Posts by Keir Leslie
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Political parties definitely buy facebook ads & they are certainly not illegal.
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Yeah, I can't see how the Greens picnic obviously differs from Dotcom's party.
Worth noting fundraisers are obviously legal 'cause you aren't giving anything away --- the reverse in fact.
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Hard News: Crashing the party before it starts, in reply to The Ruminator,
8k's a lot for what Bradbury was offering.
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Hard News: Crashing the party before it starts, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I can't see why Parliament wouldn't mean "at any time". Treating, after all, is basically bribery, and I can't see why it should be acceptable to bribe a voter to vote for you at any point in the electoral cycle. Although, as one Graeme Edgeler pointed out on Tuesday, the treating provisions are a bit archaic.
Anyway, I don't think free wi-fi would be treating, I think it would simply be s216 bribery, if it were illegal.
I'm still chuckling at Bradbury's clumsiness.
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Hard News: Lowering the Stakes, in reply to TracyMac,
But these Sunday cyclists, pretty much by definition, are out and about on the weekends, generally using quiet or scenic roads. I have little sympathy for the poor motorist forced to spend some time travelling at a slower pace: the world doesn't revolve around the maintenance of the highest possible speed of cars.
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Not having cows is a good thing because it reduces emissions. That's the whole point of a tax on a bad thing: to stop people doing the bad thing.
New Zealand has a responsibility to reduce our own emissions in line with our international commitments. We don't have a responsibility to invest in speculative attempts to save the planet through science.
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In fact, we could even reduce the number of dairy cows and increase our export earnings at the same time.
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Good grief Bart if you don't want to people to think you are supportive of subsidies to dairy farms don't suggest the state pays for a massive speculative R&D project to benefit dairy farmers! I mean I am sorry but it's an absurd position to take: no taxation of blatant externalities directly threatening humanity's future and a large government spend-up and we're not allowed to call it a subsidy --- all premised on the principle that under no circumstances can the number of cows in New Zealand shrink.
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Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to Bart Janssen,
But the point is that you are proposing to subsidise dairy farmers -- twice, in fact, once by paying for this R&D program, and once by proposing we not impose the polluter pays principle.
The whole point of polluter-pays is to make it more expensive to pollute, and by not imposing that principle, by not pricing in the externality, you really are subsidising dirty dairying --- and in a particular pernicuous way.
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Nor am I suggesting that the dairy industry should be further subsidised to increase the herd.
No, just proposing a large spend up on research that will benefit the dairy industry, to be paid for by tax payers --- as opposed to the implementation of a polluter-pays market based system that puts the cost of carbon on the people most responsible.