Wee gripes: get it right

Written By: - Date published: 10:23 am, December 4th, 2009 - 7 comments
Categories: Media - Tags:

Some dude sent me this from the awful Trans-Tasman: “More than five months after Richard Worth resigned as a minister and quit Parliament amid a sex scandal, police have closed their file and decided he won’t face any charges. A complaint laid by a Korean businesswoman and revelations of an incident involving a woman member of the Labour Party ended Worth’s political career”

  • Nup. Worth resigned/was sacked before the allegations came out. Key denied the scandals are the reason Worth went. Basic stuff.

Then, Small yesterday in an otherwise good piece: “Morgan’s “big kahuna” set the shark among the reef fish at the tax working group seminar on Tuesday. He proposed a 1.25 per cent capital gains tax, a flat tax of 25 per cent and a $10,000 minimum adult wage.”

  • Nup. Capital tax. Not capital gains tax. Big difference. Also, it’s a guaranteed minimum income. Not a minimum wage. Big difference.

Reminded me of Colin Espiner the other week: “the country could be sitting on $60 billion of untapped black gold… could be worth about $30b a year in export receipts…. there could be as many as 6.5b barrels of undiscovered oil. At current market value, that is worth about $67b.”

  • Think about it. If there’s only $60 billion worth how are you pulling out $30 billion worth a year? How much does a barrel of oil go for? $10? Nup. More like $100 NZ. 6.5 billion barrels = $650 billion.

I’m not having a go. Just pieces go from good information to confusing nonsense when these simple things are screwed up.

7 comments on “Wee gripes: get it right ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. gobsmacked 1
    4 December 2009 at 10:31 am

    Oh, Z, don’t get me started. But you have … 😉

    Basic factual errors in political coverage, no. 837: the Greens supported the last Labour government on confidence and supply. People like Barry Soper trot this one out all the time.

    Fact: They didn’t.

    I got Google, can I be a Political Editor, please?

  2. RascallyRabbit 2
    4 December 2009 at 11:07 am

    Another one that has been bugging me all week is when the media refer to Barrack Obama asking for increased troops in Afghanistan from his NATO partners then referring to NZ in the rest of the article as though we are a member of NATO

    NATO = North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

    Surely any 8 year old would know that New Zealand isn’t in the North Atlantic??!

    Just another wee Friday morning gripe….

    • Draco T Bastard 2.1
      4 December 2009 at 12:32 pm

      And anybody who’s been watching the news knows that NATO now extends to Turkey and a few other countries that aren’t in the North Atlantic. This isn’t to say that NZ is in NATO but that it’s no longer confined to that geographic region.

  3. TightyRighty 3
    4 December 2009 at 12:16 pm

    Hard not to laugh out loud at Vernons mistake. especially as Gareth spelled out what he thought quite clearly.

    Anti-spam: responsibility

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