Cactus Kate

Cactus Kate writes about the pay equity battle and new evidence that women are letting their own side down.

She is at her cutting best:

Finally a decent piece on how professional women shirk their responsibilities in the workforce.

Find it hard to get a medical appointment? Especially in a tax payer funded area of medicine.  Yes, well this has been building for years.  A bit like female legal partners who only work three days a week.  Who wants to employ someone who will not answer your emergency call on a Wednesday?  I want to know what they do for those two days off.  Play golf? Do their husband’s laundry?   Read more »

Cactus Kate knows tax…especially how to pay as little as possible. She makes a few changes to tax cheat Matt McCarten’s tax regime:

Matt doesn’t like paying tax or dealing with the IRD so he is a poster-child for the changes suggested.

1. Abolish 15 per cent GST. Replace with 1 per cent financial transaction tax as recommended by the New Zealand Bankers Association. Same money.

2. Abolish PAYE on wages and salaries. Replace it with a wealth tax and a capital gains tax when shares, businesses, land and property are sold. People are taxed when they’re cashing up, not when they are making it.

3. 90 per cent Death Tax. You can’t take it with you. Grown-up kids should earn their own money anyway. And what a fabulous run on trust and estate planning this would be as well as retail spending.

4. Rent-to-buy Housing NZ homes underwritten by banks the state. Limiting children in current state funded homes to two a family and having a capital gains tax will keep welfareprices affordable.

5. State-created work schemes for all long-term jobless. Even if they dig a hole and fill it up again.

6. A living wage set at $20 an hour minimum. It would be a stimulus package. Especially when abolishing welfare for families and state housing.

7. No tax on all funds profits kept in a business or trusts.

8.Free public transport in Auckland major cities. That would get people out of their cars but not as much as congestion charging and tolls.

9. Victims get 100 per cent state compensation for loss or injury. Offenders will work it off if necessary.

10. Make KiwiSaver a state-owned fund and sell buy all the Government’s non-core commercial assets.

I was talking to Matthew Hooton this afternoon about his comments in the NBR about never being denied service. It was during this conversation that we came to the conclusion that the amounts of liquor involved in Aaron Gilmore’s explanation seemed…well…a little too light.

So we hatched a plan…one I want to share with readers. More of an experiment than a plan.

How does this sound.

Three of New Zealand’s most obnoxious bloggers/commentators/politicos have at it at a classy restaurant and eat and drink until service is refused.  Read more »

Peter Dunne has announced the IRD systems need a $1.5 billion upgrade.  We all know this means $3 billion+ needs to be spent because the IRD has become a centralised collection agent and the taxation system has become too complex for the old IT systems.  So we are told.  We also know that like Novopay, everyone sitting in front of a computer seems to be an expert on how to fix it.

Fresh to react to  a plunge in his stocks, Rod Drury was quick on the bludge and Clare Curran, quick to suck up to anyone with the slightest knowledge of IT parroted her support in opposing Dunne’s plans.

As usual, Cactus Kate brings some good old common sense to the debate and asks why we need to spend the money in the first place when the focus should be on simplifying taxation and with it all the credits and welfare the IRD now has to manage.  A good start would be eliminating Welfare for Families and creating a tax free threshold for single and married people and those with children.  Other countries do it and their tax returns take 10 minutes to complete, why can’t New Zealand?

Cactus Kate has looked at the econonic destruction caused by Labour and the Greens and also looked at the rationale behind their policy.

She wonders whether or not they will address other areas of the economy that need similar pricing controls if their rationale is true and pure.

They need to now come clean with the following policies so those affected can act in accordance with their regime:

1. Foreign ownership of farm land.  We know they are going to stop it so tell us how.  Let us know how the rural banks are going to take a hit on valuation whereby only New Zealanders can now sell real property to each other.  It will smash the value of some $50 billion of farming debt.  So let’s have it.

2. Foreign ownership of residential property. We know they are going to stop those evil Mainlanders from buying New Zealand homes, tell us how.  Hong Kong already has laws in place to discourage their purchase so philosophically there is no reason why New Zealand should not have laws against foreigners buying residential property.  Again there is tens of billions of dollars of mortgage debt and valuations of current property at stake.

3. Exchange rate policy. We know they say the NZD is overvalued, so what are they going to do about it?  Print more money? How much? How will they lower the dollar?  This will need to be thought of in conjunction with #1 and #2 as you drop the dollar you make those assets far cheaper for foreigners to buy up.  Read more »

Cactus takes issue with Karol at The Standard:

Apparently right wing women have to be able to be angry and nasty (which is derided as being “macho”) to succeed in politics or business.  I don’t have any issue with this as by in large it is true, but from what I have seen in politics left wing women are actually angrier, nastier, manipulative and far more conniving.  Do not let the cardigans and timid lifestyles fool you.  Their only outward form of attack to curry favour in situations is a child-like “s/he is picking on me” to create themselves as the vulnerable underdog vs the outwardly stronger party.

Crusher Collins is the pin-up the left like to roll out as being nasty.  But there is nothing nasty about a woman who remains entirely predictable in nature.  Anyone crossing Crusher will get bite and eventually some form of payback.  Equally be nice to Crusher and she will be nice back.  It hardly requires complex analysis.

The left wing hate Judith Collins. But that’s ok because I’m pretty sure she hates them back. She has crushed so many of their caucus now that they seem too afraid to let anyone, especially Angry Andrew Little ask even on supplementary question.  Read more »

Cactus Kate looks at the silly beat up of the Teina Pora case…she sees greed more than stitch up  or the false claim of “institutional racism” as the reason the fool is cooling his heals in the pokie than anything else..and ratings and greed is what is motivating the public campaign to get him released despite being convicted by two juries.

Teina Pora’s family saw reward money as did Pora himself and all of them got greedy.  Two juries convicted him.  Their own evidence was used against only their own.

I suspect now the Pora’s can all see everyone’s favourite jersey wearing twenty-something ghosty paperboy from Dunedin in line for millions in compensation and think their little angel can line up for some of that if they all contradict what they said 20 years ago.  Albeit with 20 more years of pot smoking, boozing and crime under their belts and perhaps from Penfold’s door step interview, two more generations of lying, time-wasting ferals born into the wider family for the taxpayer to pay for.  It is a wonder they can remember what happened yesterday if their intellect matches the TV3 edit.
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From Vernon Small:

Best thing about early shift is you go home, put your feet up and mull over what to do with that lazy $50K in your foreign bank a/c.

— Vernon Small (@VernonSmall) March 18, 2013

Cactus Kate joins in:   Read more »

This, from a piece in the NBR yesterday (behind paywall)

NBR Online asked Mr Dotcom why he put one of his Hong Kong companies in charge of Megabox.

“It involves some US artists as potential shareholders and they want a more tax-friendly jurisdiction. That’s why we looked at Hong Kong and Singapore,” he replied.

That sounds dodgy to me, and indeed the NBR consulted their own tax expert on the issue.   Read more »