Posts by Bart Janssen
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Polity: TPP, eh?, in reply to SteveH,
This is why the Government has been (quietly) saying they can’t stop foreigners buying property in Auckland.
Which is also the reason why we should ensure that simply buying and selling land in Auckland does not make you a tax-free profit regardless of which country you come from.
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Polity: TPP, eh?, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
being asked to take waaay to much on trust
Which is a huge issue with the way this has been carried out. The "trust us we're businessmen" just isn't really reasonable when you are paid to represent the public.
It may just be that Grosser wasn't pushing the Pharmac issue because he trusted the Aussies to do it for him but frankly that is asking New Zealand's health system to take a crap load on trust.
I don't think we'll be able to judge this deal for quite some time, I suspect there will be things that turn out good or even great and I suspect there will be things that cost people livelihoods and jobs. I just hope it doesn't undermine our health system because there isn't much room for any more stress on the health system under a government that refuses to raises taxes to pay for better health care.
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Polity: TPP, eh?, in reply to Russell Brown,
Big Biotech isn’t happy, which is presumably a good sign.
I'm nervous about the details. The requirement for a register of what Pharmac doesn't pick and why is suspicious. We could be looking at pharma/biotech companies legally challenging Pharmac over its decisions - which Pharmac simply does not have the money to fight.
That said we all need to thank Australia for fighting the battle over drugs that Grosser neither cared about nor had the clout to win.
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One interesting consequence of this might be a shift is the current governments favouritism of all things dairy. The TPPA does remove tariffs on horticultural exports and manufactured goods. The later is always an unlikely winner for NZ but we can and do grow plants well in NZ and perhaps the government might see the possibility of supporting growth in horticulture.
I am of course thinking wishfully, it is pretty clear from Minister Joyce's comments of late that the only investments the govt is keen on are those that pay off in less than one electoral term and plants take too much time to grow.
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It does seem as though UCSA and AUSA were clones. So many of the descriptions match my memories of upper and lower common rooms at Auckland.
As a side note speaking of "ugly as fuck" buildings, my place of work is being renovated, rumour has it that when plans were broached to the council to change the "look" of the building they responded with "please god yes anything has to be better than what it is now".
A part of me is sad that we will only have memories of just how bad NZ public works "architecture" was in the 70s ... but only a very small part.
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Those orange couches with the sloping backs? I was there in the 90s. Why was everything so relentlessly 70s?
I think they were hand-me-downs from Auckland student union in the early 80's. That still raises the question of where Auckland got them from.
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Hard News: About Chris Brown, in reply to Russell Brown,
Dirty little secret: they basically couldn’t really find out before.
For many of those questions that is not the point. The point is should they need to throw you in jail, they can do so for lying on an official document this is then used to allow the authorities time to gather evidence for the crime for which they do want to charge you.
In such circumstances they can almost certainly get the information they need/want.
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Hard News: About Chris Brown, in reply to B Jones,
I agree to some extent but you are flicking between individual shunning and then back to "how the public sees..." that's a tricky ground to tread.
I think there must be a distinction between how I feel as a person about Veitch and his actions and the way society as a whole responds to his actions. For what it's worth I don't get a sense that Veitch has changed and personally I wouldn't have employed him, but for some reason his bosses felt there was sufficient reason to put him back on the air (cynically I think the reason was dollars).
The difficulty for me is I know people who have fucked up and then changed. The person is a different person. The action can still be considered wrong at the same time as accepting that the person would now no longer commit that action.
And I'm in no way suggesting I'm particularly good at making that distinction myself ... I love me a good grudge :).
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Hard News: About Chris Brown, in reply to B Jones,
I’m going to have to argue about that one as well. Sometimes it is just
One of the principles of our justice system is that people can fuck up and then change. They get punished and then they are given the chance to become members of society again. I think that principle is really really important.
However, if they don't change and they fail to abide by society's rules ...
That would appear to be the case with Chris Brown at the moment.
By contrast, as odious as I believe Veitch to be, he has not (to my knowledge) assaulted anyone since his conviction and punishment. He may not admit (to himself) his fault but he has apparently changed his behaviour.
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Hard News: About Chris Brown, in reply to Sue,
half the money
Half the ticket price please, because it's all too easy to fudge the numbers so the show make no profit.
Of course that would almost certainly cause the shows to make a huge loss - which might indicate some genuine remorse.