Posts by Matthew Poole
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It would have been unthinkable to consign the confused, vulnerable McKinnon to the US legal system.
FTFY. There's no justice in the US system unless you are wealthy, white, male and/or attractive.
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Hard News: Aiming for the feet, in reply to Chris Waugh,
But I don’t see why the Herald would’ve uncorrected it in the process of reposting the ODT’s report.
As much as I'd be tempted to say that Granny's sub's thought that their brand of what passes for English was "correcter" than ODT's, the total lack of any kind of editorial perusal of other stories that come through from overseas suggests that the original fuckup was ODT's and Granny just sucked it off the wire.
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Hard News: Aiming for the feet, in reply to tussock,
pays a fee to google Ireland for the use of the google brand and software and so on. That fee is always roughly big enough to eat up each year’s operating profits.
Bumped into an acquaintance on the train home the other day, and we were talking about something similar. He works for a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a subsidiary of NTT, and the parent of his employer's parent (based out of South Africa) charges a brand fee to his employer despite their not using the brand at all. Amongst other fees, of course, all designed to siphon away as much pre-tax profit as possible.
The easy fix would be for the law to change to restrict such fees to no more than x% of gross profit, and require that the rate for such fees be set at the start of the company's financial year. The ceiling could be the mean branding rate charged by the parent companies of McDonald's, Coca Cola, Denny's, and Starbucks, to pick a clutch of high-profile international brands (could be adjusted by the Minister of Revenue). After all, if it's a good enough rate for that lot it should be good enough for Google, Apple, and all the other usual international-tax-dodging suspects.
Changing the taxing basis for companies with branding arrangements to overseas parents so that there's a deemed taxable gross profit after costs of inputs, but before payments to the branding parent for intangibles, would also make a huge difference. It wouldn't much affect the franchised lot I mentioned above, because they trade through local companies that pay branding fees to a local company, but for the Googles and Apples that trade through effectively a local shell it'd be an end to a lot of their options for minimising tax.
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Hard News: The Cycle Frolic, in reply to Sacha,
Had already joined up their systems before the amalgamation.
You've been able to do inter-library loan across NZ for years. It was being able to go to any library in the region that happens to have the book you want, without having to go through the hassle of inter-library loan, which was the real bonus. Especially for people who lived close to a boundary and another council's library.
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Hard News: The Cycle Frolic, in reply to Lilith __,
Supercity! Remind me why that was a good idea?
Here's one: North-western cycleway upgrades and extensions. You actually think the previous collection could've mustered the collective coherence to negotiate with NZTA to get the quality of work done in as many places as has been achieved?
Also, the libraries. All of the books. -
Hard News: The Cycle Frolic, in reply to Stephen Judd,
back to the airport, how there are no cycle lanes on Pah Rd or similar arteries
On the main 50km bicycle circuit that runs out to the airport, there is not a single dedicated bicycle lane along either of the main roads that run to/from the airport. There are quite wide shoulders, but they're shoulders not bicycle lanes. There're some shared bus/bicycle lanes in a couple of spots along Great South Road, but they're also not dedicated bicycle lanes. Auckland just does not do quality bicycle infrastructure, historically. That's gradually improving, in places, but with a marked out 50km route that has pretty much no bicycle infrastructure you get some idea of how seriously it's being taken.
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Hard News: The Cycle Frolic, in reply to bbrooks,
or you can ask them to send it to you in a different format.
The analysis I just posted has taken me an hour, including transcribing the data across to Excel, doing the calculations, checking on my sleeping infant son, and writing up this post through a laborious draft process that included checking the snark factor for my FB version of it (FB comments having given rise to the OIAs in the first place). Asking ACC to change the format would have taken much longer to get a result, and the volume of data is so tiny (six tables, five columns in four, three in the other two, four rows including the header in each) that I just didn't see the point.
If they'd sent me an image PDF of pages and pages of numbers, that would have been a different story. -
A more in-depth analysis of what I've got so far:
Total injury claims made to ACC for the period 2008-2012* for collisions involving some combination of motor vehicle and/or bicycle and/or pedestrian: 7,657
Injuries claims made to ACC as the result of a collision between a pedestrian and a bicycle over that period: 45, or 0.59% of the total.Total hospitalisation claims made to ACC for the period 2010-2012* for collisions involving some combination of motor vehicle and/or bicycle and/or pedestrian: 1,853
Hospitalisation claims made to ACC as the result of a collision between a pedestrian and a bicycle over that period: 14, or 0.76% of the total.Total fatalities for the period 2008-2012* involving the same combinations: 195
Fatalities involving a collision between a pedestrian and a bicycle over the period 2008-2012: 0, or 0.00% of the total.Normalising the periods for injuries and fatalities to match hospitalisation's 2010-2012, we get 25/4,471 injury claims (0.56%) and 0/115 fatalities.
Note that I do not know which party claimed for a given combination of pedestrian/cyclist.
*different years of available data for different kinds of claims.
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Hard News: Growing up in public, in reply to Stephen R,
In Paris the cops tended to roam in packs
And don't forget the uniformed soldiers strolling the streets in squads, complete with their FN rifles.
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Hard News: The Cycle Frolic, in reply to Brodie Davis,
Have you sent the stats to the guys at transportblog?
I'm waiting for the Police to come back about reported incidents, since that'll be a different angle on things. They've got a little while yet. My follow-up to ACC about particular parties has to be a full formal request, too, and may not even be able to be answered, so it'll be a while on that too.
Once I've got all the responses I'll put it together electronically (ACC emailed, but as an image PDF so I have to do some work to get the numbers out) and then let the Transport Blog guys have at it.