Posts by Tom Semmens
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In relation to the financial crisis offshore, I want SOMEONE to start asking some serious questions about the affordability of National's tax cuts. It is clear that if they win office they plan to fund them by a mixture of a sinking lid on government spending and borrowing.
National have created the expectation of a fifty dollar plus tax cut per week to a meaningful percentage of the population, not just the 15% who earn over $60,000PA but also to the $45,000-$60,000 income earners out there in "struggle street". The trouble is that the cost of borrowing is spiralling internationally, so can they still afford to borrow the sort of dosh they'll need to deliver a fifty a week tax cut to the lower middle class? The $45-60,000 income bracket has swung massively to National in the clear expectation of an "fifty a week to struggle street". If they numbers no longer add up, we need to be told.
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Two questions on cybersafety:
Does the panel believe central government has any role in censoring the internet in the name of cyber-safety and, if the answer is yes, how would the panelists ensure any such centralised censorship wasn't captured by vested interests who push to ban sites that cater to lifestyle choices or political views they don't approve of?
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Hey! Just because I can't afford to loaf around spell checking...
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Hmmm, for all this talk about borrowing for tax cuts and counter-cyclical stimulation, I now wonder who we are going to borrow this money from.
The Reserve Bank factored in the high cost of credit when it cut the OCR by .5%,, but the collapse of Lehman has just made credit that much harder to get - and therefore more expensive - for our baking system.
I now expect Dr. Bollard to cut another half a percent in his next OCR, just to get mortgage interest rates down even a little bit.
We have a relatively robust banking sector, but we are also addicted to cheap foreign credit as much as the American - probably more so on a per capita basis. All that is standing between us and a financial meltdown of US proportions is the health of the government's balance sheet.
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The Warriors, the All Blacks, and - most importantly - Hawkes Bay walloping of Counties-Manakau made for a glorious sporting weekend.
And today is just beautiful as well. Even the Tui trilling away outside my house this morning paused and gave a cheery nod in my direction as I got into my car for the morning commute.
Lovely weather.
Right results.
Teh Oz is hurting.
:)
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MikeE, are you being intentionally funny?
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Sue Kegdley is the sort of person who everyone rolls their eyes at behind her back, for me - and by the look of it at lot of other people - she is the classic kill-joy, a lactose intolerant with a gluten allergy food obsessive that you'd never invite over for dinner because all she will eat is a piece of certified fair trade organic tofu from the Republic of the Coromandel. And she would lecture you over your lamb chop.
Bradford is a different kettle of fish, but just as annoying. A doctrinaire middle class "socialist" who lectures rather than persuades. I used to have some time for her, but then I personally saw her in action with some genuine working class people and she was, to put it frankly, a patronising fuckwit.
The thing about the Greens is for all their leftish pretensions, they are not a working class party. They are a religious party, just like Brian Tamaki would want, only with a belief system more palatable to middle class liberals.
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Bradford & Kedgley - two people who ought to be kept locked up in a jail on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity if the Greens want to be in the next parliament.
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All those old National Film Unit movies from the mid 1930's on didn't just happen by chance. The first Labour government gave up trying to get its message out via a N.Z. print media that thought Franco was to soft on the lefties. So instead they went over their head and used the new medium of radio (Colin Scrimgeour anyone?) and set up a pro-government film unit for good measure.
Battling the entrenched business interests who own the media is not a new phenomena for the left in N.Z.
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I thought Helen's comment about John Key enjoying himself in Otara like any other tourist would was the line of the day yesterday, and Ms. Rees won Laour a small skirmish in the overall battle.