Posts by Rich of Observationz
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A Weekend Herald survey..
In the real world, over a 1 million people (out of that 2 million) are now signed up to Kiwisaver. 66% of those opted in when changing jobs choose to stay in, so one could see this figure climbing to 1.4mln, were it not for NACTs sabotage of the scheme.
I think basically, everything you read in the NZ Herald / Dom Post can be regarded as at best tangential to the truth unless independently confirmed.
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drop Microsoft products
I have OpenOffice at home. It's by no means equivalent to MS Office - maybe 75%, with no features that MS don't provide that I've been able to find. As soon as I can find some sort of semi-hookey MS license, I'm going back to MS.
I reckon if you started giving your average government admin person a Ubuntu/OpenOffice desktop, then you'd be in for a good 2 weeks retraining time at a cost of several grand. That doesn't seem a very good deal to me.
Or are you suggesting giving every government worker a Mac?
Or going back to pencil and paper?
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That afternoon show with the "panel" seems to suffer from a need to have two crazy wingnuts to balance one reasonable liberal (David Slack on the episode I heard). Maybe they feel they need to move to the right to secure funding under NACT.
I'd rate our media soundness on a scale of 1-10 as:
RadioActive: 10
bFM: 9 (some of Havo's nuttier ideas let it down)
Nat Radio: 5 (probably reasonable for a state owned broadcaster)
TV3: 4 (better than you might expect for a right-wing overseas multinational)
TV1: 1 (believes violence is ok when white males are the perpetrator)
Radio Live, Newstalk ZB: minus infinity -
Of course, the "streamlined" structure makes it a simple business for Auckland MegaCouncil, or even the transition authority, to sell Watercare.
And typically, when that happens, senior management get given shares and go from being a salaried employee on good money to a very wealthy part owner of the business.
I wonder who would benefit in that case?
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It was founded in 1860 by Henry Varnum Poor
The name has an apostrophe. They're just journalists, basically. I'm not sure what the legality is of giving them enhanced access to unpublished information over say, the NZ Herald, or Public Address.
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Oops, forgot to revert to my real login...
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ARC elects 13 councillors from six constituencies by plurality-at large voting, who then choose a leader.
While not very democratic, this is more so than electing a Lord Mayor through bandwagon voting.
Also, the new council is having various parts of Waikato that weren't in the ARC area appended, in an effort to boost the number of tory-voting rural dwellers in the area (even if they don't want to be in the supercity, they can still be relied on to vote the right way).
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It is normal commercial practice.
That says it all, really. Auckland is being treated as if it's a business, with the sole shareholder R. Hide, of Epsom. As opposed to a democratic body for the exercise of the people's will.
The reason there isn't STV, or Maori seats, or a mayor accountable to a decent sized council, not to mention why bits of Waikato and Northland are being annexed into Auckland are simple: it's to make sure the new council is in "business-friendly" hands. Leighton Smith is being disingenuous - there's no chance that Rodney will let a left-winger take over the city. It'll be Banks, or if that doesn't work, Paul Holmes. Or Tony Veitch.
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On watching the interview I am of the opinion that Mason is a good honest man and a good father
I think it's an indictment of NZ television that they think its ok to provide a platform for thugs and abusers like this.
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trash gets elected,
s/elected/collected/p
Freudian slip!