August 2010

I don’t like Peter Dunne. I haven’t liked him since he was still in Labour. I think he is a self-absorbed pompous twat with a silly hair cut. That however is personal and somewhat silly on my part. What I really don’t like about Peter Dunne is that he has squatted in the Revenue Minister’s job for quite some time leveraging power that far exceeds his station in life.

Now he has come over all po-faced and serious and pushed his income splitting bill into the house. Quite simply the bill will provide a hideous distortion in taxation, far worse than Working For Families has already provided, and no good can come of it.

I was contacted via Facebook by a concerned parent who thought that though Peter Dunne won’t listen to her, he might listen to a pushy blogger ( I understand she has got the fob-off from the bouffant tosser in the past). This is her message, and it is one I 100% agree with.

I’m a single working mother; I work extremely hard to support my daughter on my own. I don’t receive any government assistance (no Working for Families, miss out on that too), and I’m quite happy about that. I’d rather pay my own way, than rely on a handout.

However, if this bill is passed, I will be paying an additional $4,000 tax per year than a family with exactly the same total income as myself (Around $70k). However, I’ll still have to pay $85 per week for after-school care. That figure triples in school holidays. A family with two parents might not have that expense (particularly if one parent is at home with the kids). In addition, my daughter doesn’t get the benefits that other children with stay-home mums do – such as the opportunity to attend after-school activities like ballet, netball, and so on. So my daughter is doubly disadvantaged.

I find the income-splitting bill incredibly unfair; basically, it suggest that single parents should be subject to a higher tax rate than married or defacto parents, simply due to their relationship status. In effect, it says that the children of two-parent families are more deserving of additional support than the children of single parents. And, quite frankly, I feel that my daughter should be just as valuable as any other child in NZ – and I strongly oppose ANY legislation which would suggest otherwise.

Peter Dunne’s income splitting bill should be dumped and so should he. It is unfair, discriminatory and creates distortions in our already bloated and distorted tax system.

Peter Dunne purports to represent some of the christian vote, perhaps he should consult Jeremiah 49:11 when pushing this bill thorough.

Jeremiah 49:11 (King James Version)

¹¹Leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve them alive; and let thy widows trust in me.

In my book sole parents are the modern day equivalent of the “widows and orphans”.

I can’t believe that they aren’t being charged.

Every day the SPCA deals with 20-30 animal abuse cases.

This week, the society says it came across a case where the abuse has moved from being simply cruel, to being downright criminal.

Over the weekend, four teenagers were found torturing a two-month-old puppy before it was rescued by police.

The teenagers won’t be charged for what they did.

WTF! This is why our country is going to the pack….no consequences. These four little shits should be at the very least named and shamed. To not even be charged and given little more than a hug by authorities I just bet we hear more of them in a few years when they put their kid in a dryer or something.

There can be no sane reason for not charging them, nor naming them. The tip line is there people.

As part of my series releasing policy platforms I would like to announce my policy on Michael Cullen.

Rather than putting him in jail for fiscal crimes against New Zealand including PREFU lies, the Kiwirail purchase and the Retail Deposits Guarantee, he is to be sentenced to chair Kiwirail for the rest of his natural life without any further government subsidies.

It’s a lifetime ban. END. OF. STORY.

DPF is banned for life from VRWC

This is the sort of waste councils and government  need to guard against.

Auckland’s historic Birdcage pub is on the move – 1.8 metres at a time.

All 740 tonnes of the 19th Century pub and hotel are being moved 40 metres in a painstaking process today to make way for the Victoria Park tunnel project.

Once the tunnel is complete, the entire structure will be moved back to rest on top of the tunnel.

The Birdcage, also known as the Rob Roy Hotel, was built 124 years ago and has been designated a heritage building.

It is being moved on a specially designed concrete track with a greased teflon surface at a cost of $2.5 million.

It is completely wrong-headed thinking. It is nothing any better than a grotty old pub way past its use-by date. They should have bulldozed it, that would have cost less than a hundy. No one excepting whinging do-gooders who should be forced to use public transport would have noticed it. Of course the building was the home of a drinking establishment frequented by Auckland’s liberal elite so of course it had to be saved.

The owner, NZTA, should have run a D9 through it. For $2.5 million they could have built a passable replica.

I saw this article yesterday about Celia Wade-Brown campaigning using internal council email and then all of a sudden I got sent more than a few copies of a Len Brown email that has been sent to staff at Manukau City Council.

The truly creepy thing about this email from the Brown campaign is that it was sent to internal email addresses, and it was sent with embedded links that if you check the code are hard-coded to the individual receiving it so that the mere act of clicking on a link can identify you to the Brown campaign team.
Len Brown email to Manukau City Council staff

Not only is he soliciting donations from staff of Manukau City but he is also encouraging them to join the campaign and it is all being tracked in some sort of big brother creepy way.

The people that have received this and forwarded to me all say that they have never joined any mailing list for Len Brown. The code of the email shows clearly that this email was sent internally, ostensibly from the Mayor’s office. OIA requests of the Exchange Server logs will show this.

There is something sinister when a Mayor uses his own council’s resources for his own ends, but then again we have seen Len Brown do this before with the credit cards. One thing for sure, is it looks like Len has run out of his big developers money and now needs to start picking the pockets of Manukau City staff.

Bottom line is that Len Brown has used council provided resources to campaign amongst council staff and thereby politicized the neutral hard working staff of Manukau City.

Whaleoil agrees with with Idiot/Savant? What has the world come to?

I am appalled to hear that Treasury has chucked $1.7 billion at SCF.

How many billion has Michael Cullen cost this country?

Where is the due diligence and the safe-guarding of taxpayers monies?

If the kityy was short before its way short now.

I see in the paper that;

Two youths have been jailed over the theft of a packet of pineapple lumps worth $2.90.

Darcy Te Kiri, 20, and Boudene Gerry Walden, also known as Mahiawere, 21, were both jailed in the Rotorua District Court after pleading guilty to the aggravated robbery of Jeram’s Superette in March this year.

The pair, with 17-year-old Mere Ohlson, had gone into the Te Ngae Rd shop, which had been robbed at gun-point only five weeks previously, pretended to have a gun and demanded cigarettes and cash from the owner’s son.

For a start they are hardly youths at 20 and 21 years. Good though to see that the jail sentence isn’t for the amount involved but rather for the actions involved in nicking the pineapple lumps. But it does beg the question doesn’t it, that if you get jail for stealing pineapple lumps, and I have no problem with that, then surely something a bit more drastic should be visited upon these four:

A puppy has been rehomed in an animal shelter after being kicked, struck against a tree and thrown through a basketball hoop by four boys.

A resident in Papakura heard a dog yelping on Saturday night, and witnessed the boys kicking the 2-month-old labrador-cross puppy among them in a reserve on Wilson St.

The resident did not lay a complaint, but when the boys, aged 12 and 13, returned to the park on Sunday evening the police were called.

Police communications spokesman Lou Alofa said neighbours saw the dog being repeatedly kicked before it was thrown up a tree.

“The dog was motionless when it fell back down. One of the boys then held it by its front legs while another boy kicked it in the stomach.

“They continued punching and kicking it and then threw it through a basketball hoop.”

The boys were apprehended by police at the reserve, and have been referred to Youth Aid.

At 12 and 13 their future isn’t looking too bright. This is definitely a valid case for the rotan, certainly not the group hug they are likely to be sentenced to.

SPCA chief Robyn Kippenberger said violent acts on an animal by a young person gave a strong indication they would be involved in greater violence later in life.

“The problem we have is that when kids are involved with something like this, it’s the tip of the iceberg.

“We know that it is linked to human violence; they’re not just being careless with animals.”

Yep so time to nip it in the bud. A short sharp shock administered whilst they serve time. The social experiment of group hugs for crims must end. A good start would be the adoption of Singapore and Malaysia criminal code on these sorts of things.

Good.

South Canterbury Finance Limited announced today that it has been unable to complete a recapitalisation and restructure.

As a result, the Company would have been unable to certify to Trustees Executors Limited, in accordance with the terms of its debenture trust deed with Trustees Executors Limited, that it was compliant with various financial covenants under the debenture trust deed for the financial year ended 30 June 2010.

Accordingly, South Canterbury Finance Limited has requested Trustees Executors Limited to appoint a receiver in respect of the whole of its undertaking and assets, and Trustees Executors Limited has done so.

A further announcement will be made by the Company in due course.

Now people will start to realise a few home truths. But let me outline some of them for you.

Solvency is all about liquidity. It all works fine until one part of the system freezes or becomes solid. That just happened. There will be people who will think that everything is fine because SCF was part of the Government’s Retail Deposit Guarantee Scheme. Some of those people are repeaters and should know better. Once one part of the system freezes then so too does the rest slowly.

If people who invested in SCF want their money back it will take time and time is never the friend of people who borrowed short and lent long. Other bankers will now be looking at exposure to their customers and it matters not a jot to them that there is allegedly some money sitting in SCF and allegedly guaranteed.

If SCF lied about their position going into the Retail Deposit Guarantee Scheme, then rest assured those deposits are not covered at all. It will take time, a considerable amount of time to ascertain that position, and for all that time the money in SCF ain’t going anywhere except into the receivers pockets. It certainly won’t be going into the pockets of “investors” who think they are covered by a guarantee. Now that some portions of the liquidity is frozen others will now similarly freeze and farms will start to tip over. This is neither good nor bad, but it is good in the sense that highly leveraged owners will be cleaned out, farm prices will drop making entry of new, better financed farmers more likely.

As far as primary lenders go, usually when they lend they place a “priority” on their security, usually, if they are any good at their job this is the value of the security plus a cushion of 30%. Now what this means is that the first ranked secured creditor gets “dibs on any monies, up to and including their “priority”. Second and third in line get the rest. Now if is the case as is likely in the SCF situation where exposure exceeds value then the second and third placed “secured” creditors will get jack.

And that is irrespective of any so-called guarantee. Banks couldn’t care about that one bit, what they want is their loan money back and in short order, otherwise they will realise the assets….in realising the assets they actually take ownership of the guaranteed funds, and they can afford to wait. The farmer will get squeezed out.

This is actually good. The people who took the risk get most of their money back, the fools get their money taken off them and the farms and cows keep on producing the same as they always have, just the ownership changes hand. I’m glad the government didn’t panic.

Now all I wait for is some poor schmuck to front TV crying about how he lost everything because he “invested” in Blue Chip, Hanover and then SCF, with a little dabble in Strategic Finance, making the trifecta of stupidity. He will probably add to that by calling on Alan Hawkins to come riding in to save SCF.