Posts by Paul Campbell
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
sigh - I miss skyrockets - every GF I used to put away a few hundred to use later in the year (other people have wine cellars) - came in very handy one year when the army came to our small town and held a terrorist training exercise closing the other end of the street, one of my neighbours brought their canon to the party .....
-
get a nail gun, Bob will understand ....
-
Looks like you wont be eligible for running for the Christian Heritage party then ....
-
Or more properly anyone who hosts a Linux distro mirror (like Ubuntu) that contains a DVD player is probably now breaking the law
-
On the other hand any linux distribution with a DVD player in it is probably now illegal in NZ
-
ok - I think this is a PR myth - I do run a small business - how could they make the paper work any simpler? Keeping my check register up to date is more work (it's a spread sheet - extracting the GST numbers takes a couple of minutes a month, same for PAYE - writing the checks takes longer)
I've done the same in California it was a nightmare
For those who haven't done this in NZ:
- PAYE is every month (or fortnight) you have to write the gross income/tax paid/kiwisaver/student loans/child support (all out of your speadsheet of course, in my case most of those are 0) add up the tax paid column (also already in your spread sheet of course) and write a check
- GST you add up your outgoing money, your incoming money - subtract them and (here's the hard part) divide by 9 then write a check (actually you do the divide by nine first but you get the idea - all of this of course happens in your spreadsheet and all you do is copy down the numbers)
I can't see how it could be easier unless 'tax simplification' is simply code for 'doing away with taxes altogether' but the people who advocate that have obviously never had to balance the books in a small business
-
Angus - I've actually tended to say something along the line of being delighted to see all the "different food and different faces" we now have here in NZ. But honestly what's wrong with "cultural diversity" - it means, well, a diversity of cultures - it's not a hard concept - it means everyone doesn't have to come through the arrivals gate in Auckland and become pakeha - it means bollywood posters at the corner store and those yummy Korean bean-curd fish icecreams, people speaking interesting sounding languages on the bus, it means more than F&C or bangers&mash, it means interesting beer and fresh pasta, Gung Hay Fat Choy in the Octagon, better fireworks at GF than we had when I was a kid, a mosque on one side of the uni and a synagogue on the other and chances for my kids to learn something other than french or latin in high school
to me at least it adds to the richness of my daily life, it's what I loved when I moved to the US and something I'm glad has come to NZ
-
I lived in the US for 20 years - on a wonderfully multicultural street where we were the only straight white couple - we moved back home to NZ a few years back
One of the main reasons we felt we could do that was because we felt that NZ had changed, a lot, even white-bread Dunedin - in fact probably the defining experience was on a trip back home seeing african girls hanging out with their mates at the mall and speaking with kiwi accents - things really had changed.
At a larger level the result of such wonderfully diverse immigration has been to make NZ a much more cosmopolitan place - and the food! 25 years ago when I left there was F&C and fewer than a dozen pretty mediocre restaurants in town - people forget how much things have changed - Mr Brown would serve us compulsory bangers and mash - and claim that's a good thing
But I've had this conversation a bunch of times especially with older or more working class NZers - talking up our cultural diversity, pointing out that it was one of the reasons we moved back - and I hear hesitation in their voices - things have changed and they aren't in control - that's the cultural vein that Winston's mining - it's ugly and Winston's encouraging of it is despicable - I was aghast when Labour brought him into the government last time - personally I'm hoping that NZ First will sink from the political stage this time around (will they use the Winston-walking-on-water-like-Jesus image again this year so I can make fun again?)
-
actually to me it sounded more like a Muldoon moment from decades past (note to Nat MPs - that's not a compliment ...)
-
so you're saying that it's really Brownlee that's the slippery one? .... (or just clueless)