Posts by Paul Campbell
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yeah that does seem a little strange - instead they could simply have given the guy a more anglo name and avoided the whole issue - I have to think that if there is consultation it came after the first ads probably because someone did complain.
My family is nominally culturally jewish (but not religious) - we lived in the US for 20 years of OE - you'd never see an ad like that on TV there - all hell would break loose. My kids get a lot of crap at school 'jewish' is still a put down in high school in NZ even though we're about as jewish as we are presbyterian (and 'scottish' has about the same connotations - esp. here in Dunedin). I suspect the subtext I see in that ad probably goes over a lot of kiwi's heads but I've worried for a while that some day kids will be yelling "Goldstein!" at my kids - I guess I'm a little sensitive
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I wonder of her appointment is something of a "ooh look at that shiny thing over there..." sort of appointment to take the heat off of a minister who wants the press to look somewhere else (perhaps while they lay a bunch of people off)
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As an aside - does anyone else find the ASB ads a touch anti-semitic? certainly they'd never play in the US
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well you can if you have an eeeevul surplus - even apparently if it's structural and Mr Cullen claims it's not really there
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Duoh I meant "Keith" (I always get his name confused with someone I knew years ago who looks almost the same) - this original point was that by just using 3 points you imply a continuing increasing value while Keith's graphing of both sets of data shows that the Labour tax cut was capped at $1460 while the National one just keeps on giving and giving to the rich (of whom I happen to be one, on this graph at least) - of course I knew this because I run a small business and do my monthly payroll and had to come up with something for my spreadsheets to represent the change but it's probably not obvious to everyone
I think that not including everyone is cherry picking - where does my wife (who earns next to nothing) fit in there? - she still pays taxes on half our theoretical overseas investment income, such as it is - probably our joint income should be merged and averaged.
I do think it's about time we automatically inflation adjusted income tax and nominally reduced fiscal drag to 0 - I doubt any Minister of Finance will ever go for that though.
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I'm kind of enjoying this one today, even though it does glorify terrorism:
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David - I think you kind of missed a large part of Phil's point - choosing sample points misrepresents the data - it doesn't matter which sample points you choose just choosing a few of them them rather than graphing all the data misrepresents reality.
I'm glad for you that you have access to staffers in English's office - perhaps you could share their emails so we can all use them - after all we do pay for them ....
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Come on this is New Zealand - carpet bombing an entire neighbourhood could help deal with a big chunk of the wool glut - I'm sure there were at least 3 Nat cabinet ministers down there trying to persuade them to load up with carpets the minute they heard it was on
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Guns ... the problem is guns - not because people shoot them or hunt with them .... but because people fetishise them - personally I blame the crazy 'merkins preaching from their silly 2nd amendment - we don't have one (we have better ways to overthrow our government - like voting - it even works from time to time).
The person who owns a couple of hunting weapons, carefully locks them away, keeps the ammunition somewhere else, has the right license from the police isn't a problem - the guy (and they are all guys) with the house full of guns and explosives who's whole life revolves around them is being anti-social, wont get the license and (as we've seen a few times now) bears watching.
I guess the really scary thing is that he managed to obtain all this stuff without a license - I realise he swiped some from the army - but one would think that they would be keeping an eye on their stuff - have they not noticed that a bunch of it is missing? did they call in the police?
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um, how does one ask this discretely, I have only one wife .....