Open mike 23/03/2010

18 comments on “Open mike 23/03/2010 ”

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1. freedom 1

   23 March 2010 at 8:17 am

   As the new rules for Beneficiaries are released today, i would like to mention one important reason that many are on the benefits in the first place.

   There are bugger all jobs out there, and more are being lost every day. Off-shore placement of services, manufacturing and the downscaling of staff levels driven by general profit oriented greed all produce unemployment. That is all fine as we have a profit oriented system, but do not lambast the unemployed for not being able to find work that simply isn’t there

   and yes there are some who abuse the system, look at banking, construction, and numerous other sectors, because abuse of the system happens there too. and costs the country much more than the beneficary bludgers that will be hammered today. i would even say that perhaps 15% of beneficaries might have a less than perfect motivation to find work, but remember it is no picnic on a benefit and new rules generally mean new expenses for those on a benefit, namely travel to get to meetings etc.

   There is no cure to the rising benefit dollar other than responsible business practises and more jobs
   • Jum 1.1

     23 March 2010 at 1:27 pm

     When will the gummint finally get the message that when you tell people how useless they are, they generally start believing it. I’d be interested to know what work Bennett is putting in to ‘best foot forward’ these people. There is or was an organization that prepared women (and men) to dress businesslike and confidently when going for interviews. Does that still occur and was it linked to WINZ?

     I came close to being on some sort of benefit once. It wasn’t a nice feeling even tho’ it didn’t happen. Think of when it does…

     Bennett knows better than the rest of us about that. I’ll be watching her carefully to remind her of support given to her when she needed it. I’ll hold her to her statement about proactive job seekers being safe from government officiousness.
     • Stacktwo 1.1.1

       23 March 2010 at 3:05 pm

       Quite right, Jum. “When you tell people how useless they are, they generally start believing it.”

       It is precisely the same problem which will beset our disadvantaged children in the gummint’s new era of National Standards. Tell their parents (and tell them) as early as possible just how dimly their lights are burning, and the stigma will last them a lifetime.
2. freedom 2

   23 March 2010 at 9:07 am

   http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/3490763/Council-fails-in-fight-over-liability-for-leaky-homes

   wow it took a court case to decide a building inspectors job is to inspect buildings

   captcha: properties
   • Armchair Critic 2.1

     23 March 2010 at 10:58 pm

     Funny thing is that the building inspectors must work within legislative and regulatory requirements. So when a government comes along that is sufficiently stupid to do some real dumb stuff like:
     1. allowing the use of untreated timber,
     2. suddenly changing to performance based standards,
     3. destroying the apprenticeship system,
     4. allowing monolithic cladding
     the councils have no choice but to follow the rules, even if they can see the looming disaster – as many did. Needless to say they are a bit miffed at having to accept liability for the problems and lump the costs on their ratepayers.
     Peter Cresswell had a good summary of the technical background on his blog.
3. prism 3

   23 March 2010 at 9:30 am

   Incredible argument that investors have full responsibility for the proper building standards of buildings they own. Surely all through the building construction and before, there are payments made to councils as part of the control and surveillance of the project. Investors can’t set themselves apart from the controls that all builders face, so they must be under council control.

   That means that there is responsibility on council. That’s where the buck stops for maintaining building standards.
4. Lanthanide 4

   23 March 2010 at 9:52 am

   I got a couple of 500 errors yesterday, around 4:10pm and again about 11:30pm I think.
   • lprent 4.1

     23 March 2010 at 11:15 am

     Yep.. The ones at 11:30 were me putting in updates. There had been an earlier set of errors at 10pm.

     I have no idea what is going on. But both the Apache and MySQL updates have fixes for deadlocks which is what I appear to be getting.
5. kaplan 5

   23 March 2010 at 10:04 am

   It’s amazing how quiet the sewer based echo chamber goes when NACT inc.’s wheels get a bit rickety.
   Not even a general debate thread up yet today
   • Pascal's bookie 5.1

     23 March 2010 at 10:21 am

     DPF may be occupied with curia related flag pole reaction testing related activities
6. gingercrush 6

   23 March 2010 at 10:35 am

   Oh the thought that Cullen will get Chairman of NZ Post. How absolutely awful. Not really but the reaction of Kiwiblog comments is hilarious. Irrational but then so is much of the right over the whole Clark era of government. What will be interesting to note in the years ahead is watching the left react in the same way to the right. It largely already exists with the irrational dislike of this government. No doubt the time when Labour regains the government benches there will still be hatred of this National government. And when John Key or other members of this government are appointed by the Fifth Labour government on boards etc. There is no doubt the same irrationality many on the right exhibit will be seen by the left as well.
   • felix 6.1

     23 March 2010 at 10:40 am

     Probably just takes a bit of time. Bolger’s appointments have been well received on the left and he was loathed by many while in office.

     He’ll have to go of course.
   • felix 6.2

     23 March 2010 at 10:50 am

     Oh god gc I just scanned that thread. Hilarious indeed!

     Farrar is such a baby.
   • lprent 6.3

     23 March 2010 at 11:08 am

     We won’t know until it happens. There was some discussion about things such things happening in the early 2000’s. But there weren’t any sustained political blogs (I think that KB only started in 2002/3)
7. prism 7

   23 March 2010 at 1:21 pm

   Great news for USA health care and thanks to Barak Obama for a great leap forward for most people probably as improvements to their systems will have wide advantages. The country can hold up its head proudly as a place that has universal services, well almost. Bet there are exceptions here and there but the in business we trust nuts, the anti-abortionist nuts, the reds-under-the-beds nuts, the freedom from government nuts, the backwoods gun nuts, the rigid religious and I’m agin everything nuts and other toxic blooms haven’t won out.
8. Jum 8

   23 March 2010 at 1:36 pm

   The Standard is so good at comparing apples with apples and rooting out the bad apples.

   Is anyone interested in putting same shape faces of Hide, Banks, Joyce (not sure about his face being a match), in an American-type mountain top rock formation, alongside Mussolini, Napoleon and Hitler.

   Anyone with an interest in face reading would have already spotted this, not to mention the character propensities that accompany it.
9. Lanthanide 9

   23 March 2010 at 3:28 pm

   English signals crackdown on tax loopholes: http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/personal-finance/3495511/English-signals-tax-crackdown

   I’ve mentioned in many comments, mainly in reply to Marty G’s posts about the “tax money-go-round” that the government is looking at doing more than simply changing GST, adjusting personal rates and stopping depreciation on investment properties.

   These sorts of tax clawbacks could go quite a ways towards evening the whole thing out.
10. mickysavage 10

    23 March 2010 at 3:29 pm

    Brownlee and the Nats have just dropped the ball in Parliament again. Joyce light heartedly tabled his academic records. Mallard moved a motion of congratulation and the nats did not object. This then let Labour debate the motion taking up Government time! Obviously Brownlee did not think of this.

    Mallard and Dazza have spoken. The tories by the looks on their faces are ropeable.

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