Hard News: The back of a bloody envelope
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Minister for Motorways
We don't have a Transport Minister, we only have a Vogon. Prostetnic Vogon Joyce.
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then either the honourable members are really very stupid
I wouldn't underestimate that possibility. If nothing else, this cabinet really does come across more and more as a barely competent bunch.
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I'm also quite taken (but not in a good way) by the Minister for I Used To Be A Beneficiary But Now I'm Not And You Losers Can All Just GET FUCKED.
Apologies BTW for all the swearing today. I'm just a bit cross about everything...
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We don't have a Transport Minister, we only have a Vogon. Prostetnic Vogon Joyce.
Geez, I hope we don't have to listen to his poetry.
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I'm also quite taken (but not in a good way) by the Minister for I Used To Be A Beneficiary But Now I'm Not And You Losers Can All Just GET FUCKED.
Hey, don't piss around -- just go the Brian Edwards route and call the fat Westie skank a class traitor. You're not the only one who is going to end the day in a bad mood.
Wasn't that Chris Carter's mum you were thinking of? :)
Why should I bother coming up with a foetid web-based conspiracy theory of my own? Same old bullshit in a brand new box does the job just as well.
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from everything I've read about the back-of-the-envelope finger-in-the-wind calculations, they bear no resemblance to reality.
Don't panic, the politicans will just end up as directors of finance companies. Nothing to worry about at all. :-(
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VOGON CAPTAIN: There's no point in acting all surprised
about it! All the planning charts and demolition orders
have been on display at your local planning department in
Alpha Centuri for fifty of your Earth years, so you've had
plenty of time to launch any formal complaints, but it's
far to late to start making a fuss about it now! -
Naa Craig, that's not my style - I may be being rude about what she's doing, but it's not nice to have a go at someone based on their appearance or where they're from. And "class traitor" is so old-school Socialist Worker's Party - not my thing at all.
I just find it sad that she - who knows exactly what it's like to get trapped into the cycle of joblessness - and I take nothing away from her achievement in getting out of it - good on her - she appears to take such delight in putting the screws on those still in the place that she used to be.
I'm not wanting to thread-jack and I'm sure there'll be opportunity to discuss this at some point on a more appropriate thread - but where does she think all these jobs are going to magically appear from when we're still in a recession and we've got the highest unemployment figures in years?
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I'm not wanting to thread-jack and I'm sure there'll be opportunity to discuss this at some point on a more appropriate thread - but where does she think all these jobs are going to magically appear from when we're still in a recession and we've got the highest unemployment figures in years?
Not only that, but they are failing to put in place all the incentives and the measures that a conservative government with a shred of competence and conscience would feel duty bound to provide. Deborah has put this rather well I think.
"The dream is over". What an utterly horrid, contemptible person the Minister is. Of all the things that the Government has done in the last six weeks or so, this is the one that stymies me the most.
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3410,
Deborah has put this rather well I think.
Seconded.
"The dream is over". What an utterly horrid, contemptible person the Minister is.
"Kick in the pants" is not much better.
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back-of-the-envelope finger-in-the-wind calculations bear no resemblance to reality
Damn good work at Te Standard.
$18 billion: the estimated value of the minerals in the areas of Schedule 4 land the government wants to open up. That’s three years of current mining production, hardly enough to make a significant impact on the economy when extracted over several decades.
$6.8 billion: revenue of the mining industry (including oil and gas) in 2008. It paid just $500 million in wages and salaries and only $70 million in royalties. Even if it doubled in size, mining would be an insignificant contributor to government revenue and the country’s wages. Mining companies made a $2 billion pre-tax profit in 2008, most of the big miners are foreign-owned and exported their profits.*
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5: years before any mine would start producing. By that time Treasury expects the budget deficit will be all but gone, so the argument that we need mining to pay for public services is wrong. And it’s doubly wrong when you consider the small income the government would get from this mining.less than 2%: Mining’s contribution to GDP. Even if the mining industry were somehow doubled (and it couldn’t get near that on current plans) it would be an insignificant increase to GDP and government revenue. Remember, this is the Government’s one big economic idea.
Less than 1%: The royalty the government gets for letting foreign companies dig up and take away our minerals on our land.
Zero: the likelihood of mining on Great Barrier. It’s classic bait and switch. Aucklanders get all upset about Great Barrier. The government ‘listens’ and decides to let foreign companies dig up more of our wealth for themselves in places like Stewart Island and Kahurangi instead.
Priceless
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Welfare changes fail evidence test says Regulatory Impact Statement.
"There is no research currently available which accurately quantifies the size of the behavioural response from these changes in policies. This prevents estimates, with the degree of accuracy required, from being made of the number of people who will move from benefit to work over a year, as a result of the proposed changes. The inability to determine firm numbers of people shifting from benefit to work as a result of these changes is due to the difficulty of separating out the effect of the policy changes from the effect of changes in other influences such as economic and labour market settings (e.g. employment growth, minimum wage increases)."
Oh, and fails rights test too.
Work testing sole parents on the domestic purposes benefit (DPB) is an unjustifiable breach of human rights, Attorney-General Chris Finlayson advised Parliament today.
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I think they've succeeded in restoring NZ to the state it was in when I landed in Auckland in 1997.
Congratulations, fuckers.
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Within a year he had defected from National. A fool and a puppet he may have been, but I think at some level he was genuinely dismayed by what his party turned out to be really planning to do.
I think that may be a bit rosy.
Peters is an old-fashioned Muldoonist, and after 1984, such ideas were on the way out in National.
He was sacked from the cabinet by Bolger after a year, and another year later dropped as the candidate for Tauranga. He didn't actually leave the Nats for another few months, after failing in a legal battle to get readopted.
So it's more that he was sacked then left National voluntarily, and the timeline was somewhat more extended than you remember.
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I think they've succeeded in restoring NZ to the state it was in when I landed in Auckland in 1997.
Re-privatising of the rail network commencing in 3...2...1...
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Don't think anyone's dropped this one here yet (maybe laughing too hard). Fran O'Sullivan sees NZ as "the oil sheikhs of the Pacific" if we play our cards right, swallows the industry kool-aid and slags Kiwis for opposing conservation mining.
Redeems herself a bit by suggesting a sovereign fund like Norway (and I had the pleasure of meeting some of their parliamentarians carefully researching how to use it to offset the impact of ageing on future income support).
Economic Development Minister Gerry Brownlee has mentioned the parlous state of the NZ economy which will face fiscal deficits for another six years.
Brownlee has suggested extra income from mining in particular will help the Government meet its revenue objectives.
But he would be better advised to focus on the potential to accumulate investment funds from future petro dollars and minerals royalties.
If the MED projections are correct, the Government could make $10 billion a year from petroleum alone to tuck into a fund which could produce investment income for this country.
By comparison it has taken the NZ Super Fund nearly seven years to accumulate $15.9 billion.
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when I landed in Auckland in 1997
i knew there must have been some unrevealed explanation for why i left in 1997...now i know the truth!
my homeopathic remedies unconsciously told me to flee...tiso was on his way. -
"Wha'? Has Crosby Textor out used it's use by date? But those consultancy fees worked before.But we still have our contract. They said mining works for Australia. We wanna be just like Australia.Hey we gave them their flag to fly."
Ok, yes, one may be sceptical, but I am plain anti.
Dream is over, kick you in the pants, crawl out of that hole that will exist if National reigns, whilst Key smiles all the way.
Just as Gerry proved yesterday in the house ,it's all fun until somebody looses an eye. What a bunch.Seriously if you want to defend any of this Craig (which you are pretty good at) you go ahead with your boots on because it is just horrible for everyone and country. But you knew that. -
my homeopathic remedies unconsciously told me to flee...tiso was on his way.
Crikey. Am I that toxic?
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Nah, homeopathic remedies are wonderfully uniquely totally batshit reliable at not producing any effect (aside from the placebo) at all
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So I was talking my Dad just now, retired organic chemist and occasional mining stock investor. And he points out to me that typical yield for rare earth ore is on the order of 0.04% by weight. Meanwhile, you need a buttload of sulphuric acid to dissolve the good stuff out of the rock. So you end up with great lakes of wastewater and huge piles of spoil.
Another other angle is that while the most expensive rare earths are $hundreds per kg right now, that's just right now -- a historic peak, and other rare earths are much cheaper. And even at $100s per kg, that means to get, say, a million dollars worth of rare earth mineral means somehow disposing of 10s of thousands of tons of contaminated spoil.
The best bet from a cosmetic POV is actually coal. You don't get heaps of spoil from coal and if it's not washed it's not very polluting of the immediate environment (until you burn it) either.
Dad's just marshalling all the data now for a letter to the editor, because he's old school in that respect, but I've asked for a copy for blogging purposes. His info is based on mining company investor statements (eg Lynas and Arafura in Australia) so it'll be rosy if anything.
A last thought: most mining companies burn through investor money and then fail without ever paying tax or royalties -- they just leave a smallish mess from their pilot plants. The ones that do survive are worth punting on precisely because they have paid so much up front that they have years of tax credits piled up. You can bet that foreign owned ones will be structured so that they pay minimal tax here -- that's how the Aussie-owned ones do it.
I am strongly leaning towards the idea, based on other posters' observations of increased prospecting licenses in a few select areas just before the election, that some big National donor has their eye on a particular place in the South Island. Key will graciously accede to public demand never to mine Great Barrier or the Coromandel, we'll all admire how sensible he is, and a crucial place for some political investor will be the "token" mining allowed.
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Sofie, webweaver,self right in your corner: it's just none of this is a surprise? It's NATS and this is the kind of thing they have reliably done throughout my voting life (over 40 years.)
BenWilson, the Nat beast just doesnt really change, even though you think/hope so.
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Not wrong Stephen Judd, but make that places in the South: think especially about Fiordland*/Rakiura...
*There is already a campaign to ressurect the Fiordland road-
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when I landed in Auckland in 1997
i knew there must have been some unrevealed explanation for why i left in 1997...now i know the truth!
my homeopathic remedies unconsciously told me to flee...tiso was on his way.SNAP! Left in 1997, came back in 2000, left again in 2008.
But I would love to be able to find a way home again.
Also, many thanks, Gio, for your kind words about my post.
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I think they've succeeded in restoring NZ to the state it was in when I landed in Auckland in 1997.
Blimey, he's right. That's why everything seems so familiar yet so strange. I arrived in '98 and now we are back where I started. Can I demand a refund?
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