Posts by Kyle Matthews
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
I've had a lot of conversations over the last three plus years about how Wellington is a geat sucking leech squatting on the head of Auckland, and giving little in return. :)
Amusingly, that's how much of the rest of the country sees Auckland, sucking on the rest of us :)
-
What if you obtain someone by peer-to-peer sharing?
Then you should see a doctor immediately and get tested.
-
Kyle, I don't think so. May and possibly are hypotheticals. Relatively few is a fact. That is, compared with the number of parents who smack their kids, relatively few parents abuse or kill them. Unless, of course, you have evidence to the contrary.
'Relatively few' is also a hypothetical, relatively few isn't actually a number. "There may possibly be relatively few people killing their kids". If you went out on the street and asked everyone how many "relatively few" is, you'd get a bunch of different answers, even if you gave them the context of "children killed by their own family under five years old/thousand". In this context a fact is a number, or a percentage, not a relative term related to a term which has no fixed number.
Anyway, when the person said that they may possibly lead onto manslaughter/murder, then the fact that some people have actually killed their kids, is evidence that yes, some parents 'may', 'possibly' murder their kids. The 'relatively few' that have resulted proves the statement 'parents may possibly kill their children'.
But gotta love that term 'relatively few', it's not loaded at all. Go to five funerals and stand up and say that the 2 year old child in the small casket is 'relatively few' and see how quickly a bunch of people smack your head in. Three, five, six, eight etc, are all only relatively few, compared to... craploads. Let's not diminish the problem by labelling it as OK. Six deaths/year/1000 really is six too many.
-
Oh, the money quote (referring to Sweden):
What worries me most in Beckett’s paper is that, on the one hand, he tells us that he is not in favour of corporal punishment but, on the other hand, he puts much effort into arguing against a ban. His main objections against a ban seem to be that a law could be looked upon as an unrealistic ‘quick fix’ and, second, could tie down already overstretched child protection professionals in enforcing the ban. Both these assumptions rely on misunderstandings. First, the Swedish corporal punishment ban was one in a series of protective laws that started in 1928 when teachers were prohibited from physically punishing boys in secondary schools. It was followed by the prohibition of all corporal punishment in Swedish schools in 1958 and successive changes in parents’ rights to punish their children, ending with the final ban in 1979. Second, this law is a firm recommendation by the state not to punish children while the punishment itself is regulated by the maltreatment paragraphs in the criminal code. The main idea behind the law is not to find criminals but to protect children against maltreatment. When professionals in health care and social work understood this basic idea, they felt that the law provided a good platform when discussing with parents different ways of bringing up children. In later years, this has been particularly important in encounters with immigrant families from cultures where corporal punishment of children is looked upon as more normal behaviour. I have more than thirty years’ experience as a paediatrician and I have never met one single professional, whether in health care, social services, the police forces or at school, who has felt overstretched because of enforcing the ban. My experience is rather the opposite, that most professionals feel it as a strength to have the law to lean on.
-
Beckett makes it clear that a ban on smacking or corporal punishment might may us all feel better, but it won't have the desired effect.
If you're going to wave around Beckett like it's gospel, then you should look at the rebuttals - there's a few out there.
Here's one which was published:
-
So, you have no evidence to support this? Given the relatively few kids that are seriously hurt or killed at home, I suspect your theory will never fly.
That's the cunning thing about the words 'may' and 'possibly'. 'Relatively few kids' fits well with 'may' and 'possibly'.
You just provided the evidence to prove his theory.
-
It'll probably take three months or so for exchange rates to start to impact upon prices of macs, and only if the dollar holds. They don't get a completely new stock every week after all.
Renaissance have moved into the retail market recently, I don't know if there's a store up there, but if there is they might have some good 'we just opened' specials.
-
Picture if you will people on the train - rammed together I might add - scanning barcodes on train advertising and doing Christmas shopping. Kind of did my head in.
Is it all done through your phone? Like, do you just click a button on your phone and it sends your credit card and delivers to your house. Or is it just a bar scanner like you get in k-mart which tells you what the barcode translates to - price etc?
-
(And I'm not totally convinced the "family home" should be exempt. It's still "unearned" money (though "improvements" need to be considered) and it *should* even out somewhat in that the cost of the tax to vendors is mirrored in lowerprices for buyers.)
Well that would be:
1. Political suicide. The family home is still very deep in the NZ psyche.
2. Annoying administratively. People (normally) already keep records of what they do on rental properties for tax/trust/etc purposes. When I spend a hundred dollars here and there on my family house, it would annoy the hell out of me collecting receipts to prove for a future write off in 5/10/20 years in the future that it was improvements, and therefore already taxed through my income, rather than capital gains. If houses are your business then yes, you should have to do these things. If one house is your home, then you shouldn't need a lawyer and an accountant to figure out your capital gain amount when you sell it.
3. Hitting middle income earners rather than just people who are wealthy enough to own umpteen bits of property. You'd hit middle income earners if it's a tax imposed because the money is needed, but if the prime purpose is to calm down property speculation, then hitting the family home is just money grabbing.
4. A disincentive for people to sell houses and move. Because if they lose another $20,000 in tax when they sell their house and buy another one, then you're going to discourage people from moving around the country for jobs, training, family reasons, and dampen the property market that we all want to encourage - reasonably priced houses for people to move into as first homes.
-
Kyle, if you're not willing to be part of the solution then you're part of the problem. When the revolution comes it will be fat-cat property owners like yourself who will be first up against the wall.
I'm not sure if my three bedroom ex-Railways house in Dunedin qualifies me as a fat cat property owner. A rather scrawny cat to be honest.
It seems to me that the sane solution to the property 'crisis' is a capital gains tax on everything but the primary piece of property. Hits the property speculators, collects income from the government, and doesn't hurt the family home at all.