Posts by Matthew Poole
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Following on from my OIA requests to ACC and the Police, I got a response from ACC today.
The promptness of the response aside, it was interesting to see that over the three years (2010-2012) for which hospitalisation figures are available there were only 14 hospitalisations for cyclist/pedestrian collisions. For 2008-2012 there were a total of 45 claims to ACC for cyclist/pedestrian collisions. I've gone back to ask if it's possible to correlate them to whether one or both parties claimed for a given collision.
And, unsurprisingly, fatalities from cyclist/pedestrian collisions over 2008-2012 were zero.What's clear is that cyclists are not the danger. The danger is motor vehicles. Whatever can be done to improve the safety of cyclists will also benefit pedestrians, if only because it will provide better separation between pedestrians and motor vehicles.
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Hard News: Growing up in public, in reply to Bart Janssen,
That’s the game they run around with baskets on sticks tossing the ball to each other right?
No, you're thinking of baseball (to bring the World Series gag full circle).
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Hard News: Aiming for the feet, in reply to Kumara Republic,
Much as I favour an FTT, it really needs backing from at least one or more G8 nations to be meaningful.
It needs the backing of, at a minimum, the EU. If European businesses have to take their banking right out of the Union in order to avoid an FTT, such a measure has a prayer of success globally.
NZ trying to do it alone, unless there are utterly draconian penalties for avoidance and a well-funded investigator with inquisitorial powers sufficient to make the NSA blush, would just see any business bigger than the local fish-and-chip shop open a bank account with the Australian parent of their local bank and start instructing clients to "Remit your payment to <Australian bank account number>".
Joe Muggins who owns the local garage will get screwed because he'll have to cover the tax for all his own banking, but Joanne Swindle who runs his parts importer will be fine because she banks using NAB or CBA and is thus outside the taxation regime. She'll have to work a bit harder to manage money for local payments, due to processing delays, but the additional fees will be negligible because they'll get treated as inter-bank payments (and a lot of her other suppliers will be banking in Aus too) so she'll almost certainly be up overall. -
Hard News: Aiming for the feet, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
You and I pay tax on our earnings on a progressive basis. So do most businesses
Minor correction, companies pay a flat tax rate not a progressive one.
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Hard News: All John's Friends, in reply to Mr Mark,
where the Left win a 1-3 seat majority in Parliament. Undemocratic ? Maybe. Upsetting to Craig Ranapia ? Absolutely.
Don't count on that. Craig would rather campaign to limit a Labour/Green government to a single term than campaign for another term of a National/Winston government. I don't think he's too enamoured of the CCCP's stance on homosexuality, either.
Remember, he party-voted Green in 2011; he's not a uni-dimensional National voter. -
Comment spam in eight different threads. Someone's determined.
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Hard News: All John's Friends, in reply to Johnny Canuck,
Interestingly, the Harper Government (tm) did get away with a ”light bulb ban”, effective 1 Jan 2014. Bravely going where the Clark Government was ultimately unable to tread…
And Dubbyah, of all people, signed off on an efficiency standard for light-bulbs in the US market.
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Hard News: All John's Friends, in reply to martinb,
This comes in part from an environment where some journalists print press releases without question.
FTFY.
The practice of churnalism, aka press-release-as-reportage, is not something confined to uncritical repetition of National's releases. It just so happens, though, that National are the ones implementing policy so it's their releases that are mostly worth being regurgitated; often without even being subjected to such journalistic basics as editing for spelling and grammar. -
Hard News: Cranks, self-seekers and the mayor, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Brewer failed Politics 101: Before you start posturing on the moral high ground, make sure you’re not only fully dressed but your linen is impeccably clean and fragrant.
I desperately wanted Granny to go digging into the phone bills of Brewer and Quax, ensuring that they'd carried out the requisite reimbursement exercises to account for every last cent of personal use.
Brewer had a shaky leg to stand on over the junket from TV3, but Quax got no real investigation that I could see and there was no discussion of either of their respective compliance with the personal-use-of-cellphone policy. -
Hard News: All John's Friends, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I could almost see you preferring Labour/Green over National/Winston/whoever-else-cobbles-together-a-majority.