Posts by rodgerd
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Dead right there. Nothing like laying a bit of groundwork for the next hit at the teachers. Joe Public will then see all unions as heretics and oblige our Lords and Masters with cheering, the stacking of wood and waving of torches.
And teachers are behind the 8-ball with so many years of anti-teacher, anti-school, anti-education sentiment. Too many Warick Rogers/Joe wossisname/pick a columnist at random. Beeby ought to be a national fucking hero on a par with Hilary or Kate Sheppard.
I thought things we looking promising from a PR point of view with the contrast between the teachers' miserly offer and the Education head's rather more generous effort, and most folks talking about teachers' action were discussing it in terms of the derisory offer (not even cost of living, etc), with only a few of the "teachers are all dickheads" munters.
Once the Hobbit debacle kicked off, though, it was all "bloody unions, they'll ruin the country" though.
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The bottom line is that the government are spending US$10M to keep that spending here (the US$15M tax breaks don't really cost them anything as that tax money would have been gone if the production left anyway).
This seems to be a point that gets missed - this isn't like Bill English's ETS bribes to farmers, where taxpayers pay actual money out of our pockets to underwrite someone's industry. It's opting to miss out of tax revenue we wouldn't otherwise have and enjoy collecting the income tax, GST, and whatnot anyway. And, of course, not paying dole for a bunch of out-of-work technicians, and, yes, actors. Plus the lack of forclosures on people who can't pay their mortgages and whatnot.
I'm going to break my usual distrust of the Nats by saying "Well done, John".
The devil will be in the details of contracting and employment law changes. I'd like to see them before I relax.
And, of course, AE's mess has managed to shaft the taxpayer (concessions), but the CTU's campaigns for teacher pay and the opposition to the 90-day at-will sacking law. But, hey, I'm informed it was worth it so some people could express their feelings...
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Hobbit and Lord of the Rings are clearly international movies made in NZ. Boy and Whalerider are NZ films. There's a big area in between.
Yeah. One of them had Billy Crystal on stage cracking jokes about New Zealanders monopolising the Oscars. That made me feel pretty good, actually. It's nice to be known for something other than sheep and an adventure playground or two in the South Island. YMMV.
As far as "New Zealand films" goes, well, Whale Rider has a lot going for it, but when you note that Boy got shit from US reviewers for not being "Maori enough" because WR has helped set up a very specific image about what being a New Zealander, and a Maori New Zealander, is all about, well, there's some downsides to that as New Zealand film.
And as far as the glory days of Kiwi film people are thinking back to, well, sure. But a lot of what we think of that period was made possible by cultural and legislative isolation - tight controls on imports, no Internet, hard to leave the country with money, and so on. The Cinema of Unease was great and all, but if Muldoonism is the price to be paid to get it, I'm don't want it.
unparalleled in their unique beauty.
Please. This is jingoistic nonsense. We don't have a lock on spectacular and moving scenary. And given the rate we want to dump shit on it, suck the water out of it, and generally flog it to within an inch of its productive capacity, who knows how long we'll have it for, anyway?
I have always hoped that with his interest in military history, Jackson would one day do a NZ story from the World Wars. There are plenty of incredible tales to choose from.
I'm pretty sure that's part of his interest in the Damnbusters remake, since Kiwis were involved in that. He could do the Battle of Britain, where one of the key figures winning the thing was a Kiwi, but the bit where his political opponents in the British air forces got him arseholed out of his job shortly thereafter might not go down too well in the UK market...
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* the contractor pays any tax, ACC and insurance directly
In most of the contracting I was doing a couple of years ago all three were pretty much pre-requisites from potential clients, precisely because they didn't want to get bitten in the arse. One wanted to sight my liability insurance for that very reason.
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I found Rudman's conclusion pretty silly:
Well, yes. Any half-decent nerd knows that Bilbo was a property owner with a gardener and no need to work for a living; he was, at least, upper middle class, amongst the minor gentry of the Shire. Gandalf's an angel incarnate, and Thorin's an exiled king.
(Bilbo Baggins: To The Manor Born co-starring Penelope Keith)
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At last someone notices the sexism of this whole saga.
Unfortunately for Mr Ruddman's polemic, "cluless", "out of their depth", and inept is not a bad description of Robyn Malcolm's performance as a union rep thus far. Not to mention dishonest.
An accurate description of someone's failings on the job is not actually sexist.
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Plausible. How safe are they already with the way they're doing their contracts/HR now?
Probably safer than they were back then. Friends who were working there at the "and then they backed the money trucks" phase of Weta's existence (immediately after the 20 minute Cannes reel) mentioned to me that if you wanted a gig with Weta it was hard to get hired because they didn't have any real HR at that point - they were growing stupid fast and their admin hadn't really caught up at that point.
I believe they're quite a bit more organised these days.
Do NZ Equity / MEAA / CTU have a moral obligation to be telling the NZ public the truth? Somehow, and maybe it's unfair, I feel that they do have more of one.
They may or may not have an obligation to tell me the truth, but they have an obligation to tell their members and allied trade union membership the truth, unless you're going down the Trotter/IdiotSavant route that "the cause" obviates the need for honest democratic dealings within the unions.
In which case you're a Stalinist wanker.
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Hugs to Robyn Malcom :)
For what?
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I hate Peter Jackson
This seems to be the baseline for rather a lot of people, including a few PASers. He's a rich, he has a private jet, he's successful, he doesn't spend all his time grovelling and wearing a hair shirt, he must be an arsehole Q.E.D.
Given Jackson's one of the handful of people in the world who's got a good track record in producing and directing good movies with huge budgets and making money on a fairly consistent basis - putting him in such rarefied ground as the likes of Spielberg - it's a pretty sad indictment of a chunk of our culture that we fling poo at him for staying here and bringing money and jobs into the country.
People whine and complain that New Zealand celebrates sports too much and not arts and academia, we have a famous success in the arts, and... hmm.
Now would also seem to be an appropriate time for Key to call on all the low cunning, intuition and willingness to exploit inside knowledge that served him well as a currency trader.
I hope he'll take it as an opportunity to demonstrate a good eal for New Zealand. And I find the criticism of the PM for trying to help land a major deal for New Zealand bizarre. Helen Clark jetted across the world to score the RWC. Key damn well should try to save a few hundred million in work for Kiwis, so long as he can do it without making a disasterous deal.
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It's not so much a threat as... what do you carry out the threat in advance and then say you'll stop do it only when they do what you say?
"Dat wuz a nice store you had. Pity somethin' already happened to it. Maybe you should pay us some insurance money for burning it down."