Posts by Kyle Matthews
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Stuff is reporting that one of the residents at the Wellington house is Sam Buchanan. Sam is a long-time community activist/anarchist, active in environmental and peace issues. He certainly will be well known to the police.
In the early nineties the police raided the Auckland People's Centre after a protest and he was batoned in the eye, suffering permanent bone damage and loss of eyesight. I can't remember the exact details, but I think the police paid out for medical bills or something.
I haven't spoken to Sam for most of ten years, but I'd be surprised if he was involved in anything involving firearms. Damage to property, I could understand. Thinking about hurting people? I'd be very surprised.
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There's got to be a story in why TV3 were either invited, or 'accidentally told' to be there for that dawn raid. And were allowed to film about four feet from the door. The 'raid' can't have been that dangerous if civilians were standing directly in the line of any potential fire.
It was very 'Cops'. I half expected an african american family to be dragged out half naked.
Police looking for some good shots of their big day busting activists, needed to bring a TV camera on the only raid near a TV station?
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InternationalObserver, Daleaway, Russell Brown, and particulrly Stephen Judd & Steve Barnes:
I humbly worship at the feet of your literary prowess(es). Truly we have giants among us.
Sorry David, but given that you mistook a normal posting mangled through notebook pasting for poetry, I'm not sure if you should be handing out Nobel literature prizes anytime soon.
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NB - any idea that Auckland is getting more than its fair share of Transit funding should be squashed immediately. It's merely catch up - Auckland has been underfunded for years.
I don't mind the additional funding at all. I grew up in Auckland, I know the system up there is rooted, and money is going to be needed to fix it.
I mind that the first thing out of the new Auckland City Council/Mayor is "we're not going to pay a cent for something in our front yard which will bring heaps of benefit to us as a city. The rest of the city/country should pay for it for us." It's statements like that that give the rest of the country ammunition for pointing out how crappy Auckland/Aucklanders are. As if electing the prick _twice_ wasn't enough.
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For 2005/6 Transit NZ was to spend $330 million state highway improvements and $62 million on state high maintenance in Auckland, out of the general taxpayer fund.
$392 million out of $968 million nationwide - over 40% of the funds.
And yet according to the 2001 census Auckland only has about 28% of the population.
In light of John Banks' comments over the weekend over not paying for the stadium, I vote we reclaim the additional 12%, about $120 million, and whatever amount for this year etc, and use it to pay for the caketin or AMI stadium to be upgraded.
And push the costs for the Minister for Auckland onto Auckland as well.
You gets what you votes for!
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ah yes, the curse of democracy: does one vote for the candidate one wants, or does one vote strategicly ...?
Be interesting to see how that vote would have turned out had it been run under STV. Someone run out and interview a dozen Sweeny supporters and see if they would have ranked Hubbard or Banks higher.
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What, they want you to deliver the mail using a tank?
That would be the bomb. They wouldn't need to go to letterboxes, just drive up the middle of the street and fire postal shells at people's front door.
You'd know your mail had arrived when your front door caved in.
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$21m/1.4m is $15 per household - more than enough for an NZ Post overnight-courier-addressee's-signature-required-A4-CourierPost delivery.
While not disagreeing with the original point about what is essentially taxpayer funded, under-handed, vote for the political party that bought you this policy advertising...
I suspect you could come up with similar figures to this for many major companies advertising their products, who could just as easily advertise with a maildrop.
There are reasons why companies use TV advertising above those methods however. I throw away anything in my mailbox that looks like advertising by default for example.
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The difference, and I'm not saying that you're wrong, is that tertiary students are all (technically) adults. Different standards are applied once people hit 18. Standards often relating to how self-reliant and responsible for their own actions they are expected to be.
There's some children in the tertiary education system - increasingly high school students are tacking a university course onto their last year - and there's adults going back to school to complete their high school education. The former pay, the latter don't.
Age isn't the determining factor for charging for education. Given that people finish high school at differing ages (I finished 7th form at 17, some now finish as late as 19), it's entirely arbitrary, particularly given the increasingly loose boundaries between the secondary and tertiary sector.
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I know what you're saying, but it does pay to keep in mind that the debt a student incurs is a small percentage of the full price of their education. Society(via the taxpayer) still covers something approaching 80% of the course fees.
It's been a long time since the taxpayer paid 80% of the cost of educating a student. In 2002 government funding was 42.2% of the total cost of funding universities in NZ. Domestic fees made up another 18.6%. Comparing those two figures (ignoring international fees and external research etc funding) leaves you with government funding 69.4% of the cost of a student.
That figure will have decreased a reasonable amount in the time since, as fees have risen by 5%/year at all the institutions with the removal of the fees freeze. I would imagine now that it's under 65% - less than two thirds.
Lots of students put as much or more into their education than the government. The government funds about $8,000 on average per student direct to the institution. Any student taking the full amount of student loan will top $11,000 a year, and if they're doing a more expensive course then they'll be up at $20,000 or so.