Archives of 2010 May

I have been following the frenzying of Labour and their aligned blogs on the John Key “Blind Trust” saga with some amusement. I note that there does not seem to be a lot of traction with this in the print media, although the Tabloid on Sunday will surely have something tomorrow, as, undoubtably, will the [...]

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I have noticed that the subject of inequality has been rearing it’s head again. Tapu Misa started the ball rolling with her opinion piece on how income inequality is pushing us further apart. I find this a very superficial reading of the facts and I am not surprised that Misa used the 1999 2009 book [...]

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The Herald reports that a report by Martin Dawe of the first two weeks of the Swine Flu epidemic is intensely critical of the lack of planning and poor coordination of data resources. This was the MacDoctor’s impression of the entire debacle. I knew of a potentially deadly strain of Mexican flu three days before [...]

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I am not a big fan of GST. I appreciate it is a consumption tax and therefore inherently much fairer because it taxes all people, equally. I also understand that it has a small positive effect on savings, as it discourages spending (a little). The reason I am not a fan is entirely personal – [...]

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I find it quite depressing to read all the utter drivel from Labour and it’s left wing crony blogs, harping on about how the tax cuts to “rich” people (those earning over 70,000, apparently) are worth more that the tax cuts to the poor. Are these people stupid or something? Of course the cuts for [...]

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Idiot/Savant (well, just Idiot, really) posts on John Key’s comment on the politics of envy, so clearly beloved by that bloke who leads Labour, whatever his name is. That’s the clear message of John Key in saying that we should not be jealous that the rich will get massive tax cuts while everyone else gets crumbs. [...]

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Turns out that I was right about the Left-wing blogs and the media continuing to rabbit on about John Key’s “cannibalism” joke. And, yes, it does make them look like complete prats. The editor of the Herald on Sunday even goes as far as to suggest that the coalition between Maori and National is falling [...]

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I’m willing to bet that there was a nervous tinge to the laughter when John Key made his joke about being on the Tuhoe “menu”. Everyone there would have instantly spotted that it was a very politically incorrect remark, for a Prime Minister. True to form, the left wing blogs have spent the day making [...]

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An OECD report shows that New Zealand has almost the lowest “Tax wedge” (Individual tax as a percentage of labour costs) in the OECD. Enter Russell Norman attempting to claim that “the report showed the Government was misleading people that New Zealand had high taxes, to justify tax cuts for the highest-earners”. Unfortunately, the Herald [...]

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When a serious error is made in someone’s diagnosis, investigation or treatment, we really like to blame a health practitioner or two. In the Herald today, just such a diagnostic disaster is blamed on the DHB as Ron Paterson asks them to apologise for poor service. This is pretty unfair of Mr. Paterson as it [...]

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