Posts by Matthew Poole
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How do I know, well I am dealing with one now, he owes me a million and a half, will he pay, who knows
If he doesn't can I win, hopefullyDoubt if Miis Clark has ver even done a small deal like this, well with such a big down side for her!
And how many of the lawyers, accountants and farmers on the caucuses and lists of Act and National have done such deals? Scant fucking few, that's how many. Don't try and pretend that drafting the contracts (the lawyers) and checking the numbers (the accountants) before selling a farm (the farmers) for a million bucks is the same thing, coz it damn well ain't. Jim Anderton used to run a multi-million dollar contracting company, ffs, which puts him one up on John Key's "funny money" business. At least people understand how contractors make money, which cannot be said for making huge figures on currency hedging.
But, hey, don't let reality get in the way of your surreal world
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Personally, I think we do need a written constitution.
Why? What problems would be solved by a unified documentation of our constitution to replace our mishmash of conventions, case law, and statutory instruments? Is something dysfunctional about how things are at present, that having everything written down in one place would resolve?
I find that most people who say "We need a written constitution" really mean "We need Parliament to be constrained, somehow, in what they can do to our rights." Which requires a minor change to the Bill of Rights Act, and an additional section, maybe with an entrenchment. That's it. And a written constitution that just replaces what we've got at present won't give us that, unless it's set out as an end goal to start with, in which case we may as well not bother with all the expense and instead just make the BORA changes at the outset.
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So, it doesn't actually mean anything because any legislation can potentially be repealed, but she will support it anyway?
As I've said to many people about the s59 repeal, the law is a signal. It says to society "This is right/wrong/allowed/forbidden". It doesn't stop you doing anything (when was the last time a statute book jumped on your car's brakes just as you were going over the speed limit?), but it tells you that society does or does not accept that behaviour. What you choose to do with that message is entirely up to you, but you wear the consequences of ignoring it.
Similarly, entrenchment signals to future parliaments that the current parliament thinks this is an absolutely fundamental tenet of our democratic system and ought only be meddled with at their peril. Her comment is a recognition that Parliament is supreme, and can undo whatever it so chooses from parliaments past. So she's happy to support sending that particular signal, but isn't so naive as to think that it could never be undone. Her honesty on the matter would be well repeated by Key, who seems to be telling a different story about the Maori seats whenever he opens his mouth to a different audience; are they being kept? Turfed? Entrenched? Kept until the Maori Party is no longer necessary for National to govern, and then turfed?
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entrenchment is rarely used in NZ, and arguably underused. MMP isn't entrenched, for example. Neither is the principle of responsible government (Ministers must be MPs), or even the existence of Parliament itself.
Much of what constitutes ordinary parliamentary behaviour in this country isn't legislated at all, even through "ordinary" (as opposed to entrenched) statute. This includes things like the resignation of a defeated Prime Minister following an election, and the leader of the party commanding the majority of votes in the House becoming the PM. Instead, they're conventions. The military and police swear allegiance to the Queen (and by extension the GG) rather than to the Prime Minister, so removing a rogue government by force would be entirely possible, but it's just not something that forms part of our history. Politicians, whatever we may think of their ideologies and beliefs, tend to honour the conventions of Parliament. That includes leaving when they lose an election.
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Do have any idea of what's in Labour's stimulus package, what it will cost and how it will be paid for? Armstrong doesn't, and I don't think he really cares. He should. We all should.
We've got an idea of what's in it. More of an idea, in fact, than of what National's expecting the Police to do to be able to afford these extra cops. Another 100 officers on the streets of South Auckland is roughly two entirely-new police stations' worth, so there's some hefty building required to give them places to work.
I'd like to know in advance how Labour's proposal will be funded, but I imagine that it'll be through debt, just like most of what National's promising. Serviced in the same way, but with greater tax revenues to make the repayments because Labour's not cutting taxes as far.Are you prepared to admit, Craig, that Labour's in no position to know now what our economy will look like in December? That they're in no position to know what the global economy will look like in December? And that you'd utterly eviscerate them if, come December, they're in power and the details you're demanding now turned out to be totally wrong?
Credit might be available in December, it might not. The PREFU was admitted to be done on old data, and that things are likely a lot worse than that series of documents stated. But you're demanding that Labour produce costings now for emergency measures that won't even begin until next year. They might not even be totally necessary.As for Armstrong not caring, I think he's written Aunty Helen off already and is labouring (har har) under that presupposition in the production of his columns.
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There is no point is us dipshit voters getting to assess Labour's spending promises -- and how they're going to be paid for -- before the election
Same applies to National, Craig. I'm really curious what they're going to "refocus" in the existing Police budget in order to find several million extra dollars to pay for their 220 extra cops. The $18.3m they've committed covers the extra salary cost (220x$50k=$11m), with about $7m to spare, but every new officer comes with overhead: Uniforms, allowances, additional radios and firearms, extra patrol cars (needing maintenance, petrol...), more NCOs for the extra staff, desks and computers, increased HR staff, potentially additional building space to house them all, extra prosecutions staff (assuming National want to get prosecutions against the additional people who will be arrested by all these extra cops), etc. A conservative estimate would be another $50k/officer in overhead, which means that National's expecting the cops to find about $4m in their existing budget. What's going to be slashed in order to fund that, Craig? We have a right to know, and because this is about law-and-order I rate it as a pretty damn important issue to be cleared up before the election.
This is just one point, but one that I can quickly work out the numbers for because I know what police recruit salaries are. I'm sure there are plenty of others.
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How long til you retire
It's a long-term proposition :P
As I said, who else is going to buy into our sharemarket a.k.a. back NZ business? The NZX is likely to remain stagnant for some time, one possible outcome being that the Aussies will come over and buy us up cheap, as is their habit.
And 40% of a fund that's got a 12-figure value will thoroughly destroy the market, because there will be so much money chasing the minuscule market cap of the NZX. Not to mention that it would be recklessly irresponsible, because there's no way that the NZ market is a good investment for such a large proportion of the fund. We're a tiny market that matters not a damn on the world stage. The Cullen Fund isn't there to prop up our economy, it's there to ensure that we can afford to have an aging, retired population in 20, 30, 40 years' time. Propping up NZ's under-performing markets isn't compatible with that goal.
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Whilst I'd agree that National should have actually said so, I'm pretty sure that they didn't mean for the policy to run forever. Like Labour's bank deposit insurance scheme, these ideas are only for the short term to increase confidence.
John, you don't invest in the stock market "for the short term". At the least you look medium-term (which economists call a period somewhere between three and seven years), and the commonly-accepted view is that shares are a long-term investment. To suggest that National would get the Cullen Fund into the NZX "for the short term", especially for such enormous values, is either naive on your part, or accurate and thus so incredibly disturbing that no National MP should be permitted to even be issued a credit card due to their total absence of financial competence. Certainly they should be kept as far from the Treasury benches as is possible in Parliament.
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Oh Tom - we have to get our stories straight - you have to talk about the giant keas, evolved without mammalian competition, that rip tents apart, the windscreens from parked cars, eat live sheep, attack trampers for their butter
Yeah, but the problem with that is that it's true. Tom's story at least had the benefit of being thoroughly bullshit, in keeping with the blind ignorance of the question.
I do wonder, though, what Americans would make of kea. They look so cute, until you find out just what vicious vandals they actually are! -
Interning for a tabloid in NY, I was asked, on more than one occasion, when I'd get around to speaking with an American accent.
"I'm only here for two months," I'd tell them.
"So? Speak like an American," one replied.
Did you reply "Only if you start writing in English!"?
Bloody Yanks! :P