Posts by Stephen Judd
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Oh well played sir, well played.
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I'm not enjoying this fit of self-congratulation. While I think it's true that there is a particularly visible strain of bigotry in Oz, we have it here too, it's just that it's been a while since it made the news.
If New Zealand does have lower levels of interethnic violence, perhaps that's because for most of the 20th century we've had a more racist and less open immigration policy than Australia, rather than because of some inherent virtue in the national character.
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Redbaiter has patches of sanity that make me suspect he is more than one person, or perhaps that another regular user has Redbaiter as an amusing sockpuppet and forgets to stay in character.
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When house prices go up faster than rents, it's a fair bet that they're not being driven by demand for a place to live, but by an expectation of capital gains.
Quite. Or you look at the yield on rental properties. I can't see any around where I live where the return on your capital would as good as a high-interest savings account, unless you were heavily geared.
A few months ago, I visited an Auckland accountant, to see whether he would be a good person to help manage my affairs.
One of his suggestions was that I should buy rental property.
"But why would I do that?" I asked. "Isn't the yield on rental properties less than I would get from the bank?"
"Oh, nobody buys for the yield - you buy for the capital gain! Why, houses double in value every 10 years!"
He did not get my business, of course. But it's conversations like that which make me think we are in a spec bubble with a hard landing ahead.
(And of course if house prices were guaranteed to double every 10 years, that's only about 7% or 8% per year, hardly a stellar return. They don't of course.)
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Are there any stats that measure something like the number of bedrooms or the square metres of space available per head of population?
I'd be very intererested to know that, because it would help tease apart the extent to what price is being driven up by actual shortage vs speculators.
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Sentenced to life with a merciless gavel
after what you did
at the Family and Naval. -
Who are those people Amis is referring to, David? That's what I want to know.
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If I was of a left-wing frame of mind
Surely, Craig, caring about human rights is not merely the province of the left wing? (just teasing)
I don't see either Tamaki OR Vercoe having a policy influence. But Tamaki has a posse.
However, you are very right to point out that hateful religious rhetoric is to be found close at hand, albeit without armed force behind it.
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Weston mate, who said anything about the local Baptist pastor? Or Bahais? You are proposing straw men here.
(If you think tamaki is a typical baptist you are badly misinformed).
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Weston, perhaps you need to pay attention to the eliminationist, totalitarian rhetoric of the loony Christian right.
Now of course they are not mainstream, and in New Zealand, they are a tiny minority who will never get any traction. And the vast bulk of Christians in New Zealand are blameless people towards whom I bear no ill-will at all. But if we are talking about the threat of any religion, and looking to its extremists as the expression of that threat, then Tamaki is where I will look rather than an Anglican vicar. No, there is currently no Christian equivalent of Al Qaeda; but there have been eliminationist Christian movements in the past, including the recent past, with equally murderous programmes, and no doubt there will be again.
More generally, I find Mark's unfounded assertions equally offensive. Like span, I'm equally opposed to fundmentalism of all kinds.
Some people have a kind of projection going on. They presume that since they're right wing, and right-wingers hate (what they imagine to be) Islam, that lefties must love it. No basis in fact required.