Posts by Rich of Observationz
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C'mon, if it was Lhaws with $20k in parking tickets, then I think we'd all be calling for scaphism, as a minimum..
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Isn't the classic right-wing party line that parking restrictions are a socialist imposition and those paid to enforce them are the spawn of Himmler?
Or is that trumped by the miscreant/victim being a longhaired pinko student radio DJ?
Anyway, if people are going to run up parking fines to that degree, why not ban them from driving until they pay them off. If you can't afford to pay for driving a car, why should you be allowed to drive?
There *is* public transport in Auckland, you know. Even out to the Waitaks.
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what legal recourse do i have to protect the shellfish beds from people constantly driving over it to launch their boats at low tide ?
You could lobby the council to introduce a bylaw banning vehicles from the beach.
Or you could try and persuade central government to generally ban cars from beaches, as is the law in most other countries.
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I've read a lot about it. I recommend Johnson's recent book "South Africa's Brave New World: The Beloved Country Since the End of Apartheid".
I'd recommend actually going there.
When you had a system that relies on screwing the majority population for the benefit of a tiny minority, then dismantling that is gonna cause problems. Especially for those in the minority group who suddenly lost all the privileges they previously got, just by being white. Not surprising then that a few of the whites have left.
South Africa is doing ok. I've found people in all communities there to be positive about the country and making a go of the future. Sure, the government has had issues (most notably AIDS denial) but what government doesn't?
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The treaty is between Maori and the British crown and its successor.
The elephant in that room are four million people who now simply call themselves New Zealanders, and who are not addressed in the treaty.Wrong!
The four million New Zealanders elect the government known as the "crown" and are hence party to the treaty, just as the eighteen million Brits were in 1840.
The treaty is not, and never was, a personal treaty between the Windsors and Maori. It was a treaty between the British government (and it's successors, e.g. the government of NZ) and Maori.
Trying to argue that somehow the "crown" refers to a distant figure in a north European castle is just a trick to avoid the real issues.
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Prendergast is dead. Get over it.
I thought you meant Kerry and was trying to find where the street party was happening!
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For many of us, we'd like local body politicians to deliver basic, decent services at reasonable cost and not fuck things up with noise limits on city bars and the like.
However, that isn't good enough for the people that run for office. They want to build *iconic* structures so they can walk by with their grandchildren and say "I built that". Hence we get schemes like "party central".
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I'm sure the IRD would be very interested to know that, since they allow people to claim rebates for donations to Greenpeace.
I'm just passing on what's in the public record, which presumably the IRD can read.
I imagine, being a multinational NGO, Greenpeace have it sussed. They may well pass the tax deductible donations into the educational trust and use other funding for the campaigning work.
And yes, I fully acknowledge that Greenpeace have issues, which is why I choose to send my dollars elsewhere. But I think they still have no more or less a right to tax-free status than the Catholic Church.
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BTW, can anyone suggest a breakfast cereal that *isn't* tainted by some wierd religious link? We've got Sanitarium, Hubbard, Quaker Oats and the inventions of the seriously odd John Harvey Kellogg.
Mind you, Kellogg believed that conventional sex was wrong, but yogurt enemas and violet wand insertion was just fine and dandy. If he'd been alive today, I'm sure he'd have been a regular on Fetlife.
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The Greenpeace Education Trust is a charity. Since I can't find any other entries in the register, I assume that the campaigning actions of Greenpeace are not granted charitable status. (You don't need to be a registered charity to engage in chugging).
I think my point stands that organisations that promote a deist ideology receive charitable status, while other advocacy organisations do not.
That's my main objection to giving churches a tax break (even if the effect of that break is negligible). I don't quite go all the way with Denis Diderot "Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest", but believe that, in current society, religious practice should be permitted but not privileged.