Posts by Bart Janssen
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I agree with Brian, this is just a smoke screen.
Rankin is a nutjob, but apart from pissing money down the loo there is not much power in the families commission. It could have done some good but it probably can't do much harm. That said it really pisses me off that every news story about her feels the need to refer to the completely irrelevant fact that she wears - gasp - women's clothing!
Meanwhile, serious stuff like Auckland City and questions about $2 billion of motorway will slip to page 3.
You have to admire political gameplaying at this level.
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why else would the government be doing it?
Seriously folks, it's clear that the numbers could have been fudged just as easily to make the tunnel look cheaper eg cost for displacement of 241 families = $1.732 billion therefore the tunnel is cheaper.
So I think we really need a good journalist to track down which business(es) benefits from the government choosing the above ground option and then to track down which politicians are close personal friends who just happen to have frequent expensive dinners with the owners of said business(es).
TLDR This stinks of corruption and I don't have the investigative skills to find it - is there a journalist in the house?
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Who benefits from this?
Seriously, National could have played with numbers and justified either option. As it is they've tried to tell lies about the numbers to justify the surface route.
The question is why?
Spending money isn't bad in a recession, it actually does help the economy recover. So from an economic perspective it is probably better for New Zealand to build a more expensive tunnel than to build a cheaper surface route. So National did not make this decision to benefit the economy or benefit New Zealand. So who does it benefit?
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So having cleaned up the math a bit (Muphry's Law FTW) we are left with planned tax cuts that benefit some more than others.
Which brings us back to the point that tax cuts really do help bring a country out of a recession BUT ONLY if they are immediate.
Promising a freaking tax cut just after the next election is simply trying to buy votes and does F all for the country. Note both (all) NZ political parties do this.
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for a personal apology from English and Cullen ...
And who said Craig wasn't a patient man :).
... is a copper bottomed lying shit.
Now that's a nice image. However, really they are both politicians and good ones so what else did you expect :).
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Guys if you want to play with maths please get it right.
DPF it is not statistically acceptable to present 3 income points, it does not represent the data properly and you know that.
Keith please get the numbers right (per year not per week).
Take home messages for me are
National's tax cuts won't happen.
The tax cuts we did get were those promised by labour and subsequently tweeked by National to give (slightly) bigger cuts to the higher income earners.
Promised tax cuts are promises made by politicians, doing maths on those promises is pointless.
Both Keith and DPF have strong political views, which they have both allow to colour their blogs. Note I don't object to that.
Oh and as an aside accepted economic theory says tax cuts can help break a recession but they need to happen early. promising a tax cut just after the next election is a political solution not an economic solution.
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So it really doesn't make economic sense to change from a tunnel to overground. Or if it does it's a very small real cost and not the $1 billion being advertised, perhaps more in the order of $1-200 million.
That doesn't seen like a huge cost to make the project less damaging to that suburb.
So the question becomes...
"Why does the government really want to avoid the tunnel option?"
I have no idea what the answer could be. How about a nice conspiracy theory?
But on a personal note if we can't have a tunnel, which I personally kind of think is a cool option how about something more exciting - maybe a catapult that tosses cars and occupants across the gap??
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"Making sure nobody else dies" should not extend privileges to the criminal.
Yes it should. As unfair as it might seem and as understandable as the visceral desire for revenge is, it is a mark of our (mostly) civilized society that we accord alleged criminals with the privileges of society.
Even if you want the criminal punished, in New Zealand that doesn't extend to physical punishment.
Finally if you kill the criminal you can never learn why such an event occurred. Yes sometimes even with the criminal alive you still can't learn anything but at least you have the chance.
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merely symbolic task
You say this as if it was a bad thing?
Symbols are important. Leaving a dead policeman on the street is a symbol as well.
An LAV on the street in the hands of a trained driver is not a hazard. And even if it was, the symbolic act of retrieving a body was well worth any risk.
My opinion of course.
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I have very little for their union mouthpiece.
Agree 100% Craig.
The arseholes using the death of a policeman and the death of Molinaar to pursue their own political agenda make me just go arggh!