Posts by Tom Semmens
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Speaking of freeview, and general discussions of poor customer service, I was in Dick Smith's at St Lukes on Saturday and I was looking at the freeview decoders. The sales staff girl who came to talk to me not only knew all the answers to my questions how to connect the freeview box to my TV which already has a HDD PVR/DVD player, skydigital decoder, X-box and my torrent playing laptop (we download over the wireless network to this laptop so we can watch movies directly) but when she found out I have a big LCD set she actually persuaded me NOT to buy the $249 freeview decoder, telling me to wait until the HDTV version comes along.
Upshot of her excellent customer service was she didn't get a $249 sale - but I know exactly where I will be purchasing my $400-500 HDTV freeview decoder - from her.
Until then, its TVNZ on demand thingy for me.
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"...one survived the trip and i took it to work. i displayed it to an isreali workmate, and stated my intention to devour it. he asked to smell it, to see if it was 'authentic' (and not just a supermarket con-job).
his eyes misted over, and he stated, "that smells like my childhood".
how was i not going to share half with him?"
You should have eaten it in front of him and with great relish, and then asked if he felt closer the Palestinians... -
WH said: "...But there must be more ways for government to effectively reduce the basic cost of living - from lowering the cost of vehicle registration (for instance) through to ensuring that water, power, phone services, banking and local government rates are priced at more affordable levels..."
But why should the government effectively subsidise the debt position of people who refused to entertain the idea of a capital gains tax when times were good, and who have now got THEMSELVES in the shit debt wise?
it's the free market, baby. To many New Zealander's seem to think capitalism is great, as long as it is a one way bet.
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Rich said <But the NZ economy has a massive imbalance between those who live off earned income and those who live off capital (not helped by the way our "Labour" government has unaccountably maintained a tax system biased towards rentiers)>
It's because we have a rentier psychology, that’s why. Most New Zealander's ambition is to acquire enough income to allow you to achieve the kiwi dream of an early semi-retirement to enjoy your BMW, boat and bach. We have no real entrepreneurial tradition, despite what we kid ourselves. We lack really good managerial talent and therefore rely on collectivist approaches to try and overcome the talent deficit, perhaps inevitable in a small and isolated country like ours but hardly likely to foster entrepreneurship. Until 1973 we were complacent in a highly protected economy paid for by primary produce exported to the U.K. The primary lesson for a small investor from 1995-2000 was only a fool risked their money on entrepreneurial enterprises because we ran our own version of crony capitalism, be it looking after Muldoon's farmers or destroying the economy for the benefit of Myers, Faye and Richwhite. We've now got a two step South Americanised economy - try and get a loan from our foreign owned banks for a start up company built around an idea or an invention. They'll give five minutes - four minutes laughing and one minute while security throw you out.
We've got away with this and with wage stagnation so far because while the massive growth in profits for globalised corporates hasn't translated into higher wages, the property speculation boom and easy credit gave people the impression of increasing wealth and fed our lazy mania for unearned rental income. But now the debt pigeons are coming home to roost.
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Don't the French insist that a certain quota of champagne MUT be sold in France? The sheepmeat industry is supposed to be in a tailspin but that doesn't seem to be reflected in the price of a roast at my supermarket. I am deeply suspicious that price gouging is going on over agricultural products in New Zealand. The first party to suggest that some sort of price control/local quota system for our local agricultural produce be introduced would be onto a vote winner. To me there is self-evidently something deeply wrong and deeply shameful that in a country as rich and as bountiful in food resources as ours most people can't afford fresh fish, decent meat and - now it seems - dairy products.
The Irish starved in 1848 while grain was exported from Ireland because the poor had no money to pay the price on the international market and I've got not a shadow of a doubt the global corporate warriors of our agri-business would happily step down the path to the export pier created through the rioting poor by a new generation of Massey's Cossacks if it meant they could get a few extra shekels for their milk powder in China.
Personally I am quite well set - I lived through the Rogernomics & Ruthenasia 80's & 90's and I swore two things: 1) I would never be beholden to any job, frightened that to lose my job would ruin me and 2) never to fund my lifestyle out of debt. When I want something, I save up for it. So now I am no modern serf, a debt slave to our modern version of an absentee rentier lord - the banks. It also stops me turning into one of those whining and debt ridden members of the mortgage belt so beloved of TV vox pops, who demand the government privatises their capital gain and socialises their losses...
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Well some people on PA might find the idea of living in a branch office economy and having a vanilla shopping mall culture acceptable. I don't. Personally, I'm all for Kiwibank's nationalism. Bank with us and the profits stay here. Seems a perfectly acceptable marketing message to me. I am a nationalist and we need to stick up for ourselves & make our own luck in the world, if we don't then foreign corporates will shaft us quicker than you can say "economic colonialism".
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Oh yes and whatever the latest excuses are for John Key his lack of preparation and seeming lack of knowledge regarding critical policy areas is a very poor look if you contrast it with Helen Clark’s formidable command of all aspects of her government. Perhaps he just doesn’t have her ferocious work ethic?
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"...Splitting china up into various countries a la the former USSR (as suggested by someone upthread) would certainly achieve US objectives..."
Sixty-three years ago the Europeans surveyed their ruined cities and finally realised were trying to force people to live in countries they don't want to live in or engaging in force to maintain hegemony gets you. The aftermath of WWII was massed ethnic cleansing and re-aligning of borders to ensure ethnically homogeneous populations all lived together in the same countries. Only in the ex-Yugoslavia, where Tito used an iron totalitarianism to suppress this historical conclusion of a century and a half of nationalism, did this not occur and the only result of that was to delay the inevitable until the 1990's. The re-drawn nations of Europe then VOLUNTEERILY entered into a form of federation via the E.U. the success of this body is obvious by the queue of countries desperate to surrender some of their sovereignty and join.
It seems to me the lesson of Europe should inform the Chinese leadership that only viable way forward for China is become a federation of autonomous states, otherwise no matter how powerful China becomes, revolt will be just a foreign backer away throughout their anachronistic empire. In the long run all empires built on repression fail, and it seems to me that in the long run a China without its empire is a better bet for world stability and better bet to become a superpower.
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So its NOT OK for the United States to force regime change to get rid of an Arab dictator in Iraq but it is fine for China to get rid of a repressive theocracy? And it is hardly fair to claim that the way Tibet was run in 1949 is a reason for keeping Tibet occupied in 2008. No one (including the Dalai Lama) is saying any new government of Tibet would be a simple return to theocracy. At the end of the day the Tibetan’s see themselves as a distinct ethnic and cultural group in a homogeneous location. The mass migration of Han Chinese has been a deliberate attempt at cultural genocide and it isn't surprising the native Tibetans resent their presence.
And what's so bad about giving Tibet autonomy/independence anyway? We (as in "we, the Western alliance of freedom loving democracies" - that might sound naive, but I am old enough to have visited the GDR and believe me, I know what side of the Berlin Wall I preferred) spent five decades and untold treasure confronting the USSR until it collapsed. The peoples of the Baltic States and the ex-Warsaw Pact threw off a brutal oppressor and the peoples of the Trans-Caucasus, Ukraine, White Russia and all the -stans created new nations. It wasn't the end of the world, and the USSR was consigned to the dustbin of history, where it firmly belongs. Would it really matter if Tibet were allowed to determine its own course? Would it really matter if even China itself broke up into several smaller, freer countries? It might matter to a bunch of brutal oligarchs in Beijing who dream of global power and would have to do without an extra band at their annual military parade but that’s about all as far as I can see.
At lot of people here, during the Urewera terror raid fiasco argued that if Tame Iti and co want to set up a separate country in the Urewera's, well let them. There was a general chorus of approval for Kosovo's independence - and to hell with the Serb minority - on PA.
Surely you have to apply those same standards to Tibet?
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Meh to bad tempered aging men abusing their media privilege to take out their resentment at father time on anyone and anything. It seems to be so de jour just now, but I just find it tedious and embarrassing.
Memo to Mr. Ralston: Study Brian Edwards as a model of growing old gracefully, without rancour, and with good humour. That way you'll stay relevant longer.
I'm afraid I'm in the anti-China camp. I have a naive belief in the superiority of democracy and the universality of human rights. I also believe democracy is something that has been constantly guarded and its biggest enemy today is authoritarian capitalism, be that from the Talley brothers or from Beijing.
Engagement with China under its current autocratic model is simply showing all the global corporates out there that there is an alternative place to make money other than in pesky participatory democracies with their annoying labour and environmental laws. Engagement won't see democracy by osmosis in China, it will see creeping authoritarianism here.
Oh and $500 for a HDTV free view box? Why would pay that?? I live in a high six figure income household with all the latest gizmos, early adopters even (well at least after the first service pack anyway) but sorry I'm not interested in paying $500 for another set top box for largely free to air channels. I never watch much telly during the week, and much as I am curious to see free view I'm not so curious as to part with all that dosh just so I can see John Campbell (sans tie, good grief where have all the standards gone???) do his New Idea impression live in HDTV.