Posts by Kyle Matthews
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From http://www.netlaw.co.nz/crime.cfm?pageid=348:
"Aggravated Robbery is one notch up. It is robbery with one or all of the following three things :
Grievous bodily harm is caused. (This means serious harm)
More than one person is involved (Robbery by two or more people)
A Weapon is used (Simply being armed is enough)"
I think they mean "at least one of the following three things". Presumably if you have two, but not the third, it still applies.
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FSSB has proved all delusions of constitutional protection, wrong.
There isn't any constitutional protection for that in NZ. Even if the Treaty was constitutionalised, it doesn't seem to cover that particular bit of the world.
Even if you accept that that particular bit of land still belongs to Maori in whatever sort of title, there's no great constitutional protection in NZ to prevent the government taking land off people.
"Crappy bad law" != unconstitutional.
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I wonder if in some manslaughter cases this is going to weigh heavily on juries, who may be reluctant to convict if the consequences of a guilty verdict are pointed out to them.
I'm not sure if it's part of the legal philosophy here or anywhere else, but it seems that keeping the guilty/not guilty (jury) apart from the sentence (judge), particularly in serious crimes, seems like a good thing to me. The jury can keep its eye on its job of "did this person do this crime" without worrying about "but that will mean XX for them", which still seems to me to be something that judges are best qualified to decide within broad constraints.
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And what about those art prizes? When did a painting of some kittens ever win an art prize? The Art Establishment is biased against the kitten-painting community.
Straight realist paintings don't tend to win major art prizes anymore. It's not the boundaries of the activity, a thousand artists can paint a really good painting of some kittens. The boundaries are braying donkey toilets and selling all your possessions and living in the front window of a department store.
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The problem is that fiscal drag (the opposite of what you want - which is when the govt quietly gets more money as inflation pulls people up the tax scales) is alluring to politicians - not only does it quietly help solve their budget woes by bringing in more taxes than inflation alone but it also gives them the chance to win the PR bonus of "lowering taxes" by periodically adjusting for it - if you make it automatic think of what they'll lose!
Yup. But we have a whole government act which is about financial accountability and opening the books and what not... (er, Fiscal Responsibility Act or some such). And then there's this big illusion that some things in government tend to go up with inflation (state sector salaries, benefits, health care and education costs), but tax rates don't.
I'd like to think that it'd be something that a right wing government would support. It would mean that tax rate adjustments were actually honestly that, rather than dealing with drag or bumping it up.
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In a separate nutshell: Been costed. Too expensive. (Because you have to pay every single taxpayer $20+/week.)
Yes, what George said. A percent or two at middle incomes would pay for it I would guess.
Also on my wishlist - income scales that slide up with inflation annually, so we don't have people creeping up the scales as their income goes up as money gets worth less.
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Surely the attraction of Australia isn't the tax rates, it's just that incomes are higher? Which is much more of a hard job for the government (or indeed anyone) to do anything about.
I'd love it if we had the first 5 thousand tax free in NZ. It probably wouldn't help beneficiaries much, as their benefit would probably be adjusted to cover, but low income earners on minimum wage or similar would suddenly find an extra $20+/week in their wallet, which would be big.
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Why should it matter what Atwood calls her own writing and why are Sci-Fi people so determined to prove her wrong?
These sorts of discussions always remind me of a period when people seemed to be arguing about whether Green Day were punk or not. It always seemed unimportant to me.
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because they only legalised the front end retail sale and not the cultivation or wholesale supply to the shops.
There's a law with one eye closed. "You can sell it, but it has to appear by magic, OK?"
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If we're going to go all 19th century, then my advice is be wary of the Prussian menace.
And the spikes on their helmets! Vicious.