Posts by Moz
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The female president thing to me is not about the gender, it's about the particular female that was available. I'm not sure I'd prefer Mccain over Clinton, but it would be close. Sure, Hilary is smarter than Sarah Palin and has more experience, but she just comes across as someone to whom no compromise is too much if it means getting power. Reminds me too much of third world dictatorships (and the Bush administration). On that note, she does seem kind of "Bush Lite" - same approach but not quite so bad.
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Emma, that was exactly my reaction.
I wonder if they mean "protect from contraception", since they occasionally seem to want to protect the rest of us from that too. But I think the meta-meaning is that they're against logic and plain language.
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Actually it's "proportionate to your number of non-cabinet MPs", so the governing parties would have fewer chances. It also makes small parties ministerships slightly more costly but on balance I think it's a good idea. I'm thinking of Jim Anderton here, who has presumably not had the opportunity to put a bill in that ballot for some time now (is he still around?)
Just to reinforce I/S's point - National being bad at something is not sufficient grounds to change the law. Just because The Greens have got more bills passed in the last nine years than National have does not mean we need to have a law to let National pass more legislation.
So: reform the law to give everyone more chances, sure, but don't explicitly favour the biggest loser, I mean "the largest opposition party".
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Working hours: I'm looking for a new job right now and so I've been tiki touring workplaces. The best (worst?) interview was with a guy who said straightfaced "I have managed large teams of software professionals in successful projects so I know you will be happy to work a minimum 45 hour week". I gave him the "I have 4-5 productive hours a day available" line and expected the interview to be over right then. But his currently sole developer was very keen to have me... he's finally persuaded the boss that there's too much work for one person to do it all, hence the interview. They decided to hire someone less experienced :)
I'm serious about the 4-5 hours of productive/creative work. Sure, I can fill in an hour or two of admin and housework, but more than that and I often end up doing negative work - it takes more time to fix it up afterwards than it would take to do properly in the first place.
I think longer holidays would be an excellent thing. I'd like to be able to have a few days off here and there during the year as well as a solid month break over summer. I intend to keep trying for it, but no luck so far (why people who are offering a 10% pay rise won't give me an extra two weeks holiday instead I do not know). FWIW, I took a months unpaid leave last year... annual pay was still higher than the deal I was offering them.
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wondered if one could set up your own advisory firm and secure the discounts for yourselves and friends on perfectly straight-forward investments.
In Oz this is common - many financial advisors will rebate any kickback they get for investments. The guy I use is reasonably priced, charges by the hour for the work he does, and pays me back the full "commission" he gets on anything I invest in.
Danyl: for some of us $5000 is only a couple of months savings. But you're right in that I find it hard not to spend money once I get a few months savings accumulated. For me, I'm "living poor" because I'm happier that way so I direct debit a big whack into a fund every month. They're a low-fee, no-commission fund so it doesn't cost much to deposit. Also, many funds have a "low income earner" discount of some sort so it's worth asking. My partner was getting free deposits while she was student from one fund (instead of a fee of up to 4%).
I also use a high interest saver account as my "daily" account because I'd rather pay $5 for my 2-3 monthly withdrawals and use cash for everything and get their high interest when the alternative is token interest and "free" services that I don't use. For the same reason I use my credit card quite a lot, since that cost is built into the prices I pay everywhere (ditto the loyalty scheme) and if I don't I'm subsidising people who do. Sucks, but that's the way it works. I still get good value out of "my" flybys card that I swap with people I meet whenever I can. Just to screw with the data it collects.
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What a pity we ended up with MMP and not STV here in NZ. I mean, really, if you want to be truly democratic
Unfortunately in practice STV turns out to be anything but democratic - it is just a polite way to enforce the two party system. It's rare for a third party to get elected under STV, and Australia's history seems to be the slow decline of third parties.
Where you do get third parties is the upper house. But if you look at the Australian Senates you find that they're mostly proportional (combined with STV) and often not under the control of the two major parties. The combo is interesting - if you have 5 senate seats to be elected, that's a 20% quota per seat. Typically the two major parties will get one each, so a 30%/30%/others distribution becomes 10%/10%/other, and the STV part kicks in. Which can lead to ugly scenes as tiny parties dump votes on other tiny parties until eventually someone with 1% of the primary vote reaches a quota and we get a Family First member in the Victorian Senate (FF are part of the religious wrong here).
Where I live we have a strong Greens vote and a left-wing Labour member, but even with a relatively affluent, educated electorate it's very hard to get people to vote Greens ahead of Labour or Liberal, and a lot of voters say "yeah, I support you so I gave you my number two". Which is completely backwards, but it takes a fair bit of explaining to get that across. Hence many minor parties try to explain how voting works on the back of their how to vote cards and in their mail-outs.
It still annoys me that campaigning is allowed on the day and largely unpoliced. Plus the major parties are full of people who will happily lie if they think it will get them an advantage - I spent time at two booths and both times Labour were using the line "The Greens are only standing in the Senate, vote for the Labour MP". They facilitate that by not putting party affiliation on their how to vote cards. Which makes it that much harder to get third party candidates up. It also cuts them out of electoral funding because that's based on primary vote.
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Maybe if the Labour party actually had a legislative agenda people wouldn't be spending so much time on a private members bill. But as things stand this is a most excellent diversion from the complete lack of anything to do in parliament. {looks nonchalant and whistles}
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Jolisa, I'm sure that Tze Ming and you would totally make the calendar worthwhile. Without you two it would be unbalanced, surely?
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"This flag is ours, do you see anything that says Asian on it?"
Did no-one think to yell back "except the "made in china" label".
Almost guarantee that it had one :)
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I've been on the dole in both Oz and NZ, but never long enough to get into the training/work for the dole side of things. But I've spent a bit of time with government-employed activists and the bureaucrazy seems to have two main aims: keep the unemployed off the streets, and make it sufficiently irritating to stay on the dole that anyone who can, gets a job.
The WFD stuff seems largely to work, in that it keeps people too busy to find a job without giving them any useful skills. As an employer the WFD people mostly suck, it usually becomes obvious quite quickly why they're long-term unemployed, but if you tell the dole office that the person will lose their benefit for months (6?), so few employers will do that if they can avoid it. Or more accurately, the ones who would generally don't bother with WFD - there's no money in it, the low wages are compensated for by the high supervision and admin costs. There are other subsidies for taking on unemployed people, not sure of the details though.
Depending on your situation and skills some of the WFD stuff can work out really well - there's a bit of PEP-style environmental work available, and some theatre-type course etc. But for the most part the charities that administer this stuff seem to focus on getting you doing low-value makework just to keep you out of the way. Unfortunately it's not optional, and it is usually a pain to do.
But in Oz they have moved past "if you can" to "anyone at all gets a job or loses their benefit". The penalties for minor stuff-ups are now at the insane level, such that even if the bureaucrazy don't stuff up and get you penalised, any change in circumstances on your part will likely cost you the benefit. Unexpected income can screw you for months as different bits of the bureacrazy argue about the appropriate level of penalty to apply, and accuse you of fraud if what you paid is less than what they think you should have. Especially if that is what some other part said. Changing addresses is likely to lead to all sorts of hell, as "you must do this within one week (including postal delays) or lose your benefit" letters go to random locations with extended delays for Aus Post redirection if you're silly enough to get that applied. There is no acceptable excuse, BTW, not getting the letter does not mean you don't get penalised. At best, the penalty will be retroactively waived... so to be on the dole you need to keep a few hundred in the bank to deal with the payment delays and hiccups (this is a feature, not a bug).