July 2009

Not from a journalist, there are precious few of those left in NZ anyway, nor from a repeater, most of them can’t even read.

No it has come from a blogger….you know, one of those disdained ones that NBR owner Barry Colman despises. Well this blogger has provided an analysis that far exceeds any mumblings of an NBR columnist or repeater when it comes to understanding the appalling judgement in the BNZ case.

Of course the blogger in question is Cactus Kate. This is one of her more lengthy posts, so it probably took her about 10 miuntes to bang out but it worthy of so much more than all the other 1000′s of words miscontrued by others about this case.

Her summary is thus;

I have discussed this previously and taxation is an area of the law where the strict letter of the law MUST be applied. If not then the taxpayer will ALWAYS lose in cases against the IRD. This has been the norm as of late in the higher courts. Especially the Supreme Court since the abolishing of appeals to the Privy Council. Public policy is of course to always collect more tax than less. Bernard and Adolf have proven the “I pay so why can’t those bastards” line of thought. It is personified by one of the most arrogant bastards ever to work at the IRD, now drop-out law lecturer Mark Keating.

Auckland University senior law lecturer Mark Keating, who has previously advised the IRD on the banks’ structured finance transactions, said virtually all tax avoidance cases involved taxpayers who were technically compliant with the law. “Technical compliance with the law is never enough.”

Why not? Imagine if this rationale was applied to criminal convictions. Where innocent people were convicted because while they complied with the law, “it wasn’t enough” and a Judge simply convicted them because he or she didn’t like them. Civil liberty groups would be outraged. Forget the rule of law and find every corporate wheeled by the IRD in front of the High Court immediately guilty of tax avoidance!

Name me one situation now when it comes to a taxpayer vs the IRD where the taxpayer can now possibly win if section BG1 is now applied in an all encompassing fashion in our leftist activist Supreme Court?

This new approach to judicial activism in New Zealand will spread through the leftist Supreme Court. We saw it last week with Rose v Rose. It has wide ramifications and makes the task of litigating a near impossibility as cases will now be decided on the mood of the nation through what the Courts think everyone wants, rather than firm legal principles and the rule of law.

Very hard to disagree with that and the new found judicial activism being practised upon us by the Clark instigated Supreme Court. Mark my words, this Supreme Court experiment will be one of the more profound disasters visited upon this nation by Helen Elizabeth Clark.

The DomPost Editorial take a mighty big swing at the pro tem Leader of the Opposition.

Labour leader Phil Goff is finding life is not easy in opposition.

He overplayed his hand in the Richard Worth affair, and now he  has botched efforts to offer an  alternative to the Government’s handling of the lengthening dole queues.

His initial proposal to give the unemployment benefit to anyone who lost his or her job regardless of family circumstances was ill-considered.

Ever since he pimped out Neelam Choudary the wheels have fallen off his scheming and plotting. Last week was a shocker for Goff but still he continues.

The onus is now on Mr Goff to provide his own costing – and to explain how that would be funded at a time when the Government’s revenues are being shrunk by recession- diminished tax takes.

Simply whacking it on the bill is not the answer. Not only could that see New Zealand’s credit rating downgraded – adding to interest bills – it also saddles future generations with the consequences of the profligacy of those who were unwilling to live within their means.

Exactly, old Whack it on the bill Phil, and his pals in spendthrigt Labour are so used to spending the surplus they have forgotten that their profligacy has seen them off for at least 10 years.

Mr Goff also risks opening a debate he may not wish to have. Much has also been made of the fact that many of those now being made redundant have paid taxes for years and are entitled to get something back. It would be a mistake for Labour to pursue that notion. It immediately begs the question why those who have not paid any taxes should be entitled to anything.

Well what a fine idea. Some people with Working for Families are actually net tax takers rather than tax payers. I think it is indeed tiome for us to be looking at the so called “entitlements”. They are simply unsustainable moving forward. We need to be encouraging people to support themselves rather than rely on the state for their largesse.

New Zealand has a welfare system, not a social insurance system. Citizens pay according to their ability through the progressive tax system, and receive according to their need through a welfare programme that rests on income testing.

However, the bottom line is that Mr Goff does not recognise the reality of the situation New Zealand is in. The Government can take the sharp edge off the recession, but it cannot make it go away. The sooner Mr Goff accepts that, and acknowledges taxpayers should not be subsidising disappointed property investors, the sooner he will be able to start Labour on the comeback trail.

He won’t and neither can Labour. They refuse to accept that they were soundly rejected at the last election and assume that the country was just a little mistaken. The longer they carry on with that the longer they will remain in opposition.

How’s Helen Clark getting on at the UN? – One hundred days is the time often used to judge new political appointees. It’s also about the amount of time Helen Clark has been in her new role at the UN [TVNZ News Politics]

Uhmmmm….we don’t care.

One thing I do know though is that senior staff at the NZ mission are sick of being embarrassed in meeting by the hangers on that Heather Simpson brings along, all wearing jeans or dungarees.

I know of at least one senior staffer that has requested a transfer out of New York rahter than continue to be associated with the Ginga Ghengis.

No, not me, I’m not even remotely qualified, but MacDoctor is (one of my must read blogs) and so devastates Kevin Hagues woefully idealogical mumblings.

Frogblog has a long post by Kevin Hague entitled Outsourcing Health No Solution arguing that public hospitals should be used to maximum capacity before outsourcing operations to the private sector. Superficially, this sounds like a reasonable argument but, as we look in more depth at Hague’s discussion, it is easy to see that his arguments are facile and reveal a lack of understanding of the health sector. Which is pretty scary considering that Hague was the CEO of a DHB!

Go read the fisking, it is brilliant and scary at the same time.

The paid lap-bloggers at the Stranded are now resorting to revissionst history;

I still get the chills some times remembering how close the Left came to losing the 2005 election. If it hadn’t been for Brash being caught out in his lies over links with the Exclusive Brethren’s smear campaign, National might just have squeaked the win.

Readers might equally imagine Labour lickspittles saying

I still get the chills some times remembering how close the Left came to losing the 2005 election. If it hadn’t been for that extra $800,000 of spending we miraculously found in our budgets, National might just have squeaked the win.

or for that matter

I still get the chills some times remembering how close the Left came to losing the 2005 election. If it hadn’t been for stealing $800,000 of taxpayer money and dishonestly breaking our spending limits, National might just have squeaked the win.

Just sayin….

Some of us will never forget Labour’s total disregard of our electoral laws and complete willingness to do anything including breaking the law to win.

The Herald on Sunday is engaging in Spam Journalism again. This article about “10 homes a day taken by banks” is a case in point.

For a start the homes aren’t being taken by the banks anywhere. More accurately the story should explore that 10 mortgagees a day have failed utterly to meet their contractual obligations for their lonas and so have forfeited the homes that the banks paid for.

Let me make one thing clear, having worked for a major bank in lending, Banks hate mortgagee sales. They are a last resort for them. They only pursue a mortgagee sale when communications with the customer and attempts to get things back on track have failed utterly.

In my experience when a Bank decides upon a mortgagee sale it is usually because the mortgagee has not faced reality, failed to meet repayments over a long period of time and failed to communicate with the bank, instead trying to fight for something with an ostrich like behaviour when it is clear that they can’t afford the lifestyle they have borrowed to support.

These sorts of customer always pretend like they own the assets they use. Invariably they actually own nothing except debt, which also needs to be repaid. They also have store debt in the form of hire purchase and the most stupid debt of all, that for a car.

Their debt is literally eating them alive and they are in fact a pay day away from insolvency. When the job goes so too does everything the loans and the small monthly payments paid for.

The reality is in most cases mortgagee sales are of homes of people too stupid to have a loan int he first place.

The Herald on Sunday list 10 spectacular FAIL!’s in NZ. Not surprisingly Jetstar is number 1.

1 – Jetstar New Zealand: not delivering the difference

Jetstar’s entry into the domestic airline market has been bedevilled by bad press, with complaints about baggage costs, delays and cancellations and rigid adherence to check-in times.

2 – Michael Hill Shoes: not sticking to knitting

 Shoes just didn’t fit.”

3 – Chrysler Dodge: not going local

Dodge was launched here in 2007, debuting with the Dodge Nitro, a big, muscular 4WD aimed at families; the Avenger, a mid-sized sedan; and the Caliber, a Corolla-sized hatch.

Motoring writer Jacqui Madelin says, “They were hoping to sell at mainstream prices to mainstream buyers they’d attract on the strength of their brash American good looks. But poor standards of build quality were apparent with the early cars. The performance didn’t live up to the muscular image.

4 – Planet Hollywood: passe?

It was a caricature of Americana: Jaws in the bathroom; spaceship interior; a cryogenically-frozen Sylvester Stallone suspended overhead. Sky City Leisure brought Planet Hollywood to Auckland in 1999, and closed it less than four years later because of what it called “changing consumer trends”. Says Richards, “I don’t think we buy into that American culture perhaps the same way we didn’t in the 60s. It’s a little passe.”

5 – Clayton’s: not in good taste

It was that brand name that rebelled against its makers: it entered the Kiwi vernacular, but not because we loved the product. Clayton’s was a non-alcoholic, non-carbonated drink coloured and packaged to resemble bottled whisky. Heavily marketed in Australia and New Zealand in the 1970s and 1980s, its slogan was “the drink you have when you’re not having a drink”. It never took hold – apparently not many people liked the taste. But the word “Clayton’s” became shorthand for a compromise that satisfies no one, or something that’s the same in everything but name.

6 – Russell Crowe’s singing career: not playing to your strengths

7- The Football Kingz/New Zealand Knights: no-win situation

Formed in 1999 by the Australian Football League, the Football Kingz were meant to professionalise and popularise football in the land of union and league. After a promising first season, fan support and credibility nose-dived, with poor results and off-field ownership wranglings.

The club’s image was so shoddy that when it was sold in 2004 the new owners decided to rebrand as New Zealand Knights. But mud stuck.

8 – NZ Idol stars: not taken seriously

Ben Lummis, Michael Murphy, Rosita Vai – in their moment of NZ Idol glory all were pegged for great things. Season-one winner Lummis came the closest. His 2004 single They Can’t Take That Away spent seven weeks at number one on the charts, and his album sold more than 30,000 copies.

But label Sony BMG dumped him after three months. At the time, Lummis’ manager Paul Ellis said the singer was despondent about making what Ellis called “the worst-sounding album of my entire career” with a company that didn’t care.

Irene Gardiner says Kiwi Idol winners seemed doomed to not have pop success. “It’s a weird quirk of New Zealand that I don’t understand. All the Australian and American ones have done well,” she says. Her theory is the Idol brush erases musicians’ credibility, and our music industry is set up well for bands and singer-songwriters, but not for mainstream, middle-of-the-road pop artists. “I don’t think the talent level was necessarily the issue. It was a combination of the nature of the entertainment industry and something about the public perception of what being an Idol winner meant.”

9 – Warehouse Australia: not Ocker enough

The Warehouse was a household name in New Zealand when it expanded across the Tasman. But that was irrelevant in Australia. The Warehouse acquired the Australian Clint’s Crazy Bargains and Silly Solly’s retail chains in 2000, stamping their mark and building new stores. But the Aussies didn’t take to the Red Shed in nearly the same numbers as Kiwis had, and Warehouse Australia struggled to break even. The Warehouse Group sold its Australian operation in 2005 to Australian Discount Retailers (ADR), which renamed the stores Sam’s Warehouse. (In a twist, the Kiwi connection returned in March, when Kathmandu co-founder Jan Cameron bought ADR.)

10 – City Life: ahead of its time?

It was written by James Griffin, the co-writer of juggernaut hit Outrageous Fortune. It launched the TV careers of actors such as Sunrise presenter and theatre star Oliver Driver. It was pitched as New Zealand’s answer to Melrose Place and This Life. But TVNZ urban soap opera City Life, which debuted in 1996, was taken off air part-way through its first season. (The series has since been screened in full, but in the late night or mid-morning hinterland.)

A couple of weeks ago I brought attention to a school using technology in a less than optimum way. I did it because the school wasn’t listening or acting upon the concerns of many parents.

For my efforts I got attacked by a bunch of useless ICT teachers who all thought they knew best when in fact they knew fuck all. In rder to demonstrate that I had to humilate one of them so that they will learn and understand that the Net sometimes isn’t all about cuddles.

Then yesterday I saw an article in the Herald about a new campaign;

Three organisations are teaming up in an effort to help parents protect their children from the dangers of technology.

Telecom, police and Net Safe are joining forces to ensure young people are aware of how to stay safe online, and through text messaging. Their pamphlet, Keeping Kiwi Kids Safer in Cyberspace is being distributed to schools.

Well I never. Who would have thought that there was a problem? Especially if you listend to fool ICT teachers. Of course the first sentence is completely misleading. The technologies themselves aren’t dangerous. I mean who ever heard of someone being raped by a router or a switch. I guess though an ethernet cable could be used to tie you up that requires the essential invention of a person. And ladies and gentlemen is where the problems lie with technology. The people using it.

A case in point was highlighted by the Herald on Sunday today.

A woman stripped of her teaching licence after inappropriate relationships with two female students has admitted abusing a position of trust.

Anne Caldwell was deregistered by the Teachers Council in February, for serious misconduct while working at troubled Fairfield College in Hamilton.

According to the decision, the 40-year-old former computer teacher singled out one girl for special meetings and encouraged her to lie to her parents. She received a warning after management discovered the relationship but continued a secret infatuation with a second student.

The decision said Caldwell:

- Told the second girl she loved her and could not live without her;

- Bombarded her with inappropriate texts over a sustained period;

- Sent messages to her page on the Bebo social networking site;

- Resisted attempts by the student to end the friendship.

The offending came to light when the student complained to another teacher, who referred the girl to principal Julie Small.

So what does this tell us. Well, that it isn’t really creepy paedo’s we need to watch out for it is the teachers that are preying on our young. With the numerous cases coming to light it seems that the teaching profession is quickly gaining the reputation of the catholic preisthood when it comes to diddling kids.

The ex-teacher herself has made some recommendations;

After spending most of her adult life studying at university and little time in the workplace, Caldwell said she had not “grown up” and called for all would-be teachers to be psychologically tested.

“People who are not emotionally mature often think like teenagers, think that they’re invincible and nothing bad is going to happen.”

Caldwell, who was ordered to pay $2000 costs, said she found it “easy to fall for students”.

She apologised to the two students, their parents and the school for putting them through an “emotionally challenging situation” but denied she was a “predator”.

And she warned other teachers not to text or email students because the technology enabled potentially inappropriate “private relationships”.

Well duh! Anyone who has had a run in with teachers knows this for fact. A good place to start with be the coven of witches and fools that attacked me for pointing out obvious.

Bill Ralston : Blogosphere shows Goff must watch his back – Phil Goff had better start looking over his shoulder. When it came to power, National was banking on six to 12 months of destabilisation in Labour as it feuded and fought over the leadership once Helen Clark left. That failed to… [NZ Herald Politics]

Bill Ralston catches up with what I have been saying, that the left wing blogosphere is reflecting out loud what the murmurings are behind the scenes inside Labour.

Make no mistake, Goff’s days are numbered, the only reason he is still leader is because the pretenders are all fighting each other jockeying for position.

hat tip The Inquiring Mind

I have to thank Andrew Williams, the Clown of Campbells Bay, the Mad Mayor of North Shore for continuing to rise to my bait and guarantee me headlines. For the headlines, good or bad, I don’t care i give my heartfelt thanks and dedicate this song to him, long may he continue.