Posts by Moz
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Speaker: A minor change to existing provisions!, in reply to Matthew Poole,
We've just moved house, and the former landlady has announced that she wants to make deductions from our bond
Things I don't miss about renting #27 in a long list. I don't envy you that.
Does NZ have the semi-secret tenants database(s) that real estate agents maintain? In Oz the problem is not official records, it's getting nasty things in the shared databases used by landlords. I know people who are unable to rent for reasons that seem extremely unlikely (including stories like yours, Matthew). Although interestingly some landlords have access but are easily persuaded by prospective tenants when the property is even slightly hard to let.
I am extremely cheered by the news that remediation could become a requirement.
In Oz we have that everywhere I've been (SA example), and in urgent cases tenants can simply have the work done, pay for it, and deduct the cost from the rent they pay (landlord will be ordered to reimburse any remaining amount if they move out, and I strongly suspect only god would help any landlord who tried to kick tenants out in that situation). I've been through the urgent repairs with a private rental from landlords who treated us like serfs and had to be ordered to pay for a new hot water cylinder (we paid for it and took it out of the rent, which they refused to accept).
Oh, and FWIW, the landlord saying "that's too expensive, I had a mate lined up to do it much cheaper in a few days" was met with "the law gives you 24 hours. Clearly you had no intention of complying with the law. I could fine you for that". I think the landlord failed to impress the tribunal lady.
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Hard News: Media Take Takes a Break, in reply to Hilary Stace,
OK, that looks really good from the first couple of minutes watched at work. And even better, I can apparently watch Maori TV from Oz. By the look of it that might double my TV time for the next week or two.
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"The Hollowmen", an Australian TV satire about politicians opened with a Bats track. I wondered at the time whether that was part of the satire, as well as thinking "that would have paid them a decent amount".
Hmm, new laptop running Ubuntu is not as offended by bandcamp as my usual windows setup. Hopefully I that will work for me.
I suspect I'm pretty typical of my age cohort - I spend about $NZ1000/year buying digital downloads, and I torrent maybe 3-4 albums a month as well. I try to pay the musicians I like, and usually succeed, but some of them make it bloody difficult.
I see Amazon is trying to impose the music streaming on authors. That could be fun, given the number of authors who explicitly say "you can't buy my books when you see them advertised, and I refuse to accept donations for pirated copies on principle". Ok, no money for you.
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Speaker: Protesting private prisons, in reply to ,
Being subjected to extreme bullying is probably not going to help.
Perhaps it would be more useful to identify the people who would be helped by extreme bullying and discuss them separately.
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Speaker: The CERA transition that no one…, in reply to Russell Brown,
When I read this, I couldn't not make a comparison with the well-funded change-the-flag roadshow. It really is about what those in power want discussed.
And how much they're willing to spend to distract people.
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Have submitted (so to speak). Was polite, but it took a lot of effort to edit polite into what I wanted to say. They emailed me a copy of it, 900 words, which is kinda scary for a basically "give the locals control" submission.
Summary:
The council needs more power to override central government inertia.
I suggest flipping most of the powers, and allow the council to take action against the minister when he doesn't carry out his duties appropriately. When a plan is made the council should be able to influence the plan, and once it's committed to they should be able to force the minister to implement it. They should also be able to force the minister to come up with a plan when he doesn't do so, and the alternative should be that the council can implement their plan using the minister's budget. Simply saying "council can complain about ministerial inaction" hasn't worked.
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OnPoint: Don't put words in our mouths, Rob, in reply to Katharine Moody,
unlawful breaches of our human rights protections in New Zealand – we have a Government who refuses to acknowledge such breaches
Yes, but the choice is not purely between "vote National" and "vote Labour", so it's entirely possible (and reasonable under MMP) to write them both off as hopeless.
I'm still hoping that we can get from "the only data available is racist" to "here's good data", but I don't think that's likely. I think Labour tried to do something very difficult in one of the few ways they could, and it had an entirely predictable outcome. National, OTOH, are trying to do something fundamentally evil and succeeding very well, aided by people like Tze Ming Mok and Keith Ng. Their path is not easy either, but I think they're getting away with pretending they're not actively helping National. Which is pretty poor, given the usually wide-awake PA audience.
It is very, very John Key: start a commotion then stand back looking calm and measured while other people get all worked up about it. In this case it doesn't look as though they had to do more than agree that the data from Labour is racist.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Silver and Gold, in reply to Kimberley Simpson,
Golden Scroll that went to my dad, Corben Simpson back in 1975 for the song of the decade. There is nothing there, like it never happened.
That's pretty shit. I'd like to think "song of the decade" was actually important, more so than the (mere?) song of the year. Especially since they either have hidden the later songs of the decade or haven't re-issued the award.
It does look as though they were very slow to get on the whole internet bandwagon, with a domain like http://apraamcos.com.au you can see that they weren't exactly first in the queue. And search optimisation is not their thing. Their own search and Google both find exactly one mention of Shona Laing, for example, as an "also given an award in the past" when talking about the 2014 awards. It may be that they don't do history at all, they are strictly "since we discovered the internet in 2010".
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Hard News: Friday Music: Silver and Gold, in reply to Sam Bradford,
The young people don't write political songs anymore...
I thought that was ironic, given the inclusion of a protest song in Russel's piece.But maybe it was unintentional irony.
To some extent I have the other problem... a lot of the music I am given is protest stuff, and some of it is more political than musical. My taste these days is definitely tending more towards easy listening than angry young people, so there's a bit of a clash.
(to be clear "easy listening" in the sense of Karl Jenkins and Sky'High rather than the official genre). Here's one from 2012, admittedly:
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Hard News: Friday Music: Silver and Gold, in reply to Robyn Gallagher,
who are the ignored artists of 2015 who will end up as beloved icons of NZ music in 2050.
Isn't that what "hall of fame" nominations are supposed to be about? Not strictly "oops we ignored these people" but nonetheless "looking back this was amazing". I thought the list of winners was interesting, and there was a definite transition for me at the NDTs entry where suddenly I can see why they'd reward the song. "I can't sing very well" kinda sums up my impression of the previous winners.