Wee gripes: get it right

• Zetetic
• 14 years ago
• Categories: Media

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.