Posts by Kyle Matthews
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And seriously, would you say "yes" to a complete stranger on the phone who asked you the question "Do you want a tax cut if it meant cuts in Health and Education"?
I'm one of the few people who would say 'no' to the straight question 'do you want a tax cut?' But I do think the point that 'tax cut' has positive implications, and 'cuts in health and education' have negative implications is important.
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Well Kyle, Labour has announced its tax policy. There is no reason now why it can't be trumped...is there?
Yes but they probably figure it'll have more impact as part of the election campaign, rather than a budget response. It's their biggest election policy, as big as the others all put together. You want that close to when people vote and you want maximum impact, and that'll be August - September.
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"...Well it's only unacceptable if it doesn't work for them..."
I would say that as of about 7pm last night it stopped working for Key.
"As slippery as a snake in wet grass" might yet come to be seen as an important marker in a sea change in attitude to National.
While the media, and people on here keep saying that, National keeps building a stronger lead in the polls. It's not shown any sign of being a sea change over the past year or so of non-policy.
Key and his strategists will be laughing all the way to the government unless it changes. The media might think he's slippery, they might say that loudly to the public. If people still vote for National, what does he care?
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That is completely unacceptable. The policy that they seem to happily state is the core of the election and ongoing policy platform and they won't reveal it until then? Absurd, absurd, absurd.
Well it's only unacceptable if it doesn't work for them. I suspect it'll work for them fine. Perhaps it wasn't your swing vote that they were counting on.
I suspect they've also learnt a little from last year where they released their student loan policy, and then got absolutely trumped by Labour's policy a few days later.
There'll be a dateless calendar in McCully's office. It'll have marked on it the 10 or so major policy announcements they'll make in the buildup the election, and they'll be spread out by a few days, because they figure that you get 2-4 days of good press out of a major announcement. They'll probably have their last one 1 - 2 weeks out from the election, and they'll have worked backwards from there.
Once the election date is announced, they'll drop the dates in and it'll go around their campaign teams in each electorate.
They can't plan on doing any releases 3 months in advance anyway. The campaign period for the election is a minimum of... 6 weeks? They're not going to put anything major before that, they'll be busy trying to slam Labour in the house.
Winning Elections 101.
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WFF certainly strikes me as redistribution of capital from the individual to the community; its not classic Marx since it privileges those with families over those without but its still a centrally organized redistribution of wealth. If it ain't socialism (a) what would you call it, and (b) what is?
Well it's not the redistribution of capital, it's the redistribution of money. Capital is the means of production - factories, farms etc. Marx wouldn't have supported the argument that money == capital == socialism when moved around.
Nationalising the railways (or buying them back) - you can argue that's socialism. Taking factories away from the people that own them and putting them in the hands of workers collectives - that's socialism. Benefits - and that's what WFF is, a benefit for low and middle income working families with children - isn't socialism.
Socialism is a dirty word which gets bandied around a lot to tag onto anything that (typically) right-wingers don't like, just because it's left wing.
I'd call WFF either a benefit, or income redistribution.
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Except I always think that's one of those questions that's (intentionally or not) framed to elicit precisely that response. Who is going to tell a complete stranger over the phone "kiddies and sick people can go fuck themselves, show me the money!" even if that's what they really think?
Conversely Craig, there's a pretty strong response to the question "do you want a tax cut?".
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Seriously, you do get services for the tax you pay, Andrew, and I suggest that (with five children) you're getting a massively bigger bang for your tax dollar than most other people.
Hear hear.
I don't mind people saying that they don't like Working for Families. I don't mind people saying they'd rather have a tax cut.
I mind people taking the money and then calling it a travesty. If it's so bad, don't fill in the form, don't take the money, and then come back and complain about it. You'll at least have some self-respect.
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However, lets start with getting rid of the socialist traversty called Working for Families.
Socialism: a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.
Lively debate should always start with understanding the meaning of words that you use. WFF isn't socialist at all.
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So it is for Dr Cullen. He has delivered the Budget of all mothers.
Presumably this is Cullen's last budget.
I wonder what he thinks about it privately. It's a rather unusual Labour pre-election budget. No big 'bribes' of spending to 'buy votes'. It's a rather right-wing budget in terms of 'here, have some money back, and more if you vote for us later in the year'.
I think he's been a fairly good Minister of Finance, and while I wish he'd thrown a bit more money around in a few places, I imagine he can't be overly happy that the last chapter in his book was a final attempt to undercut national's election chances, which probably isn't going to make much difference anyway.
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so you make no effort to reflect all the colours of that coat, to use your metaphor, you allow commercial radio's criteria to dictate the palette, there by failing at your role of reflecting 'nz identity'. essential practicing a form of discrimination.
You're saying you reflect NZ in your funding but really you fund only that which will fit into a narrow format.
I don't know why NZ music identity shouldn't be just as much about the music that fills the pop charts as any other country. Whatever NZ Idol and Popstars has produced, Brooke Fraser, OMC's big hit, The Feelers, OpShop (who I don't think I've even heard, but whoever they are). 'Bliss' is as much a part of our music history as any other song that Dave Dobbyn performs, no matter how much he hates being asked for it at gigs. The majority of NZers are following and buying that music, both locally made, and internationally and NZ on Air should follow that trend. Maybe some people want a NZ on Air that are music snobs and tell us that we should only listen to 'the good stuff', but I suspect then we'll be back down to commercial radio only playing 2% NZ music.
You completely failed to link your statements about this to Brendon's information about National Radio NZ and bnet etc. That's how they reflect all the colours of NZ's coat.