Posts by Paul Campbell
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Sigh - $700 for something that costs US$400? - are they going to be plated in gold? at today's exchange rate that US$400 is NZ$505 .... I predict the "I'll unlock your iPhone for $50" people will do a brisk business
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ooh ooh please please - can we in Dunedin just build a wind farm down there rather than the silly stadium (if you read the local paper apparently our rugby team is so good we're basing all our future economic development on the bucket loads on money it's going to bring in)
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Quite apart from Comalco I've been wondering about energy in general - why do we shift it betwen islands or rather why does it cost the same on both islands if we apparently lose 1/3 of it getting it there (my long ago recollection of the efficiency of the Cook straight Cable was that 2/3 of what you send in gets to the other side) - wouldn't we be better off charging what it costs, have people put their data centers in Clyde and run fiber down there instead?
(OK, not Clyde, there's still that fault line under the dam to consider, but you know what I mean)
Equally if you have to run Huntly the extra Kyoto costs ought to be bourne by those who need them ....
But Auckland needs power you say .... maybe not forever - maybe it's too big and we need to grow elsewhere instead, an isthmus a kind of a silly place to put a big expanding city ... the alternative is that those of us down south are subsidising its growth - I hear a lot of people outside Auckland griping about it these days, about what a drain it is on the economy, all the tax money goes there, they always win the lotto, what a pain it is to have to fly there to leave the country (and through that annoying airport, someone suggested the other day that we should sell it off to the Canadians .... and make them take it) ..... I understand that half of you live there, the other half of us don't.
What I do seriously wonder about is how windpower is going to work day to day if it gets really really big - seems to me that it doesn't solve peak needs - it might be a calm day - we still need that peak production - on the other hand we'll probably be turning power production on and off ... seems to me that hydro and wind are a great mix - we'll just shut the hydro off and let the lakes fill when the wind blows right? - problem with that is that the existing dams can't make any more peak power than they did when they were built - what we need to do is pony up and add some more penstocks and generators to the existing dams so we can play that sort of game - maybe then things like Huntly won't be required
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Actually the best train trip in the country used to be the over night trip between Auckland and Wellington - not because of the wonderfull views (it's night time) or the amazing rolling stock - but because for some reason that trip seemed to bring people together in a way others didn't - you were up all night with strangers, playing cards, drinking tea, etc etc
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only time I ever got one was the day after turning up to the Honolulu airport at 2am with 2 very tired children to discover the plane had been cancelled - turns out that those people reading their business sections take a very very dim view of small children
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Craig I understand that but what I'm trying to do here is to suggest a way out here - I think that civil law should not discriminate and having 'marriage' only being available to straight couples is barbaric - civil law shouldn't care whether marriages or civil unions are performed in a church or not.
Maybe we should go to the French style of marriage where there are two ceremonies - a civil one at the town hall and a formal one usually in a church.
There are a bunch of people who throw their hands up at the thought of 'gay marriage' - I think we should give them an out by simply saying that while the state may accept all unions we don't require that their god does - those denominations that want to keep fighting over the issue will (like the Anglicans for example), but it will be their problem rather than ours, others wont even consider it a possibility and some will welcome gay people into their churches and get them hitched. Athiests like me will make our own decisions for ourselves not having to bother with what the various religions think I should do
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I mostly agree - but if you want to have "Civil Unions" and "Marriage" as different forms of recognising partnerships that's great - it's just that both those options should be open to everyone - anything else is discrimination
There is a religious issue here and I think that acknowledging it and giving the Destinies et al an out is the right way to do it
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This whole gays can't get married thing is really silly. The most formal wedding I ever went to was for a couple of lesbian friends (or rather family) - it was in California so no legal marriage - My kids asked me the other day (7 years later) "are they really married?" because they were part of the ceremony as small kids. On the other hand in California we had 2 female neighbours who were legally married (one had used to be a man - apparently there it's not BEING married that's illegal it's GETTING married that is).
I think the right societal compromise is NOT civil unions - it ought to be marriage for everyone - I understand there are some people for whom there are religious issue and I think we should allow them to refuse to marry people in their churches if their religion has a problem - but they shouldn't be allowed to tell other people what to do in their churches (or whereever)
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After years living in the US I could never get a straight answer as to whether American Football did well on TV because it had all those gaps that commercials fit well in or whether the game had changed to provide the gaps so that TV would accept it more .... usually people would just give me that "are you taking the piss" look
So I gotta ask .... is that what's happening to rugby?
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Well we all need kids whether they're ours or someone elses - we have a health insurance system where we on average pay in when we're young and healthy and collect when we're older - we're all depending on there being a new generation out there keeping the economy ticking over and paying taxes for that to work
Income splitting is another tax issue that's being discussed a lot at the moment - at its simplest it works by moving the tax steps out so they kick in at twice the values they do now and then letting a couple claim their joint income at that rate - it particularly helps people with very different incomes - like stay at home mums (or in my case a spouse who's gone back to Uni) - it doesn't help the working poor if they're both working - and in fact to keep the total tax take neutral you have to raise the taxes on everyone else (or more likely you move the steps which has the same effect).
One argument is that the self employed already have this benefit because they can prorate income through a corporate shell - it's true - and my accountant periodically tries to encourage me to set up something so my wife can do this and I keep lecturing her about how the whole point of my corporation is to pay tax (in NZ rather than the US, where I consult - I think you should pay where you live), not avoid it.
But Craig isn't going to like this one either - as I said it benefits the married at the expense of the single - in the US, where it's called "filing jointly", there's a (quite small) singles movement against it claiming discrimination