Posts by Kyle Matthews
-
Milling around outside, you were brought to your senses by some guy in a balaclava holding an assault rifle stepping out of the bushes and telling you that you were not allowed to walk this way.
Guaranteed to sober most people up.
-
Personally, I'd be much happier if MPs and Ministers got their housing allowances abolished and replaced with a one-off pay hike. Then, they can live in a shack or a palace -- don't much care, but they've got to live within their means (or to the limits of their credit) like everyone else.
I think they've moved towards that with the new flat do whatever you want with this housing allowance.
I think (and hope) they've retained it only for out of Wellington MPs though. I don't think Grant Robertson, Peter Dunne, etc should get 20% pay hikes to maintain their one home, the principle of "we'll support only out of Wellington MPs maintain a residence in Wellington since they have to come here so much" seems to me to be a good one to keep.
-
Sorry, what?! They're actually not under licensing law?
Yup, see the story that Craig originally linked to.
-
Probably not, but if you really want to go there I don't see why MPs really need heavily subsidized housing in the first place.
I don't mind the subsidy. I think the new system they've set up is a bit on the high side, but these people have to live in Wellington, and I don't think they should have to sell their homes in their electorate, so fair enough.
It's the way that he seems to have lost all pecuniary interest in the trust that owns his house over Xmas that concerns me. Maybe its legal, and he's moving his assets into a family trust to avoid future tax when he wants to pass it to his kids.
However, given the great big salary he gets, and the way he's stomping all over pay rises in the public sector, I think he would have been smarter to have turned down the $48K when it became available, taken the standard $24K, and not got himself into the dodgy limelight that he's in now. Appearances matter in politics, after all.
When he ended up standing knee deep in shit that Labour threw at him, I think he should have found a way to take the Trust details off the table. Labour offered him a confidential briefing with one of their MPs I seem to recall, as much as it might have raised bile at the time, maybe he'll want that offer back now.
-
But one might think a fraking instructor at the Police College (presumably a senior officer of some experience and judgment) would not get grossly intoxicated with his students; and a bar on the grounds of the Police College itself would be more than usually scrupulous about obeying the law.
Heh. Clearly you haven't spent enough time in police bars.
The suggestion to bring them under the licensing law is a good one. They'll become more responsible venues once a couple of them get stung with $10,000 fines.
-
It's like 11-man rhythmic gymnastics.
Actually, if they did away with the ball and gave every player a long twirly ribbon on a stick, then it would definitely be the 'beautiful game'.
-
How flowing artistic interpassing, spacing and a good mobile midfeild can find room in even a strong defence to set up a shot - its beautiful to watch.
On this basis I recommend that the sport do away with the goals all together if the setup is so beautiful.
-
Hey Kyle. You might want to comment on this too (I apologise in advance)
Your beating will come later.
Ice hockey is not a good sport to translate into games I think. I have NHL 04 for the playstation, which is OK, but I wouldn't ever try and put pressure on someone to play it if they didn't play hockey. It's a hard enough game to explain to someone watching it without them having to play it.
But then again, I've played a couple of sports translated games over my life, and most of them struggle to be average - cricket, rugby, NFL, baseball. Taking an inherently physical 3D activity and reducing it to abstract controller movements... very hard.
The endless sequences of these games coming out every year with minor changes in gameplay, and updated rosters... really are crap. It's basically like buying Windows XP again every time they release a new service pack.
A new game every 3 or so years would seem much more reasonable given hardware and software development, these days anything else (updated team rosters etc) could be downloaded off the net.
-
Ice hockey is a little similar, in that the best games are the ones that are low scoring and close. You'd almost never see 0-0 though, and if that started to become common, ice hockey would adjust a rule or the size of the goal or something to prevent it. A few years they made significant adjustments to the instructions to referees to allow skillful players the opportunity to play and score goals.
Ice hockey also plays the wonderful endless overtime games, resolved by golden goal. Two seasons ago two teams went into four overtime periods (that's a whole 'nother game and bit') with both goalies pulling off some incredible saves before someone finally scored.
A game where no one scored, and then it didn't ramp up by going into overtime and getting a result? How can this be the most popular sport in the world?
-
Football is all about the denial of orgasm.
Subtle photograph choice there.