Posts by bmk
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Hard News: Time to Vote, in reply to Caleb D'Anvers,
Seriously, what don’t people like about Cunliffe? He’s (apparently) literate?
What I repeatedly hear from my partner, co-workers etc is that he 'looks fake', 'smarmy'. I get the feeling he says what he thinks people want to hear. He seems smug and pleased with himself. I would hear him on National Radio and think no way can i vote for this guy (and this was without even seeing him). Whereas the moment David Shearer stopped being leader he sounded so articulate - I think the party only needed to stick with him and give him more media training.
-
Hard News: Time to Vote, in reply to Caleb D'Anvers,
Greens always underperform polls. Last election they ended up with 11% and I think that's where they will end up again after specials.
In terms of Labour the problem is simply Cunliffe. I knew so many people who said they simply couldn't bring themselves to vote for him. Under Shearer, as incoherent as he could be, Labour was always above 30% and often in the mid-30s. Sadly I'd been dreading this result and while hoping it wouldn't eventuate kind of knowing it would - I just hope Labour can use it to get rid of Cunliffe or they will be confirmed to this result again in 2017.
-
"I'll get back to that ... "
Translation: I'm going to ignore the question and talk about what I want to.
-
Hard News: Friday Music: Good ideas and grumbles, in reply to Russell Brown,
Yeah I guess that's a fair point except I got the idea that it was more that they wouldn't do it again to that specific organisation but would keep doing it to other places until called out on it. Kind of similar to the practice some places employ of not paying invoices until prompted.
-
I have to post my perspective in here - I thought about not adding it. But in my experience gangsters practicing extortion are exactly what APRA are. I have to be careful with details as it relates to an organisation who wouldn't like these matters publicized.
This organisation pays for a site wide copyright licence at considerable cost. APRA then found a specific area on the site playing music and individually sent them an invoice saying otherwise there would be legal consequences - this area went and paid (understandably). Fortunately, this got discovered when the colleagues were having a work discussion about another matter. The copyright officer was then horrified to find they'd been charged twice for the same thing. They contacted APRA who said something along the lines of 'You are right, you should only be paying once as you have an entire site licence. But it's our job to maximise revenue for our artists so we invoice anywhere we can. We won't do this to you again.'
It felt like a deliberate unscrupulous ploy. Imagine another business doing a job and invoicing one person then deliberately invoicing someone else in the hopes that they would both pay. So in my limited experience APRA are indeed gangsters practising extortion,.
-
Up Front: Dropping the A-Bomb, in reply to Sacha,
There are some great ethical minefields about using the food supply to fix what we don't like.
I don't see too many people complaining about iodized salt.
-
To clarify - I could handle the higher income tax amount but when you add another 10% for Student Loan repayments - it really hurts.
-
Speaker: Why we can’t just fix secondary…, in reply to David Hood,
How about fixing the student loan repayments on secondary work
Yes. When I was studying that was the biggest problem with secondary tax - the fact that I was on a super tight income and yet they were deducting student loan repayments when I wasn't going to earn over the threshold. Sure I got a refund at the end of the year but it made work barely worth while during the year and made it so hard to get by.
-
Hard News: A Big Idea, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
What does that achieve? I asked David Parker to consider low income and beneficiary situations of which isn't compulsory, and I expect they will make sure it's affordable. They are increasing minimum wage too remember , that's another tool
Well if they raise the contribution for those voluntarily (which is still a large amount of people) it should still have a significant effect on taking money out of the economy. If you say it won't work with only people voluntarily in the scheme then I don't think it will work if everyone is in the scheme. There are already enough people in KS that if the idea is sound it will work and this will save forcing people into it who either don't want to or can't afford it.
As to your other point; they probably will make sure beneficiaries and people on low incomes are ok. But I'm sure there are plenty of people in similar situations to me, where you have a middle income but a fully committed budget. In this situation there are only two things that could work a. Leave KS as voluntary b. Build a tax-cut in at the same time that is equal to the compulsory KS contributions.
-
Hard News: A Big Idea, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Imagine what would happen if we introduced a little supply side economics into this.
The biggest problem facing most people is the cost of housing, rent or mortgage.
Now that's really inspirational. Rather than meaning people get less money in their pockets. Build cheap housing which will both employ people and lower the cost of housing. That's an idea I'd really get behind.