Posts by Rich of Observationz
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Why *do* we have elected DHBs? We don't elect a railway board, a police board, a library board, a school board (though they do in the USA, and did years ago in London). Why is healthcare different?
It would make much more sense if DHBs had tax raising powers of their own. As it is, it just looks like a method for central government to shift the blame for underfunding healthcare.
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In 1880s New York, a fraudster had a lead ingot cast and gold plated, with a slug of real gold in the base. He set up a fake assay office where the mug could be taken and given a clean report on the gold. If neccesary, he would scoop a piece of the gold slightly out and allow the mug to get it tested by a real assayer.
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Surely Ms Roy is a blonde force, rather than a dark one?
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I prefer voting for ideas than personalities. So I'd be happier with a mini-parliament system where we voted for a party group and the mayor was the leader who could command a majority of members, rather than the present beauty contest.
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If you lend someone money to buy a property they can't afford and rely on inflation to fix it, then you're headed into trouble however simple the process. Look at Hubbard.
Those people didn't earn enough to afford the houses they bought at the prices they were sold for. The financial fix for this didn't work - what's actually needed is a system that lets ordinary people have a decent house with secure tenure.
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I don't buy that. The concepts are not that hard (obviously they're quite impossible to a politician or journo who scraped through school cert maths only by the efforts of their top decile educators).
Basically the problem was that the structure was robust against default by individual creditors at the anticipated rate. It wasn't robust against a sustained fall in property prices causing a large proportion of the creditors to default. Nor indeed was the much simpler NZ model of "mates looking after mates".
The fix is to deal with property price inflation. But that isn't going to happen when the aspirations of key middle class voters is tied up with their getting free money from sitting in a house.
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...how the National Party actually works, or how it doesn't actually directly get involved in local body campaigns...
Except to try and design an electoral system that will guarantee their favoured candidate success, or if that seems too slow, just sack the council, cancel elections and appoint commissioners.
Campaigning is so last century.
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There seem to be 3 not-batshit-insane candidates who arent Kerry to choose from here in Wellington.
Jack Yan believes that free wifi will somehow enable Wellington's economy to achieve 15% growth over an undefined, but presumably short timeframe. Said free wifi is now being funded by Trademe, so we'll see its transforming powers if he wins or not. The former is unlikely, as his campaign has been targetted at the few hundred geeks of whom he is the Obama-like hope. Predict a 4th place.
Celia Wade-Brown has racked off many of her core constituency by backing Kerry's destruction of Manners Mall. This militant desire to compromise presaged the national Green parties vote on the Earthquake Enabling Act. Interestingly, she doesn't describe herself as a "Green" in the election material, but has been a Green councillor for
several years. Could have won, but will come 2nd.Bryan Pepperell is mildly nutty, but is at least in favour of keeping spending under control and reducing contracting out of services. He'll get my vote, but will probably come 3rd.
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I can recommended flaming sambucas to those wanting to smoke alcohol.
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I'm unconvinced that some in the media weren't aware of Garrett's offense. He would have made several court appearances.
They could have challenged the suppression order (as has happened in various cases with notable non-political defendants). I've seen no sign of this.