Posts by Sacha
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Up Front: Absence in the Arcades, in reply to Lilith __,
One of my most treasured movie-going memories is of when the Film Society was in the Clock Tower of the Arts Centre. Climbing the twisty stairs to the top and sitting on our tiny rickety seats.
Same. Magic.
And intermission. -
Speaker: Doing the right thing on retirement, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
You could see the lightbulb go off in Key’s head when he said that
You'll probably find the lightbulb was in Joyce's head many days earlier. Hence the annoyance from Gordon Campbell and others about the lack of any effective response.
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Up Front: Absence in the Arcades, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
Ta. Haven't been yet myself.
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Up Front: Absence in the Arcades, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
What did you make of Matakana?
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OnPoint: Fiscal Responsibility is the…, in reply to Ross Mason,
Screw the supermarkets. Grow your own
Imagine putting a large enough amount of public funding into programmes to help people and communities grow their own veges - already being done by some Councils, NGOs and schools. No ticket-clipping by large food retailers like the tax option; good news for garden centres and implement suppliers, though bulk purchasing should be efficient.
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Unrelated, overview of NZ blogosphere includes Russell and Robyn (also contains Farrar and Slater, but without any unmoderated nastiness).
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OnPoint: Fiscal Responsibility is the…, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
justice :)
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OnPoint: Fiscal Responsibility is the…, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Their future capital needs will have to be met somehow, yes.
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OnPoint: Fiscal Responsibility is the…, in reply to Sacha,
Gordon Campbell says even business leaders ought to be alarmed by some of the shonky economics on display.
After all, it can make no economic sense to sell down the state’s stake in energy assets that stand to earn high dividends in perpetuity – and as the Greens argue, could provide a launching pad for the export of high added value green technology – in order to generate a short term windfall, and then pour that money into schools and hospitals that will generate no economic gain at all.
A few robber barons may want to take the asset sales money and run. But the more thoughtful members of the business community will see this asset sales policy as unsustainable. Investing in irrigation – as proposed around Budget time – doesn’t pass the sniff test, either. (As Rod Oram has pointed out, the returns from irrigation have been assessed in Cabinet papers as delivering a meagre 6.4% return.)
For a sector already nervous at the government’s apparent lack of an economic plan for growth, the energy asset sell-down must be of concern. Both in itself, and for the uses to which it has been earmarked. Rather than use this one time only windfall to pay down debt – as any prudent manager would do, especially when government debt is rising in a risk averse world – the government is planning to pour it into daily running costs.
It doesn’t take a financial genius to work out that the spending on schools and hospitals could be paid for more cheaply (in the short term) by borrowing, and in the longer term by the dividends from the fully retained assets.
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Hard News: We interrupt this broadcast ..., in reply to Paul Williams,
my sources tell me that the Green/Labour relationship often worked well
What period were they talking? The ideological composition of the Greens has certainly changed this year - but that hasn't stopped any of the snideness from some Labour MPs.