Posts by Tom Semmens
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
If John Key were to take the time to ask any, say, middle aged male school teacher he would discover no male of his age has ever won the battle of public opinion if they are stupid enough to take on a teenage girl in a slanging match.
-
Prime Minister beats up on teenager, feisty kid hits back!
-
But you may need to shell out more for a convincing experience?
I don't know. I always rate the enthusiastic cheap and cheerfuls.
-
The thing is, not for the first time has nickle and diming corruption been vigorously dealt with, whilst no one is asking if it amounts to corrupt practice to buy a political parties climate change policy.
-
However, one of the reasons for paying people more is recognition of the value they bring to society.
I have to agree that this is nonsense. The people who get the most money are the people who make the most money for their masters, be they be sports clubs, Media companies or money speculators.
I think Key's dismissive response to Keisha Castle-Hugh's is interesting, because I think if a theme is developing around this government it is of one of being a bunch of white, nouveau-snobs not interested in anyone who doesn't conform to their narrow definition of who is fit to take part in civil society.
-
Pizza is pretty much like a cheap tart these days, it is whatever you want it to be.
-
Whilst I find it deeply ironic and quite hilarious that the Dark Sith Lord of Fiscal Restraint has been proved the one most flagrantly with his hand in the till, I am not greatly exercised by this whole expenses affair.
In terms of what MP's get paid, well it is always a vexed question. It is hardly fair to compare their renumeration with professionals and technocrats, because they are not professionals or technocrats, and if they were then democracy as we know would be over. After all, it is the house of REPRESENTATIVES, not the house of experts, or professionals, or the house of silver-spoon-in-the-mouth-born-to-rulers.
In a general sense it seems to me that if the public thinks MP's are now over-paid vis-a-vis the average/median wage then that is probably a reflection of the wider growth in income inequality that has occured in the sort of obscene money our self-important CEO's and top executives now think they are worth.
Perhaps the answer would be to publish all the incomes of everyone in the top two percentile in New Zealand, so we can accurately gauge the relativity of MP's wages with top executives, and also - like MP's - so we can accurately measure the performance of those in the oligarchy who, by their utterances through and funding of bodies like the ACT party and the Business Round Table, also choose to have a significant role in policy formation.
-
A CEO of a large corporate isn't spending taxpayer dollars. The issue is not one of renumeration, it is about a deliberate and planned legal double dipping for taxpayer dollars whilst lecturing the public about restraint.
The issue is hypocrisy.
-
I don't buy that coaches have an automatic shelf life.
But surely Wayne Bennett and his like are the exceptions to the rule?
But in a general sense, as I alluded to above, the coaches and the All Blacks are showing the signs of a more systemic organisational failure.After the battle of Jutland in 1916, in which three British battlecruisers were blown up by German gunfire, the BCF commander Admiral Beatty made a famous quote - "There is something wrong with our bloody ships today" but it is what he said next that was more important - "And there is something wrong with our system." In other words, he recognised the ships lost were the consequence of a deeper corporate failure in the Royal Navy.
like Beatty, it isn't our battlecruisers blowing up on the big occassion that bothers me most. It is that our system is wrong.
Like the Victorian public who worshipped the Royal Navy, we've allowed ourselves to be captured by a semi-mystical belief about the abilities of the All Blacks that doesn't stand up to best foreign practice.
We still persist in an arrogant and unwarranted belief that we can somehow play a style of rugby that other lesser mortals cannot aspire to. To famously quote Graheme Henry, we would rather lose than win by a drop goal - which curiously echoes the sentiment another British Admiral of the Victorian era, who described submarines as "underhand, underwater and damned un-English".
We really do need to get back to basics - recognising that our players are men not Gods, playing simple, basic rugby based on posession and field position, and taking points whatever way we can get them. But I think that change in attitude in our corporate culture may require an absolute clean out at the NZRFU that the current monoply structures would not allow.
-
I make Welsh rarebit with Wattie's Spaghetti and left-over sliced sausages, and a damn fine thing it is!