Posts by Bart Janssen
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Up Front: What's the Big Idea?, in reply to Emma Hart,
And the biggest demographic change with age in terms of voting is that the new ones are not voting. They don't support one party or another, they just don't vote. They're not inspired to. And I think it's particularly clear in Britain right now, but also the case here, that the right is pretty okay with that. The stuff that happens - like the housing crisis - just happens, it's nothing to do with government, and this is all complicated and boring and all the parties are the same and nothing ever changes so why bother, right?
Dead right.
And from everything I've seen NONE of the parties want them to vote.
National is very happy courting the boomers and businessMEN
NZF - well duh
ACT would like there to be young capitalist pigs and there are some but it's such a small number
Labour has Little doing his best to pack in more middle aged men into the ranks and never says anything remotely interesting to anyone under 50leaving The Greens - who for some unfathomable reason decided to pick old folks to go to parliament and made damn sure the one young person who has actively engaged younger voters has no chance of going to parliament.
It's hard to blame the next generation for saying fuckit why bother.
I don't think it's because they don't care - rather none of the parties has given them the slightest reason to choose any of them. With the exception of The Greens none of the parties have policies for anything like the next fifty years they're all just focused on the next 9 months and maybe 3 years beyond.
If anyone presented the younger voters with actual policy designed for a real future that benefited them they might just vote.
Wouldn't that be interesting.
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A thwack of dildi?
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Hard News: Every option has costs, every…, in reply to Sacha,
Verily. Those who can afford to dine out can bloody well pay the price, rather than it landing on the shoulders of low-paid workers.
Just to reiterate there are a whole bunch of restaurant owners who make a point of paying decent wages with reasonable conditions. And yes it costs a bit more to eat there - money well spent I think.
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Hard News: Every option has costs, every…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Are you saying that that's too broad, that it doesn't cover what a degree used to be, that it isn't actually being measured against by NZQA, or that degree holding should be limited to institutions that were universities in 1965 or whenever because tradition?
No, all I'm saying is that our acceptance of what constitutes a tertiary education has changed. Almost certainly for the better.
But immigration still operates the same way it did in 1965 and assumes any tertiary education is good enough to qualify for a student visa.
That's the disconnect. What used to be a slam dunk obvious gain for NZ eg overseas student gets degree stays in NZ and become useful citizen - is not so simple now because tertiary education has changed.
If you were cynical you might suggest that some tertiary institutions exist solely to create a fee-paying path to citizenship. That probably isn't what was intended.
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Hard News: Every option has costs, every…, in reply to linger,
Yes. The basic problem (and one that’s become increasingly more serious over the past decade) is that in NZ, relevant qualifications and skills generally aren’t as highly valued, and don’t translate to as high a wage increase
It's really pretty annoying to have a parade of business people trotted out on the news to complain about how their business couldn't survive without the immigrants.
What's not made crystal clear on the news is those businesses are paying minimum wage and demanding long hours in pretty hard conditions. In short, nobody who isn't desperate wants those jobs at those wages.
Immigration policies that bring in workers at the bottom of the pile help to keep wages as low as possible.
This isn't an accident, it's a deliberate policy setting to support businesses that would (and should) fail under a living wage.
If you can't run a restaurant and pay a living wage then the question is "should you be running a restaurant?", not "how can we get cheaper labour?".
Sadly that might mean fewer restaurants in Auckland, but the ones that are left will be those run by people with morals.
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Hard News: Every option has costs, every…, in reply to Russell Brown,
as highly trained New Zealand chefs and other hospitality workers were opting to work overseas.
Where they get paid more???????
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Hard News: Every option has costs, every…, in reply to Katharine Moody,
the infrastructure deficit in NZ is a massive, massive problem
This is the key.
If we had the capacity to house and transport and fairly pay these immigrants we wouldn't be having the panic attack we are having.
For the last two to three decades we've had governments, both national and local, that have focused on cutting costs. Lower taxes, lower rates, get re-elected.
But the only way that works is if you stop spending rates and taxes on things like roads and drains and medium density housing and public transport ...
So we've spent the last couple of decades patting ourselves on the backs saying gosh we pay less tax than anyone in the world ... and now we discover our cities just don't work, they're broken.
And instead of looking at the problem honestly and deciding to spend the money (taxes and rates) to fix our broken cities we blame immigrants?????
FFS
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Hard News: Every option has costs, every…, in reply to Russell Brown,
Mmmm yeah I’d like to see the real numbers on this, I suspect that a lot of the export earnings in this area come at diploma level, not degree.
Fair call. You may well be right.
Part of that is the expansion of the definition of "tertiary degree". Way (way way way) back when, it used to mean a university degree and nothing else. That was elitist, in the sense that it marked those with the privilege and training and yes to some degree the intelligence to get a uni degree as somehow "better". Of course they weren't better, they just had different aptitudes and skills and yes the privilege of their communities to go to Uni.
That doesn't diminish the value of university trained people to society, they are useful and society does need them.
Anyway at some point folks decided to include all sorts of post high school training and learning as tertiary education. Rightly so. All those training/education schemes "add value" to the people who take them and add value to society.
The question though is whether all those tertiary education institutes have the same value with respect to immigrants? Some certainly do and some certainly don't but I don't think immigration policy distinguishes at all.
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Hard News: Local journeys on the cusp of…, in reply to Gerrit,
You have to be a brave cyclist to be in the advance box with a double decker AT bus behind you
You'd have to be a certifiable bus driver to want to run over a cyclist just because you can.
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Hard News: Local journeys on the cusp of…, in reply to Russell Brown,
Has anyone ever seen these "special marked areas"?
Haven't seen any of those in Auckland yet. However they do somewhat rely on cars allowing cyclists to go to the front of the queue, this of course is the intended use of the green box now appearing at a lot of intersections.
BTW the advanced stop box (the green box) is for bicycles only. How many drivers know that?