Posts by Tom Semmens
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It occured to me the other day that another benefit of legalising cannabis is being missed. Legalise pot and there would be a cannabis beer (or an alco-pot for the girls) in the liquor stores in no time, allowing you to get happily slowly stoned by drinking your lot of pot.
The benefits of that over the harmful effects of smoking unfiltered dope has on the lungs and respiratory system seems obvious.
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Craig, are you arguing that because Labour did a bad thing, I can't criticise National for making it worse?
Dude, that is his only argument. EVER.
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found it interesting that the Herald's graphic in today's paper (showing what your net gain from the tax cuts minus GST hike would be) started the income at $30,000,
Recently 2500 people queuing for supermarket jobs was treated by our corporate media like a revelation from another country. Why should those people be any more visible to the Herald today?
Welcome to two step New Zealand, where the greedy neither know or care about the rest.
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Is this the same Bernard Hickey who predicted a catastrophic collapse of over 30% in housing prices?
He makes some pertinent points, but his powers of deduction are not all that very good.
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So there we have it; the Key government is the inheritor of Shipley. An unimaginative, blinkered small "n" neo-liberal incrementalism combined with a fair amount of mean spirited new Victorian beneficiary bashing.
It tells us this government is in character the creature of the dismal and dreary double dipper of Dipton, with all the provincial small minded moralising that English brought to government when National was last in government.
It seems more and more that John Key is little more than a stuffed shirt, a PR exercise in electability that runs a loose ship because he doesn't care enough to manage it any better.
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Bringing in a land tax per se might not be a bad thing. But bringing in a land tax - and raising GST - just so rich fat cats can have a tax cut is. The whole thrust of the TWG was to redistribute the tax burden downwards so we can have yet another repeat of failed trickle neo-liberal economic theory. "Fiscally neutral" means nothing of the sort. What it actually means is more taxes for middle and lower class New Zealanders, and a bonanza for our kelptocratic business class who will show their appreciation of the government's closing of property tax loopholes and tax cuts for them by stealing your money in the rigged lottery that is New Zealand's crooked finance and investment markets. And they'll get away with it scott free.
The enthusiasm with which New Zealanders have flocked to Kiwisaver - gold plated back by the government Kiwisaver - betrays the lie we don't save. Kiwisaver also obliquely indicates why New Zealanders invest in property. The uptake of Kiwisaver shows what New Zealanders really think of the competence and honesty of our private sector business class since 1984. No one really trusts them or their corrupt practices. Land and the government - Kiwi's will invest their hard-earned money anywhere but into the private sector.
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I am not sure what it is about that Atlantic article that has got the right wing teacher haters so excited. It's message is that the most important learning aid is the teacher and that failing teachers need to be identified and nurtured. That is hardly rocket science, and hardly controversial. If anything, it shows how far behind the USA compared to NZ. Here, a lot of what the Atlantic article treats as revelatory is pretty much mainstream received wisdom.
The sewer seems to think the article provides a fatwa to conduct a jihad against the teaching profession, which it does not.
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There's a very succinct solution to league tables. Require all schools, public and private, to reflect the demographic makeup of the nation.
100% agree, along with banning private schools.
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Here is a totally random music joke for Friday:
Q: How many PA muso's does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: It's an obscure number, you've probably never heard of it.