Posts by Simon Lyall
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Up Front: The Surprisingly Sincere Up…, in reply to simon g,
Exit polls are common overseas, but not used in NZ. Is there anything to stop exit polls being conducted on Advance Voting?
Well in 2014 I had a little run in with the Electoral Commission around an exit poll. full story here but the relevant threatening language is:
Under section 197(1)(d) of the Electoral Act 1993, it is an offence to conduct a public opinion poll of persons who have voted (exit polls). Section 197(1)(d) states:
197 Interfering with or influencing voters
(1) Every person commits an offence and shall be liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding $20,000 who at an election—
(d) at any time before the close of the poll, conducts in relation to the election a public opinion poll of persons voting before polling day -
I've photographed and published my unmarked voting papers several times. Not had problems with that.
I have taken photographs inside polling place and been told off, even though Ive taken care to avoid photographs of other ballots. I would note it is common for photographs to be taken of party leaders when they vote so it doesn't look like the rules are consistent here.
Also the design of some polling places isn't all that private. I voted in the Mt Roskill bye election at the Mt Roskill library and the "voting booths" were directly in front on windows to a public area at the entrance to the library. Anybody could have stood at the window 2m behind somebody filling out their ballots (photo attached)
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Hard News: This is bad – very bad, in reply to Chris Peel,
Heart of the City just a press release around businesses...apparently, their solution is to eradicate homelessness by largely increasing security.
What do you think they should should have said? They have inner-city businesses complaining, what should they do?
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Another outlet that seems to be following the regional model is the ODT. They appear to have reporters in at least half a dozen towns in their region filing stories daily. I found it a big contrast to the Herald when I'm reading it and they devote a page to Alexandra, Balclutha, etc.
I'm not sure how well it is working (on a news or financial) level. Most of the complaints I hear about the ODT are regarding their coverage of Dunedin matters
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Whenever this topic comes up online you usually get a few people who clean the toilets in bars or schools who start state that women's toilets are often the worst.
eg:
had a friend who worked in a bar, he said the womens washroom was always worse than the mens, used tampons stuck to walls and ceilings, ass paper all over the place....men would piss on the toilet paper rolls, seats and floor on purpose, but he said the girls side was ALWAYS worse.
I worked as a cleaner ("maintenance") at a mcdonalds and I always tell people how the female toilets were always much dirtier. They had the same amount of shit and piss events as the males but with the occasional added bonus of menstrual blood . I could never work out how the blood got to some of the places ( splotches on walls , floors , under rim etc) so I have since decided that sometimes females must stand in odd places while removing tampons and that sometimes engorged tampons are difficult to control.
It might be just an american thing but apparently the toilets seats always have piss on them because women "hover" because the toilet seats always have piss on them because...
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The things is that the Daily Mail is a lot better at these sort of stories than the Herald or Stuff. They usually have lots of great pictures attached to the stories and nice summaries that don't get picked up by the NZ sites:
eg compare this Herald story to the Daily Mail original.
Even something like this piece of gossip and Paparazzi photos ("sourced" from another publication) has lots of photos and videos that completely blow the NZ clones out of the water.
Aside from the odd local "star" the overseas publications are always going to get the gossip stories first and do a better job presenting them.
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I'm note sure that the idea that they will use noise control to shut down the Kings Arms is real, this will surely take a few years even if they started building apartments tomorrow. More likely they added the KA property to the designation since it was a lot easier to do it now (and no real downside) than apply for a new one later.
I'd wonder why they actually didn't apply for a larger area.
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Polity: Global behemoths and tax, in reply to linger,
Which if any of those hypothetical scenarios bears any resemblance to reality?
Google is probably (5) right now but I know of companies that I guess are each of the others. In the past Google was some of the other options. Companies like Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo, Microsoft, Dropbox might be any of them. Traditional companies like Publishers or Media companies where the content is being sold but they have some sort of New Zealand presence might also adopt one of the above.
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Polity: Global behemoths and tax, in reply to Rob Stowell,
In the case of Google, nz eyeballs ARE the added value. Nz advertisers are the local revenue stream. Google get both for close to nothing tax wise.
Note we are talking about company profit here not GST or other sales taxes (and interesting but different issue).
How much tax should Google pay New Zealand in the following scenarios?
1. Google have no presence in NZ. People here pay them $100 million per year in advertising and subscriptions. All payments are to overseas companies.
2. Google have 5 employees who work from home as programmers. They are paid and employed by the US company.
3. Google have a sales guy in NZ. He is paid by an overseas company and all sales are to an overseas company.
4. Google setup a subsidiary in New Zealand. It employees the sales guy but all payments still go to the US company.
5. Google NZ now directly bills about $50 million/year from the largest NZ customers. It claims costs of $500 k for the local office, $49 million from services from Google US and a profit of $1 million. Another $50 million per year from smaller customers goes directly to Google US from NZers.
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This is a story that comes around regularly, John Campbell did it just 6 months ago and it has been done many times before that.
The important thing is that the 1,2 or 10 people working in New Zealand for Apple, Google or Facebook don't generate all that much added value for the companies. That is all generated by the factories, techies, lawyers and marketing people on the other side of the world.
The New Zealand office isn't generating 100s of millions of dollars of extra value. They are adding a few million and declaring this to the IRD (who would no doubt keep a close eye on them).
Trying to extract an excessive amount will result in these companies closing their local divisions overnight. They may even cut other (non sales) jobs in New Zealand out of the fear that hiring a couple of developers will expose them to 100s of millions of dollars of liability.
