Posts by Sacha
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Muse: Freakanomics (TVNZ Edition), in reply to DexterX,
Act, then
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Hard News: A fiction of unalloyed darkness, in reply to chris,
you also need the 'http://' at the beinning of that youtube link before it will embed here automatically
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Hard News: The Vision Thing, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
and the policy includes "reviewing" development contributions. Doubt that means upwards somehow.
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More on reconciling local vs central govt priorities.
Councils may have to bow to central government's preference as far as some local activities go, with Prime Minister John Key today saying it was not a local body's job to fund projects the Government had decided not to.
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"In narrowing their purpose clause, it may exclude them from providing those services, or at least challenge their thinking about whether those services should be provided,'' he said.
"One has to ask the question, if central government isn't providing those services, then really should local government step in and fill the breach? Because there might be a very good reason why central government hasn't done it.''
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Hard News: The Vision Thing, in reply to nzlemming,
Let's face it - change is needed. Most councils are technically insolvent, because of the debt, just like many private companies, and their rateable population is just too small.
Councils have long sought other income streams. Governments have blocked it.
And like central government, it is a mistake to see Councils as insolvent in a snapshot when they are by law responsible for the needs of future residents as well as current ones. Debt is a way of spreading the cost of current investments over future beneficiaries of it as well.
But I guess that might 'crowd out' the wealthy from leaving a private inheritance to give their own children a leg up. Sad they don't have more confidence in their offspring.
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Hard News: The Vision Thing, in reply to nzlemming,
The key issue is the private sector aspect
As you say, privatising services and assets has to be part of the intent here. Something I haven't seen picked up yet (maybe I've missed it): the insistence on 'must not compete with private sector' sounds an awful lot like Smith's (unsuccessful) plan to hobble ACC so profit-seeking Australian insurance companies could feasibly 'compete' with it. Don't want those Councils outperforming privatised services, do we?
Key and English seem to share this fear of 'crowding out' - hardly the mark of a confident entrepreneur or leader, you'd think.
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Oh, and most 'working class' people aren't likely to have the luxury of sitting around discussing such stuff. Let alone deploying their university educations and well-paid contracting to produce such carefully-crafted posts.
We all have a position in this. 19th century intellectual and moral frameworks are no more useful sometimes than 1990s ones. Though humans have been so for a very long time. It's why the likes of Shakespeare and the Illiad still shine some light on our motivations.
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Hard News: The Vision Thing, in reply to Rob Stowell,
In case anyone hasn't read it - Gio's full musings on Shearer's speech, "Finlands of the Mind"
I hadn't, thanks. Striking passage about middle class guilt, I thought:
But self-interested faux pragmatism alone doesn't quite explain why the leadership of the party and a substantial number of its supporters go along with measures against the less privileged that are petty and vindictive.
It’s as if middle class liberals hadn’t yet forgiven the working class for Rogenormics, as if they hadn’t forgotten what they forced them do to save their own skin during the great crisis.
Unmoor them from society, cast them off like that. It must have been horrible – and I don’t mean for the actual victims of the reforms, but for the self-image of the liberals, for their consuming need to see themselves as fundamentally decent and fair-minded folks.
and summarised well in the comments section by Mr Judd:
... nice middle class people who benefited the most from reforms are cross with the poor people who suffered the most for making the middle class people feel bad. And there is an emotional truth in that.
For me it seems well in accordance with the principles of social psychology, the just world fallacy, and cognitive dissonance: if we had to hurt poor people, they must have done something to deserve it.
Now how do we heal that?
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the same blogger has declared he would make himself subject to a new media regulator along the lines proposed by the Law Commission
He was also involved in the drafting of the Commission's discussion paper. Not sure how ironic they were intending to be, but the only other blogger they consulted at that stage seems to have been the oily one's chum, Mr Farrar.
Both 'men' seem to have trouble moderating or leading the discussions they host to even slightly resemble fair or decent. One therefore wonders what particular expertise or mana they lent to the process.
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Muse: Confound The Ignorant, And Amaze Indeed!, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Sasha
oi