Posts by George Darroch
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I haven't seen anyone on my street get their pony. And now no fucking pie!
No-one I know has got any of the promised cheese yet either. Where's my cheese!?!!11!1!??/?!1!?
See, I wasn't depressed after the election, because although I knew it was coming, it hadn't become real yet.
Audrey Young didn't know it was coming, you see. She took Bill English at his word when he said there would be pies and ponies for everyone.
Mmmm, cheese pies.
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...the low hanging fruit of the energy sector.
In a feted University of Otago study (BMJ, PDF), the health and other benefits were found to be significant.
A conservative cost-benefit analysis of this intervention
trial indicated that the tangible health and
energy benefits outweighed the costs by a factor
approaching 2It was also found that NZ has a much worse housing stock, of old wooden buildings, than other OECD countries, and that insulation tends to be deferred in favour of other spending.
If there is a need for infrastructure in this country, insulation is it.
Labour fought the Greens on the insulation fund, and thus didn't put enough money into it to really give it the spread and depth it would have needed to really have a political impact. It's a pity, because it's far more necessary than most of the motorways we're building, and could have been begun years ago. It's not hard to put in place a funding scheme that includes everybody, such as low interest loans for all, with graduated imposition on rental owners. As is significantly increasing the standards for new homes. Labour were coming round, but as is so often the case, it was taking a long time, and they went halfway rather than back a strong scheme with greater potential (and some risk).
Warm people are also happy people. I'd wager that people who live in warm dry houses are less likely to get on the next plane to Australia in search of a warm dry country.
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Back on topic
Sixteen hundred more New Zealanders die every winter than during other seasons, with researchers pinning part of the blame on cold, damp and poorly maintained homes.
That's a lot of excess mortality, a lot of preventable sickness, and a lot of cold children and elderly.
Not for nothing does the Economist describe the neglected 'negawatt' as the
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Professor Howden-Chapman is internationally recognised for her research showing for the first time links between New Zealand's cold and thermally inadequate housing, health outcomes and energy use. She has authored 150 publications on this and other public health issues.
That Key is thinking of scrapping insulation funding is criminal. That Helen Clark blocked the issue for 8 1/2 years, and then fought the Greens vigorously over the table on this issue in ETS negotiations is proof that she too is insane. To their credit, once they realised that the policy would be popular with low income potential Labour voters, and an issue to attack National with, they parroted it as their policy all along.
New Zealanders leave because they can't stand the cold, wet horrible conditions, and seek somewhere warm and dry. A pity that place is not their house.
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Angus, that report, which I am aware of, does not say that NZ dairying is the most efficient agriculture in the world, as measured by inputs.
It says that across a range of agriculture NZ is significantly more efficient than the UK, such that food miles do not tip the balance in favour of the UK.
New Zealand has some of the most efficient dairying in the world, in terms of output/inputs. Dairying is low output, but high value use of agricultural land and inputs.
Your argument that the ETS would make NZ agriculture less efficient is also spurious. There are a range of measures that farmers could adopt that would significantly reduce their emissions, at low cost, but without incentive they have not seen significant uptake. This will not solve all of their problems however - research (which should have been paid for by farmers until Labour backed down) is being undertaken to reduce methane emissions from ruminants.
Climate change is a very serious business, and ultimately some sectors will have to wear some pain. It What farmers are currently demanding is that we either wear the entire cost for them, or do nothing. Neither is an acceptable solution.
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The farmers in question are amoung the worlds most efficient users of carbon/kg of produce, they are by world standards the complete opposite of polluting.
{{Citation needed}}.
I call bullshit on this one.
It is uncontroversial among climate scientists that dairying is a major source of greenhouse emissions, intensive application of fertilisers causes further emissions, and that the emissions per unit of food are much greater than in most comparable forms of agriculture.
(Rice and palm oil are major emissions sources, particularly where large scale drainage and clearing occur.)
Sounds like the kind of bold and false assertions that many of our farmers continually make.
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ACT want to scarp that one I'm afraid - "waste of money".
What we got, after a very hard fight with Labour from the Greens, was $1billion for the insulation of state houses.
What I and others wanted, and kept asking for Labour to back, was a roll-out of insulation to every house in the country. A policy that excludes renters, home owners, and the large majority of the population is quite easy to scrap.
The people of NZ deserve to live in warm, dry homes. They shouldn't have to go to Australia to do so.
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Because it would be one of the less effective ways of helping poorer people...
A tax free bracket on the first $X000, paid for by pollution taxes and/or a top tax bracket... The Economist (25th April 2006) rates NZ's current tax structure as among the flattest in the world, with only the top 10% paying significantly more than under a 25% flat tax regime.
Ah hell, is it worth repeating myself endlessly? I might as well give it one more go.
Free dental care for all. Proper insulation in every house. (These to be paid for by deferring/cancelling new multi-billion dollar motorways). Minimum wage $15.
Sound, popular, ambitious but affordable. Failed opportunities for a once popular and competent Government.
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Political Correctness gone mad!
It's time to remove the rules and regulation surrounding zoos, which are an assault on our rights.
People should be allowed to visit zoos without the state interfering in their lives and mandating unfair and costly 'fences' and 'moats', which harm the livelihoods of small zoo operators. People are good judges of their own self-interest, and animals are thus of no potential harm. The only harm is that inflicted by the state. Children will have their parents to decide what is best for them.
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She's obviously a clever young woman. Plus she must've ran a good campaign to win a previous Labour stronghold.
I wouldn't be so sure. While I think the good people of Auckland Central elected a poor candidate, there is no reason to believe that they felt Tizard represented their interests well.
Labour patronises a lot of communities, in both the positive and negative senses of the word. They've done it well, in some cases very well. However, to sustain that support in the long term you have to deliver to expectations. This election result seems to represent a loss of confidence from the sectoral and geographic communities that have delivered for Labour in years previous. I look at various polling booths around the country, and see slumps in both support and turnout where it matters for them.
They'd be well advised to work on building up those relationships again, talking to the people, and providing them with a clear sense that Labour will deliver what they want.
And it would be nice to see the Greens to start to attempt this in a serious and sustained way, outside the small communities they currently target. It's all very well to get 588 votes at the Aro Valley Community Centre, to Labour's 620....