Posts by Matthew Poole
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We should never let ill-educated politicians anywhere near education.
Pardon my missing something....is John Key sick??
Quite possibly, but that has nothing to do with him being ill-educated. Hail the mighty hyphen, wonder grammatical tool that suffers awfully from misunderstanding and disuse.
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And another maths question which involves knowing how quarts relate to gallons.
Hey, leave them alone. It's only been 34 years since the first legislated attempt to get America to use metrics. Not their fault that they're slow learners.
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I am also amused by the new Mini server
Was discussing this one with a colleague yesterday. We concurred that, if one were to dabble with such a thing, one would very definitely want the three-year warranty. And a religiously-followed backup regime. Hard drives are not fond of heat, and two drives stuffed into a Mac Mini case is a recipe for death.
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On a completely different, Friday-friendly note, this is pretty amusing. And very topical for this forum.
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I was in the Epsom electorate for last election, and I did everything I could to stop them. In this case that amounted to holding my nose and dropping my electorate vote on National.
Ditto. It was all that I could do. I hadn't counted on Rodders getting quite such a significant margin, after his nearly-almost-ran performance in '05, but I can at least say, hand on heart, that I contributed not a single tick to his cause.
If Labour can pull finger and get organised, National are in the process of handing the '11 election over on a silver platter. I'm not sure if they realise it yet, but by even entertaining the prospect of competition in accounts such as motor vehicles they're offering such electoral gifts to Labour as few politicians could conceive of except in their most rampant of wet dreams.
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The ACC thing just gets scarier. Not only do we face every likelihood that the workers' account will be opened to competition, we now have this wonderful idea, attributed to John Key: He refused to rule out possible similar treatment of other ACC accounts, such as the motor vehicles one, into which car drivers pay levies when renewing their vehicle registration.
There are only two ways that unprofitable accounts (ie: everything except the workers' account) could possibly work in the private sector:
1) Premiums go up exponentially. If motorcyclists think they've got it bad with the proposed changes now, wait until they see what'll hit them when the people carrying their cover have to make a profit! Or,
2) Which is a much, much, much scarier option, is that the insurers are allowed to sue those who cause injury to their clients. If they can't charge premiums at a level that will sustain cover and also return a profit, they will have to seek cost recovery. There is no alternative. And that, of course, will put us into the wonderful realm of American-style tort fuckery. Hoo-fucking-ray.So, I feel that a huge fuck-you-very-much needs to go out to Act voters right about now. Coz if National introduces legislation to make any or all of the other accounts competitive, Act will vote for it in a heartbeat.
Oh, and as an almost-side note, whatever happened to investing in NZ? We have no native accident insurers, they'll all be Australian and American. That means that the profits will be siphoned off overseas, on top of the destruction of ACC's investment portfolio. That's just "O for Oarsome" beyond words.
Edit: I hope that National would only be likely to try and make the other accounts competitive on the basis of pressure from Act. I don't think their ideological blinkers are quite that fixed, but I guess it's possible. Having Act in the equation, though, changes everything. And not for the better.
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It's pretty easy to be cynical about the motivations of a company with monopolistic tendencies, such as AIAL, but I think in this case their (in)actions have simply been about not paying attention to a dog that didn't bark. Until very recently a rail link to the airport would've been classified as a dirty rumour - as plausible as suggestions that Rodney actually hearts unions and the minimum wage - which would've made it pointless for AIAL to make any comment, positive or negative, about the concept.
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Sacha, why not double-tracking of the Western Line before? Why not electrification yet? Why not reopen the Onehunga Branch before?
And those are all projects that use existing corridors. A line to the airport has to go through built-up areas, with no existing easement; unlike the Avondale-Southdown one. When we haven't even been able to muster the political support until recently to upgrade what we've already got, building an entirely new link is on the back burner on a stove in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the leopard." With apologies to Douglas Adams. -
I suspect the quick, easy flow of passengers is more valuable to them than carparking...
Indeed. Passengers spend money inside the terminal, which generates revenue. The more passengers, the better.
Plus, if it's easier to get to AIAL it reduces pressure for another airport in the region. That means no competition for landing fees, and other such revenue-negative developments. -
I'm sure it has nothing to do with the influential airport company making over 30 million dollars every year from carparking fees.
Probably less than you'd think, actually. If they can build on some of the carparking space they can get both rents and percentages of turnover. AIAL's income from parking is thoroughly dwarfed by the income they take from being a commercial and industrial landlord. I bet they'd charge KiwiRail an easement for running a railway line across airport land, too, and rent for a train station.