Posts by Ben Chapman
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It's not shuffling the misfortune about - it's shuffling who pays for it. With minimum wage, it's the employer. With WFF, it's the taxpayer. It's businesses who are most fragile right now, and it doesn't make sense to put the pressure on them.
I see your point, but I think mine is still valid. Regardless of who is paying, in one case the jobs of temporary minimum-wage employers are at risk, in the other it is the relative income of minimum-wage workers who do not qualify for Working for Families.
If anything, a tax cut for the lower brackets would be better relief for minimum-wage workers, but there is as little chance of that happening under this government as there is for WfF to be beefed up.
If you are going to use tax credits to address the danger of job losses, then perhaps a targeted tax break for businesses who retain workers should be considered.
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Anyone else seeing Haddin-gate coming back to bite us big time?
In what sense? Rarking the Aussies up or seriously copping it if we're ever caught cheating ourselves?
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Not increasing the minimum wage to keep some temporary employees in work and then making up for the non-increase by upping Working for Families payments for those who qualify (which will never happen under National anyway), just seems like an effort in shuffling the misfortune about. It also has its own costs, notably the social cost of the minimum wage lagging further behind the average wage, and being a drag on wages overall, at least at the lower end of the spectrum.
Surely we aren't going to survive this recession by having the poor weather the storm for the rest of us.
If a major consequence of the recession is a reduction in the number of paid hours worked, then a solution is to increase the amount of work available.
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The rankings are strange aren't they, Bond was no. 1 for much of last year despite not playing for NZ at all during that time. I've never figured out how they're done, really.
I could be wrong, but I understand we have never been fully told how the ratings are calculated. I think the algorithm was a commercial secret for the various companies that used to look after the ratings, but now that it they are with the ICC, I just don't know.
Without seeing the algorithm and all the weighting factors we can never know how fair the system is. I do believe it includes some quite dodgy factors, like giving more weighting to a score that was part of a victory for example.
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My favourite commentary moment was very early on, when someone asked Justin Langer how the Aussie team would be feeling. "Relieved," he said. "They'll just be so relieved they're only playing New Zealand and not South Africa."
He made it almost the whole way to the end of the sentence before Marsh went out.
That wouldn't have got him down though. He was predicting an Australian score of 250 as late as the 30th over. And he spent much of the beginning of the NZ innings talking about how devastated the Black Caps would be if they lost.
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Whoa, he's getting stress leave? That's un-Australian.
Though it is not the first time he has been rested during a series against NZ. Considering how important the current Chappell–Hadlee is to the pride of Aus cricket, you'd think he'd be keen to play on.
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<i>Awww, it cut off before I could imagine Stephen Fleming saying 'my texture is the best fur, chinchilla'. :)</i>
My 3-year old has been watching a lot of Wiggles recently, and seeing Fleming as his "the Wiggle in the yellow skivvy" alter-ego has kind of compromised his sex appeal:
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how surprised we were about how long it took us to stop feeling homesick for london and wishing we were still there
I have a very interesting experience when I return to New Zealand after a long stay overseas. (I've done two years in Japan and two stays in India of one and two years.) When I first arrive back, I find it very hard to recall the places where I have just been living. It is some time before those places return to me.
Then after several years of being home, the Proustian memory of the places I have visited, brought on by such things as the smell of incense on a summer's evening, can be overwhelming and bring on heart-breaking nostalgia.
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I do not think that word means what you think it means.
But I'm not sure it means what you think it means either.
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Okay, drifting away from music videos quite a bit here, but this still needs to be shared.
The pick of the Indian Premier League team promos: