Posts by Kyle Matthews
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I've never assumed that the stadium would be profit-making if it had to pay off all the money given to it at full interest rate loans.
But then again, I can't imagine most sporting and recreation facilities in the city would. Edgar Centre, Ice Stadium. I presume the Cricket Oval isn't paying commercial interest rates on any money given to them.
It's difficult to make any sporting facility work in a small city like Dunedin, it's good that the city helps out through grants, special loans, and just plain investing in sporting assets. Why shouldn't they? The new Carisbrook will be a world class stadium, one of very few rugby stadiums in the world with a roof, it'll bring sporting events into the city, which brings in people, and it'll promote our town to an international audience. The city _should_ be putting in something, the debate should be about how much and how generous the deal should be.
I'm not sure who the front man that you're talking about is (Malcolm Farry?). But, is that a problem? He doesn't control the purse strings, the trust has put forward a plan, indicated how much it'll cost, and is now trying to convince councils and other places to pay for it. The councils will decide what they want to do with their money, and presumably they'll have their own experts look at it and give advice. Have the trust come up with a bad plan which would never work? Are there backhand deals going to his mates for the work or to buy the land? Not that I'm aware of.
I'm involved with the Ice Stadium here in Dunedin. The people that proposed that were all from the group that would run it, they developed the plan, the costs, and they approached the city council. Sometimes people asking for money for something they're involved with is just people who work hard for the good of people and our city, and they're asking for the money because they're the ones doing the work, and if they didn't, no one would.
Ok Kyle, I have to ask, what the hell is one of the above?
It's a motorcross X event with clearly insane people doing backflips and hanging off motorbikes while going over jumps. They're on a world tour. They were at Carisbrook about... 5 or 6 weeks ago? There were about 10 - 12 people there - it was a sell out originally so they opened up more seating. My son loved it. I suffered through it for my love for him.
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Does Mailnga's effort this morning constitute a Double Hatrick? Or is that 6 in 6??
If that was two hat tricks, then if he'd got the 5th wicket next ball, he would have had three.
So no, I think the only person to get four (apparently in the Windies I heard on the radio this morning, this is known as a Bever) is a good enough recognition for it.
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Paul,
In terms of the ORFU having to front up. I was under the impression that the stadium would be owned by a trust, which would include the Rugby folks, but also other members. Obviously they're the prime user, but there are other interests.
I know in the USA stadia are often owned by professional teams, and city councils give them money and tax breaks and whatnot to bring the teams to their town. That's a fairly different situation to what we have here, when the teams are already here and aren't going to leave. Otago, Highlanders, and the All Blacks will all play here at this stadium and that's guaranteed. They have an interest in making the stadium financially viable because it's their permanent home.
Like I said I don't know about the cricket. But cricket is often played on rugby shaped fields in NZ - Auckland, Wgtn and Chch do this with one day cricket. With the roof I thought it would be ideal to put ODIs in the stadium, and everything else over the road at the oval. Perhaps they haven't made it wide enough for that.
I think the other uses to which the stadium can be put depend on the design. The University is putting money and space in there. But it would be an ideal conference venue, and the university hosts about 30 conferences a year, many of which have a couple of hundred people. Car shows, Crusty Demon type events. Maybe the new Wgtn A League team would play one game down here? Craft shows.
It's my understanding that the Caketin has successfully adopted this model of multi-function. Obviously population would limit our ability to do that somewhat, but there's a lot of options which if it's well run could make it viable.
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Whatever one thinks is the rationale behind this bill, it is an anti-smacking bill.
I'll just restate Grant's point in his preface in different language.
The Crimes Bill was the anti-smacking bill, because that's the law that made it assault and illegal. There's nothing in current law which allows smacking, reasonable force has simply included it under case law.
In light of Grant's excellent comments about language framing the debate, I'm starting a very late run on having it called the 'positive parenting bill'. Because clearly it's about changing parenting attitudes and skills and providing a legal framework which discourages the assault of children.
I could just as easily, if Graeme calls it the 'anti-smacking bill' call it the 'anti-assault bill'. Which if we look at the legal terminology (ie, smacking doesn't appear in the Crimes Act, assault does), is much more accurate.
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It is a very popular view that the West's interference in the Middle East is the cause of the problems there today, but based on what I have read, this is not correct. The Middle East’s problems are mostly of its own making, but how those in the Middle East love to blame everyone else for their short comings. I mean to say, they blame Israel for just about every problem they have, which is just ridiculous.
Well I can't say I agree with your history.
But regardless of that, my point was that there are many Islamic countries and countries with lots of Islamic people which are sane, rational, peaceful, and good members of the international community. The key factor clearly isn't Islam, because there's a big set of Islamic countries which aren't exhibiting violent expansive behaviour. There's also non-Islamic countries exhibiting violent expansive behaviour.
Islam isn't the problem. The world isn't that simple.
Even the West Wing knows that - Isaac and Ishmael: http://dmca.free.fr/scripts/thewestwing/season3/thewestwing-300.txt
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Well, I don't think 30,000 people are going to go to every game of footy that's put on. If we presume that test matches and finals of domestic competitions, if we ever make one, are going to sell out, that's maybe two games a year. 20,000 people would be a better estimate for a 'normal' game. Major problems are only going to happen at the 30,000 people games, and one or two nights of traffic chaos a year is a small price to pay. We put up with the festival of speed which shuts down state highway one and other roads for 24 hours. If we want to talk about traffic holding our city back, how about they close down George Street to traffic. That'd make a big difference to the heart of our city.
And there no parking at all around the stadium during the day, because of all the university and polytech employees and students. In the evening and weekend though, there's a few thousand carparks within four or five blocks. And a third of the people going to the game are going to walk because they live near campus, the stadium is right by the railway line, so trains could bring people up from South Dunedin and the railway station. And there's a massive park just over the road that they parked cars on for the cricket final. That'd hold 1000 cars no problem. That's a much better parking situation than Eden Park, the Caketin, or Jade have.
I think Wellington has a pretty good model for a stadium - using it for conferences, events beyond sports, car shows, music festivals, and not having the focus be entirely on the grass, which is the problem with Carisbrook, Eden Park etc. The area they're looking at isn't a residential area, so it can be used during the day and late at night, noise and light aren't an issue as far as I know. It can be multi-function (I'm dubious about the money the university is putting forward, but I trust the current management to be sensible with it).
But mostly, $200,000,000 for a roofed stadium when Auckland couldn't put a... whatever that was, on their waterfront for less than $800,000,000. I like vision, I like a plan that says 'yes we can do this, yes it'll work, so lets do it'. And I like saying "useless bloody Auckland couldn't organise a lickathon in a roomful of lesbians".
And I don't know the details of the ongoing payments. But I'd presume that rugby is paying something for the privilege of having games there. But they don't have the ability to borrow or to increase income that the City and Regional councils do, so it's reasonable that they be supported by the City providing a big chunk of the initial funds.
Yes it'll cost ratepayers, and presumably it'll cost commercial ratepayers as well. I'm sure some of them will benefit a lot more than they pay, but there's no good system for charging people the amount that they benefit. Businesses doing well in Dunedin is good for the city, particularly when they start employing people. Businesses also pay for a heap of 'human services' that the city council puts on for us that they get no benefit from because they're just an entity. We should be willing to pay rates which go towards things which benefit businesses in return, as long as they're good for the city.
A lot of people say 'I don't go to the rugby I won't benefit'. I think they should look at the popularity of the Wgtn 7s and how many people who 'don't go to the rugby' fight for tickets to that party. You're seeing a lot of women there, younger people, non-traditional rugby fans, etc. They should also think about the 20 or so other things that it could be used for.
We're also going to lose international rugby here if we don't do something, and a roof opens us up as a premiere venue to host sports (I'm not sure what the involvement of cricket is in it, but it'd be easy to bring one dayers back to Dunedin with a roof). We can guarantee a perfect surface and weather no matter what it's like outside, and that's money in the bank in events organisation and a steal at the price.
And Carisbrook is a hundred years old. They keep tacking bits on it, spending money upgrading the bits that they upgraded ten years ago, but it's a modern world, it'd be nice to have a modern stadium. I think small cities can do these things if they're done well. If Invercargill can pack their netball venue for Sting matches, and build a velodrome to host world class cycling, it shouldn't be too hard given that we're picking rugby, which does have a bit of a following round here.
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I'll never forget being in Dunedin several years ago when there was some serious financial news at a national level - Reserve Bank governor statement or something. Every other paper in the country led with it. The ODT led with a story about a youth who might have stolen a car except it looked like he probably didn't. I found it quite bizarre.
It's called the Oddity down here for good reason.
It's whole fascination with some sheep named after an ogre for example...
ODT's pages are full of odes to how wonderfull our new stadium might be (I've yet to meet a real person who's actually in favour of it).
"Nice to meet you. My name's Kyle."
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At the core of Islam is "submit or I will chop your head off". Islam has at its core the conquest of the world by Muslims, by war if necessary, for Allah. It is the only religion like this.
I'm no expert on religion as well, but the little knowledge that I have of Islam would indicate that this isn't true - or at least, it's a broad overstatement.
Indeed, the religion which has a more significant history of trying to conquer the world, often by incredibly bloody means, is Christianity.
And Mohammed conquered Mecca in a bloodless war in... 629 I think? Sure, some people have taken Islam and run with it in a pretty nasty direction, but it's not the only religion to have nuts sign up and go postal.
A lot of people associate the anger and violence that can come out of the Middle East with Islam. There's lots of islamic peoples and nations that live perfectly peacefully and happily in the world. I think the fact that the Middle East has been the playground of the Western World for a couple of centuries might have a bit more to do with it, not the religion that they happen to hold.
I mean America's a fairly aggressive country on the world stage. That doesn't then map across to all Christians in the world.
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People and groups that protested for woman's rights, gay rights social justice etc. find themselves working with or effectively supporting Islamists who have no concept of woman's rights that we would recognize, stone to death woman accused of adultery who are actually victims of rape and think gays should be killed.
While there's some who are doing that, there's others who aren't. The 'left' is a very broad and diverse place, and there's a heap of nutters there just like everywhere else.
And just because people support governments/peoples etc that are a long way from perfect, doesn't mean they support everything they do. My government pisses me off several times a week, but they're better than the alternative IMHO.
Just because there's no perfect government in the Middle East, doesn't mean people shouldn't engage with the region and voice their opinion about their country's foreign policy. The alternative is to keep your head in the sand, and there's enough of that in the world already.
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This is good: Mad TV iRack Apple Iraq war parody