Posts by Gareth Ward
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Sorry, councillor only, not Mayor (and hopefully never will be)
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The death penalty for tagging? Fucking disgraceful comment.
Absolutely. From a Mayor nonetheless. I realise Christchurch has it's crime problems but it's got a bit rough when the Mayor suggests letting murderers off.
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So that was it? His State of the Nation speech? Boot camps for young people, slightly tougher sentences for those under 16, enforced parental classes if your kid has been offending, an extended apprenticeship scheme beyond the existing one?
All noble-enough things that I'm not complaining about but hardly a significant program for change. Maybe I'm just hoping too much but Mr key - do something bold and interesting that makes me think a significant difference will be made. I need it if I am to vote in a relatively untested and unknown leader.
That's twice now (National conference early last year and this) that I've been so underwhelmed by the policy platform that came out. Admittedly I haven't seen major groundbreaking forward policy out of Labour either but at least I have their track record to look to.
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Re PS3:
http://au.ps3.ign.com/articles/745/745359p1.htmlMight help?
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I do wonder though: as long as the Reserve Bank believes personal tax cuts are inflationary, we can expect it to do its best to hoover the "extra money" out of the economy quick smart?
Unfortunately that's bang on. The Reserve Bank are tasked solely with keeping inflation between 1-3% by setting the underlying interest rates.
They can't do anything but see additional money floating around (that is likely to be spent on inflationary "consumables") and put up the interest rates to take some of that back.
Hence the calls to modify the Reserve Bank Act so that the focus isn't so blunt and maybe introduce some nuance into it (because those interest rate hikes really hurt our exporters and homeowners in ways that only affect inflation indirectly...
Was rather glad to get a letter from my Kiwisaver provider (Fisher Funds) the other day saying they had processed my application to join but that the IRD holds the funds for the first 3 months and is paying me 6% interest until they hand over. Better that than being in a stock-weighted fund right at the moment... -
Anyway, what do folks think of Cullen's op-ed in today's Herald? On the political tip, I'd have to give him credit for striking just about the right tone. But substantively, a sounds assessment of the prospects for New Zealand, Pollyanna making a party political broadcast or a bit of both?
I would class it as a political "told-you-so", but the thing is - he's kinda right. "You all told me I was hoarding too much of the good times, but I told you there would be a cyclical down turn and we'd need to have the money to respond to it".
The question now is how does the Budget cushion us - tough ask to my (admittedly junior-economic) mind as the combined nasties of inflation and recession are tough for the Govt to respond to early on, yet they won't want to let the recession bite as a brake on inflation itself... -
dc_red, quite right - I missed that little word "personal" in front of the "tax cuts".
And frankly I think he's just using the chance to drop in his usual "cut company tax" line - although there is an argument that company tax cuts would see greater investment in the productive economy (as you don't take the money out of the business when your personal tax rate is 39% but the company's only 25%). And a larger (if not 100) percentage of government spending is non-inflationary as it goes on infrastructure spending on the like.
While some personal tax cut would go on debt reduction etc, the profile of likely spending from personal tax cuts is more inflationary than that of most government spending/hoarding or lowering the corporate tax rate. None of those are ultimately one direction or the other, but the weighting is different on each... -
Interesting that Telecom provided this for free at BDO this year:
Mobile broadband and laptops will be available for free from the Telecom Recharge zone on the day for Facebook, Bebo and My Space updates.
Not sure how broadly used they were?Given that the BDO moved to vid-blogs rather than text-blogs (I'm sure there's geek speak I'm missing here) is that an indicator of how the local blog community may head?
Piece to camera "Leave Britney Alone!" styles perhaps? -
Given it's an election year I suppose bearpit is unfortunately more likely.
As to whether or not the "NZ internet" matters, I would suggest it is only in that type of sphere - i.e. local news and discussion. Although I predict an increase in local interweb shopping I suppose - as people become more comfortable with purchasing online their first steps would likely be with local brands and identities, though in the longer run they would become less important.
My broadband (having left Woosh and now "hardwired" on Xtra) is pretty bloody good as it is (averaging 4.2Mbps down on speedtests) - think this is partly to do with the fact that I must be close to the Ponsonby exchange (anyone know where that is?) and being the hotbed of testing activity that seems to be perhaps it will get even better? Mobile broadband will be an '09 thing for me - certainly the roadmaps I've seen allow for some pretty decent speeds at about that point.
What else... ummmm, more small businesses to have their own @zzz.com addresses with email to match - having found Google Apps for my wife's business I can't see why anybody wouldn't?!
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And interestingly, while the US administration is throwing cash out like the Santa Parade, Mark Weldon (NZX boss) is telling all political parties to NOT offer any tax cut as election policy - given the inflationary pressures we are under and the interest rate differentials we have to the rest of the world, we can't possibly afford the extra pressure that a tax cut would provide.
Here
Chances of being listened to? Preeeeeetty much zero I would think.