating to your sole-trader income.
One of the reasons that NZ's personal income tax system is so straightforward and avoidance (as opposed to structuring to reduce liability) so minimal is that it's very, very simple. Wage and salary earners have no deductions available to them in relation to that income, and it's all supposed to be taxed at source. That's hard to avoid, and doesn't encourage rorts of the sort seen overseas. That's not to say that people don't avoid income tax, or rort the system, but that it's a lot harder to do when the majority of personal income tax is deducted before the money ever hits the employee's bank account and that there's nothing they can claim back in relation to how they earned that income.