Posts by Kyle Matthews
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So, next time you see some farmer, ask him for your $200 back.
I might be a simple person, but it seems to me that what you've just described provides virtually no incentives for changing behaviour etc.
If it cost more to produce the goods, then farmers might change their methods, consumers will change their purchases. If the government subsidises 90% of it, we're just delaying the system having any impact upon behaviour and therefore our environment for most of a decade.
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That's around $230 dollars in subsidies from every single New Zealander.
John Key was on Sunrise this morning saying that it would cost us $3 each / week, less than the $6-7 each that the Labour scheme would cost.
Does that include the $230 above? Is the saving by just doing less, or have the transferred the money from personal cost to government cost?
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Sure it's not a feature of MMP?
I think it's a feature of the bell curve, which pre-dates MMP by some time.
Though I do wish that politicians would spend more time trying to move the curve in their direction, rather than letting it rule their lives.
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The thing is that people use the "no money in it" argument for not playing the PI sides but we play one of Tonga, Fiji or Samoa most years in a test so what difference would it make?
There's some money in having a Pacific Islands team play here - not a lot, but some.
There's no money in taking the All Blacks to the Pacific Islands. Ticket sales might cover local costs and make a small profit from the hosting association, but nothing close to the sort of money that the All Blacks earn for the NZRU by playing England at Twickenham.
I still think that the Pacific Islands deserve to host the All Blacks, given how much they've contributed to NZ rugby, but we shouldn't do it for money reasons.
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Starting Nonu is liability at the moment with the amount of kicking and the flat defensive screens that is going on.
Actually he's been our best attacking weapon all season, leading try-scorer I think.
Given how short in supply tries have been, not something you'd want to throw on the bench.
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My Father was very angry with the lightbulb ban, not because he's a climate change denier but because almost every light switch in his house is on a dimmer switch, CFLs blow up if you put them into those sockets and he was going to have to get his whole house rewired.
From my understanding of what would be banned, and what was available, he had no reason to be so upset. One company was producing a dimmer bulb wasn't it?
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What does it say about a government that thinks it needs to take such an easy choice out of the hands of ordinary New Zealanders? Do they think we are stupid?
There's a straw man argument which would only make sense if everyone had rushed out and bought power-saving lightbulbs, which they clearly haven't.
Old heat producing lightbulbs are a "freedom of choice to beat yourself about the head" argument. To completely jump threads and steal from Graeme - if we're going to deny choice, there has to be a decent reason to do it. For me "the alternative is really stupid for umpteen reasons" is pretty decent.
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If we do nothing we will not win the World Cup.
To be honest, I think "what is the best thing to do to win the world cup" is a bit beyond armchair critics.
Most people could see that Donald needed to be replaced at some stage during that game.
It's a bit harder to say now with precision what needs to be done now to win a major international tournament in two years. That's the sort of vision that makes good coaches great.
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I guess that depends what you mean by an old school socialist economic platform.
If we're going to pull stuff from the book of Marx, sure. But if it's about maintaining a decent welfare state, education and healthcare paid by a central tax system, these are still at heart popular concepts in New Zealand, despite being 'old school', and pretty socialist.
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I think he may have realised the err of his ways when 11 seconds after the opening kickoff '**they've been doing it all day ref!**' was shouted in his direction...
lol.
I think the lineout problems are long running enough given that I remember having discussions about how Anton Oliver couldn't throw the ball to a bunch of guys in black in about 2001.
Why we have a specialist scrum coach but not a specialist lineout coach (or, here's a thought, it's the same 8 guys, maybe one coach could do both) given that we've sucked at it for numerous years.... I have no idea.