Posts by Kyle Matthews
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It’s been mooted more than once, and instantly rejected on we-know-best safety grounds.
I do think we need to remember that a waiver protects others from legal liability, it doesn't protect them from other liability. If a person goes into a building and gets hurt, we're not exactly going to wave a piece of paper that they signed at them and leave them there to die or crawl out by themselves.
It may be overzealous, but it should be based on whether the building is safe to enter, not whether the person signs a bit of paper.
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I was prepared to make it the one and only firm veto power I'd ever use, if it came to that. It didn't, which is great because ultimatums suck arse.
Yeah, well I vetoed, and we're currently about two or three weeks away from a judge deciding for us. Which feels stupid, but here we are.
My daughter keeps piping up from her car seat with things she's been taught about god. Today she told me she loved god more than everyone because god was everywhere and everything. I wish it was illegal to indoctrinate kids like that :(
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The main one that came up was around “raising children in the Catholic faith”. I was prepared to go so far as to let them be baptized, but not so far as to make them go to church or a Catholic school. My wife had probably not realized just how strongly I felt about the issue, nor how little she cared about it.
Ugh. I'm currently going through this about my youngest. My ex recently found, or re-found or something the Catholic Church, and we're negotating about her attending a Catholic school, which I'm fanatically against.
I’d also have to say that it’s one of the things that guys most get out of each other’s company sometimes, to be able to speak their thoughts about sex, thoughts that could be extremely unpalatable in the company of women
I watched a reasonably amusing rom-com called "I Love You, Man" (it's on Sky at the moment) the other night which presented this rather well, from a "women do this but men don't really" kind of angle. My partner found it very amusing.
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So somebody who has poor parents, works for years and earns a million dollars will pay tax on that, maybe $330k.
Someone sensible enough to choose rich parents who leave them a house or farm worth a million dollars pays *no* tax.
That's a bit of a silly comparison. In your second example, the rich parent's assets have already been taxed once - via income tax or profit in their business. If they haven't, it's not the fault of a gift or duty tax or the lack of.
Sure, if you want to tax wealth by hitting it again, go ahead, but you can't claim it's *no* tax.
Means testing is like user pays. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Guarantee a decent minimum to everybody, including the CEO of Telecom, and incentivise people to supplement that. Getting people to save and then take away what they would have got if they hadn’t is just wrong.
It's really a question of whether we consider superannuation to be Universal Basic Income, or a welfare payment for those in need. I think I could be happy with the former, but it should apply to people under 65 as well.
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For a surreal take on the whole thing, the last couple of weeks of John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman's The Bugle podcast have been hilarious, doubly so because it's nominally released from inside the Murdoch empire - it comes from the Times Online site. They seem genuinely surprised that they haven't been shut down yet :)
They've been excellent on this and a number of other things UK-side. Good counterpoint to getting what's going on inside the USA from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart I find.
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The rewards system has been updated. You have to get six times as many stamps, but you get an iPad in the end.
Black or are they doing a special colour?
The adoption thing I think is more complex because the entire Adoption Act needs revamping, for a whole bunch of different reasons, some of which are nothing to do with LBGT rights.
I think it's also going to be a lot harder politically because a lot of homophobic people can be convinced that two people of the same sex getting married only affects the couple - no one else. Adopting children is going to raise all sorts of unfortunate fears about different parents and raising kids to be 'queer' and whatnot.
Like Emma I think there are steps, and as long as we keep working on achieving all of them, we're doing what can be done.
Thanks to Tansy for posting that facebook link too.
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Okay. Richmond the pink-shirted whistle-fondling referee is being attacked by zombie rugby players. We need to free him from this situation so he can board Ellerslie Panmure’s pirate ship for the trip down the Avon and round to Governor’s Bay.
Creative solutions?
PAS style, I think he should be hoist by his own petard out of there (yes I know you can't actually be hoist by a petard, at least without being blown into bits).
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A competent opposition might do that.
Yeah. Even odds at this stage?
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Nice try, but far too little, far too late. Goggle is a tool, not a policy. If Robertson were to actually stake something on this instead of hyperlinking, I might respect him.
Umm, like what? He's in opposition, and he's only one cog in the party policies that help get him there.
What exactly would you like him to put up, beyond his time, devotion, and personal cash?
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If you add the size of the workforce, plus beneficiaries including super annuitants you get about 3 million – unless you can’t count?
Keith, did you leave the door open to kiwiblog again?