Posts by Angus Robertson
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No Joe it was once complex, but now it is not. A complex situation can be solved peacefully through debate & democracy in an open forum. Preventing debate from happening reduces the chances of peace and thus the stiflers of debate are easily seen as in the wrong - as Chavez is here.
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our death squads are better than your death squads
Yes, the great charm of Venezuela is there are no death squads, just Chavez smashing the press & beating up peaceful protesters in the street - so marvellously free of ambiguity.
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<quote>I don't like Chavez much either but I wonder why all the attention is given to him when Columbia's much nastier boss man enjoys the Bush arm around the shoulder.<quote>
Wonder no more.
There are no good sides in the Colombian conflict, just the most popular bad guy. But Chavez has troops attack peaceful protests with teargas and rubber bullets, so it is a very easy call as to who are the good guys - hint: not Chavez.
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Re: lowest tax bracket.
For anyone with kids, tax is negative up to a much higher level than this. Working for Families benefits more than outweigh tax.
Whilst anyone without (or yet to have) kids is inherently more mobile and on a short flight to Sydney.
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The graph is comparing saver vs tax is inaccurate as it compares a voluntary scheme with a mandatory tax reduction.
Particularly the bottom end of the graph is likely to be quite meaningless in the real world. Those on low wages are less likely to be able to reduce their existing budgets by 5% (minimum reduction in take home pay) to afford KiwiSaver. The opt out rate amoung low wage earners will be much higher.
It appears that this scheme is primarily a vote catching ploy aimed at the $40,000 to $70,000 bracket that benefit more under it than the tax cuts and are likely to be able to afford the cut in take home pay with minimal sacrifice. It could have been so much better - if the KS had been introduced in parallel with a substantial cut in the lowest tax rate it might well have added an impetus for lower incomes to join the scheme.
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Wondering how many coffee beans they can productively cram into each civet to make the exclusive coffee before said civet expires?
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Re:
inverse elitism = redneck populism
Investigate is calling for an inquiry into the police, which would mean that you think the police are not a serious entrenched power, but rather agitators for protection of vulnerable groups.
???
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Different day, same old saw.
A lot of the corruption issue revolves around the behaviour of police closely involved in the Bain case and it might be a good idea to mention that the complete & full investigation of these police (that exonerated them) was carried out in 1997. Labour was not governing at the time. Just recently we have had this case thrown out by the privy council, proving it to be highly defective.
If corruption is existant, then this investigation of the bungled murder case is at least as culpable as the earlier investigation (1985 under Labour mentioned in Investigate) into police mishandling of a pedophilia and child sex case. The subsequent alleged events Investigate portrays as the main drive of its article detail recent corruption for which it lays blame for the fudging of the earlier investigation under Labour and does not comment on the failure of the 1997 investigation.
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I agree that it should be, but the cynic in me wonders how Labour would have reacted if they were not in office.
They'd do exactly what National are doing right now. Sitting back and seeing how it develops. Not associating themselves with a gutter journalist.
like Craig says - "pretty damn careful".
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I suspect the idea would have Labour Party political strategists reaching for the hard liquor.
Yeah, you are right it was a silly suggestion. The only thing is that if it is big enough and wide ranging enough and historic enough, maybe it spreads muck onto National and pushes its reporting date out to past the next election. Wishful thinking.
What are they going to do?Hope it goes away quietly - might work. But it leaves opponents space to present the case unopposed. Gives Key the opportunity to be that new broom (in the quite possible event of National winning) and set up an inquiry specific to these Labour tainting scandals and ignore any National shennanigans - and be praised as the new broom.
Or
Attack the messenger - which is doomed to fail. Any attack on Investigate, becomes an attack on the sources who are (if they are to be believed) rape victims. And this attack will be played out in public where there is no name suppression option. Suspect that several people would relish the chance of slinging mud at the victims as asking for it - the good old "Can you rape a prostitute?" will be asked soon enough.
Is there an option I am not seeing that is good or is this just damage limitation from here on through?