Posts by Bart Janssen
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Muse: One Of These Things Is Not Like…, in reply to Hebe,
I tend to agree with you Hebe.
I do think Craig has a strong point about the misuse of the word. But the context and direction that the thread has taken suggest that continuing the discussion can only do harm.
I would love to be wrong. But there are (at least) two very strong emotional pressures at play in this thread and they are not making for a productive discussion.
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The frustrating thing about Cunliffe's education announcement was that it ignored the central problem.
Almost everyone believes education is worth improving.
Almost everyone agrees that reducing class sizes AND improving teacher quality are BOTH worthwhile.Nobody is willing to say we need more money to do those things. More money for education comes from one of two places, first slice the taxation pie differently. You could raise the superannuation age to 70, that would have a huge impact but no politician is willing to do that and sadly we continue to vote into power politicians instead of leaders.
And of course the second option, the one followed by all those countries in Europe we are so fond of benchmarking ourselves against and aspiring towards, raise taxes. Simply put we, the public of New Zealand, and especially we the wealthier public, need to pay more into the pool of money that we want to be spent on education. But again no politician will suggest that because sadly we continue to vote into power politicians instead of leaders.
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Hard News: Good news for self-powered travellers, in reply to BenWilson,
Eh? Those guys always wear helmets.
Usually very expensive helmets that have no additional protection but do cost a lot more and have prettier paint jobs.
I did quite like the helmet with the mohawk built in :)
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Hard News: Good news for self-powered travellers, in reply to Kevin McCready,
I could go on and on but this is not the forum and I have other fish to fry.
True, but, your arguments are based on entirely reasonable theory. What I and others are saying is that for reasons that are not clear, the observation is that the helmet law is counterproductive with respect to cycle/car accidents. You can spend all day and all night arguing why, but the why is irrelevant, maybe fun but irrelevant.
What is relevant is the evidence from other countries shows that having no helmet law (while still strongly recommending helmets) results in a lower rate of accidents.
Do what works.
Don’t do what should work but doesn’t work.
Later you can figure out why it works and optimise that. -
Hard News: Decidedly Undecided, in reply to BenWilson,
“the information is low quality”
That wasn't what I said. I said the polls are deceptive. that is a totally different reason for banning them.
By the way there are several countries where polls are banned for a period prior to the election date without any collapse in the society.
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Up Front: Dropping the A-Bomb, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
Sadly not true: Student, 20, charged over death of baby
In New Zealand (I think) all such cases result in charges being laid - because by laying charges the police and the court can ensure that the mother gets proper psychiatric care. I don't know for certain but I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of those cases never go to court, the intent of police and the courts is that a mother gets proper care for what is a psychiatric problem not a criminal problem.
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Hard News: Decidedly Undecided, in reply to steve black,
what we are after is a proper representative sample
To be completely anal, we don't want a representative sample of the population but only of the population that will actually vote on the day. It's pretty clear that a significant percentage of the population make their political opinions felt by actively not voting.
The difficulty is that those that choose not to vote may well choose to answer the polls and may at the time of the polling say they will vote.
When you combine the difficulty of getting a truly representative poll result with the appalling standards of reporting of polls by the media at large then I think there is a very real case for saying the polls are deceptive. Perhaps not deliberately deceptive but in practice they act to give the public a false impression of the state of political opinion in New Zealand.
Given that, I'd argue they should be banned.
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Hard News: Labour's Fiscal Plan:…, in reply to Andrew C,
Could you explain how this is done Bart?
Bearing in mind I am not a tax accountant (huge sigh of relief) my understanding is that trusts will attract the top tax rate on the assumption that those benefiting from trusts are doing so to avoid paying the top rate of tax.
There are situations where trusts are set up that do not simply exist to make rich people pay less tax and again IANATA but I suspect IRD would have a mechanism to rebate that tax.
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My response was "well I don't mind paying a little extra tax to put through the policies after all as far as I can tell I'm rich" and then I realised "holy crap I'm not even close to being taxed anything extra!"
Essentially, the $150k mark means anyone bitching about an extra couple of percent tax on earnings over their $150k really does need to check their privilege. And nailing trusts at the same time seems perfectly reasonable since most folks use trusts as a means of avoiding tax, including most MPs.
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Feed: A scientist researches restaurants, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
You know Ian, it is rarely that you do not make my day happier. thank you.