I’m not a racist but… treaty mentality
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Whale Oil draws our attention to the worst of the worst example of treaty mentality at work. In a damning expose the Herald reveals the designer of some of the artwork for the RWC is “disappointed” he has not been offered any free tickets to any of the matches for his work, work he was paid for. Obviously no true-blue pakeha would have such a sense of entitlement or voice it so vehemently in the press, can you imagine any pakeha anywhere being disappointed they didn’t get free stuff for work they did? The young Maori artists admission that: “if people recognise my work or they ask me to do some work I would be quite happy with that.” Is a clear indication of just how far treaty entitlement has corrupted the youth of today.
In breaking news we can reveal another blog is about to expose another example of treaty entitlement mentality with the revelation that a Maori person was seen using a disabled parking spot. When it was pointed out the Maori in question was in a wheelchair and had a valid permit the writer responded: “That’s exactly what I am talking about, it’s this mentality that they can just waltz on up and demand a permit because they are brown. We are all one people and we shouldn’t be handing these sorts of things out to Maori just because someone’s ancestor signed a piece of paper.”
Key does unthinkable!
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Hat tip to Imperator Fish for drawing our attention to the damning revelation that John Key has been caught in the most shameless and heinous crime against humanity!
Key was quoted somewhere as saying he wouldn’t change Kiwisaver this term, then in the budget he… wait for it… changed Kiwisaver. He of course defended it by saying the changes wouldn’t come into effect until after the election so he hadn’t technically broken his promise.
I know the nation breathed a collective sigh of relief once we heard that.
But wait, some canny investigative researcher somewhere has uncovered that technically the changes start being accrued from 1-July this year, even though we don’t have to cough up the cash until 2012. OMFG! you rightly say!
Key, the most beloved Prime Minister in the living memory of every 3 year old, has… lied… Well, technically he has probably crazy-stupid stretched the truth to justify his own position and put a positive spin on something. We are all of course completely aware this is something no right minded politician would ever, ever, do anything like that (certainly not the opposition).
In tomorrows breaking news we will reveal damning evidence that over 90% of Government MPs have a pulse and are regularly partaking in breathing.
Christchurch
Words cannot express, heart goes out to you guys…
Live stream: http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/canterbury-earthquake-live-stream-video-4038290
Initial reaction: http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/christchurch-quake-initial-aftermath-6-07-video-4038328
A few initial thoughts:
1. How important is it for Civil Defence to have a dedicated & robust satellite communications network (independent of phone lines). Sat phones are not that expensive.
2. The indirect damage to Canterbury will be huge. If I lived there I’d be be going online to look for a new job somewhere else as soon as possible.
3. If this can happen to a city which would have been our safest… a bit inland, not near known fault lines, etc… what is Auckland, which is built on a gazillion volcanoes doing?
4. Who would be surprised if heartless money making machines insurance companies are desperately updating everyones policies to exclude as many people as possible… I hope I’m wrong there…
Read MoreWhy not to buy a BMW
DPF at Kiwiblog drew my attention to a release from the DIA on Beemer-gate:
DIA had advised that the cost savings from a three-year replacement versus a five-year replacement, are considerable.
”Based on a fleet of 35 cars, if the existing fleet is kept for five years, the total cost of ownership over the five years would be $4,697,175. If we keep the cycle of replacing every 3 years, the total cost over five years of the existing fleet held for three years plus two years of the new fleet, would be $2,612,365. So, the savings over five years would be $2,084,810 .”
In true DPF style he is saying that replacing the cars was a fiscally sensible thing to do, albeit maybe a politically poor one. I am not so sure.
According to the DIA the cost of maintaining a luxury BMW is really very high after 3 years. Assuming in the calculations they used the cost in the first 3 years for both options was the same then the cost saving has to come in the last 2 years. So a saving of 2 million dollars over 2 years means a used BMW costs an extra $29,783 per year to maintain than a brand new one. WTF?! Assuming these are lease vehicles I assume there should be no depreciation cost as such so that’s got to be just running costs!! Nearly an extra $30k per year to maintain?
My feeling is that they based their numbers using the heavily inflated charge per km that lease companies throw in when the mileage starts getting high. Its a way to make sure you don’t keep the car too long and eat into their resale value. It was poor calculation to include this (if they did) as it is premised on the only other option available was to keep the cars or replace them.
I wonder how much more it would have cost to ditch the BMWs and replace them with another brand of car altogether. I wonder if a struggling car brand, such as Chrysler or Ford or GM, or an up and coming, such as Kia or Hyundai, would have been prepared to heavily discount their lease price in order to gain the mana associated with supplying vehicles to the Ministers. I wonder if someone wouldn’t have donated them if they were allowed to use the fact in advertising (maybe a stretch, but you never know).
Read MoreAre we Wong
The Standard has a piece commenting on Campbell live last night about Pansy Wong. Now Wong made some errors in judgement and paid the price. For what it’s worth I think she should have stayed in office as a backbencher until the next election with all perks suspended… but resigning and forcing the taxpayer to spend tens of thousands of dollars on meaningless by-elections is somehow more honourable.
Anyway, I wanted to ask a question of one of the points raised:
You’ll remember that Sammy’s companies were registered to the address of Wong’s electorate office. Using that taxpayer-funded space for private business is illegal. The defence at the time is it was just a mailing address. Well, that was a lie. Priest confirms that he did business deals with Sammy there.
If (and this is a big if) Sammy’s use of the office didn’t incur any additional cost or expense for the electorate is there any problem with him using it from time to time to meet people and have mail delivered? To me there is not really and is something I would be comfortable one of my employees spouse doing.
However, if the use of the office incurred cost (such as getting one of my staff to do some things, or even a lot of printing/phone calls/faxes) then I would have a problem with that. I guess the line is grey so hence the firm rule. But from what I have heard of Pansy personally she is a nice person and a good MP so should we be chasing her down like this unless there is evidence of material (as opposed to technical) abuse?
Read MoreDumb and dumber
The governments decision to upgrade their fleet of BMWs is dumb because: They have recently announced a need for the public service to tighten their belts and cut costs, yet are able to afford luxury cars.
The governments decision to upgrade their fleet of BMWs is dumber because: It’s a god damn election year guys?!
DPF calls it “a stupid blunder”:
I give the Government a big fail for this move. When Labour did the same in 2008 I put it down to advanced third termitis (when you no longer sense what may be unpopular), but this is even worse as National is in their first term.
Slater calls them “morons”:
These are quality vehicles, they can easily drive the kilometres required of them, and easily extend their life beyond three years… Change the requirement… extend it to 180,000km, they are BMWs not Fords.
Couldn’t agree more.
Read MoreSpirited levels
Deborah Coddington has stirred up a bit of a left vs right debate over her post in the HoS in the weekend. Her post is largely a critique of the book The Spirit Level, a book it is entirely possible she hasn’t read. No matter, neither have I. But I do find her objection to the book somewhat ideological rather than logical.
Firstly she agrees with the books premise, that greater wealth inequality is bad:
Actually I have no problem with closing the gaps. I think that’s an admirable objective…
But that’s where she departs from reasoned argument into an attack on the left:
… when most people talk about closing gaps between rich and poor, they want to drag the successful down to the level of the lowest, whereas I’d lift everyone up to the top…
Somehow I suspect this is the most illogical and downright silly thing I have read ever. I would say even the most ardent left wing, green eyed, communist loving, protestor would happily say that they want to lift everyone up to the top. I doubt anyone in the left would prefer to drag everyone down to the bottom, in fact I have never even heard this mentioned in any left wing publication I have ever read (and I spent time studying sociology with a bunch of radical left wing lesbians… argh!!).
What Deborah is really objecting to is the concept of wealth redistribution, where the top layer is used to lift up the bottom layer. She is essentially saying that taxing the wealthy is about bringing them down to the level of dole bludgers, that the politics of the left is one of envy.
Let me explain a few basics of economics that may have escaped Deborah on her rise to wealth from poverty.
Firstly, it is human nature to want to do well, to be successful. Wealth inequality is actually good as it gives people something to strive for, a chance to be better. However, if the gap is too big it becomes a problem. Basically, the poor lose hope in ever being able to catch up with the wealthy and look for ‘get rich quick’ options to try to close the gap, most of which are illegal and bad for society (eg, bank robbery). The wealthy on the other hand continue to pull away because, as we know, its easy to make money when you have money.
For example, if I have a 1 million dollar investment and get a hypothetical return of 10% per year after 10 years I will have (roughly) 2.6 million dollars. My neighbour who started with 10 thousand dollars will have 25 thousand dollars. The same percentage increase but here’s the problem, I started off with 990 thousand dollars more – I now have a lot more and the gap is growing. This problem keeps compounding with the gap between the two becoming larger and larger even when the return is the same (and made worse by the fact you can get better returns with larger investments). Silly example I know but it illustrates my point. At some point the poor 10 thousand dollar guy loses hope of being able to catch up. Lost hope is a recipe for social unrest.
Secondly, the simple idea of simply lifting everyone up without penalising the rich is nonsensical. There is a fixed amount of money in the world, it is not economically viable to just print more (at least not on an on-going basis unless hyper-inflation is your goal). The only way for the poor to get more real wealth is for someone at the top to get less – there is simply no other way to do it in a closed system (which is why the government wants foreign investment as this puts ‘extra’ money into the system, although there are negatives with this too and is not long term sustainable).
What most ‘spirit levelers’ argue is those who have the most, the rich, are getting richer at such a rate that the poor can never catch up. They do not argue the rich should be pulled back to the lowest common denominator but simply that a percentage of their annual wealth increases should go towards reducing the gap and creating opportunity and hope for people. They argue the wealthy can afford to contribute more than their fair share to society because they hold the majority of the wealth and it is in their best interests for there to be less social unrest.
No one is arguing that you can help everyone, there will always be those at the extreme ends of the scale but when the distribution curve is too spread out something has to be done. Again, for the idealogues out there, it is not about bringing the wealthy down to the poor but about lifting everyone up using the most efficient distribution of resources available. That is those who can afford to spare more, spare it. Those who don’t have enough get it.
Anyway, apologies for the overly simplistic examples. It is a highly complex problem and should not be looked at through blue or red tinted glasses. Look at the facts, the principles and remove emotive arguments from the discussion.
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