Open mike 20/03/2024

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, March 20th, 2024 - 28 comments
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28 comments on “Open mike 20/03/2024 ”

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  1. Mike the Lefty 1
    20 March 2024 at 6:21 am

    Peters caught using someone's music without permission.

    Chumbawamba say they don't support his use of their 1997 hit "Tubthumping" because they mean it as a song of hope, whilst Peters is …."using it to shore up his misguided political views…" and he will be sent a cease and desist letter.

    Not the first time the right have been caught using someone's music without permission, but I suppose they don't think they are answerable to anyone.

    All the media’s fault probably.

  2. bwaghorn 2
    20 March 2024 at 6:46 am

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/350208676/richlisters-speak-out-why-they-splash-big-cash-political-parties

    To be rich is all it takes to be a top New Zealander in luxons world view. As he fawns over some nobody who sold something.

  3. Phillip ure 3
    20 March 2024 at 8:28 am

    So..anyone with a disabled friend/family member..who voted for tories/act/nz 1st..

    ..could be having buyer's regret spasms..?

    You'd think..?

    • Phillip ure 4.1
      20 March 2024 at 12:03 pm

      Shit..!

      I only met/talked with him a few times…

      ..back when I was doing political commentary and stuff @ bfm…

      He was kind enough to say encouraging words about my scribblings/squawkings/pontificating.

      He is one of the few mainstream media commentators I have total respect for…

      His was a clear voice.. amongst the usual incoherent/irrelevant babble that passes for commentary/analysis..

      It is sad to hear he has died…

    • Macro 4.2
      20 March 2024 at 12:22 pm

      OMG! What a loss. crying

    • Ad 4.3
      20 March 2024 at 12:42 pm

      Big shoutout to his family and the liberal Anglican community he supported.

      A committed cyclist, economic commentator with ideals, great guy to deal with. I'm grieving over this one.

    • Patricia Bremner 4.4
      20 March 2024 at 12:44 pm

      We feel this. He was a good man who spoke for many who could not.

    • Subliminal 4.5
      20 March 2024 at 1:16 pm

      That is very sad news. He will be missed

    • observer 4.6
      20 March 2024 at 1:18 pm

      Really shocked by the news today. I can only agree with what others have said. One of the best.

      • Anne 4.6.1
        20 March 2024 at 3:57 pm

        Ditto observer.

        He came to speak to the North Shore LP a couple of times and I was struck at how humble he was despite his well known public profile and academic achievements.

    • Bearded Git 4.8
      20 March 2024 at 1:53 pm

      Shame…he was priceless on RadioNZ.

    • AB 4.9
      20 March 2024 at 2:36 pm

      I recall him saying somewhere that when he first arrived in NZ, he was sounded out by Roger Kerr, who clearly wanted to know if Oram was a strict adherent to the one true faith of neoliberal economics. Oram was a brave man to stick to his principles in such a toxic environment – and to keep doing so for so long.

    • Tiger Mountain 4.10
      20 March 2024 at 3:16 pm

      Nice guy, met him in union forums over the years, liked the way he stretched his tech, ran small MacBooks because of the size he preferred.

      A public intellectual in a way, but was generally tagged as a business correspondent. He certainly served it up to Fonterra over the years and knew his stuff.

      • Ad 4.10.1
        20 March 2024 at 4:07 pm

        Lordie I just loved the way he kept scorching Fonterra. I don't know of any economist or economic correspondent who does that to our largest-by-a-long-way business.

    • Ad 4.11
      20 March 2024 at 4:06 pm

      Back in 2007 Rod Oram wrote a book called Reinventing Paradise: How New Zealand is Starting to Earn a Bigger, Sustainable Living in the World Economy

      If anyone wonders what an optimistic, credible, sector-by-sector approach to the New Zealand economy looked like before the GFC, and on the peak of the Helen Clark-Cullen government, check this one out as an oldie but a real goodie.

      So many excellent anecdotes of strong businesses making real headway, and collectively forming a new kind of future prosperity for us all.

      Read it again now, and check how far this National government is taking us away from that.

    • Hunter Thompson II 4.12
      21 March 2024 at 8:35 am

      Heard him speak at a public meeting.

      He was the sort of man who advanced well-analysed arguments to support his case. In short, the voice of reason.

  5. Stephen D 5
    20 March 2024 at 6:12 pm

    The problem is landlordism.

    https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/19/end-of-landlords-surprisingly-simple-solution-to-uk-housing-crisis?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

    “Where Adam Smith and Karl Marx found common ground was in the idea that everyone’s interests are aligned against landlords: they are an economic deadweight. Even if we leave aside the appalling conditions and precarity that private renters face, anyone with an interest in lower taxes, lower wage bills and increasing the number of first-time buyers must equally be interested in smashing the private rented sector to bits. Homebuyers are now forced to compete with landlords, who chase sensational yields in our unregulated rental market, and £85.6bn a year(which comes, of course, from wages and taxes) is wasted on rent. A renewed collapse of landlordism would represent not just the tenants’ revenge for the housing crisis, but a much broader and more valuable moment of social progress.”

    • Michael P 5.1
      20 March 2024 at 7:20 pm

      Yep. Sounds radical and 'not in a million years' but something like that or actually much more drastic literally has to happen in the next few decades or maybe the next century.

      I would to start with:

      Make it illegal for anyone / anything / any other entity than an actual real individual human being to be the registered owner of a residential property. The only reason a company /corporation has for owning a residential property is to make money from, whether in some sort of tax avoidance or capital gains. Residential properties (houses) should be for NZ citizens and permanent residents to live in, not for people / organizations to be making massive amounts of money on.

      Make it illegal for any non NZ citizen or permanent resident and illegal for any overseas businesses, etc to buy / own residential property in NZ. Again, houses are for living in. If a foreigner wants to come and live here then by all means, get NZ citizenship and welcome. Again, the only reason a foreign person / entity would have for owning a residential property in NZ is to make money from, which is non productive money, which goes off shore anyway. If foreign people and organizations really genuinely want to invest here rather than stealing wealth then we should be encouraging making it easy for them to invest in businesses which create jobs for NZ people.

      Make a law that only allows an individual to own a maximum of 2 houses. That would allow one to live in and maybe a holiday home for the more wealthy. There's no need or reason for anyone to own more than 2 houses unless they are using them to male money from.

      Encourage investment away from property (yes even if that means crashing the housing market. Sorry but someone, somewhere has to take the hit and as with most things it's far better to get it over with asap) and into productive investments such as businesses (jobs).

      I shouldn't have associated property and investment there. Buying residential property is not productive investment. It doesn't create jobs (except maybe parasitic real estate agents) and it doesn't bring money into the real economy of goods and services. The money just stays within a small group (and getting smaller all the time as is obvious by home ownership rates being in constant decline for 4 decades) going round in circles making money from money but none of it ever comes back into the real economy.

      I know obviously there would be all sorts of exemptions to start with (such as for landlords being allowed to own more than one 2 houses)

      Anyway just some radical (many would say economically catastrophic – I disagree) ideas that obviously won't happen any time soon. But the tipping point for all this is coming and it's not that far away. Wealth is being concentrated into a smaller and smaller percentage of people at the top and this is going to continue because that's what the outcome of our current economic system delivers. So at some stage the peasants (us) will say "whoah… stop, this is not good and time to stop.. Will it be when the top 30% own 70% of all the wealth? When the top 10% own 90%? This is exactly what is happening, the middle class is being eroded and most are still distracted enough not to quite notice it yet but they will at some stage that is 100% definite. The obvious end point is when one person owns everything and that is the path we are on. Of course there will either be revolution or martial law before that.

  6. bwaghorn 6
    21 March 2024 at 6:28 am

    Encourage investment away from property (yes even if that means crashing the housing market.

    Remove rental subsidizes, they are the a direct cause of the housing ponzi scheme, make landlords eat the loss,