Open mike 05/08/2012

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, August 5th, 2012 - 211 comments
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Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to Policy in the banner).

Step right up to the mike…

211 comments on “Open mike 05/08/2012 ”

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  1. Carol 1
    5 August 2012 at 7:00 am

    Interesting Occupy Christchurch oral history project, aiming to get it off the ground using crowd funding:

    https://www.pledgeme.co.nz/Crowd/Details/313#review

    Oral History of Occupy Chch By Byron Clark

    For 162 days, from October 15th 2011 until March 25th 2012, protesters camped out in a corner of Hagley Park as part of a global protest against wealth inequality. Over that time what The Press described as “one of Christchurchs most unusual communities”
    […]
    My goal is to raise enough money for the recording equipment needed to conduct this oral history project, and self publish a book- with copies being donated to the Alexander Turnbull Library, Christchurch City Libraries, Archives New Zealand and the Canterbury Museum archive. This will provide an important historical record looking at what was going on locally in the early 2010s- an era where Time magazine made “The Protester” their person for the year.

    As the MSM are already writing off the occupy movement, I reckon it’s a good idea to put some of the NZ/Aotearoa voices from the movement on record.

    Also will be interesting to see how successful the crowd funding is.

    • Jenny 1.1
      5 August 2012 at 9:38 am

      According to Colonial Viper the peaceful Occupy protesters are all foreigners that fully deserve to be mowed down with machine gun fire.

      Oh wait, I am mistaken. Colonial Viper is a racist who thinks this treatment only suitable for Arabs.

      [ Jenny. This daily goading of CV is getting very tiresome. See this as a polite request for you to pull your head in – Bill]

      • weka 1.1.1
        5 August 2012 at 10:22 am

        According to Colonial Viper the peaceful Occupy protesters are all foreigners that fully deserve to be mowed down with machine gun fire.
         

        Links to back up that statement please.

      • Jenny 1.1.2
        5 August 2012 at 10:28 am

        A person who supports a mass murderer and torturer deserves a daily goading, (at least). CVs poisonous racism and Islamaphobia is on open display on this website and is not being challenged by you Bill.

        I will continue to confront racists and apologists for crimes against humanity. Bill, you can protect them from my criticism if you choose.

        But I will not ignore racists or stop criticising them.

        Personally I think it would be more honourable for you to either argue against my position using facts, or argue CV’s case if that is what you feel.

        Sincerely Jenny

        [ If you have a position on events in Syria, then by all means argue your case in the appropriate thread or section of open mike. For days now, you’re basic thrust has been to inaccurately malign CV at every opportunity while showing no concern for how your off topic interjections mess up debate/discussion. To the best of my knowledge there have been no comments made by CV that exhibit either ‘poisoness racism’ or ‘Islamaphobia’. If you can link to such comments then I strongly suggest that you do so. Otherwise, and bearing in mind that I’ve had enough of all this nonsense, end it. Not one more word pertaining to CV’s supposed racism, Islamophobia or otherwise using his comments to ‘have a go’. I hope that’s clear. I really dislike imposing ‘holidays’ on people, but from where I’m sitting it appears you are intent on packing your bags. Please prove me wrong. – Bill]

        • weka 1.1.2.1
          5 August 2012 at 10:39 am

          Jenny I don’t have a problem with you arguing against racism, but you engage in slander far too often for your posts to be that useful. Many of your posts about CV contain content that isn’t fact based and is merely your (negative) assertion/opinion. You seem to not understand the difference between fact and opinion. Unfortunately it’s starting to make me question the integrity of everything else you say.
           
          Speaking of facts, are you going to respond to my post 1.1.1?

          • Jenny 1.1.2.1.1
            5 August 2012 at 10:57 am

            I think a Citation is required here Weka.

              • Jenny …
                5 August 2012 at 11:35 am

                You will have to better than that Weka.

                I have characterised Colonial Viper’s depiction of the Arab people who have waged the Arab Spring as being agents of the West as “racist”.

                Colonial Viper’s subtext, being that the Arabs are too cowardly and timid to take on these mostly Western backed regimes.

                You will notice that CV himself has never defended himself from these accusations.

                I imagine though that he has submitted many bitter complaints to the moderators on being challenged on his racism.

                [No Jenny, s/he hasn’t. We get the point, you have a thing against CV. Please take the hint from the growing response here and consider your point well made eh? – thanks – r0b]

                • weka …
                  5 August 2012 at 11:40 am

                  I said that you post assertion as fact. You asked for my back up. I posted the link.
                   
                  example:
                   

                  According to Colonial Viper the peaceful Occupy protesters are all foreigners that fully deserve to be mowed down with machine gun fire.
                   

                  You’ve since acknowledged that CV never said or implied such a thing. You lied, and you used the lie to smear CV. It’s bullshit.

                  • Jenny …
                    5 August 2012 at 4:01 pm

                    Weka I think it is a bit of stretch to accuse me of lying. where is the lie? As I have admitted I was indulging in satire to make a point. The point being while he is content to see Arab Spring protesters mowed down by the army on the orders of the government, that even Colonial Viper (hopefully) would object to see unarmed protesters being mown down with machine guns if it happened in this country.

                • Colonial Viper …
                  5 August 2012 at 11:45 am

                  I imagine though that he has submitted many bitter complaints to the moderators on being challenged on his racism.

                  From what I read, that’s far from being the only thing going on in your imagination.

          • Jenny 1.1.2.1.2
            5 August 2012 at 11:03 am

            As for a response to your comment 1.1.1. To make it clear I was using satire to make a point. CV did not actually say that peaceful New Zealand unarmed protesters were all foreigners that deserved to be shot to death. But, he has argued this very case for the peaceful protesters who first confronted Bashar Assad’s regime.

            • weka 1.1.2.1.2.1
              5 August 2012 at 11:11 am

              right. But can you see that for anyone not inside your head, or aware of your feelings about CV, the post about Occupy is nothing close to satire and makes absolutely no sense. Any new reader here is going to think CV is an arse. For regulars it just comes across as someone with a grudge who uses off topic posts at every chance to have a go at someone else.

              • Pete George …
                5 August 2012 at 11:21 am

                Any new reader here is going to think CV is an arse. For regulars it just comes across as someone with a grudge who uses off topic posts at every chance to have a go at someone else.

                Fair enough if you are trying to support CV, but “uses off topic posts at every chance to have a go at someone else” is hardly out of the ordinary here. Are you speaking against repeat harassment here in general, or just in this case?

                • Kotahi Tāne Huna …
                  5 August 2012 at 11:23 am

                  🙄

                • weka …
                  5 August 2012 at 11:33 am

                  I’m not supporting CV, I’m objecting to Jenny’s behaviour. It’s tedious and interferes with the flow of conversation. I haven’t been reading hardly any of the comments on Syria, so I don’t know what Jenny is on about. From the little I know of CV, her criticisms don’t match outside of the Syria issue, and I doubt they even make sense within the Syria issue. She just comes across as irrational or with a bug up her arse, and as I’ve pointed out doesn’t seem to understand what arguing the facts is. I’m sick of it.
                   
                  The difference between what Jenny is doing, and the general rough and tumble here, is that she is now stalking CV and being a tr*ll. It doesn’t particularly surprise me that you don’t get the difference, you always seem to not understand the culture of this place, or certain social norms here.
                   
                  Either that or your question is a disingenuous nod to how you feel you’ve been treated.
                   

                  • Pete George …
                    5 August 2012 at 12:45 pm

                    The difference between what Jenny is doing, and the general rough and tumble here, is that she is now stalking CV and being a tr*ll.

                    That you would make a statement like that suggests that you seem to not understand the culture of this place, and are oblivious to certain social norms here.

                    I don’t have a problem with either CV or Jenny, I don’t follow much of either but it’s easy to ignore what doesn’t interest you, if you choose. Some choose to stalk, that’s obviously frowned on at times, but it is common and often supported.

                    • weka …
                      5 August 2012 at 12:57 pm

                      Please give me an example of someone being stalked in the past week, other than CV.
                       
                      Whether you have a problem with CV or Jenny or not is completely irrelevant. What matters is whether it affects the site. Plenty of people, including two moderators, say it does. You really think that your personal experience matters more than that?
                       

                      but it’s easy to ignore what doesn’t interest you, if you choose
                       

                      LOL. So says the man who has been banned multiple times for behaviour that pisses off lots of people and disrupts the site.

            • Pascal's bookie 1.1.2.1.2.2
              5 August 2012 at 11:35 am

              “But, he has argued this very case for the peaceful protesters who first confronted Bashar Assad’s regime”

              Cite for this.

              This is what Bill is talking about. CV has pointed out that AQ and other groups are involved in the syrian civil war. He’s right about that. Here’s an interview with some of them:

              http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/30/al-qaida-rebels-battle-syria?CMP=twt_gu

              From what I’ve seen you think that all this is just propaganda, and from that you make the rather astounding leap that CV is a a racist islamaphobe who bla blah blah. Your failure to actually argue case is what the problen seems to be.

        • Jenny 1.1.2.2
          5 August 2012 at 10:47 am

          The regime of Basher Assad beloved by so called Western leftists is condemned by the elected Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas

          http://kiaoragaza.wordpress.com/2012/08/04/palestinian-refugees-shelled-by-syrian-regime-14-dead/

          • grumpy 1.1.2.2.1
            5 August 2012 at 11:08 am

            …….I think you have a few issues…………………

            • muzza 1.1.2.2.1.1
              5 August 2012 at 11:40 am

              What this shows graphically, is where the blind get it so very wrong when doggedly beieving in a cause.

              The intention is good (although becoming questionable given the rantings), the cause is worthy, but the lack of holistic self awareness casts a very dark shaddow of negative energy in the direction of the targeted recipients of the good intentions.

              Having spent some time participating in the local active scene, it appears that it is all too common, for those involved to lack the self awareness, and hence the abilities to really make a difference. In fact they become a driver for turning people away from good causes and important issues, who might otherwise build numbers to make some genuine positive change.

              Because of these types of people, the active community is destined to always be “fringe loonies”, and that is a real shame, but will not change until some people of integrity, and leadership appear, and get involved.

              In the meantime, the Jennys of the active world will in fact help the well intended causes to lose ground, by simply turning people away through shear blody minded ignorance!

              • weka …
                5 August 2012 at 11:44 am

                There is also the issue of being unable to take feedback from one’s peers.

                • muzza …
                  5 August 2012 at 11:54 am

                  Depends who one sees as peers, if indeed they see things that way at all.

                  The other point is that many on here have posted links about Syria, cv, bill, P’s B, myself, and others, yet its seems only cv is getting the treatment, which indicates some other problem/factors are at play.

                  Pick a number….

                  • Colonial Viper …
                    5 August 2012 at 12:10 pm

                    Yeah that’s an interesting observation. Disagreement over my energy depletion vs climate change position preceeded Jenny’s objections to my Syria statements.

                    • weka …
                      5 August 2012 at 12:15 pm

                      Plus the criticisms of the middle classes. It’s not like you’re the only person who makes those points.

                    • Jenny …
                      5 August 2012 at 12:53 pm

                      Yeah that’s an interesting observation. Disagreement over my energy depletion vs climate change position preceeded Jenny’s objections to my Syria statements.

                      Colonial Viper

                      That is right CV you have generally been the voice that leads the charge for conservative BAU fossil fuel use that will condemn us all.

                      It came as little surprise to me that you also support the status quo in the Middle East.

                      Are the two linked?

                      Yes, in that they are both a product of a misanthropic world view that argues that human beings are powerless to defeat repressive political regimes, or powerful vested interest.

                      I have always begged to differ and have cited examples from New Zealand and world history to disprove this widely perceived world view.

                      PS. And you shouldn’t be so coy CV. I have made this “interesting observation” to you previously myself.

                    • weka …
                      5 August 2012 at 1:04 pm

                      That is right CV you have generally been the voice that leads the charge for conservative BAU fossil fuel use that will condemn us all.
                       

                      More mistaken opinion stated as fact.
                       
                      Please provide three links to places where CV has promoted fossil fuel use in the way that conservative typically do, and where he has lead the way on this.

                  • Jenny …
                    5 August 2012 at 12:30 pm

                    The other point is that many on here have posted links about Syria, cv, bill, P’s B, myself, and others, yet its seems only cv is getting the treatment, which indicates some other problem/factors are at play.

                    muzza

                    Quite correct Muzza, It is because I fear that CV’s views are silently held by many others here that he gets the treatment.

                    If I thought that he was just a lone right wing nutter I would ignore him.

                    Unfortunately for him being the most vociferous in his support for this murderer and torturer he gets the full force of my fury. To his credit he has dared to raise his head above the parapet.

              • Jenny …
                5 August 2012 at 12:04 pm

                It is the blind supporters of murders and torturers who turn people away from the left.

                • Pascal's bookie …
                  5 August 2012 at 12:11 pm

                  People that turn a blind eye to Al Qaeda and the like? Yeah, it’s a problem.

                  • Jenny …
                    5 August 2012 at 12:23 pm

                    Not afraid to take a stand, New Zealand’s own Anita McNaught goes to the front line.

                    http://kiaoragaza.wordpress.com/2012/08/04/rebel-fighters-consolidating-hold-in-east-aleppo-reporter/

                    A deserved slap in the face for kiwi quislings like Colonial Viper who support the Assad regime in it’s murder and torture and deride and defame the Syrian people’s attempts to rid themselves of the tyrant.

                    • deuto …
                      5 August 2012 at 12:32 pm

                      I was trying to refrain from commenting on what has gone on today re your apparent obsession with CV, but obviously everything that has been said, including by the moderators, has gone over your head and you could not help yourself with this latest:

                      A deserved slap in the face for kiwi quislings like Colonial Viper who support the Assad regime in it’s murder and torture and deride and defame the Syrian people’s attempts to rid themselves of the tyrant.

                      If you had left out ‘like CV’ , I would feel some respect for you and your views, but you have now lost me and I will no longer be reading any of your comments.

                  • Jenny …
                    5 August 2012 at 12:39 pm

                    People that turn a blind eye to Al Qaeda and the like?….

                    Pascal’s bookie

                    This is just the propaganda put about by the regime. By parroting it, it is you PB who is willfully turning a blind eye to the mass murder of peaceful civilian protesters and the torture and murder of the families of army deserters that preceded the armed insurrection.

                    • Colonial Viper …
                      5 August 2012 at 12:49 pm

                      New York Times describes increasing religious radicalisation of Syrian conflict, and role of foreign fighters

                      http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/world/middleeast/as-syrian-war-drags-on-jihad-gains-foothold.html?pagewanted=all

                      But jihad has become a distinctive rallying cry. The commander of the newly unified brigades of the Free Syrian Army fighting in Aleppo was shown in a YouTube video on Sunday exhorting men joining the rebellion there by telling them: “Those whose intentions are not for God, they had better stay home, whereas if your intention is for God, then you go for jihad and you gain an afterlife and heaven.”

                    • muzza …
                      5 August 2012 at 3:20 pm

                      “This is just the propaganda put about by the regime. By parroting it, it is you PB who is willfully turning a blind eye to the mass murder of peaceful civilian protesters and the torture and murder of the families of army deserters that preceded the armed insurrection”

                      –Where to begin with this one…

                      1: Propaganda from the regime – What regime would have the control over the links posted from the various sources, we have been posting, and where does Al Jazeera, and Anita McNaught fit into that regime you talk about? Sounds all very confused to me Jenny, not to mention contradictory!

                      2: Mass Murder of peaceful civilian protesters – You keep spouting this, yet can’t recall seeing where you provided a link which was not easily negated by many others. And I have not heard you make any mention of the numerous Syrians who actually support Assad, I guess that doesn’t much matter, cos it makes a rather big hole on your belief system.

                      3: Deserters – Um, yeah there has been a heap of them right, but there has been many more caught and killed who have been shipped into Syria to fight the military, who are deserters and mercenaries who have been murdering and killing innocent civillians too, yet you continue to ignore these deserters who are a rag tag bunch of rent a jihadi working for the paycheck of the Qatari. Saudi, NATO warmongers

                      4: Speaking of Qatar, Bharain, Saudi etc – No mention from you about the civillians getting crushed on regular basis, murdered, tortured etc by those regimes, unless I missed it, another rather gaping hole in your discussion points

                      Jenny the key thing to remember is that on any side of a debate, no one can be entirely right or wrong, there is simply too many complex issue at play here, it can only be a case of read as many points of views and materials from as many sources as it take to form an opinion, then keep reading more and be prepared for your opinion to evolve, thats really the best any of us can do eh. Sticking to a position which has been reasonably well proven to be incorrect, and then hurling abuse at people who point this out, really just makes you lose credibility, and also negatively impacts how well your message could be recieved, surely you can see that is unhelpful to those you claim to support?

                      In war, truth is the first casualty. Aeschylus Greek tragic dramatist (525 BC – 456 BC)

                    • Pascal's bookie …
                      5 August 2012 at 3:56 pm

                      “This is just the propaganda put about by the regime.”

                      Here’s an interview conducted by a war correspondent with some of the rebels. I’ll include a longish quote because I have the feeling you’re not inclined to read links, so it will pay to get the evidence into this thread:

                      http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/30/al-qaida-rebels-battle-syria?CMP=twt_gu

                      But these were not average members of the Free Syrian Army. Abu Khuder and his men fight for al-Qaida. They call themselves the ghuraba’a, or “strangers”, after a famous jihadi poem celebrating Osama bin Laden’s time with his followers in the Afghan mountains, and they are one of a number of jihadi organisations establishing a foothold in the east of the country now that the conflict in Syria has stretched well into its second bloody year.

                      They try to hide their presence. “Some people are worried about carrying the [black] flags,” said Abu Khuder. “They fear America will come and fight us. So we fight in secret. Why give Bashar and the west a pretext?” But their existence is common knowledge in Mohassen. Even passers-by joke with the men about car bombs and IEDs.

                      According to Abu Khuder, his men are working closely with the military council that commands the Free Syrian Army brigades in the region. “We meet almost every day,” he said. “We have clear instructions from our [al-Qaida] leadership that if the FSA need our help we should give it. We help them with IEDs and car bombs. Our main talent is in the bombing operations.” Abu Khuder’s men had a lot of experience in bomb-making from Iraq and elsewhere, he added.

                      Abu Khuder spoke later at length. He reclined on a pile of cushions in a house in Mohassen, resting his left arm which had been hit by a sniper’s bullet and was wrapped in plaster and bandages. Four teenage boys kneeled in a tight crescent in front of him, craning their necks and listening with awe. Other villagers in the room looked uneasy.

                      Abu Khuder had been an officer in a mechanised Syrian border force called the Camel Corps when he took up arms against the regime. He fought the security forces with a pistol and a light hunting rifle, gaining a reputation as one of the bravest and most ruthless men in Deir el-Zour province and helped to form one of the first FSA battalions.

                      He soon became disillusioned with what he saw as the rebel army’s disorganisation and inability to strike at the regime, however. He illustrated this by describing an attempt to attack the government garrison in Mohassen. Fortified in a former textile factory behind concrete walls, sand bags, machine-gun turrets and armoured vehicles, the garrison was immune to the rebels’ puny attempt at assault.

                      “When we attacked the base with the FSA we tried everything and failed,” said Abu Khuder. “Even with around 200 men attacking from multiple fronts they couldn’t injure a single government soldier and instead wasted 1.5m Syrian pounds [£14,500] on firing ammunition at the walls.”

                      Then a group of devout and disciplined Islamist fighters in the nearby village offered to help. They summoned an expert from Damascus and after two days of work handed Abu Khuder their token of friendship: a truck rigged with two tonnes of explosives.

                      That describes defectors from the regime, joining up with the FSA, becoming disillusioned with the capabilities of the FSA and hooking up with Al Qaeda. Which is entirely understandable and predictable. It’s what happens in civil wars. It is not some romantic fucking game where the good guys win as long as their hearts stay pure.

                      It is entirely predictiable and expected that AQ will move into the chaos of Syria, and just as predictible that the rebels will see this as usefull. Denying it is just ignorant.

                      Here’s another link:

                      http://www.rt.com/news/syrian-host-saeed-executed-868/

                      That describes the kidnapping and killing of a tv presenter by the rebels. Again, entirely the sort of thing you expect to see happenning when pluralism breaks down in a country going through a civil war. This journo was broadcasting propagnda, so they captured him and slaughtered him, and are using his slaughter in their own propaganda. That’s what civil war looks like.

                      So what do you think should be done?

                      Be specific. I want to hear what you think the NZ govt should do, and what you think ‘the left’ should do.

                    • Pascal's bookie …
                      5 August 2012 at 4:08 pm

                      And here’s a link to the statement from the group that excecuted the journalist:

                      http://austintice.blogspot.co.nz/2012/08/web-resources-on-alleged-execution-of.html#!/2012/08/web-resources-on-alleged-execution-of.html

                      We warned previously that there was no place in the middle for anyone, the regime would not accept that. And the people of Jihad, with the clarity of their way and the strength of their belief, would not accept that either. It is upon all to decide to choose one of the two sides; which team to support, to stand before God, most high, and make this choice.

                      By the favor of God for the Mujahideen in the al-Nusra front, the heroes of the western [don’t know], over the media Shabih Mohammed Said, on the date July 19, 2012, was killed after an interrogation. The Shabih Mohammed al-Said worked for the Syrian satellite station, and previously presented for the program “Hadith al-Balad” [Talk of the Nation].

                      Perhaps, through this operation, and others like it, [we will] express to everyone who supports this tyrannical regime will repent to God, and the swords of the Mujahideen will reap their heads and purify the land of Sham [historical name for Syria] from their filth, in shaa allah.

          • Frank Macskasy 1.1.2.2.2
            5 August 2012 at 5:07 pm

            “The regime of Basher Assad beloved by so called Western leftists…”

            Really?!

            Gosh.

            I must’ve missed the email instructing me to love Assad.

            So, how’s that worship of Dear Leader working out for you, Jen?

            By the way, Jenny, in case I shatter your delusions, you might want to take a squizz at this: http://fmacskasy.wordpress.com/2012/02/29/bloggers-lament-the-ultimate-sacrifice-for-freedom/

            Whatever weird thing you’re doing, I think this is closer to reality.

        • Jenny 1.1.2.3
          5 August 2012 at 11:26 am

          It seems clear to me Bill that you are taking sides, many times CV has supported a proven mass murderer and torturer. I also see that further down this thread you also object to me challenging CV for his continual support for continueing with policies that will seriously increase global warming.

          I also notice that you have never criticised CV for deriding those he scapegoats as “middle class”.

          • weka 1.1.2.3.1
            5 August 2012 at 12:08 pm

            < 🙄 >

          • grumpy 1.1.2.3.2
            5 August 2012 at 2:28 pm

            One man’s mass murderer and torturer is another’s freedom fighter.

            Pardon me if I do not share your view of Al Queda as “freedom fighters”.

            Seems like you start from the premise “Palestinian good, Israeli bad” and then go careering off on a tangent from there.

            More thought required.

    • weka 1.2
      5 August 2012 at 10:35 am

      Thanks Carol, great project. Looks like they reached their target already too.

      • Jenny 1.2.1
        5 August 2012 at 12:33 pm

        My apologies to Carol for disrupting her thread. I thought my satirical comment would be just passed by. But it seems the apologists for Assad decided to make a stand.

    • Mark 1.3
      5 August 2012 at 11:54 am

      “My goal is to raise enough money for the recording equipment needed to conduct this oral history”

      I suggest that this is not expensive equipment.

      http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/SearchResults.aspx?searchType=all&searchString=voice+recorder&rptpath=all&type=Search&generalSearch_keypresses=15&generalSearch_suggested=14

      It also seemed that whenever Police were there to uphold the law there were plenty of Occupy supporters recording “brutality”.. perhaps ask some of them?

      • weka 1.3.1
        5 August 2012 at 12:06 pm

        What’s your point Mark? $1200 for the whole project, including self publishing a book and giving copies of the audio to various museums, doesn’t seem excessive. There is also a quality issue in recording oral histories that would affect what equipment was bought.

        • felix 1.3.1.1
          5 August 2012 at 7:19 pm

          It’s a bargain basement price and won’t include paying for anyone’s time either.

          Many people seem to think that because they got iPhoto and Garageband with their macbook that everything can be done for free now.

          • Colonial Viper 1.3.1.1.1
            5 August 2012 at 7:33 pm

            And they typically don’t understand the quality difference between professional/studio grade equipment and cheap consumer crap. A Sony consumer grade video camera might be $500. A Sony professional video camera might start at $50,000. And the entire range inbetween.

            • Carol 1.3.1.1.1.1
              5 August 2012 at 7:45 pm

              Indeed. And for this particular project the researcher is hoping to lodge the recordings in the archives of Alexander Turnbull, and other libraries and a museum. I understand they usually prefer “archival quality” recordings:

              http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/hands/preparation-a-guide-to-recording-oral-history

              Equipment

              To record oral history you will need to use the best-quality equipment you can buy, borrow or hire. Poor sound recordings will be of little use to researchers in the future.

  2. Socialist Paddy 2
    5 August 2012 at 8:54 am

    I have just watched the replay of The Nation on TV3 and more particularly the Colin Craig interview. Louisa Wall was great and really dominated. Craig achieved an unusual status, he was odious, overbearing and smarmy all at the one time. He kept on overtaking Wall who to her credit stood her ground and managed with some very concise responses ridiculed what he was saying.

    Craig has some unusual views.  Apparently homosexuality is a lifestyle choice while at the time is evidence of abuse as a child. He is also fully in favour of there being a referendum on the subject but is opposed the a Parliamentary Select Committee from hearing submissions on the bill. How undemocratic is that? Louisa’s response that New Zealand gave the vote to women in 1893 without the need for a referendum whereas it took Switzerland until 1971 for the first Canton to give women the vote with the benefit of a referendum.

    IMHO the issue is purely one of human rights. Why should gay and lesbian couples be discriminated against?

    The Green MPs are all supportive. There are 8 Labour MPs who have not declared a position or have not decided yet. Jones and Sio have not declared, Twyford, O’Connor, Cosgrove, Huo, Prasad and Robertson have declared they are undecided.

    I hear that O’Connor, Robertson and O’Connor are unlikely to vote in favour.

    Shame on them. MPs in a progressive party should prefer principle over red neck populism every time.

    • Pete George 2.1
      5 August 2012 at 9:13 am

      Louisa Wall has impressed me since her bill was drawn from the ballot, she has worked strongly and positively to get support, and uses good fact based arguments. I was a bit doubtful about her abilities, but she’s proven to be a very good MP.

      Colin Craig keeps shooting anti marriage equality in the feet.

      I don’t think MPs with different views should be shamed, all MPs have a right to vote on their conscience. Democracy shouldn’t demand everyone back one side.

      • Socialist Paddy 2.1.1
        5 August 2012 at 9:17 am

        Oops I meant to say Cosgrove. And if an MP in a progressive party does not support human rights then they should be shamed.

        • Pete George 2.1.1.1
          5 August 2012 at 10:11 am

          Interesting contrast between Wall and Cosgrove, who both had bills drawn at the same time.

          Cosgrove, fading old school MP – his approach was a cranky attack on National saying if they didn’t support his bill it meant something irrelevant and totally unsupported by facts. He presumably chose his bill as a political attack weapon.

          Wall, up and coming fresh approach MP – her approach was to work with MPs from other parties to build support for her bill based on well expressed facts. Her bill was the right approach at the right time and an very good example of an appropriate Member’s bill

          Result.
          Cosgrove’s bill is doomed from the start and largely ignored.
          Wall’s bill looks assured of success with increasingly popular support.

      • Te Reo Putake 2.1.2
        5 August 2012 at 9:23 am

        🙄

    • Colonial Viper 2.2
      5 August 2012 at 9:19 am

      Why would a gay MP be expected to vote against this Bill?

      • Te Reo Putake 2.2.1
        5 August 2012 at 9:29 am

        They wouldn’t, CV! I think it’s likely that 2 socially conservative Labour MP’s (O’Connor and Cosgrove) will abstain, but I would be very surprised if any MP on the left votes against the bill.

      • Socialist Paddy 2.2.2
        5 August 2012 at 10:03 am

        Ross Robertson, not Grant Robertson. 

        • QoT 2.2.2.1
          5 August 2012 at 12:17 pm

          And if in a bizarro-world situation Grant R. did vote against it wouldn’t be unprecedented since Finlayson is already down as a “no”.

  3. Ministry of Justice 3
    5 August 2012 at 8:54 am

    I have a question about the gay marriage bill.

    According to the NZ Herald…

    Ms Wall re-emphasised yesterday that her legislation would change the state’s definition of marriage, not the church’s definition, and religious institutions would be free to opt out of marrying same-sex couples.

    What legislation, i.e. which section of which act, would allow religious institutions to opt out of marrying same-sex couples?

    • bad12 3.1
      5 August 2012 at 10:16 am

      Conversely, which section of which Act makes it compulsory for religious institutions to marry anyone???,

      I was always under the impression that a couple wishing to marry in a church had to ask the churches permission…

      • Ministry of Justice 3.1.1
        5 August 2012 at 1:38 pm

        Human Rights Act 1993
        Section 21 Prohibited grounds of discrimination
        (1) For the purposes of this Act, the prohibited grounds of discrimination are—
        …
        (m) sexual orientation, which means a heterosexual, homosexual, lesbian, or bisexual orientation.

        • Colonial Viper 3.1.1.1
          5 August 2012 at 1:49 pm

          None of which is going to get Destiny Church (and others) to do anything differently.

  4. Dv 4
    5 August 2012 at 9:09 am

    Did I just hear that the Govt are getting a new valuation for the rezone houses, so they can charge the insurance companies.

    How come they don’t use the 2007 valuations the forced on the red zoners. That would be a zero sum game. Are they expecting to make windfall profit. If that is so that is DISGRACEFUL.

    • Descendant Of Smith 4.1
      5 August 2012 at 10:13 am

      You are assuming the valuation will be higher. It may not be.

      I’ve always seen that 2007 valuation as fair as house prices had dropped in many parts of Christchurch since 2007.

      One of our family friends had just gone unconditional, two days before the first quake, were selling their house and moving to Hamilton. They had sold for $20,000 less than the GV. The buyer was allowed to pull out as the house was wrecked and subsequently they received an extra $20,000.

      The issue really isn’t the use of the valuation, the issue is the increased cost of land and the increased cost of building.

      For many who are moving or have moved to other towns and to Aussie it’s a non-issue.

      For those staying and building it the costs are higher than their previous home was worth.

      In saying that many house insurance policies are now not for a value but for a square footage at a certain quality of material. A value shouldn’t matter in those circumstances.

  5. David H 5
    5 August 2012 at 9:12 am

    14 Billion barrels of oil. Hmmm that should be worth a pretty penny, but who will get the money ? And who could be left with a cleanup?

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/7416887/Oil-company-going-ahead-with-East-Coast-operation

    • Colonial Viper 5.1
      5 August 2012 at 9:25 am

      there’s no way there’s 14B of proven, extractable oil. Those kinds of figures would put the oil field there amongst the largest in the world, up with the fields in Russia, Iraq and Iran.

      • Jenny 5.1.1
        5 August 2012 at 9:52 am

        there’s no way there’s 14B of proven, extractable oil. Those kinds of figures would put the oil field there amongst the largest in the world, up with the fields in Russia, Iraq and Iran.

        Colonial Viper

        Are you actually questioning the veracity of oil companies CV?

        Or, are you just trying to downplay the size of this oil field as minor, and a little drilling won’t hurt anyone?

        [ Jenny. Did you not see my moderators edit on your previous comment up the thread? Or did you choose to ignore it? I’ll be nice and assume the former. But any more comments from you that attempt to goad or snipe at CV will result in a ban. – Bill]

        • Colonial Viper 5.1.1.1
          5 August 2012 at 10:19 am

          🙄

        • Jenny 5.1.1.2
          5 August 2012 at 10:54 am

          Bill, I thought you were only against my challenging of Colonial Viper’s support for a murderous torturer.

          Bill are you now expanding this to protecting Colonial Viper’s open support for climate change pollution as well?

          • Kotahi Tāne Huna 5.1.1.2.1
            5 August 2012 at 11:19 am

            Bill is right – you should have been given this warning weeks ago. When did you stop beating your children?

        • Pete George 5.1.1.3
          5 August 2012 at 10:59 am

          On the scale of goading and sniping here this seems very mild. Is this isolated adminishing, or setting a new standard? (Serious question to establish an understanding of what is deemed unacceptable).

        • Jenny 5.1.1.4
          5 August 2012 at 11:17 am

          Bill. Did you not see my polite comment on your moderators edit up the thread.

          I’ll be nice and assume you didn’t. Banning me while leaving Colonial Viper free to spew his warmist and racist propaganda unchallenged, risks bringing this site into disrepute.

          If you disagree with what I am saying why not argue the case. Point out if you can where I am going wrong.

          Or if you support Colonial Viper’s position why not say so. And argue in his defence.

          But don’t try and claim that you are not partizan.

          Your threats already against me already show that.

          [ This one? http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-05082012/comment-page-1/#comment-502602. Yes. So now we are clear that all relevant comments have been seen. That’s good. – Bill]

          • gareth 5.1.1.4.1
            5 August 2012 at 1:36 pm

            FFS C.V. is allowed to have his own opinion… you calling him out everyday with an unprovoked snide remark is tiresome at best…
            Just post your opinion and leave the personal shit out of it… all it does is detract from your argument…

          • TheContrarian 5.1.1.4.2
            5 August 2012 at 2:40 pm

            “risks bringing this site into disrepute”

            I am pretty sure this site is as low as it can go already.

        • Johnm 5.1.1.5
          5 August 2012 at 8:00 pm

          Hi Jenny
          I think that really you fancy CV.He’s very intelligent! Ask him out on a date and you guys can discuss your apparent differences. :-))

    • Bill 5.2
      5 August 2012 at 9:42 am

      sheesh! – Wish journos would do a bit of journalism. That 14 billion figure is basically b/s. If you go to TAG’s website, it takes about 2 seconds to find that they reckon there is 1.74 billion barrels of undiscovered conventional oil and 12.65 billion barrels of undiscovered unconventional oil http://www.tagoil.com/reports.asp

    • Jim Nald 5.3
      5 August 2012 at 10:18 am

      14B? Not talking it up to attract the money and more support? What is the basis for that figure?

      Exploration consents had been granted months ago, bypassing the public and mayor. And going further back, a former Natz MP was paid by the oil company for consultancy work in the area before his parliamentary stint.

    • Southern Limits 5.4
      5 August 2012 at 12:34 pm

      From what I wrote back in April from a post called “New Zealand’s Potential for Oil Independence in an Uncertain World”:

      “Elsewhere in New Zealand limited exploration has occurred in the East Coast Basin, Canterbury Basin and the Great South Basin. Currently the most promising area is the East Coast Basin.Two fields, one north of Gisborne and one between Napier and Danneverke are currently being explored. TAG Oil believes there is an undiscovered resource potential of 12.65 billion barrels of unconventional original oil in place (OOIP) and 1.74 billion barrels of conventional OOIP. The potential recovery rates of 12% are similar to that of the North Dakota Bakken deposit in the United States. This means roughly 1.52 billion barrels of unconventional oil and 182 million barrels of conventionaloil are thought to be recoverable from this area.

      Being generous and assuming TAG Oil’sestimates are correct there are currently 2.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil from both the Taranaki and East Coast Basin. This would give us another forty-two years before these fields ran dry at 2010 consumption. If we expect our economy to grow however we would assume that our oil consumption would grow each year and so it is likely we would require far more oil during this time period.”

      http://www.southernlimitsnz.com/2012/04/new-zealands-potential-for-oil.html

      • Colonial Viper 5.4.1
        5 August 2012 at 2:33 pm

        Private oil company rights. So none of that oil can be directed to stay in NZ anyway. Unless the oil operations were nationalised.

  6. Dave Kennedy 6
    5 August 2012 at 9:26 am

    This National led Government reneges on its governance role and supports business and environmental anarchy: http://localbodies-bsprout.blogspot.co.nz/2012/08/national-government-supports-anarchy.html

  7. ropata 7
    5 August 2012 at 9:35 am

    It was a remarkable admission from Bill English last week: that no housing is being built for the lowest-income fourth of the population.

    “Like, none,” he said. “It’s unsustainable.”
    But what is the Government’s response?

    So far there is none, beyond some rather sinister observations about the mounting cost to the taxpayer of housing subsidies, chiefly the accommodation supplement, and how they can probably be “targeted better”.

    Investors have responded to signals from the tax system: the prospect of high leverage and untaxed income, in the form of capital gains, from rental properties compared with the disheartening front-loaded taxation of superannuation schemes.

    In addition there is a subsidy, in the form of the accommodation supplement, flowing from taxpayers to landlords. The Government and Labour are now questioning whether that represents value for money.

    Maybe we also need to acknowledge the possibility that our parents and grandparents were smarter than we are. They were not wedded to the idea, dominant since the mid-1980s, that whatever the problem, the solution is a market.

    Faced with an inadequate supply of decent housing, they built state houses – and would be astonished at the prices some of them now change hands for. And they made State Advances loans available, at concessionary interest rates, for first-home buyers who could only use them to buy new homes subject to size limits.

    That policy targeted what are again the missing lowest rungs of the housing ladder. Right now the Government can borrow 10-year money for 3.4 per cent. Housing Minister Phil Heatley, on TV3’s The Nation on Saturday, said the Government already had $15 billion invested in 70,000 state houses.

    “We’re in no position to build more and more state houses, you know, we’re just not in that position.”

    Well, why not? The need to rein in public debt? When it suits it, as with state asset sales, the Government likes to pretend there is only one side to its balance sheet, the debt side. But there is a world of difference between increasing public debt in order to fund an operating deficit, and increasing it to fund the acquisition of long-lived assets.

    • just saying 7.1
      5 August 2012 at 10:54 am

      Well said.

    • DH 7.2
      5 August 2012 at 11:48 am

      I don’t see this as just a National party problem. Labour are very quiet on this issue too.

      It is a ridiculous state of affairs. We keep giving more & more taxpayers money to people so they can afford to pay their rent or mortgage and that money keeps pushing up the rent & mortgage. We can never catch up.

      This country spent $22billion on social welfare last year ( including superannuation). At a rough guess I’d say about a quarter of that went to pay rents. $5billion a year of taxpayers money subsidising private landlords. The state could build 16,000 houses every year with that. It would take only what, 5-6years(?), to solve the housing problem and cut $5billion off the social welfare bill. What a crazy world this is.

      • Draco T Bastard 7.2.1
        5 August 2012 at 1:04 pm

        +1

        and considering that the government doesn’t have to pay interest on money it prints it also doesn’t need a financial return from building those houses. The social return, less poverty and illness etc, would be enough.

      • bad12 7.2.2
        5 August 2012 at 1:52 pm

        From the 1960’s onward the State has built less and less State Housing, engaged in various sell-offs to both tenants and where it got really ugly, to the private sector,

        we only need to look at the basic riffmatic to gain an insight into ‘the problem’ on a basic level and such a basic level of understanding does not include the huge rise in the proportion of the have-nots’ in our society brought about by Roger(spit)nomics and the later governments that adhere to such warped ‘thinking’,

        When we had a population of some 3 million souls we had as State Housing some 75,000 households, our economy had ’employment’ for most of them,

        NOW, we have a population of 4 million+ and only 69,000 State Housing units, most of the tenants can find no employment in our economy and further to that the proportion of the have -nots in our society has risen at a far greater rate as would be expected within the 1 million growth of that population…

        • ropata 7.2.2.1
          5 August 2012 at 2:07 pm

          Exactly. Train more people to build houses. Employ more people. House more people. Spend a little bit extra. What is the point of Government if not ensuring the wellbeing of people!?

          • bad12 7.2.2.1.1
            5 August 2012 at 3:18 pm

            The problem with ‘the housing problem’ if you will excuse my lingo is that it is a problem on so many different levels of both society and economy that to address ‘it’ and propose solutions in just one comment is fraught to say the least,

            I believe that there is a study going on at the moment with input from major players at the sharp end of ‘homelessness’, like the Wellington City Mission,Salvation Army etc which is quantifying the actual state of ‘homelessness’ in all it’s stages, not only the obvious street presence of homeless people but attempting to put numbers on those who are forced to share accomodation,(over-crowding),and the transient homeless who have the family/social networks to be able to keep themselves off of the streets without having the benefit of an actual home,

            the proposal seems to include showing ‘the real cost’ of homelessness where in supposedly saving a dollar by ignoring the need for social housing Governments are actually being forced to spend more in the Health,Justice,and, Police budgets, something successive Governments seem more than happy to do,

            One study(sorry i didn’t save the link),of 1 homeless male in the US showed that He cost the State 1 million dollars over a 10 year period in various costs in the Health,police and justice budgets, the particular individual may well have been the worse case scenario that could be found but it highlights the shortsightedness of New Zealand Governments ignoring low cost social housing…

            • bad12 7.2.2.1.1.1
              5 August 2012 at 3:25 pm

              PS, thanks for highlighting that article by the Herald’s Economics Editor, Brian Fallow, which i had missed, one of the more thoughtful pieces of journalism i have read from the august Herald…

            • bad12 7.2.2.1.1.2
              5 August 2012 at 5:05 pm

              As another afterthought to what i have commented above, it does seem totally f**king perverse that those who are at the sharp end of providing relief to the homeless are those that reliant upon charity in most cases are left to fund the study into the cost of homelessness,

              Governments past and present with the 60 billion dollars a year gained from all of us via taxation should know the true cost to the economy that homelessness creates,

              It’s easy for Heatley and English to sob about the cost of housing people as ‘unaffordable’ when there is no definitive knowledge of the costs from the other side of the bean counting ledger when we don’t…

  8. Kotahi Tāne Huna 8
    5 August 2012 at 11:21 am

    Looks like the sky is going to fall on France’s head.

    • weka 8.1
      5 August 2012 at 11:24 am

      Anyone want to have a go at explaining, in lay terms, what is the perceived problem with a financial transaction tax?

      • Colonial Viper 8.1.1
        5 August 2012 at 11:53 am

        It would mildly limit the profits made by the massive financial speculation industry, particularly in their use of manipulative, automated high frequency trading strategies.

        • weka 8.1.1.1
          5 August 2012 at 12:01 pm

          Yeah, but I’m assuming that’s not the rationale given in opposition to an FTT

          • Colonial Viper 8.1.1.1.1
            5 August 2012 at 12:14 pm

            Perhaps, but its always useful to remember that’s where any objections are really coming from.

        • Jenny 8.1.1.2
          5 August 2012 at 2:25 pm

          It would mildly limit the profits made by the massive financial speculation industry, particularly in their use of manipulative, automated high frequency trading strategies.

          Colonial Viper

          That is right CV, but a very “mild” restriction on the speculative Financial Transactions of the rich will reap huge rewards, returning $billions of dollars to the public purse. Enough money I have been informed that the amount of tax raised from a less than 1cent tax on every dollar on Financial Transactions would amount to the same amount of money presently made by regressive GST taxes on the poor.

          The percentage rates that are being talked about internationally for Financial Transaction Taxes are very small, ranging from 1% to as low as 0.05%.

          Tax Justice New Zealand The case for Financial Transaction Taxes in NZ: A Fact Sheet

          A 0.1% general FTT could raise over $NZ1.6 billion (0.88% of New Zealand’s GDP). Based on the revenue estimates compiled in an extensive 2008 research study by the Austrian Institute of Economic Research. Their statistical estimates factor in a reduction in trade volume resulting from the implementation of the tax, which would discourage speculation. (Source: A General Financial Transaction Tax, Stephen Schulmeister, Austrian Institute of Economic Research, 2008.)

          Tax Justice New Zealand The case for Financial Transaction Taxes in NZ: A Fact Sheet

      • muzza 8.1.2
        5 August 2012 at 12:04 pm

        Not sure about perceived problem, but put it this way, there are hundreds of billions of dollars worth of financial transactions (bets) made on the $NZ alone each, year and most if not all are untaxed, so imagine what could be done with a 1% sales tax applied. Globally I believe it to be tens-hudreds of trillions each year in financial transactions, all with zero behind them, yet all with real negtive consequences for sovereign nations down to individuals. Most if not all of those transactions are untaxed!1

        The real issue is simply one of appetite, and powerful forces preventing such taxes on the financial industry coming to fruition. Finance controls all aspects of global goings on, from top down. People want to deny this, but the fact remains, the financial industry is all powerful, and controls those who would legislate such taxes.

        If there was a global will to do so, this would happen, along with some big players being prosecuted and locked awy for a long time. Its not happened, and I question if it ever will, so on that basis, no appetite to prosecute, means no appetite to reform/tax to the benefit of the rest of us!

        • weka 8.1.2.1
          5 August 2012 at 12:09 pm

          Yes, I understand the value of a FTT. What I’m asking is what rationales get used for saying it’s a bad idea. eg the sky will fall in.

          • Colonial Viper 8.1.2.1.1
            5 August 2012 at 12:16 pm

            Typical would be: too complex to implement, too costly to run, it would cause capital to flee, it would damage the financial services industry and hurt jobs in a valuable economic sector, financial business would go elsewhere, blah blah blah.

            • weka 8.1.2.1.1.1
              5 August 2012 at 12:21 pm

              So nothing of substance then. Just rhetoric.

              • Colonial Viper …
                5 August 2012 at 12:26 pm

                Here’s the way I look at it: the finance sector imposes their own taxes on many of our daily transactions now. They call them “charges” and “fees”. Credit card companies are an example. You buy something from a shop with your visa card, the credit company clips 2% from that transaction, from the store owner. You pull money out of an other bank ATM, you get clipped 50c or $1.

                So, the thieving lying scumbags are absolutely fine with an FTT just as long as the proceeds are going to them.

                • Draco T Bastard …
                  5 August 2012 at 1:39 pm

                  The biggest tax is the interest that private banks charge us accounting for somewhere near 50% of all prices.

                  So, the thieving lying scumbags are absolutely fine with an FTT just as long as the proceeds are going to them.

                  And that sums up the financial industry well. It’s nothing but a tax on everyone else and, due to the compounding nature of interest, that tax increases year by year until the financial industry pretty much owns everything.

          • muzza 8.1.2.1.2
            5 August 2012 at 12:24 pm

            Weka, there is no rationale, its plain and simple fear mongering my those who control the financial industry.

            CV cites some excuses which are run out through the media, but the reality is simply that there is no appetite by TPTB/governments to go up against their pay masters.

            I think the past 4.5 years should illustrate pretty clearly who is pulling the strings, and the rationale, or lack of it you are seeking, can be found in the same place!

            • weka 8.1.2.1.2.1
              5 August 2012 at 12:27 pm

              Hi muzza, I get the dynamics behind why it doesn’t happen. I was just curious how it got spun. I’m assuming politicians (and others) don’t just say, oh we don’t want to do that because the people really running the country/world wouldn’t like it 😉

              • muzza …
                5 August 2012 at 12:34 pm

                Yeah I hear you there Weka, and actually its not a topic which gets alot of air time anyway such as it is. It did get some time for a short while, but has largly been “off the menu” for reasons we seen to agree on, mostly to do with power and influence, which pretty much would tell the story.

      • Kotahi Tāne Huna 8.1.3
        5 August 2012 at 12:20 pm

        Good question Weka – the objections I’ve heard so far leave me strangely unmoved.

      • Jenny 8.1.4
        5 August 2012 at 1:54 pm

        Here you go Weka

        For a very good introduction of what a Financial Transactions Tax is, you couldn’t go far past the Tax Justice New Zealand Fact Sheet.

        http://www.nogstonfood.org/2011/08/18/the-case-for-financial-transaction-taxes-in-new-zealand-a-fact-sheet/

        “The beauty of financial transaction taxes is that they can target the super-rich who aren’t paying enough tax; it’s almost impossible to avoid; and modern technology makes it a simple and low cost form of tax collection,”

        Vaughan GunsonTax Justice spokesperson

  9. RedBaron 9
    5 August 2012 at 11:33 am

    I had a quick look at the accommodation supplement and in Auckland it is a maximum of just over $200 per week. When doing the calculation the first $130 of rent is deducted and then 75% of the balance up to the cap can be claimed depending on income etc..

    So if a low earning family receives the $200 from the state and pay the $130 themselves plus 25% of the difference then the state funds $10400 per annum and the individual some $7000+ p.a.

    If the state borrows at 3.4% then it could fund a house worth some $300,000 and after paying interest instead of the supplement be cash square and have an asset. But the renter still pays some rent, say the $7000 which goes towards the maintenance and paying down the capital sum so over time the govt owns the house.

    It would vary from region to region but where there is an actual shortage of housing stock then this should work. If there are surplus houses in a region then the govt shouldn’t add to the housing stock.

    Can’t afford it, more likely “we can’t afford not to” and it would beat idiot roads hands down.

    • Dv 9.1
      5 August 2012 at 12:15 pm

      Could the state build these houses at 300k.
      Interesting proposal.

      • bad12 9.1.1
        5 August 2012 at 1:17 pm

        The State, based upon ‘economies of scale’ could build the needed social housing for far less than 300 thousand per housing unit,

        The fact is Money, or more to the point the expansion of the amount of money as wealth can be logically generated either by ‘borrowing’ to create increased production or ‘created’ to build an asset to the value of the money so created therefor justifying the ‘creation’ of that money,

        The State in response to the Christchurch earthquakes built and located in Christchurch’s Hagley park a number of housing units at a cost of 100 thousand dollars each, it is actually not the cost of such State House building that is the problem here in any way, it is the WILL of Government to actually do so…

      • gareth 9.1.2
        5 August 2012 at 1:39 pm

        The only issued would be land…. If they made some available through law change then they could do it easily…..

        • bad12 9.1.2.1
          5 August 2012 at 1:59 pm

          Aha, it is really only ‘the Will’ of Government that holds us back in the housing area, sheesh the Chinese can build whole cities for 250,000 people from scratch in 3 years, roads, shopping malls, schools, everything, they make what we accomplish look primitive…

    • DH 9.2
      5 August 2012 at 12:36 pm

      “Can’t afford it, more likely “we can’t afford not to” and it would beat idiot roads hands down.”

      It ticks all the boxes doesn’t it? Whichever angle you look at it from it benefits the Crown accounts and provides both social & economic goods. More trade jobs, more disposable income for people on lower incomes, less Govt expenditure… pick a goal from the left side of the fence and the peg fits in the hole. And all Labour seem to want is a CGT that will push house prices & rents up further and cost the taxpayer even more in social welfare payments.

      • mike e 9.2.1
        5 August 2012 at 12:44 pm

        If labour were smart they would put half the CGT tax gained into paying off debt and the other half in tax breaks for those on lower incomes who can’t avoid taxes like capital gaingters.

        • DH 9.2.1.1
          5 August 2012 at 1:18 pm

          Can you not see how daft that is? CGT will push rents up, there’s no question of that. So Labour bring in a CGT and give a tax rebate to lower income earners. That tax rebate goes to pay most, but not all, of the higher rents which in turn pays the landlords CGT which gets given back in rebates to the low income earner… only the portion of the pie gets smaller for the low income earner each time & they end up paying more & more of their nett income in housing costs.

          Unless the housing problem is fixed first a CGT will be paid by the renters, not by the landlords. It will just make the poor even worse off.

          • Colonial Viper 9.2.1.1.1
            5 August 2012 at 1:30 pm

            CGT will push rents up, there’s no question of that.

            Totally false. A CGT will suppress house price increases, making homes more affordable.

            I appreciate the fact that the govt must sort out the affordable housing supply side.

            • QoT 9.2.1.1.1.1
              5 August 2012 at 1:33 pm

              Well, you do have to consider, CV, that even though logically there is no reason why a CGT would increase rents, plenty of greedy-bastard landlords will probably use it as an excuse to do so.

              • Colonial Viper …
                5 August 2012 at 1:35 pm

                And that’s on a generous day as greedy landlords don’t need any excuse at all.

              • DH …
                5 August 2012 at 1:58 pm

                “… even though logically there is no reason why a CGT would increase rents,”

                There is a cast-iron logical reason. Property investors are presently getting a return on their investment via a combination of rent and capital gain. If you cut back the capital gain through regulation the investor will claw back that loss in return through rents. Since every property investor will be affected the same it will result in all of them increasing rents over a period of time.

                The one thing you can’t do is force the return on an investment down through taxes, the % return always bounces back unless the risk profile changes.

                • Colonial Viper …
                  5 August 2012 at 2:07 pm

                  The one thing you can’t do is force the return on an investment down through taxes

                  Of course you can, and it has been successfully done many times. Its called structuring the market to get the social and economic objectives you want for your country.

                  Property investors are presently getting a return on their investment via a combination of rent and capital gain.

                  So we get rid of property speculators, and help create a class of professional landlords who make an income from renting properties, not trading them at increasing prices and increasing mortgage debt.

            • DH 9.2.1.1.1.2
              5 August 2012 at 1:48 pm

              I said rents there, not house prices. And there is absolutely no doubt that a CGT will push rents up. It has to.

              You must be joking if you think a CGT will make houses more affordable. Read the link higher up, they’re not even building ‘affordable’ housing.

              • Colonial Viper …
                5 August 2012 at 2:03 pm

                And there is absolutely no doubt that a CGT will push rents up. It has to.

                No it doesn’t. A CGT doesn’t increase any costs of house ownership. Landlords who make an income from renting houses will experience no change. Property speculators expecting untrammeled capital gains will not be happy of course.

                You must be joking if you think a CGT will make houses more affordable.

                Well its far too weak a step, but it will tend to divert capital away from the property market.

                • DH …
                  5 August 2012 at 2:17 pm

                  “Landlords who make an income from renting houses will experience no change.”

                  Thanks but there’s no point in debating with you on this, you’re away with the fairies. Pretty much every property investor disagrees with you. It’s basic arithmetic fer crissake!

                  • Colonial Viper …
                    5 August 2012 at 2:28 pm

                    The market doesn’t need property speculators. We need professional landlords.

                    Pretty much every property investor disagrees with you. It’s basic arithmetic fer crissake!

                    Not a surprise that property speculators would be annoyed at a CGT.

                    And your maths is wrong. CGT does not increase the costs of running a rental property. Professional landlords won’t be affected by it at all, but property flippers will be.

                    • DH …
                      5 August 2012 at 2:40 pm

                      “And your maths is wrong. CGT does not increase the costs of running a rental property. Professional landlords won’t be affected by it at all, but property flippers will be.”

                      Don’t be ridiculous. Professional landlords count capital gain into the returns they get from their investment property. They can get 4.7% on term deposit right now, why would anyone invest in property that returns less than that from rents alone.

                      Rents decoupled from house prices years ago, if rents were to provide the sole return on rental properties now they’d have to go up a hell of a lot more.

                    • Pete George …
                      5 August 2012 at 2:42 pm

                      Not a surprise that property speculators would be annoyed at a CGT.

                      It shouldn’t annoy them, they are already subject to tax on capital gains.

                    • Colonial Viper …
                      5 August 2012 at 2:51 pm

                      They can get 4.7% on term deposit right now, why would anyone invest in property that returns less than that from rents alone.

                      Push house prices back down and rental returns will go up enough to sustain a true professional landlord class.

                      One which makes a living from rental income. Not a class of pretend landlords who happen to rent out properties inbetween flipping them.

                      They can get 4.7% on term deposit right now, why would anyone invest in property that returns less than that from rents alone.

                      Well they can always exit the property speculation market and the state can take a bigger role in the providing affordable housing and rentals.

                    • DH …
                      5 August 2012 at 3:03 pm

                      “Push house prices back down and rental returns will go up enough to sustain a true professional landlord class.”

                      What, and you think a CGT will achieve that? Bollocks it will. The minute returns from houses fall the number of new houses being built also falls. If the return isn’t enough people will invest elsewhere instead, ie term deposits.

                      That slowdown in new house building leads to higher rents through shortage of rentals. Those higher rents gradually lead to a better market return from property which attracts investors back in again. That increased demand from investors pushes house prices up again…. and the endless cycle continues. A CGT won’t change anything there.

                      Have you not been watching the housing market over the last five years? It’s been pretty damned obvious.

                    • Colonial Viper …
                      5 August 2012 at 3:18 pm

                      You skipped the part where I said the state can play a much larger role in the housing market, exactly like it used to.

                      As English already said, the current market ignores affordable accomodation for the bottom quarter of the population.

                      That increased demand from investors pushes house prices up again….

                      Easily answered by limiting mortgage credit for the property market.

                    • bad12 …
                      5 August 2012 at 10:19 pm

                      On a bit of an unrelated topic, has someone been feeding the Minister of riffmatic and Bean Counting Bill English truth syrup or something???,

                      Last week it was English openly admitting that what the economy faces ie: recession/depression aint going away for the next ten at least, years that is,

                      Now He is putting His hand up to being part of Governments that have simply ignored the (known?) need to build housing for renting on the basis of income,

                      Admitting the facts is fine as far as i am concerned by the Minister, does He tho have a plan to fix what the known ailment is???….

                    • Colonial Viper …
                      5 August 2012 at 10:23 pm

                      And don’t forget English’s comment last year that the way NZ used prisons “were a moral and financial failure”. Its spacey I know.

          • mike e 9.2.1.1.2
            5 August 2012 at 7:46 pm

            Protecting those who don’t pay any tax doh.I hit homer
            any landlords would give up and flood more houses into the market bringing ownership back into the NZ psyche which helps stabilize families.

        • Draco T Bastard 9.2.1.2
          5 August 2012 at 1:48 pm

          Actually, if the government built houses (high density, both row houses and high rise apartments) to meet demand and rented them out at 25% of income house prices and rents would fall making a CGT unneeded.

          Still, I’d say a Comprehensive Capital Tax as outlined in the Big Kahuna would be an excellent option to put in place.

          • the pink postman 9.2.1.2.1
            5 August 2012 at 4:17 pm

            Remember the wonderfull State Loans Scheme .Plus State insurance?
            Which enabled working people to buy their own well built houses. Labour needs to revise such a scheme as soon as it returns to government.
            Most off the well built houses us older folk are still enjoying were state loaned houses. Why ever was it stopped? Because of the greedy slime bag Tories.

            • Draco T Bastard 9.2.1.2.1.1
              5 August 2012 at 5:27 pm

              We won’t get that from Labour as they’re far too enamoured of the free-market BS and enriching banks.

          • bad12 9.2.1.2.2
            5 August 2012 at 9:35 pm

            You are of course right, The provision of 20,000 State rental units in Auckland City would immediately kill off high demand for rentals in that city thus overcoming on the rental side of the property equation the supply/demand impetus in that market,

            My view is that the State should in fact become the majority landlord across the whole new Zealand rental market and when the building program has housed at 25% of income all those on low and fixed incomes tenancies should be made available to others on higher incomes at the same rental of 25% of income,

            The present National Government is talking from a position of trying to curtail the annual expense of the subsidy to HousingNZ of some 600 million dollars and the only means of addressing the direct subsidization of HousingNZ that does not further deflate the local New Zealand economy by further reducing the discretionary spending of the 69,000 HousingNZ households would be to dramatically increase the stock of HousingNZ homes to the point where Social Demand is zero and tenancies could be offered to tenants earning 1000 dollars a week at 25% of income thus adding an element of cross-subsidization to the HousingNZ books,

            Obviously for that to occur, Government would have to have been smart enough to have produced it’s own printed monies to enable such a building program and would also have to have been looking at the economics of it all through a smart lens other than what could enrich the core of its voting bloc,

            Alas, such is the nature of the chimps in the jungle mememe economics currently to the fore that i couldn’t begin to imagine such a society that would embrace such an elegant solution to matters of housing for at least 1000 years…

      • Colonial Viper 9.2.2
        5 August 2012 at 12:53 pm

        And all Labour seem to want is a CGT that will push house prices & rents up further

        This is false. A CGT will suppress house price increases. Which is why you don’t like it, as a guess.

      • bad12 9.2.3
        5 August 2012 at 1:29 pm

        Roads of No Significance are a case in point to what i commented on above, obviously a quantifiable value can be placed upon a road, ie: X road is worth a billion or whatever,

        In theory such a method of ‘counting our beans’ gives us an asset, but, it’s hardly an asset that can be ‘realized’,

        So,

        It is logical for a Government to simply create the amount of money needed to build X road as the creation of the road at X value as an asset justifies having expanded the money supply by the X of that roads value,

        It is the economics of the primitive chimpanzee to create a fiscal drag upon an economy by ‘borrowing’ to create the infrastructural assets of the State when that State is quite capable of creating the expansion of the money supply as the States asset values increase,

        My one codicil,(a small nod to the present economic paradigm), is that where we have an ‘inflation target’ such expansion of the money supply to build assets should,(must), be allowed so as to occur within such inflation targets…

        • Draco T Bastard 9.2.3.1
          5 August 2012 at 1:56 pm

          That’s easy – just adjust taxes in line with the spending. The Comprehensive Capital Tax is also essential as it would tax the money sitting in bank accounts.

      • bad12 9.2.4
        5 August 2012 at 4:15 pm

        The other positive is that for every Household that is created the level of economic activity in the wider economy is increased,

        IE: such households must have furnishing and these are constantly changed/upgraded on an ongoing basis, i call this the ‘broken dinner plate example’ where if you have 10,000 households X amount of dinner plates will be broken and need replacing in any given period, raise the number of households to 15,000 and the number of broken dinner plates becomes X+x…

    • Daveosaurus 10.1
      5 August 2012 at 12:40 pm

      If Laws wants a referendum, he can get off his backside and organise a petition for one. Just like everyone else has to do.

      • QoT 10.1.1
        5 August 2012 at 12:44 pm

        Exactly, Daveo. I love how Peters and Lhaws are both now acting like a referendum is the “sensible” thing to do, ignoring that (a) the government clearly has no appetite to order a binding one on this issue and (b) they themselves have no inclination at all to get it done themselves.

        Oh, and it costs money and stuff.

    • weka 10.2
      5 August 2012 at 12:50 pm

      Nope, Laws and Peters are idiots. They might possibly be right that morality laws should be decided by the public, in which case people who object to gay marriage on the basis of morality should get a referendum petition organised.
       
      But the current proposed legislation isn’t a morality issue, it simply one of equality and human rights.

    • Draco T Bastard 10.3
      5 August 2012 at 2:05 pm

      Amazingly enough, I’m going to have to agree with Lhaws on that as well. Of course, I think it should be true of all major policy. State asset sales should have gone to referendum – instead it got rushed through as fast as the government could push and the government ignored the will of the people while doing so and I don’t think we’ll be seeing Lhaws calling for that to be put to referendum.

      • weka 10.3.1
        5 August 2012 at 2:54 pm

        Where’s the line that determines ‘major policy’?
         
        The issue of whether gay people have the same rights as everyone else was settled with the homosexual law reform bill. The current bill is merely an adjustment to bring marriage law into line with that. I don’t see why the validity of homosexuality should be put to the test of public opinion.

        Needless to day Laws isn’t arguing for referenda for major policy, just the ones he deems to be issues of morality.

        • Pete George 10.3.1.1
          5 August 2012 at 3:16 pm

          Laws isn’t the only one that does that.

          I agree, this is a relatively minor sorting out and doesn’t warrant a referendum. But to a few people it’s a Very Big Deal.

        • Draco T Bastard 10.3.1.2
          5 August 2012 at 3:28 pm

          Where’s the line that determines ‘major policy’?

          Where policy is actually changed rather than amended.

          I don’t see why the validity of homosexuality should be put to the test of public opinion.

          I don’t see why we’re being held back by a few people who happen to be our servants.

          I actually think that all fundamental rights need to be put to referendum and then made supreme law. For starters it tends to settle the basis for the laws that are passed and it also prevents the government from riding roughshod over those rights.

          Needless to day Laws isn’t arguing for referenda for major policy, just the ones he deems to be issues of morality.

          No he’s not, he’s asking for referendum on policies he doesn’t like and thinks the referendum will stop.

  11. Mark 11
    5 August 2012 at 12:06 pm

    Surprise surprise, further tax facts confirmed.

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/7416899/Figures-suggest-wealthy-carry-tax-burden

    Now for the headlines we will never see:

    “The left helps the poor help themselves”
    “Green Party cares about the environment”
    “$5 per day will give 3 kids breakfast and lunch”
    “Holiday highway will be used by all people”

    • Colonial Viper 11.1
      5 August 2012 at 12:28 pm

      The bottom half of the population have no net assets and plenty of debt, and the top 5% of the population own most of the country’s wealth.

      SO OF COURSE the richest pay the most tax. They benefit from this inequitable capitalist system the most.

      After all, they can afford to without going hungry and without giving up their Mercedes.

    • bad12 11.2
      5 August 2012 at 1:00 pm

      As a proportion of income the top 40% of New Zealand pays less tax than the ‘rest’ of us,(60%)…

      • Pete George 11.2.1
        5 August 2012 at 1:08 pm

        Odd and very dubious claim. Citation?

        Many of ‘the rest of us’ have little or no income, and pay little or no tax nett of credits.

        • Colonial Viper 11.2.1.1
          5 August 2012 at 1:21 pm

          I suspect bad12 is correct. When your $2M home sells for $3M, how much tax do you pay on that $1M of unearned income?

          That’s right, zero.

          and pay little or no tax nett of credits.

          The whole net tax argument the Right wing makes. If the bottom tier of society had a chance to accumulate some net assets and some decent income, perhaps they could become net tax payers too.

          • Pete George 11.2.1.1.1
            5 August 2012 at 1:37 pm

            When your $2M home sells for $3M, how much tax do you pay on that $1M of unearned income?

            Incorrect. It’s not income, it’s capital gain.

            That’s right, zero.

            No, it depends. If you sell a house with the intention of making a capital gain then that gain is taxed.

            If you’re a speculator you buy a property always intending to sell it. The property is treated like “trading stock” and your profit or loss from selling the property is taxable. Speculating can be a one-off purchase and sale of a property.

            If you’re a dealer you are similar to a speculator buying properties for resale, but you have established a regular pattern of buying and selling. This includes rental properties.

            Dealers and speculators must pay income tax on any gain they make from reselling their property.

            – IRD

            Dealing and speculating has investigated more rigourously by IRD over recent years.

            • Colonial Viper 11.2.1.1.1.1
              5 August 2012 at 1:38 pm

              Incorrect. It’s not income, it’s capital gain.

              You mean that extra million in my bank account is not really money at my disposal?

              • QoT …
                5 August 2012 at 1:40 pm

                Of course not, CV. “Income” is something common plebs have to work for. “Capital gain” is the reward rich people get for being so much cleverer than the rest of us.

              • Pete George …
                5 August 2012 at 1:46 pm

                It depends.

                IRD: “as a general rule, buying and selling a family/private home usually has no tax consequences. However, if a property is purchased with the intention of resale, or there is a regular pattern of buying and selling homes, then this may be considered property speculation or dealing for tax purposes.”

                If you buy a house for $2m with the intent of selling it for capital gain then that capital gain is taxable.

                An increase from $2m to $3m would indicate it was owned for a substaintial period of time or it was improved or speculated, the latter being more likely to be taxable gain.

            • Frank Macskasy 11.2.1.1.1.2
              5 August 2012 at 1:52 pm

              Pete, from personal experience, I can tell you that your assertions are wholly incorrect.

              It has to be demonstrated that you are trading in property. If you buy a whole bunch of properties and then flog them off in such a way that you are not seen to be reliant on the proceeds, it is deemed a capital gain,

              “If you’re an investor you buy a property to use it to generate ongoing rental income and not with any firm intent of resale. The property is a capital asset and any later profit or loss from selling the property is capital and isn’t taxable (apart from clawing back any depreciation, which is now recoverable). ”

              Source: http://www.ird.govt.nz/property/property-common-mistakes/mistake-dealing-with-investment/#facts

              A builder, on the other hand, who makes his living building and selling and building and selling and building etc, is trading in property because that is his/her primary business.

              The irony of this shouldn’t be lost on anyone; I paid no tax on capital gains, yet built nothing.

              The builder who actually constructed the properties was taxed to the hilt.

              The problem here is not just the inequity of this current situation, but the fact that the law is so vague and we’re debating the interpretation of who is luiable or not liable to pay tax. Any law so open to subjective interpretation is not a particularly helpful law.

              Far easier and fairer if both dealers and rental investors paid the same amount. Then everyone is treated reasonably equally.

              Then we don’t arrive at silly propositions such as your artificial definitions, a-la “Incorrect. It’s not income, it’s capital gain.”

              • Pete George …
                5 August 2012 at 2:09 pm

                There are valid arguments about what capital gains should be taxed – to do that the difference between income and capital gain is important, and not an ‘artificial definition’.

                As is the definition of a family home. It would be easier and perhaps more fair for capital gain to be taxed on them as well. But there would be significant flow on consequences.

                And you are missing a basic difference, flicking on or sitting on.

                A builder (or a doer upper) can claim on any expenses but any capital gained is taxable. Houses in this category are usually turned over quickly.

                Most rental investors hold a property for quite a few years.They will usually gain capital but not always, and that will be offset by inflation and possibly by expenses. If a rental investor sells a house quickly they are more likely to lose on expenses and capital.

              • Draco T Bastard …
                5 August 2012 at 2:10 pm

                The problem here is not just the inequity of this current situation, but the fact that the law is so vague and we’re debating the interpretation of who is luiable or not liable to pay tax. Any law so open to subjective interpretation is not a particularly helpful law.

                QFT

                Our laws are a mess and I think a government should be looking at writing new law from the ground up and throwing the old laws and precedents out. The old laws and precedents really are just getting in the way of rationalising our laws.

                • Colonial Viper …
                  5 August 2012 at 5:45 pm

                  Any law so open to subjective interpretation is not a particularly helpful law.

                  Well, its helpful to some parties including professional advisors with clients who have a lot of money on the line.

        • bad12 11.2.1.2
          5 August 2012 at 1:36 pm

          * 🙄 * bout the only citation you are getting from me…

  12. weka 12
    5 August 2012 at 12:13 pm

    So, 20 out of 60 comments in this thread so far have the word ‘Jenny’ in them, and as far as I can tell they are all about Jenny’s thing about CV.
    33%, I think that beats Pete George by quite a way.
     

    • Pete George 12.1
      5 August 2012 at 1:03 pm

      The difference between what Jenny is doing, and the general rough and tumble here, is that she is now stalking CV and being a tr*ll. It doesn’t particularly surprise me that you don’t get the difference, you always seem to not understand the culture of this place, or certain social norms here.

      And you don’t get the difference between Jenny ‘stalking’ CV and what you’re doing?

      You said ” I haven’t been reading hardly any of the comments on Syria, so I don’t know what Jenny is on about” but “tedious and interferes with the flow of conversation”. And then “I’m sick of it.”

      Are you trying to talk up a bitch to ban campaign against Jenny based on that?

      • chris73 12.1.1
        5 August 2012 at 4:52 pm

        It almost sounds like Jenny got jilted by CV and is now wrecking her vengeance on the boards…

        (I’m not in any way suggesting they had a relationship but her posts read like something about a woman scorned :))

        • Vicky32 12.1.1.1
          6 August 2012 at 5:54 pm

          I’m not in any way suggesting they had a relationship but her posts read like something about a woman scorned
           

          I had the same thought!

      • felix 12.1.2
        5 August 2012 at 9:37 pm

        Pete, try reading your comments back to yourself out loud before you post them.

        I reckon you’ve dropped several IQ points this weekend and as you’ve so often demonstrated it’s not like you had an overabundance to work from.

    • bad12 12.2
      5 August 2012 at 1:06 pm

      Yeah it’s a pity that both party’s cannot engage in the debate without it becoming personal, it makes the points both are trying to make a hard read,

      We all need remember here that we all, well maybe excluding 🙄 ,are representative of the thoughts and ideals of the broad Left here and when we begin to address each others ideas on a personal basis the actual Facts become lost in the heat of personal vindication…

  13. Draco T Bastard 13
    5 August 2012 at 3:21 pm

    Study proves that rich people are more likely to be complete arseholes.

    Rich people are more unethical and likely to cheat, break the law or plain behave badly towards other people, a new study has found.

    Rich people also shared “feelings of entitlement and inattention to the consequences of one’s actions on others” that may play into their moral decisions, study authors said.

    ABC quoted the authors as saying the differences in ethical behavior could be explained, at least in part, by the upper-class participants’ more favorable attitude toward greed.

    So, there we have it. Proof that the problems we face as a society (poverty, deprivation, inequality) stem almost wholly from the rich.

    • chris73 13.1
      5 August 2012 at 4:55 pm

      Good thing that no left-wing politicians could be considered rich then eh

    • Kotahi Tāne Huna 13.2
      5 August 2012 at 6:26 pm

      Interesting stuff.

      In follow-up laboratory studies, upper-class individuals were more likely to exhibit unethical decision-making tendencies (study 3), take valued goods from others (study 4), lie in a negotiation (study 5), cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize (study 6), and endorse unethical behavior at work (study 7)

  14. Morrissey 14
    5 August 2012 at 5:22 pm

    Paul Brennan breaks down reading news item about deaths of New Zealand soldiers
    National Radio, Sunday 5 August 2012

    Anybody else hear this? Reading the 3 p.m. news, about the two New Zealand soldiers killed in Afghanistan, Paul Brennan started to choke up with emotion. It soon became clear he could not continue, and a brief snatch of music was put on. He returned after five or so seconds and read out only two more items in a drastically reduced news broadcast.

    “Sorry about that,” he said. “I had a very big frog in my throat.”

    Then at 4 p.m., Brennan started reading the same news item, and choked up again.

    Clearly, it was not a frog in the throat.

  15. Anne 15
    5 August 2012 at 5:34 pm

    Googled his bio… he’s an aviation enthusiast and has been on a number of overseas ‘adventures’. Perhaps he knows one of the soldiers killed.

    • Morrissey 15.1
      5 August 2012 at 5:52 pm

      Perhaps he knows one of the soldiers killed.

      That’s exactly what I thought, Anne.

  16. Socialist Paddy 16
    5 August 2012 at 6:20 pm

    Tvone and 3 are running polls tonight.

    Tvone has National up 1 at 48%, Labour at 32 and the Greens at 12%

    Tv3 has National at 50.6% , Labour at 30.8% and the Greens at 11.2%.

    Shearer is going backwards.

    I feel like I am in a time warp because the Government has been absolute shyte.

    Time for the opposition to think about what they are doing. 

    • Colonial Viper 16.1
      5 August 2012 at 6:31 pm

      Anyone here still believe that National doesn’t have a credible shot at a third term?

    • gobsmacked 16.2
      5 August 2012 at 6:34 pm

      Time for the opposition to think about what they are doing.

      Sadly, most of the Labour caucus are happy with what they’re doing. They keep failing, but they keep their jobs. It’s not like anything else matters to them.

      I’d like to publicly apologise for remaining loyal to Labour at the last election. It was a sympathy vote for Goff (who had done OK in the campaign) but I should have switched to the Greens.

      I seriously – stupidly – thought that after a defeat, Labour would change. I was wrong.

      The results are entirely predictable, and everyone knows it. Including the fucking Labour caucus. They just don’t care.

      • bad12 16.2.1
        5 August 2012 at 8:48 pm

        Although i couldn’t bring myself to vote for Labour 2011 i too was impressed with the manner in which Goff campaigned, despite being maligned daily by the media He never at any point seemed to be deterred,

        My belief is that had Goff not gone into the election blindsiding the blue collar working class with the message that a vote for Labour was a vote to raise the pension age another 2 years the out-come of the 2011 election would have been far far closer,

        I am not saying that Labour would have won, but, on my reading the Maori Party would not at present be the Poodles of National had Goff not been handed such a poison chalice as an election policy,

        My present reading of the polls is that after months of vocal opposition to asset sales both Shearer and Norman gave all and sundry a kick in the nuts by both announcing pompously on the same day that neither Labour or the Greens would be taxing those who bought the assets until they bled so as to enable a Labour/Green Government to put the assets back in the ownership of all the people,

        Both Shearer and Norman need to harden the f**k up and decide exactly who they wish to represent in the electorate,it doesn’t take a mental giant to realize that the Slippery National Government has already BOUGHT the middle class by cleaning out the treasury and now with its intentions of selling off half the family silver via asset sales,

        If the pair of them can gain an education thus far it is only a simple step to understand that with the addition of NZFirst and The Conservatives the middle class vote in New Zeland is all tapped out so the f**king pair of them can stop stooping to sucking at the tit of who can play Mr Straight ”i aint scaring the horses” the best and start talking as if they have something to offer the REAL working class that both their Party’s would traditionally be thougt to have seen as their voter bases…

        • Colonial Viper 16.2.1.1
          5 August 2012 at 9:09 pm

          My belief is that had Goff not gone into the election blindsiding the blue collar working class with the message that a vote for Labour was a vote to raise the pension age another 2 years the out-come of the 2011 election would have been far far closer,

          Agreed. That BS shift to the Right lost Labour core votes without winning over any centre or Right votes. I reckon Labour lost 2-3 MPs out of it.

          • mike e 16.2.1.1.1
            5 August 2012 at 9:11 pm

            had the all blacks lost the right would have been savaged.

          • bad12 16.2.1.1.2
            5 August 2012 at 9:50 pm

            Aha, that’s my reading of it as well, had such not occurred i beleive that we would still have a Slippery lead National Government, But, He would not have had the luxury of being able to pass ANYTHING through the Legislature without the support of His whole coalition…

          • Colonial Viper 16.2.1.1.3
            6 August 2012 at 12:08 am

            You can’t forget that Slippery is a gambler by trade and by training. A good one too, with good luck. He bet on an updraft from an AB win, amongst many other factors, and he got it. The tea tape scandal was a bit more of a firefight, but he played that one as well as he could, even after it started to go sideways.

    • Pete George 16.3
      5 August 2012 at 6:35 pm

      I feel like I am in a time warp because the Government has been absolute shyte.

      Many people obviously don’t see it that way.

      Time for the opposition to think about what they are doing.

      Yes. They could trying to be more positive and show that they can do rather than trying to stop other people doing things, people tend to prefer that.

      • felix 16.3.1
        5 August 2012 at 6:58 pm

        🙄 Everyone get behind the largest party and work against the interests and wishes of those who voted for you.

        • pukeko 16.3.1.1
          5 August 2012 at 7:01 pm

          Ko rāua mārire hoki ngā tāngata pākiwaha i kōrero whakakake noa, rūpahu noa.

      • Pete 16.3.2
        5 August 2012 at 10:19 pm

        I would think their successes in the members’ ballots (and yes, I tip my hat to Mr Dunne for his support) are positive initiatives, but we have a Westminster system consisting of a government and Her Majesty’s loyal opposition. They would be remiss in their constitutional duties if they failed to hold the government to account and force it to make its case for its policies.

        Secondly, remember that MMP was chosen – twice – because it slows down government. Consensus has to be built. We have no upper chamber, no head of state who can in practice veto legislation, no fundamental rights the courts can use to overturn outrageous legislation. The scrutiny offered in the House and in Select Committee is the only safeguard we have against the tyranny of the majority. And a weak safeguard at that, as we learned with CERA. Sure, if being nice is a tool in achieving that role of scrutiny, fine. But to make it easy on the government or let it do what it wants is a constitutional path to nowhere. And I would expect no different from the opposition when Labour next takes the treasury benches.

    • muzza 16.4
      5 August 2012 at 6:45 pm

      Time for people to wake up and accept that that political system as we know it be is a bad joke, and not answering to this country an dhas not for some time…

      Until some of those who are “comfortable” and vain/conceited enough that they think the political system is currently working for them, get a bloody good wake up call, we are going to continue to be pumped hard.

      Wonder how many years until those “comfortable” people who may well have talked down at the “underclass”, find themselves facing becoming part of the “underclasss”

      The fact so many still seem oblivious to where this is all heading makes me shake my head!

      EDIT: No the Greens will not be the left for long, and those who vote for them, will be in for a very nasty shock in good time!

      • Draco T Bastard 16.4.1
        5 August 2012 at 7:18 pm

        Wonder how many years until those “comfortable” people who may well have talked down at the “underclass”, find themselves facing becoming part of the “underclasss”

        They already are but they’re either a) not aware of that yet or b) in denial of it.

    • McFlock 16.5
      5 August 2012 at 6:57 pm

      Well, it’s been a while since Labour went down to 32% in a CM poll (haven’t really looked at the 3news one). For much of the last year, 32% has been an object of anticipation. 
           
      It’s the trends that one should watch.
                 
       

      • muzza 16.5.1
        5 August 2012 at 7:04 pm

        Hey Mcflock, speaking fo trends, do you reckon the Cantabs are going get left with a situation like Dunners, when they get their shiney new stadium?

        • McFlock 16.5.1.1
          5 August 2012 at 11:45 pm

          Pretty much. They’ll have a shiny stadium and poverty as an excuse to cut social services and userpays water.

          • Colonial Viper 16.5.1.1.1
            6 August 2012 at 12:02 am

            plus sell off a few more public assets, with a few ‘public-private partnerships’ throw in for good measure.

            • McFlock 16.5.1.1.1.1
              6 August 2012 at 12:30 pm

              yep – they flogged off the council owned bus company to the private sector for a couple of mil. Reckoned it solved conflict of interest issues so they could improve the bus services.
              Buses still shit, just more expensive. 

      • bad12 16.5.2
        5 August 2012 at 7:09 pm

        Another ‘polling amusement’, who here really believes that NZFirst are polling under the 4% it did at the 2008 elections after months of attacks from both the press and opposition???,

        If you have to suspend your belief over any part of a poll, (based upon logic), then it makes the other parts of the poll just as suspect…

    • David H 16.6
      5 August 2012 at 8:36 pm

      It makes you have to ask yet again, WHEN are they getting rid of this loser? He’s nothing but the BUTT of Shonkys jokes. He CANNOT string 2 words together without the stammering. He was put in AGAINST the wishes of the rank and file. He is USELESS! The sooner he goes and takes the rabble that call themselves Labour with him, them maybe Labour can do the serious rebuilding that it needs. At the moment 2014 National will win again, unless Shonky is caught with his hand in the cookie jar or committing murder.

  17. Anne 17
    5 August 2012 at 6:47 pm

    Many people obviously don’t see it that way.

    Nah, because like you… they are shallow, mindless thick-heads. 🙄

  18. Penny Bright 18
    5 August 2012 at 7:27 pm

    4 August 2012

    “State housing is a function of central Government – it’s that simple'” says Tamaki Housing Group’s Sue Henry.

    PRESS RELEASE: Tamaki Housing Group: “National Government threatening to break their promise on market rents.”

    “It’s reprehensible for greedy self-interested church, iwi and charity groups to even contemplate stepping into this role.”

    “It’s ironical that only a week ago, Housing Minister Phil Heatley said on nationwide television that market rents would not be reintroduced for Housing NZ tenants.

    (The Nation TV3 http://www.landlords.co.nz/read-article.php?article_id=4406 )

    Today, he has done a complete about-face on this issue ( NZ Herald Saturday 4 August 2012)”

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10824497

    “Why should Housing NZ tenants be forced through rent increases they can’t afford to subsidise multiple, parasitical groups in the private sector?”

    “Shame on Dianne Robertson CEO of Auckland City Mission, and Major Campbell Roberts, CEO of the Salvation Army, for helping to concoct this policy beside developers, international bankers and property consultants, to push for temporary tenancy agreements, higher rents and the privatisation of the State housing stock (through transferrals) and destabilisation of 70,000 vulnerable families across New Zealand.”

    (April 2010 Housing Shareholders Advisory Group Report
    http://www.dbh.govt.nz/UserFiles/File/Publications/Sector/pdf/vision-for-social-housing-nz.pdf )

    “It is a disgrace to discover that Dianne Robertson CEO of Auckland City Mission, and Major Campbell Roberts, CEO of the Salvation Army, are members of the ‘invitation only’ hugely powerful, private sector corporate lobby group – the Committee for Auckland,” concludes Ms Henry.

    http://www.committeeforauckland.co.nz/membership/member-organisations

    Sue Henry

    Ph (09) 575 6344

    • bad12 18.1
      5 August 2012 at 8:24 pm

      Ummm i am happy to attack National and it’s Housing Minister on matters of ‘fact’ and over the lowering of the level of the numbers overall of State Houses,

      But,

      I cannot see where the Herald article you have linked to shows Heatley threatening to bring back the ugly ‘market rent regime’ for State Houses,

      In the Herald article provided Heatley says when talking about what His CONsultants group will be looking at vis a vis State House rentals ”Nothing will be ruled out EXCEPT market rents”…

  19. Vicky32 19
    6 August 2012 at 4:46 pm

    LOL. So says the man who has been banned multiple times for behaviour that pisses off lots of people and disrupts the site.

    By and large, I do  not support anything PG says, but I do think that he has never deserved to be banned even for 5 minutes. You can simply ignore what he says if you don’t like it! (As I ignore idiots such as QoT and TR Putz..)
    The rolleyes smiley campaign against him is incredibly juvenile.
     

    • Te Reo Putake 19.1
      6 August 2012 at 5:08 pm

      That’s some top quality ignoring, Vic 🙄

      • QoT 19.1.1
        6 August 2012 at 6:26 pm

        It’d be a lot more convincing if she’d stop consistently mentioning me … and then engaging with me when I point this out … and then throwing around truly hilarious accusations about my gender, location, and hair colour.