Posts by Bart Janssen
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Hard News: Time to get a grip, in reply to BenWilson,
Surely there’s a buff for that?
The trinket drops in Heroic HoO, but it's on use :(
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Hard News: Time to get a grip, in reply to BenWilson,
she's a paladin in the retribution tree
Prot FTW.
She'll have to learn to cover her contempt better. Her slots on Breakfast TV with the Nat boy are hilarious for the look on her face as he babbles party line. Sadly she isn't much above babbling party line either.
As for Ms Tizard she has never been able to say anything and I suspect she was trained by her Mom who also was very good at talking a lot without saying anything, basically perfect Gov Gen material.
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OnPoint: Everything has changed until 2014, in reply to Greg Dawson,
I thought we’d already figured out it was all due to the moon?
Don’t be silly, in this thread it’s all John Key’s fault.
I’m not ruling out the possibility that John Key controls the moon, obviously.
I bet the wristband is the remote control device
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OnPoint: Everything has changed until 2014, in reply to Clare Swinney,
OK we've mocked you enough, can you go away please?
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OnPoint: Everything has changed until 2014, in reply to Greg Dawson,
I thought we’d already figured out it was all due to the moon?
Don't be silly, in this thread it's all John Key's fault.
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OnPoint: Everything has changed until 2014, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
if the bloody Opposition had a coherent and credible policy
sad but true
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I think there is something different about this conflict/war in Lybia and the UN involvement. To me the key difference is that two neighbouring countries recently went through regime changes that were remarkably peaceful. I don't think anyone really expected such a thing to occur or even be possible. It suggested that the old pattern of bloody drawn out civil war was not the only way to remove a dictatorship.
And for a moment it looked like Lybia might do the same. And I think everyone held their breath and hoped.
The fact that Gadaffi responded so brutally is what has spurred the UN into action. It isn't that he's different in his brutality or that Lybia is different from any other oppressive regime. It's that Gadaffi is snuffing out the possibility of doing regime changes in a new and more peaceful way.
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Hard News: Libya, in reply to John Holley,
highlighted that air power alone cannot achieve strategic objectives
Something that has been true since WWII and demonstrated in every conflict since. There ought to be a quote about repeating history's mistakes really.
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Hard News: Libya, in reply to chris,
happy to listen to other reasons/ theories for the UN’s selectivity
To be fair I don't think France gets much of it's oil from Sudan.
It's almost certainly true that the high quality oil that Lybia produces (much higher quality than from Suadi Arabia) and the supply of that oil to France in particular might have some role in the UN actions.
But if it's the right thing to do, which based on what little I know seems likely, then who cares?
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OnPoint: Everything has changed until 2014, in reply to Keith Ng,
But what if half the voting population never accepts spending cuts and the other half never accepts tax hikes?
oops sorry long post but kinda disturbed by this stuff given I have to figure out who to vote for this year.
Um but I can't see any party proposing increasing taxation to pay for the things we want. My beef with Labour for the last few cycles is that they've given up on the idea that taxation and government spending can actually do good. Even now they are proposing tax cuts. I expect that from the Nats but from Labour?
And how do we know half the population won't accept taxation? Has anyone actually asked? And I don't mean NZHerald "do you want less money in your wallet surveys" I mean really asked the public if having the government pay for education and infrastructure is a good thing at all then how about we get together and contribute money towards those things ie pay taxes.
I agree we need to change the balance or we're screwed. What scares the hell out of me is that this "doing something" is going to cause more harm than good. You might well change the deficit but so compromise our future by stuffing up education (and yes R&D) etc that we have no future anyway.
To me this seems to come down to a fundamental difference in philosophy. On the National Party side you say free market fixes everything and less government is better hence less taxes and less government spending. The market will fix any problems. Having lived in the USA I'm not convinced.
The other philosophy is that by taxing everyone according to their ability to contribute you can use that money to proved benefits to society that are worthwhile. Stuff we kind of expect from our government, education, health care, infrastructure etc. If you want more things from the government you all stump up and pay more taxes. Much like what you see in most of the countries at the top of the OECD.
For obvious reasons I find the correlation between government spending on R&D and OECD performance particularly compelling, but similar correlations exist for education and health care.
The problem is that Labour doesn't seem to represent that latter philosophy, one starts to wonder what Labour does represent. The bugger for me is that there doesn't seem to be any group of representatives willing to stand for such a philosophy. That suggests to me we're screwed no matter what the current deficit looks like.