Cracker by Damian Christie

Wow. Wish I had kids.

I'm sure that there are many happy families out there as a result of Labour's promise to extend the Working For Families package.

I'm not impressed. Hardly surprising I suppose, single professional male that I am.

Labour's policy release takes me back to a discussion I was having with my blograde Tze Ming at Russell's birthday the other day. And yes, it's true, we do all hang out, singing 'Solidarity Forever' and drinking – anything as long as it's red.

My point was, and still is, that I don't like the idea of the Government turning more and more people into beneficiaries. Not because beneficiaries are bottom feeding scum or anything similarly reactionary and neo-con, but because I don't like the idea of increasing numbers of people becoming beholden to the state.

There's a touch of The Matrix about it.

When people are reliant on Government assistance, it gives the Government the ability to impose conditions. Some might be reasonable to most people, i.e. Thou Kids Shalt Attend School, but I don't think it's a huge leap of faith to imagine Thou Shalt Immunise Thy Children, which raises all sorts of issues. (No, I'm not some anti-immunisation nut, but I'm pro-choice, where that choice is informed).

By extending the Working For Families package to provide assistance for parents, Labour isn't just helping out those families who are really struggling. They're also making life a little cosier for those who aren't doing as well as they might, had they not dropped as many sprogs as they did. So why should I be paying for that?

According to Labour's new WFF calculator (smart move by the way, people love that shit), even if you're earning $150,000, you'll receive a benefit in 2007 – as long as you have six kids. So what gives? Are they chasing the Catholic vote? Why is Labour suddenly valuing the family higher than everything else when it comes to tax relief?

The problem is, and it's a problem I dare say National has been trying to deal with ahead of its tax policy release on Monday, when you try and give everyone something back, you don't get much bang for your buck. Rather than spraying it around like confetti, it's best when it's targeted. National is probably quite happy to target the middle and upper wage earners (while still delivering on its promised "tax cut for everyone"), because that's where the votes count.

Labour on the other hand, wants to be seen to be good to families, with an emphasis on those on lower to middle incomes. And here's their issue. You can't cut the bottom tax rate without giving everyone, including the rich (goddamnit), something back. And that's expensive. So the only way around it is to turn the tax cut into a benefit, where an income ceiling is imposed.

'What's so bad about being a beneficiary anyway', Tze Ming asks, as Russell turns to throw another copy of Atlas Shrugged on the glowing birthday bonfire.

It might be an ideological position, but it irks me. It's bad enough the Government takes as much as they do in the first place, now we're supposed to be grateful we can ask them for some back? Not on my watch.

For what it's worth, I like the new National ad, although as a friend pointed out, it probably makes being in the Labour Government seem a hell of a lot more fun than it is.

Finally, I found this Matrix quote vaguely amusing in the circumstances. Don't read too much into it – I'm still officially undecided.

Morpheus: This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

PS: In my last post I mentioned going to the Solomons and New Caledonia last weekend. The trip was fantastic (thanks for asking). We followed 80 Pacific war vets back to where they fought and to visit the mates they left behind. It was incredibly moving, and I felt extremely privileged to be there. But as I've written before, old soldiers do that to me.

So anyway, if this sounds like a bit of you, be sure to watch Sunday (7.30pm Sunday on One).

Mucho money must’ve changed hands around the offices of New Zealand as Brent Todd was revealed as one-half of the so-called “celebrity drug scandal”.

"Mr Todd wants it known that he has not bought, sold or supplied prohibited drugs," John Billington QC submitted in a memorandum to the court.

I’m not by any means suggesting Todd has done any of the following, but his lawyer’s denials aren’t exactly an exhaustive list. Hypothetically, a person could have been given drugs for free, simply been in possession of some drugs, attempted to buy, sell or supply any number of narcotics and still be able to claim what Todd has.

I get a bit pissed off about the hypocrisy involved when it comes to people caught dealing drugs. The biggest culprits tend to be young professional “part-time” drug users. Like some young lawyers I know who enjoy getting completely mashed every weekend, presumably to forget the cold grey corporate hell divided into six minute units they suffer during the week. Quite happy to consume the drugs with voracity, but pity the Scum of the Earth they buy them from.

The idea of a “pusher” hanging around like a vulture, incubating addicts is laughable in New Zealand, at least in any social scene I’ve ever hung around in – although I’ve never spent much time in the homebake city of Hamilton. It’s as ridiculous as a claim I heard on Leighton Smith’s show one morning (okay, if you’re looking for ridiculous claims, he’s got them in spades, but stick with me). A caller (paraphrasing):

“Leighton, if you don’t think drugs are available in primary schools, you’re living in a dream world. It’s all there Leighton, cocaine, crack, heroin, this P stuff…they give it to them for free to get them hooked.”

Yes. That’s right. Rather than sell the stuff to hairdressers for $350 a gram, it makes a lot more sense to get primary school kids addicted to class A drugs, then relieve them of their 50 cents pocket money each week. Pure evil genius.

Just as laughable is David Henderson’s claim that he did cocaine for weight loss. Sure, it might be a nice side-effect – it’s certainly done wonders for any number of super models over the years – but are you sure it didn’t have a little something to do with the fact it made you feel fucking awesome? Really? It goes to show how ridiculously body conscious we’ve become, that it’s preferable to say you did coke to lose weight, rather than because you enjoyed it.

I’m off to watch the leaders’ debate. I can’t wait to see whether Jim and Pete have the gall to make eye contact with JC. As belle de jour Cathy Odgers notes, it’s kind of like gate crashing a party you weren’t invited to. Onya chaps.

Righto. I'm off to New Caledonia and the Solomons for the weekend. I'll explain why when I get back. Wish me luck.

Finally we know the election date. And it’s the same one we knew all along. Ho-hum. At least now the media can stop rocking itself to sleep muttering “September seventeenth… definitely definitely September seventeenth…”

And much like the card game Memory, we can start matching Labour and National’s policies against each other. The difference being, in a game of Political Memory, the pledge cards sport pictures of made-over politicians and cost hundreds of millions of dollars each. And they prefer it when the voters don't remember them.

Labour successfully distracted attention from National’s student loan announcement by having Trevor Mallard jump up and down on a trampoline wearing a pair of cut-off jean shorts and a bikini top. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked.

However Labour must have noticed that some of us, i.e. those of us with huge loans, pricked up our ears at National’s announcement. And so they’ve tried to go one better, promising No Interest on Student Loans, as long as you live in New Zealand.

The right-wingers are already jumping up and down, screaming about perverse incentives – if there’s no interest surely EVERYONE will borrow as much as they possibly can, damn the torpedoes. Smart parents will use their children’s loan accounts as investment portfolios etc etc.

Well maybe. Although there are two important caveats on Labour’s scheme.

1. You must keep living in New Zealand.

2. It's not guaranteed to last forever.

Therefore any student considering moving overseas, or that this is merely a pre-election bribe to be revoked at will, would be well advised to borrow carefully. Unless of course you're so damned rich you don't need to actually use the student loan money, and can just chuck the whole lot into solid investments. (And if you're that rich, are you really going to fluff around investing each paltry weekly installment just so you can reap the returns off a few grand each year?)

It should also be noted, if these perverse incentives do exist, they also exist in National's rebate scheme, albeit to a lesser degree. Although with no interest, as under Labour's scheme, why would you ever try and reduce your loan through voluntary repayments, as opposed to just sticking the money into a savings account?

If you're interested in what'll happen to your own loan under a zero interest policy, there's a calculator here. Probably wouldn't hurt to check the numbers through a calculator not provided by the Labour party though...

At this point, I should make it clear out that by doubting the Nats' trustworthiness in my last post, I wasn't supporting Labour. My enemy's enemy is not my friend etc. And two months from the election, I ain't got no friends.

Still, this simple fact didn't prevent an even simpler character named Nick, using the charming email moniker, ahem, showing me the flaws in my argument. Apparently not only am I a lefty, but also (and I quote):

...an ugly four-eyed cock-biting fuckwit.

Obviously he missed my post on the laser eye surgery. These days I'm only a two-eyed cock-biting fuckwit.

AM I GOING through The Change, or did someone turn up the heat on this non-election campaign?

National’s acting like the miller from Rumplestiltskin, bragging Don has the ability to spin straw into gold. Tax cuts for every New Zealander AND more money on just about everything.

And yesterday it was time to bribe those with student loans.

Like everyone who started university the same year I did, I remember National’s 1990 campaign promise that it would abolish fees. Well, it did, kind of. By bulk funding universities and leaving it up to them to impose fees for any shortfall, National’s sleight of policy would have impressed even David Blaine. Twaah.

The student loan scheme was introduced in my first year of university, and like drunken Otago scarfies to the wintry Leith River, we took to it with much gusto. Cars, stereos and ski holidays were charged to Uncle Jim – one friend even had the receipts to prove he had spent his entire year’s loan on alcohol. [RIP Brett: We miss ya buddy.]

Long story short, a few years later, a few letters after my name, and I owe around $55,000. A good amount I reckon. It’s too big for me to consider pecking away at it with voluntary repayments, but it’s not so big that I sob myself to sleep every night. The way I look at it, even if I lose my job, the Government’s not going to come around and repossess my new fuzzy hippo slippers.

Even so, a $55k albatross is still one helluva hunka marine seabird to have hanging around your neck. What did scare me a little was the fact that even when I was working, earning vaguely-okay money, paying ten cents for every dollar over the loan threshold, my loan kept inching up. And I'm not alone. Only this year has my income crept up enough to see my loan start to decrease, albeit very very slowly.

So what to do about it? Early into the scheme there was talk – from Jim Anderton if I remember rightly – of writing off the student loans, or at least the portion students were willing to swear an oath went on actual university education, rather than, say, tinnies. But as the debt hit the several billion dollar mark, and the untrustworthiness of students vis-à-vis swearing an oath was proven in peer-reviewed research, it became clear my loan wasn’t going anywhere.

Tax rebates have always made sense to me, although I’ve had the nagging feeling they wouldn’t work for some economic reason. I think there’s the concern that shrewd rich parents will use their children’s student loans, invest them, claim the tax rebate and somehow profit from the whole deal.

Truth be told, you could already profit from the student loan scheme, by investing in property. It would only take a small group of committed students with a couple years’ worth of loans to become serious slumlords anywhere outside of Auckland. Even if you couldn't get enough students together to pay cash, IRD's handy write-offs would ensure an interest-free mortgage, at least for as long as they're studying. Um... I think, better check that with an accountant first.

By making only the interest tax deductible, as National are proposing, I end up being about $30 a week better off. If there’s tax relief on the way too, as they’re suggesting, I could be a few thousand dollars richer each year. At least that’s what the American who keeps calling tells me.

Will I sell New Zealand to the Tories for a few grand? Maybe, maybe not. But you can be damn sure a lot of people will.

THE ONLY FUNNY thing to come out of the second London bombing… On National Radio this morning, a young bystander sounding exactly like a real-life Ali G:

Yeah, so I saw the guy din’I, and he took off down the road, right? An’I would’ve taken off after him, in’it, except I got my heavy record bags – cos I’m a DJ, right…

Have a good weekend. In'it. And gaming fans might be interested to note I've got a new monthly column in the styley new M2 Magazine, out on Monday. Check it.

The old cliché of Death and Taxes have been a real theme for me in the past couple of weeks.

Tax, in the sense that I'm nutting out a story on this year's big election issue, while simultaneously ignoring the letters from IRD telling me my tax returns are overdue. The twice-yearly pain in the arse that is GST filing has been complicated even more by packing away all my stuff into various boxes, moving house, and not having the space to unpack everything.

Who am I kidding? It's also got a lot to do with the fact that I use my company account like a small child uses a tree – providing endless hours of entertainment in any way I see fit. Somehow it all works out, but there are a lot of dubious Friday night withdrawals that need to be explained away first.

Death-wise, I carried my grandfather's coffin on Wednesday. I've been to a few funerals before, but this was the first time I've acted as a pallbearer. I guess that's one way of determining how close you are to someone, especially as a guy – although I'm reliably informed it's common for women to lend a hand these days.

The funeral was nice, even if the chaplain did get a bit lost with the names (somehow my Uncle Terry became Aunty Megan), and the Last Post failed to fire on the stereo (I knew we were up against it when the chaplain tried turning the CD over to play the other side…). Surely it couldn't be that hard to find a bugler on a naval base.

Leaving the chapel, it was raining pretty solidly, a very grey day at the Devonport navy base, and I wondered if we needed to walk quite so slowly from the chapel out to the hearse. The alternative – breaking into a quick jog – didn't seem appropriate though, so I resigned myself to the downpour.

Which for some reason reminds me of a joke. Why does Snoop Dogg always carry an umbrella?

Drizzle.

Anyhoo, Sunday just gone, I wrote my HOS column about the trials and tribulations of moving house. Mercury Energy in particular go out of their way to make life difficult, especially with their policy of "we'll be round to connect your power, um, sometime today."

How it works is this: You name a time, and they send someone round up to five hours later. They can't tell you anything more detailed than that, they can't call you to let you know they're on their way, and if you're not there, you pay a penalty (and nominate another time…)

All of which is great when you're trying to move house.

I got an email from Mercury offering an explanation for the mandatory five-hours of sitting around with my finger up my bum (I was bored, okay)

We are unable to give a more accurate timeframe for reconnection as the contractors we use have a schedule of jobs over the greater Auckland area and any new job is then added to that.

Which doesn't really explain anything. Many people have a schedule of many things, and add new things to the end. It's the way schedules work, and it certainly doesn't give them more than half a day's leeway to turn up to existing appointments.

But the real pisser about having to move came from the landlord. As I mentioned before, she's selling the house, so we had to move out. The stooped thing is, when the owner of a house gives you notice, if you find a place earlier, you've still got to give 3 weeks' notice.

Which is arse, quite frankly.

Not only do you have to pay moving expenses, reconnection fees, letting fees etc – all of which added up to about $800 – you have to pay them rent for the house they're about to make a killing from.

So I negotiated with the property manager to only give two weeks' notice. Two weeks later, the landlord said she wanted an extra week. I said "no". I pointed out we'd paid about $90,000 of her mortgage off already. She said "how about half a week?" I said "no". She looked down and realised she was standing on no legs.

Seriously though, what about a change in the default residential tenancy rules? If the landlord sells the house from under you, you can move out without any notice.

While I'm on things that just don't make sense: David McPhail's TV reviews. Anyone?

For something that's actually funny, Office fans should check out Ricky Gervais' ads for Live8.

Incidentally, I've seen the much-dreaded US version of The Office. It's actually not bad. It helps that large chunks of dialogue have been lifted verbatim from the original, and that the casting is close, but not so close as to be sad. It has no laugh track. It works.

Whew. One whole post without mentioning London. You see, I've never been there, and friends of mine are far more qualified to comment than I.

But my thoughts are with you. And as the Maori proverb says, "Iti noa ana, he pito mata" – "With care, a small kumara will produce a harvest."

Okay, it doesn't make sense, but it's a proverb with a kumara in it. What's not to like?