Posts by Paul Campbell
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OK thanks - rats, should have done it last week when it was rumoured - this is money we've set aside to partially pay off our kid's loans so they don't start life completely burdened - I'm not planning in giving it to them to enjoy while they let their loans deflate
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BTW if I were a student and owed $20k in student loans and could borrow more interest free - right now I could borrow another $20k, use it to pay off the original $20k, claim the 10% early pay off bonus, and end up owing $18k (rinse wash repeat)
I'm always been amazed that people haven't been shrinking their loans this way - it always seemed very rort-worthy
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Any one know - the 10% bonus for paying off a student loan early is going away - anyone know when - I want to pay off some of the kids loans if I can
(10% ROI - better than anything else on the market)
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I left NZ for my OE the day after Marylin Waring crossed the floor, by the time I found a paper overseas the election was on - the NZ I eventually returned to was very very different from the one I left
Yes that stupid tax cut has caused no end of budget strife - but that's the neocon way - drop taxes for their mates then squeeze on government because, oh deary, the budget doesn't add up ... I've done very well from it but I'll happily give it back so that little old ladies on fixed incomes can afford their meds - roll on the next election
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My teenage daughter inflicted Shortland St on us all last year, it would fill up the PVR (in HD no less) so her friends could avoid missing an episode and we were forbidden to delete it, this year she's a Uni student and "so over that", our PVR has room again
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I use Linux so iTunes is not available to me - I own a shit load of CDs - so many I have trouble storing them - I used to buy 2-3 a week but when Real Groovy bought up most of the Dunedin record stores and then went bust Marbecks and JBHiFi don't really fill the void, I try to buy stuff when I visit the US .... but mostly these days I just don't have any great new music in my life which makes me sad
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Legal Beagle: A matter of conscience, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
I'm trying to draw a distinction between personal votes, and conscience votes. I think there is a place for conscience votes, being votes on which MPs are only accountable to themselves/God, and other votes, on which their parties, supporters, and voters generally can and should hold them to account.
I disagree - they're representatives, they're supposed to represent the people who voted them in, not their party, or any particular god (we don't let them vote). List MPS arguably represent parties as well since the people they represent voted them in through their party.
In general I think that when a conscience vote is held an MP should go out of their way to determine what the consciences of the people they represent think, rather than just decide they know better.
But the thing is that in a representative election there are no single issues - you can't vote someone in just on the abortion issue, or just on capital punishment, or slavery, or taxes, or .... in the end you have to choose someone who represents the majority of what you believe in and sort of hope that it all come out in the wash - an MP who continues to find out what the people who elected want so he or she can represent them better is a good MP.
I think that a great question to have a prospective MP answer is "what conscience issues would you vote for (or against) even if the majority of your electorate (or party's supporters for list MPs) felt differently?".
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Up until '81 the party leaders would barnstorm the country's Town Halls, a hang over from the pre-TV era I guess - in '78 the Dunedin town hall filled up to the gods and yelled at Muldoon for an hour, in '81 just after the tour they instituted tickets, only handed out to the faithful - in that pre-desktop-processing world they consisted of a yellow square of cardboard with a unique number printed on them - I distinctly remember the night before in the Cook, someone had figured out that yellow cardboard would go through a xerox ...... no one at the door had any way to check that the numbers were unique .... our local HART leaders came in disguised as nuns ... there was a lot of shouting, the SIS guy sitting next to me looked so pissed off ....
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I too came to my political consciousness during the Muldoon years, seems like there was a march through downtown Dunedin at least every month back then (and twice a week during the '81 tour) - I do miss attending National party campaign meetings in the town hall, one seldom gets a real chance to express one's anger directly to the powers that be any more.
We brought up our kids in Berkeley, street marches (during the Bush1/Bush2 years) were not unknown - and we took them to many marches, one wants to raise them with your own values after all, creating signs to carry was an important part of the process - we'd talk to the kids and they'd make their own signs - sometimes with confused or somewhat mixed messages and often overly sparkly.
My kids have marched in the SF Gay freedom parade twice (once with a mostly lesbian pro-choice group, the other with their half siblings with lesbian mums [my wife volunteered me]).
But one needs to be careful - kiwis are so nice - protest marches are (usually) pretty sedate while in the US there seems to be a seething undercurrent of people who are just so powerless that things are likely to let go - the night they started bombing Baghdad (the first time I think) I found myself on a freeway wondering why people were dancing around a burning highway patrol car (it's full of bullets, run away!"), the night of the Rodney King decision was equally scary - definitely not things to take kids to, and sometimes something best to just walk away from yourself
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Steve - I think you have to hear him say that in your head with a german accent ....
(and then hear Banksy say "I know nuffink ....")