Posts by Tom Semmens
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If it was my daughter I'd just ring up a few mates and then go and give them a good hiding, with a promise of more where that came from if they didn't stop. As long as the parents of another victim were prepared to swear on the bible you were at their house the whole time, I doubt the police would investigate to hard.
Problem solved at a community level.
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I do hope this website initiative isn't the justification to never revisit the concept of a youth radio network
Exactly!
How can you have a radio station that doesn't broadcast on a radio frequency? It isn't actually a radio station, it is a youth orientated web site. Calling it a radio station is an abuse of the English language.
We still don't have a youth radio network.
The interview with Cecile Richards was quite good though.
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And therein lies the rub, certainly. But if you look at it as the net cost of maintaining a skill and technical base, it’s still a lot less than the necessary direct funding would cost you.
But isn't it time we grew up and started looking at using scarce government seeding capital over generational time spans to build sources of income that don't rely on a boom/bust cycle that opportunistic individuals can exploit?
Someone up the thread talked about "electing a government with 1950s attitudes" which is true, but that government attitude reflects the wider feckless Kiwi way of doing business. We are forever looking for get rich quick schemes, the next big thing to quick wealth. A yellow gold rush. Exploiting the land beyond it's carrying capacity for white gold. Drill a hole and hope for an oil bonanza without a blow out. LOTR? Cash in on the rush of work, buy a van, hire some people. Then demand government subsidies when the rush wanes. Private profit in the good times, taxpayer subsidies in the bad. Not for us the slow accumulation of capital and plant over decades, not for us a well paid job working in factories making things the world wants.
Kiwi entrepreneurialism is defined as work hard, and build up your own little business from scratch with several hundred grands worth of capital equipment (and constant cash flow issues because you've geared up to buy investment property). Then expect that the social contract is that that business and the capital appreciation on your home will allow you to sell up and retire early to enjoy some rental income from investment properties and the beach, boat and BMW.
Maybe the film and TV business can become something that will, eventually, stand on its own two feet and have a huge investment base and make us a fortune in I.P. But that isn't the argument I am seeing here. All I can see is people begging the government to invest not to create something permanent, but only to avoid them being left behind in a race to the bottom.
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Let’s be real – the movie business is asking the government to pick winners, one of those winners being them – which is fine as far as I am concerned, in this country we have no tradition of banks funding venture capitalism and chronic lack of captial is a major problem for NZ business that has always be solved by the state.
But I have read nothing here that persuades me that thirty million dollars of subsidies and tax breaks to a foreign owned movie making business is a better use of taxpayers money than giving thirty million dollars in tax breaks and subsidies to a local manufacturing company that actually makes and exports things from here and that is screaming for a break. And a local manufacturing company, once it gets going, almost certainly won’t come back year after year asking for a bigger and bigger taxpayer handout.
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So you’re saying that only the uploader downloaded them, and Whaleoil says he downloaded them… The obvious conclusion here is… interesting
The conclusion I would reach is that Cameron Slater uploaded the file, then downloaded it, in order to make up a story that would score a hit against one of self-styled enemies. I hope (hah!) that the media who seem to have switched from interviewing kiwiblog to whaleoil for their source for a story take note.
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So we can pat ourselves on the back and tell ourselves we are canny cut-rate Hobbits who do as they are told and work harder than anyone else, but really it was just favourable tax deals and a low dollar that brought movie and TV production here? Hollywood itself is also feeling the effects of what is just another attempt by globalised movie businesses to play countries off against one another in a relentless race to the bottom. We can talk about IP, but Americans don’t want to see more than a tiny bit of us.
Now consider another business in the news lately – the Denheath custard square . It has got IP – with proper protected designation of origin there can only be one Denheath custard square. It trades on adding value to our established food industry. It pays all it’s taxes. It is located in provincial NZ, a place in need of good manufacturing jobs. It currently only has 10-12 employees but it is on the up and look at Hostess Brands who make those God awful Twinkies – they have 18,000+ workers. The sky is the limit for sweet snacks.
So if I had a few hundred million in government subsidies, well, they work just as hard in Timaru as they do in Auckland. Why shouldn’t it go to all the Denheath Custard Square companies out there? People who actually make and export something? People who pay all their taxes? People who provide much needed regular, full time manufacturing jobs in provincial NZ. Businesses that can’t up sticks and leave if the government doesn’t bow and scrape to them. As opposed to the money going to subsidising foreign film conglomerates that just want to play us off against everyone else to see who they soak the most taxpayers dollars from to ship back to whereever they have an HQ? People who can turn the employment tap on or off at their discretion?
Making custard squares in Timaru or whatever might not be as glamorous as seeing your name in the credits for Spartacus, but in the long run I suspect that sort of industry might be better for our economy.
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Hmmm, no 'update' from David Farrar today. Maybe the big bananas in the Nat HQ have given him the hard word.
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The 21st century is not as liberal as the late 20th century in many respects.
Wishing something were so does make it true. I think John Roughan would be much happier living in Salt Lake City. People’s views are more nuanced, particularly as we now live in the time of social media and with it the end of shame.
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John Palino first removed him to “the North”. Now he has fled as far as Melbourne. One hopes he never slept with Bevan Chaung, lest Richard Branson receive a panic stricken call about the availablity of the Virgin Galactic.
On Thursday, the revelation Brown had helped Chuang get a council-related job saw the moral compass swing 180 degrees against him.
Actually what happened on Thursday was this little revelation was spotted hanging up on the wire in no-mans-land between the two now fully entrenched sides exchanging furious bursts of chattering media machine gun fire.