Posts by Cameron Pitches
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Graeme, funding issues aside, what are the implications of a deregistered party's vote being counted in passing legislation?
On Tuesday the Land Transport Management Bill passed its third reading. When the speaker tallied the votes he clearly states "United Future (1 vote in favour)"
If United Future have been struck off and are an unrecognised party, the speaker may as well have called "Unicorn Party (1 vote in favour)". Surely the Speaker cannot count votes of parties that don't exist?
-
From the Herald:
where a $54 million boring machine will arrive in parts from China in June or July to be assembled before spending a year from October digging the first tunnel.
... the obvious thing to do when that tunnel is finished would be to move the tunnel boring machine over to Mt Eden and start boring the rail tunnel. Or is that just too obvious? No doubt there will be some technical reason why the CRL tunnel will be different to the Waterview one, but I'm hoping you can just adjust the size of the drill bit with a massive chuck key and just get on with it.
-
Legal Beagle: On the possibilities of a…, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
I'm not so sure about the defendant's right to silence. Silence does indeed provide no evidence whatsoever that a person has done anything. But putting him on the stand also might provide evidence that they have. Especially in Kahui's case, where it was as if Macsyna was the one on trial.
-
Gerry regularly gets a pasting now in question time, and rightly so. I'm hoping we can get to the bottom of this response pretty soon as well.
Phil Twyford: Did his predecessor intervene on behalf of Infratil to pressure the Auckland Regional Transport Authority, and, subsequently, Auckland Transport, and the Land Transport New Zealand boards to allow the Snapper card to be rolled out in advance of the integrated ticketing system?
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: No, that is not my understanding. The member may want to take that up with Auckland Transport.
Not exactly an outright denial that there hasn't been political interference in the integrated ticketing fiasco in Auckland... Phil Twyford probably has good reason to ask the Auditor-General to investigate.
-
Is it just me or does anyone else feel McCully's "apology" to Len Brown was less than sincere? According to TVNZ:
McCully said today discussions had been held between Auckland Council chief executive Doug McKay and officials but clearly Brown was not kept in the loop .
"I spoke to him after I became aware that he felt uncited on some aspects of it. I told him that I was sorry about that, that hadn't been the intention," McCully told media
He only spoke to him because Len Brown phoned him to ask (politely) what the fuck was going on! And as we've learned here Doug McKay was kept in the dark as well.
John Key goes one better and says it was McCully that phoned Len:
Prime Minister John Key says there was “an assumption that [Mr McCully] knew it probably would have been better if he had rung [Mr Brown] directly himself first, but as soon as he realised the Mayor didn't know he got on the phone".
Yet on Campbell Live last night Len Brown said it was he that phoned McCully, not the other way around.
I've not really followed McCully in the past too closely, but I'm rapidly forming a view on him that he is disingenuous, slimey and can't be trusted. I probably need to let this go now.
-
I think we can all agree that the size of the crowd far exceeded anyone's expectations, and there were considerable shortcomings with transport and crowd control.
However, right from 10:30pm on Friday Len Brown acknowledged this, apologised, accepted responsibility and promised to sort it out. Until yesterday afternoon, he was in constant contact with the Government. He talked to Steven Joyce, who said this in Parliament yesterday just hours before McCully's press conference :
I can report to the House that I met this morning with the Auckland mayor, Len Brown, and representatives of Auckland Transport, and I can report that they are committed to ensuring that additional capacity is made available over the rest of the tournament, to cater for all eventualities.
And then right out of the blue comes this completely arrogant, rude behaviour from McCully, which ensures the issue remains on page 1 of the Herald, rather than page 5. How the hell does this help our reputation with the RWC?
But perhaps this whole thing is going to backfire for the Government. iPredict has Labour winning Auckland Central up 3% this morning to 26%.
-
As a small business, keeping receipts is the one thing that drives me nuts. Is there any way that an eftpos transaction could be GST enabled, so that the receipt information was recorded. I realise this would involve Banks and eftpos, but I would happily pay to not have to keep, file, enter these records when I fill the gas tank. It is such an outdated concept.
Agree totally.
For this to work, though, EFTPOS would have to transmit the line items and their dollar value as well, since you can purchase multiple products or services in one transaction. Each line item generally needs to be coded to a different account. If line items were transmitted though, it would be really cool to take the next step and allow you set up your own accounting codes for a recurring supplier and line item. This would eliminate a significant amount of accounting data entry. Also rather than EFTPOS transmitting detailed invoice information to the bank, it would make more sense to transmit invoice data to an accounting server (e.g. Xero) for storage and to allow for the coding customisation that I've just described and storage / archiving of electronic invoices. Otherwise you would be reliant on the banks to produce electronic statment files in a totally different format to what they produce currently.
The other option is IRD waives the need to keep invoices for $x or less, but there would have to be a limit to the number of invoice per month this would apply to I would have thought.
-
'Bout time someone brought out a "Practical Technology for Small Business in NZ" book. (By all means change the title). Three things I couldn't do without:
salesforce.com - despite the lame name its totally adaptable to any business and is great for tracking contacts, activities and emails from multiple home offices or on the road. Integrates with Outlook. Up to 5 users for less than $1000 a year. Can't think why anyone would build a CRM system for more than that.
ifax.co.nz - receive faxes to your email box as pdf attachments from $25 / month for up to 200 faxes. You still need to pay telecom to CustomerLink to your ifax number, if you want to keep your existing number. (Just what happened to number portability anyway...?)
servcorp - real live receptionist answers your calls in your company name, takes messages and routes calls through to your home office. Meeting rooms for hire.
Have had a look at Xero, but have invested a bit of time in customising invoices etc in Quickbooks so will stick with it for now... unless there is a converter in the pipeline soon?
Great thread, cheers.
-
Hi,
Pro roading lobbyists include the Road Transport Forum, who represent truckies, and as a more extreme example, the Highway Action Trust. The later is a good example of the sorts of mysterious organisations that appear just before elections, attempting to sway voters. Remember those pullout supplements along the lines of "complete the motorway network" before the last local elections? - that's the work of your pro-roading lobby groups.
( By the way, there ain't no city in the world completing motorway plans drawn up in 1953.)
Other groups, notably the NZ Council for Infrastructure Development , are funded by organisations such as Maquarie Bank, Beca, Fulton Hogan etc in whose interest it is to see more spending on transport infrastructure. Not quite sure why Auckland City and ARTA feel the need to be paid up members ($9,000 p.a.) as well. Maybe this is a good thing as NZCID's attitude to public transport and alteratives to roading has improved recently.
As far as public transport advocates there is the totally without budget, voluntary, politically independent Campaign for Better Transport; other alternatives are Cycle Action Auckland and Walk Auckland
Finally there is ARTA, whose job it is to plan and operate our public transport system in Auckland.
Cheers
Cameron Pitches
Convenor
Campaign for Better Transport
www.getmoving.org.nz -
Some random thoughts:
Do people still watch TV?
Agree that production and distribution need to be separate. Ever since the advent of the programmable VCR, DVD'S, Tevo, MySky and now YouTube, we are moving more and more to on-demand TV watching. Tying production and distribution together limits the audience.
Why aren't educational institutions broadcasting on TV yet? Wouldn't the knowledge economy be better advanced if tertiary and training institutions broadcast their lectures, instead of building auditoriums?
Will we finally get the news at 8:00pm on the digital service? Never understood why both channels show the news is at 6, especially in summer.