Posts by A S
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Good points Russell.
I'd also suggest having a look at the school leaver stats that you'll also find on the education counts site, they don't make for such rosy reading.
Table 2 effectively says that in 2005, 28% of school leavers had less than level 1 NCEA, and in 2006, 24% of school leavers had less than level 1 NCEA. Neither of those is a particularly great achievement.
In Table 3, it shows that 45% of Maori school leavers left with less than level 1 NCEA in 2006, as did 32% of Pacific school leavers.
You'lll also note that the stats are trending downwards (and in fact they were when National was in too), but the question remains, at what point can the public legitimately start expecting to feel that they are getting a good return for their tax dollars? If Carter was right, funding has increased by 80%, whereas school outcomes haven't improved by a similar margin.
As to health waiting lists, I suspect that a similar question remains. Do people feel that the multi-billion increase in investment is bearing fruit? If not, is there a problem?
Again, I'd suggest that no-one really begrudges paying tax if it leads to improvements, is perhaps the issue around tax cuts simply a reflection that people don't feel that their contribution to making NZ a better place to live (via tax) isn't being well spent?
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D'oh. That second to last para should read:
I wouldn't have thought that many begrudge extra spending....
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So modest that only 11% of the population earn more, according to the latest data.
Which to be fair, is a fair bit higher than the 5% of the population who got hit with the 39c rate when it first came in. It does suggest that based on the link you provided, having the top tax threshhold kick in at 100k would effectively capture the highest earning 5%.... Which would maintain alignment with the original premise for the additional tax on high earners.
Just in terms of the whole cuts in services bogeyman that seems to be constantly raised when anyone talks about national policies, in the education sector, Chris Carter talked about how school funding has increased by 80% since 1999. My question is, at what point should the general public start expecting to see some returns on this investment in terms of a greater proportion of kids leaving school who are equipped to onto further study (or at the very least being able to read and write)?
Has the extra investment in health cut waiting lists as much as the increase in $ might have led people to expect? I don't know the answer to this, but again, perhaps it is relevant to wonder at what point should people start to feel like they are contributing to solving problems, rather than throwing money into an apparent black hole?
I wouldn't have that many begrudge extra spending/tax if it actually delivers (reduced waiting lists, kids succeeding at school, kids with special needs getting the support they need to be able to participate etc.)
Might the whole tax cut thing at heart boil down to the concern that in a lot of areas, progress in addressing issues has been quite a bit less than might have expected for the amount of investment that has been made?
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Then all I can say is, thank god that Welly and its outer burbs aren't hamstrung like akld.
Sounds like the odds of ever getting decent fibre up there is somewhere between zero and none. Sad really. But on the upside, as I said earlier, roll out the fibre to the rest of us, we're easier and much, much cheaper to hook up :-D
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So, if it came down to it, would you say no to 100mb FTTH (for arguments sake), if you had to have a few poles down the street?
I'd say bring on the poles.
A pole with a couple of wires on it would not be especially important overall surely? Kind of like how we'd all like that nice tarmac on the road outside, but instead we end up with that nasty hotchip. Upshot is, we've got a well engineered road, capable of all handling all the traffic we could throw at it, but it just doesn't look as pretty as the more expensive option.
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so I reckon it's going to be at least 60ms
60ms to US servers would be absolutely bloody fantastic. Anything has to be better than what we get now, even on cable, I get anywhere between 160 and 300ms. 60 is what you get to NZ servers a lot of the time.
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Ain't going to fly in Auckland. A significant part of the reason that Auckland doesn't have TCL cable is that the Auckland City Council said nay to overhead lines. District plan forbids new ones unless it's absolutely imperative.
Then Auckland will risk missing out. I'd be quite happy if they rolled fibre out to the rest of us instead, who don't mind overhead wires if we can get decent speeds. It will also mean less congestion on the international links if Akld stays in the IT stone age, not to mention significant cost savings to whichever govt decides to go with FTTH :-D
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Isn't pork barrel politics, basically by definition what politics is all about?
from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_barrel_politics
Based on the first line of the definition, a huge proportion of the policies of all political parties, rely on this type of politics to get votes.
just look at the swing from ECA to ERA. One seen as benefiting employers, the other seen as benefitting unions. Both could equally be seen as pork barrel politics...
Are we really surprised that various policies from different parties, aren't at heart, an enticement to vote for them?
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@ Paul
I'd love 100MB up/down. That way I might finally get a deceny ping to US game servers....
I'm on telstra cable now, and frankly, even their cable offerings aren't good enough to game and have one of the other machines on the network surf at the same time. I'd hate to go back to the dark days when I was stuck with the dross that is adsl, but cable @ present is really only the best of a fairly poor bunch.
It would be good if they aimed for GB capability at the very least, if not aiming for TB to future proof things for a year or two.....
On the cost of rolling out fibre...
I would have thought that stringing fibre from phone poles (of which there are an awful lot around the country) would significantly reduce the cost of rolling out fibre. Telstra clear has cables festooned all over the place in various Wellington burbs, and Citylink in wellington has their little blue cables strung thoughout the city. They tend to fade into the background pretty quickly.
No reason, aside from NIMBYism why it couldn't happen with a fibre roll-out.
If it is a problem, roads get dug up with awful monotony, so it wouldn't really be too hard to lay conduits when councils are doing their usual mad spend up before the end of the financial year. Start now, and in a few years, everything will be in place.
Trying for two birds with one stone might even be possible on this one.
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Shep.
Let's recap.
earlier post from Samuel.
any one that says the ploughshares could have got their point across as effectively in other ways is wrong.
Then we have my statement questioning this.
This logic is a bit screwy, isn't it?
If I thought the education system was bad, would I be justified in burning down a school? Or if I had concerns about the health system, would I be justified setting a couple of wards ablaze?
Samuel came back with
oh nonono. sorry, i spat that comment out in a bit of a hurry. its possible I could have been clearer. Im not sure why you think I am advocating some kind of terrorism though...
putting aside the fact that i see your burning schools and hospitals comparison as a HUGE leap beyond inconveniencing a satelite dish operation....
I then replied to this with
I understand your perspective samuel, I guess that I just can't get my head around the motivation to damage things we don't like in order to get attention.
On the huge leap thing, I would have said that in looking at it dispassionately, there isn't really much difference between events at Waihopai and the burning school/hopital e.g's.
In all cases:
1. Someone decides that they have an issue with a state institution,
2. They unilaterally decide to attack/damage that institution because of the issue they have, and carry out their intent.The motivation, action and result in all three examples is the same. The end result is damaged things that the public has to pay to fix. Generally that cost has to be met by reducing spending somewhere else.
Samuel and I continued to discuss in a similar vein, then Malcolm chipped in at that point
That was spent by our elected representatives. We can vote them out. Nobody elected these activists to spend our money. Nor can we vote them out.
Also, riddle me this; what if this led to an intelligence failure, that resulted in an ambush, that cost ANZAC lives in Afghanistan? How peaceful would the sickles be then?
Then you chipped in with reply to Malcolm
Malcolm - now that's a leap.
It's not like it's the first time anyone jumped the fence there. No damage was done to the infrastructure itself. They just popped a balloon that is there to provide weather protection.
Result - if it was anywhere else in NZ it might get wet, but it's Marlborough and so that's not gonna happen.
Security is their responsibility & it is obviously seriously lacking, as no real damage was done they've actually helped bring to light how lax those boys and girls at Waihopai are.
...At that point, I thought this wasn't quite accurate, so I chipped in with
Shep,
It isn't such a leap really. Media reports were that the dish was out of action as a result of the attack.
In terms of the security at Waihopai, are you suggesting they should have had armed guards with shoot on sight instructions?
$1m damage, nothing to worry about? I suspect most people would disagree with you on that one.
Then you replied with
A S,
$1m - The obvious answer to that is moth balls, pull the plug and then no more problem.
And this $1M for a plastic rain coat, really? I'll do the contract for 1/2 that.
All that was needed was a roving patrol in fog when the CCTV is out of action.
It might be cold and dark outside, but if you can't see you better off your ass and take a walk, a flashlight, radio and themos of coffee would do the job.
etc. etc. etc.
In reading back over this, to your strawman accusation, I say Bullshit. You might not agree with my argument, I sure as hell don't agree with yours, but lets try not to degenerate into the written equivalent of throwing stones shall we.
I did indeed draw a parallel between waihopai and other state assets. I maintain that this is a valid parallel. Destroying something, even if it belongs to the state, just because you disagree with it, or because you want to make a point is just screwy, not to mention criminal.
Show me something in my statements that isn't a valid point to bring to the debate.
Actually Samuel, the bit horrified me the most was this
and would include the possible presence of non-involved people. where as everyone inside the Echelon base is involved in the project.
Wouldn't you agree that from this statement you could indeed draw such a conclusion?
Hate to say, I've never read anything by Wishart, so I'm uncertain if that is a compliment or an insult. In terms of the twilight zone, though, let's not get into that debate, it really doesn't get us anywhere, and the accusation of conspiracy theory nutjobs really does go two ways on this.
Cheers
A S