Posts by Steve Barnes
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Mmmm, Mellowpuffy's gone all Yoda on us.
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One or two axe-murderers and cat-stranglers by the looks of it.
Indeed. Whilst we are on that subject.
How about Bob "The Re-Builder" Parker with those, permanently "Rolled Up" sleeves?
I can hear the PR guy now "and roll those sleeves up when you're on camera Bob, it makes you look more "Hands On" as we say" -
But Wait... There's More
Before the War Damage Fund was even considered there was the Hawke's Bay Earthquake Relief Funds Act 1931 which was enacted to co-ordinate the distribution of " Funds raised wholly or partly by Private Subscription for the Benefit of Persons injuriously affected by the Hawke's Bay Earthquake." so those that HAARP (see what I did there) on about Individual Lberty™ and complain that this is not the business of Government can, as I said, F*#k off to Aus F#*@kin' Stralia.
Yes, Richard McGrath, I'm lookin' at you. -
After taking on board comments by others about the seeming inequality brought about by the need for house insurance to qualify for assistance from EQC, I have given the matter a great deal of thought.
In the first instance I thought about the origin of the fund and the fact that after the end of WW2 the fund went from being a war damage fund to what is now known as the Natural Disaster Fund (1).
This seemed to point to the fact that, as such, this fund has become general property of the people, in as much as that the fund has passed through generations rather than just the lifetime of those that have paid into the fund. This being so and the fact that you may go through several generations without a major disaster, it seems wrong that someone who has just started insuring their property is entitled to payment whereas someone who has paid insurance for most of their working life and now finds that they can no longer afford such payments, is not entitled. This just seems wrong.
Seeing as a house is the largest investment most people will make in their lives, surely, this investment should not be considered as less important than an investment made from disposable income for, even something as important as retirement funds, let alone a business investment.
It would not take a complex bill through parliament to fix this anomaly.
There is already provision in the Earthquake Commission Act of 1993 to cover any deficiencyDeficiency in Fund
If the assets of the Commission (including the money for the time being in the Fund) are not sufficient to meet the liabilities of the Commission, the Minister shall, without further appropriation than this section, provide to the Commission out of public money such sums by way of grant or advance as may be necessary to meet the deficiency upon such terms and conditions as the Minister determines.
I still have reservations about Local Authorities collecting payments and even more about them holding such funds but that maybe more acceptable than compulsory insurance.
As for those that think this is not the job of Government to look after its more vulnerable citizens I would suggest they move to Australia and stop telling the rest of us what to do. -
I lashed the really bad chimney up with network cable until I could break it down, any port in a storm eh?
Well I hope that was cat6 cable and not the old cat5, you could have problems with transfer speed when you pull the chimney down and I don't know about any port in a storm. Using port 80 could seriously affect download speed of web pages and stay off ports 25 and 110 unless you want to bugger up your eMail.
Glad to see you're all fine. -
The War Damage fund was oriented more toward general disaster coverage from the outset, Churchill said that rather that reimburse those that had paid into the fund the fund should be used to give "grants to persons who have had damage done to their property as a result of Earthquakes or other disasters" (Legislative council debates, 9 October, 1941) ref
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So everyone's insurance would get slightly cheaper,
Ha Ha Ha.... Ha.. Ha.
You're such a card Rich. -
University libraries are Library of Congress
No wonder I couldn't find anything in the Library, damned yanks.
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On the plus side, it's actually bloody hard to break a book
Thankfully there were no students in the library at the time or we would be talking "Flatmates" here. Whoever was responsible for that setup needs a bit of a talking to, those shelves should have been anchored but unfortunately they rarely are. A friend of mine, a few years back, was doing some renovation work in a large filing room come library and stacked a few sheets of Gib Board against what he thought was a secure wall. The wall turned out to be a screen screwed to a bookshelf, the whole roomful of filing cabinets and shelves dominoed taking desks, chairs, computers and workers with it. Luckily it was lunchtime and only a couple of people were injured. He hasn't said anything against ACC since, after all, it was their office.
ETA. Maybe we should re-write the Dewy Decimal system to classify books by weight so's the big ones go on the bottom shelves.
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(I can't see National deigning to upset their mates in the insurance industry, sadly. ACT would never allow it either).
On the other hand I'm sure Rodney Hide would have loved to have got his hands on that pile of local cash, or Rodney Council for that matter.
It may seem incongruous for me to be seen as standing up for the Insurance industry, they are, after all the scum of the earth but it comes down to an "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" sort of situation. In terms of natural disasters laying off the risk is best done on a very large scale, as large scale is what these things tend to be. Leaving it in the hands of empire builders would be a mistake in my opinion.I was thinking that this would be collected by Councils and passed to EQC,
If you are referring to the small number of people not covered under the existing system then I think you have to take into account that a lot of renters have no insurance but their landlords do and so the housing stock would be replenished, looking after your antiques and knick knacks should never be the business of the State, that would, inevitably in my opinion, lead to conflicts of interest and abuse.