Putin might play? Trump seems to an admirer of his. Please God, don't let Trump get back into the Oval Office. I would rather have a forgetful Biden to a mad Trump who seems to think he is running against Obama.
"On balance I don't see this as bad". On this I would agree with you. Why do we need a largely container terminal in the centre of a city? When you talk about the 1970s we must realise why there would have been so many ships around. Nowadays international ...
I have no idea where Robertson squandered all the money he borrowed. I doubt if even he could tell you. Of course the borrowing was below the OECD average. That was because when he started we had almost no debt. According to the graph you posted it must ...
I doubt he would be much help. According to the only source I found with Google he is only worth about $10 million. Trump really does have some great friends, doesn't he? Why am I not surprised? The ones I picked were because they were seriously rich, ...
I wish I was broke if this is what it means. I imagine that Musk, Bezos, or even Zuckerberg would find it difficult to get anyone willing to guarantee the payment of a debt that size. Perhaps Arnault could help him out. For Trump, who has made a career out...
"You do realise that ..... " Yes, and I also realise that the interest we have to pay on the $100 billion or so that Robbo borrowed isn't making it any easier to get to a budget surplus. It might not matter if it had actually been invested in something ...
I'm afraid that it was Robertson's two terms as Minister of Finance that demonstrated the truth of Karl Marx's statement. To paraphrase what he said. Robertson's two terms were an example of history repeating. His first term was tragedy. His second was ...
The first graph in Michael Reddell's link (Croaking Cassandra) shows exactly what I said. New Zealand debt rose in a nearly straight line from about 4% in 2019 to around 16% in 2023. It never declined at all and was forecast, by the OECD to keep going up ...
The problem is that, although the OECD countries only had a rise in their debt levels in 2020 Robbo, having got a severe case of borrow and waste, just kept going. Other countries have lower levels of borrowing than they did at the end of 2020. We are, ...
Your memory may be better than mine. I don't know where my copy of Pam's book went so I wasn't able to check the detail. You comment, and some of the others in this stream do prove my point of course. McCully came in immediately and enabled Pam to correct ...
If SPC is correct Luxon was a great deal closer than you were. And you had the chance to look it up. Please tell us whether you made a mistake or whether you think SPC's source did.
Perhaps Parliament was a much better place a quarter of a century ago when Pam Corkery was an MP. At that time there was some co-operation between parties so that votes made in error could be corrected rather than, as today, they try and score cheap ...
I see that the story told us that it was the first such loan ever issued. "KiwiRail’s $350m loan facility to finance the purchase of two new Interislander ferries has become the first shipping loan in the world to be certified by the Climate Bond ...
"Could the bones of that be re-engineered". That is just about as likely as having Trevor Mallard's dream of reincarnating the Moa in the hills of Wainuiomata coming true. The business model behind the broadcasting businesses is dead and the corpse is ...
"lived there during peak COVID" That was of course about 4 years ago. Old houses where the maintenance is not carried out deteriorate awfully fast.
I guess you will have started by now. How many have you moved in since you said you were going to help them with the move? Or are you, as that great US description has it "All hat and no cattle"?
Don't you dare call Jackson a muppet? My kids when young loved the muppets. Q. Why do some of my comments go into moderation???
I can't see anything wrong with the current scale. Cabinet Ministers spend much mor time in Wellington and ought to be allowed to have their families with them so it should be more than a back bencher. The PM also has to entertain a bit so should get more....
They can choose where they live, if they are a List MP. Well let them choose Wellington and if they also want a place somewhere else let them pay for it themselves. I can't be sure of the numbers, and I really can't be bothered tracking them down but at ...
Please tell me. Is Mitchell a List MP or an MP whose electorate is in the Wellington area? If the answer is Yes he shouldn't get an accommodation allowance. If the answer is No because he is an Electorate MP from outside the Wellington area he should get ...
Willie Jackson has been a List MP for all of his nearly 10 years in Parliament. Why doesn't he just face up to the truth that he has no reason to live anywhere outside of Wellington and he should do so. Move here Willie. This is where your job is. He, like...
I can't really be bothered checking your numbers for 2020. What are your excuses for 2021? And 2022 And 2023. I live in Wellington. In 2021 I had my house re-clad. I had no trouble getting the Cedar to do the job. I had no trouble getting a builder to do ...
"was in lockdown for almost 2 years. To get any repairs on property done was nigh impossible unless it was an emergency." The covid lockdown in Wellington started on 25 March when the level was raised to 4. It was reduced to level 3 a month later on 27 ...
"In my experience, people who claim they are centrist are invariably right wing" Come come MH. I would guess that you think Karl Marx was a fascist and as for those Nazis Mao and Josef Stalin you probably see them as being far to the right of Mussolini
I'm not so sure about that. The whinges come mostly from the left on that sort of thing. In 2012 when Key was the PM and they spent $275,000 on painting, carpeting and replacing curtains in the house little Chris Hipkins had a tanty and tossed all his toys...
"public space."? How do you get that idea. I can assure you that if you go onto that property you won't be welcomed as a person who is welcome. You would be far more likely to be looking at a weapon held by someone in the DPS. The public did, back in the ...
Here's the gist of what the PM was told, and that she ignored even though it could have fitted in beautifully with the spend-up that Grant was pushing. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/premier-house-needs-more-renovation-work-department-tells-pm/...
"fiscally prudent". I wish that you believers in the faith of the left could make up your minds. The time when you say that she wouldn't spend money because fiscal prudence was called for was exactly when Grant was borrowing and spending tens of billions ...
The report is what was wrong with the place in about 2020. It went to the Prime Minister of the day who, as was her wont, did nothing about it. It wasn't even allowed in the too hard basket. It was then inherited by he successor who did the same. Now a ...
"In 2018 the house was upgraded, with repairs and maintenance undertaken, at a cost of NZ$3 million." I fear that that upgrade must have been as bad, and as expensive, as most of the things that the Labour Government attempted. Why does it seem that every ...
If you are a true believer in the last Government we had until last year then you wouldn't see any difference between a property without a mortgage and one that did have one. After all the the Labour Government changed the law to prevent anyone claiming ...
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