Posts by Bart Janssen
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you have to wonder if they had received better childhood intervention tragedy might have been averted
I suspect you could say the same about most criminals.
It argues that one of the most complex and difficult things we humans do is raise other humans from childhood. Because there are such huge differences between each individual it becomes and enormously difficult task. So difficult that we (society) get it wrong a lot.
I think we are getting better at it though.
cheers
Bart -
"Oh, so it's an Australian accent."
Will-power is over-rated
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You have got to be kidding.
The All Blacks just finished the last game of the never-ending season.
The Rugby posts have all been taken down and the big white ovals have been painted.
The sun has been out and in some places it's actually dry underfoot.
New green carpet has been laid on the concrete.
DAMMIT it's cricket season!
In a little over a month they'll kick the boys and girls in white off the grass again.
Then you can rabbit on about how nice Richard Kahue will look in his new tight top but for now...
Arrrgggh I hate Rugby in summer, they're not even playing and all you can talk about is...
sigh only two more games at Eden Park outer oval, sniff
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who is saving by getting us all to pay for their share of polluting
It could be that Sacha, but my gut feeling is that it's probably more direct than that. Avoiding having to pay for pollution will prevent someone losing money but it won't make someone a quick billion. Someone is planning to make a lot of money from this and they'll be thinking short term because this really will only be a delay.
The committee will eventually conclude that the scientific consensus was indeed correct and anthropogenic global warming is real and we will have to honour Kyoto. And because we will have delayed the penalties/taxes will be higher. So someone who was going to have to pay for pollution will just get a couple of years before they have to pay, and there will be backdated costs.
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Who is making money from this???
Serious question and I don't have the skills to track it down. But someone is making enough money from this piece of politics to make funding ACT worthwhile.
I simply don't believe this is politics. To me it looks like corruption. New Zealand will lose money over this delay but someone in NZ will make money from it and my bet is that person has wound up the Rodney doll and sent it on its merry way.
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My guess is there is nobody in NZ more frustrated by Shane Bond's failure to ever play more than one test without an injury than Shane Bond.
It was kind of sad that we spent so many years waiting for him to come back from injury. It always annoyed me that commentators would talk about the team as if he was part of it, when sadly he never really was.
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Argghh Inzamam - the memory still makes me shudder.
My favourite NZ team comes from the time of Coney as player and as captain. During that time we had two players of genuine class (Hadlee and Crowe). The rest of the team would never had been picked in an Australian side. But they did what I love about really good teams, they each played their role above and beyond their ability. They set aside personal glory shots for the good of the team. And as a result they trusted each other.
For the last 10-15 years I've seen that will to perform for the team disappear and with it the trust that the other guys will do their best.
We don't have any players of real international class in the side (we could argue about Vettori), but they are good and sometimes better than good. But they don't have that magic that a real team has.
Without wishing to pick on him but McCullum exemplifies it, he is more interested in his chance to get more runs batting higher in the order than in what might be best for the team.
Really great coaches get average players to perform at a higher level. And just one comment about our current coach. He stated that he wanted to focus on our ODI performance and that if tests suffered because of that then so be it. Economics demand that ODIs are the priority. So lets judge Bracewell on how much he improved the ODI performance, he started in 2003
2002 rating 95 8th
2003 rating 97 8th
2004 rating 120 2nd
2005 rating 111 4th
2006 rating 112 4th
2007 rating 112 3rd
2008 rating 113 5th
from ICC-cricket December rating (except for 08 which is November).So Bracewell did better than 8th. Good luck to Moles he only has to do better than 5th :).
cheers
Bart -
Man this post was confusing, I kept having to scroll up to remind myself this wasn't Hadyn, which was obvious since you said you liked cricket more than Rugby! Fortunately, I figured out that Hadyn wasn't staring at Chris Cairns' tight pants.
... but I vote for us sending McCullum and Ryder out to open the innings by putting the ball into the stand and make a dash 300 by 50 overs.
For shame Kyle. Any purist will tell you that the reason we suck so much at the moment is because Bracewell has no clue how to select players for test matches. GT is dead right, the only reason McCullum looks any good in ODIs and 20/20 is because the opposition aren't allowed to field properly.
I love our team, I love NZ cricket and I love test matches. I just wish we'd stop putting dashers like Ryder and McCullum in test matches where you need real batsmen. It does them no credit and it really doesn't help us compete.
Soon we will have a real coach that can tell the McCullums of the world to STFU and bat at No.7 like a proper keeper. And explain to our No3 that really, no really it's OK to defend two balls in a row!
Sigh
Note I really do think McCullum and Ryder are amazing talents, but I also think they need a good coach to get them to play the right role at the right time.
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Hi Ben
Was POTUS the final conclusion for an acronym for the recession? I didn't get a vote,
Vote??? heh that was just my suggestion and yes I was aware of the other meaning for the acronym - it was rather the point.
But I don't expect it will catch on, but there were a bunch of nice suggestions in the thread :).
cheers
Bart -
Declaration first: I am NOT an economist, my knowledge in this area is limited to some general reading and listening to friends whom I trust, friends who DO know what they are talking about. So my comments are more for discussion than made from certainty.
Speaking personally, my answer to the depression is to tighten and save. Pay off debt. But I don't think that is good for the economy.
As I understand it you are dead right. Economic theory seems to say that in a depression, governments need to stimulate economy by spending tax money (infrastructure if you are National, healthcare/education if you are Labour) AND freeing up tax dollars by tax cuts. Countries that did that quickly in the 1930s did better than countries that didn't, but that was 80 years ago and times have changed.
Tax cuts can be a problem if, instead of spending the money, people just save it. Since saved money doesn't immediately stimulate the local economy. Although you could argue that having money in kiwisaver allows the fund managers to invest in the local economy.
That said, it seems that what National has promised is the best bet to stimulate the local economy. Much as I might personally hate the idea of kiwisaver being undermined.
BUT
For NZ the local economy is so small that it is almost irrelevant. As far as I can tell from my right voting friends, the biggest complaint about the Labour Government is that they haven't done a thing to resolve our balance of payments black hole, if anything it's worse now. I personally think it has less to do with Labour than with the fact none of the NZ governments have made any serious impact on the external deficit. I also personally think the best solution for NZ is to have the best education system in the world and let educated kiwis do what the governments haven't done.
In short what worries me most about the coming POTUS is that it will make it hard for other countries to spend money on what NZ sells. That, I think, is why all countries that sell primary commodities are seeing their dollar fall relative to the rest of the world.
I have no idea what changes will have to happen to get NZ to earn more money than it spends. I don't see any indication that National has a plan for that or that Labour has a plan either.
To me it looks like National is a party that wants power more than a party that is willing to risk power to do the best thing for New Zealand. But I guess we'll see over the next three years.