Interesting comment from a politics graduate in this article, the flight to OZ.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/n...ectid=10805706
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Interesting comment from a politics graduate in this article, the flight to OZ.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/n...ectid=10805706
Yawn! I look forward to the continued and accelerating flight of the lower classes to Australia. Go the Mozzies.
Makes more space and cheaper assets to buy up in NZ and less lower class annoyances like rugby league, gangs, Maori child bashing etc.
And as Muldoon remarked, it raises the IQ of both countries.
And, oh yes, there's another benefit.
Continued flight of Labour voters to Oz will ensure NZ has a permanent Nat Party majority.
And as the migrants to Oz become richer they'll switch to voting Liberal/National over there.
Its a win/win situation - Go the flight!
Easy Belge, observe the departees as they line up in their jandals - nearly all working class people.
Think about it, continued flight of working class voters in recent years (incl under Helen Clark) and the Labour vote in NZ collapsed significantly in the last 2 elections.
For the first time the Chch party vote overall has gone blue, National, and I'm sure there are other areas in NZ which have done the same.
Even Dunedin is starting to come unstuck as a Labour stronghold.
And yet National won the last 2 elections and the Labour lost the last 2 elections and Christchurch and its easy to observe the emigrés in line at the airport....so I think its you Belge with the reality gap....
And you're wrong about the economics degree Belge, its actually a double degree in Economics with papers in micro, macro, econometrics, money and banking, NZ industry, labour economics - just a little bit better than McDunk. And a whole lot of subsidiary units in various subjects like maths and English, accounting subjects, and a qualification in French from the French Ministry of Education. Subject closed.
This is the worst aspect of Sharetrader - the drift into ad hominem arguments. I don't propose to enlighten you other than to say there were 4 different institutions involved in different places. Nor do I propose to tell you what my portfolio is and how many of each.
This has nothing to do with the debate. I recall at least two posters were thrown off Sharetrader for that sort of thing, personal abuse and several warned.
Shall we talk about the psychological problems you have Belge, which u divulged in one of the debates.....
Lets stick to the economic, social and political debates and keep out of each others personal lives and respect privacy.
I think most Sharetraders would agree that its a pretty good indication that Belge feels he is losing the argument when he makes a desperate jump into personal details of other Sharetraders and gives up firing any ammo on the issue in debate which was the polkitical effects of the drift across the Tasman :-)
So we are agreed that the drift across the Ditch favours National here and the Liberal/Coalition over there....
Great link. Now I can apply for that Yahoo CEO job.
This is a silly comment MVT, I and all my university grad mates live here, that’s about 30 of us. Pretty much every Kiwi I have bumped into is either a uni grad or a skilled trade worker. I don’t think a single many of them are labour or left leaning voters. Surely the act of voting Labour or National is no reflection of educational qualities.
However, if you’re right, NZ will be a rich raging success in no time at all. but i doubt it. My money is on it.
Its not a "silly" comment Pumice, I would accept an unproven assertion, certainly, although the NZ election results are telling.
Rather your reply is a "silly" reply.
Why?
Because if say 100,000 NZers have migrated to Australia in the last year or two and I assert that most of them voted Labour in no way do you disprove this by saying that you know a dozen of them and you don't think they voted Labour. If you are following that tack then you have to find another 49,000 and show that they didn't vote Labour or perhaps find a reliable opinion poll that says that. I don't know of any such poll.
For one, it’s called a brain drain MVT, not a working class drain. 100,000 voters is also a very small percentage of the voting public and they were more than replaced by immigrants. Most people that move also know they are not entitled to a single benefit over here as well. That’s more of a capitalist position to put oneself in don’t you think? Are labour supporters more likely to be working than national supporters? Because the fact is that although 55,000 left NZ, the unemployment rate went up from 6.3% to 6.7% (lazy national supporter’s?) while in Australia, thee unemployment rate dropped from 5.2% to 4.9%
I just dismiss your assertion that there is a cause an effect relationship between kiwis leaving and national getting in power. Correlation, sure, but that’s all. National had significant support well before the brain drain reached its peek.
I hope NZ's economy thrives under its concentrated national support, it should do, yet to see any evidence though. It might soon be worth the move back.
Here's the latest from the dim-witted National Party: local body councils should look very hard at selling off income-producing assets, and concentrate on the basics: Rubbish, Water, and Rates.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/poli...on-asset-sales
National will also look to intervene if rates increase faster than inflation, and help out councils who are going down the right track.
And this policy is being pushed ... because it has been proven that the private sector is better at building up an asset and keeping costs down, 100% of the time. Spare me. Look at NZ Rail.
The other side of the coin is that without Council involvement, many of these assets would not be there in the first place. No private sector firm would have made the investment, so there'd be nothing to squabble over, meaning no bargain investments down the track for the private sector.
Here in Hamilton we have the new council-funded Claudelands Events Centre, which will be a great asset in the years to come. At the moment it's losing money, but not badly. It will compete with the not-for-profit society running the Mystery Creek area, where staffing is partly on a volunteer basis. Like them, it'll need to work on some profit centres over the years ahead.
But should the council sell this down to the private sector first? No way.
Your council is one of the examples that led to this. What was it, a 30million hole from street racing?! Explain that to a. Pensioner struggling to pay the rates.
That was an aberration, Slimwin. At the time all this was pushed through and a contract signed, we had a hotshot mayor called Michael Redman, who swept in from the private sector (so-called marketing guru). We were all convinced this would be great for Hamilton. Redman opted out of being mayor soon afterwards and set himself up as the CEO on far better pay (Christchurch ended up with our old CEO, bad luck), then left under a cloud, so this was all just spin on his way up the tree.
So 2012 was the last year for a while when we got to watch rich Aussies parade their V8 cars around on our streets (mostly in single file, doing lap times slower than old Porsches).
So I agree, the V8s had to go, and were a bad investment for a council. They didn't exit the contract well, they got tucked yet again, and it was the private sector that did that to ratepayers.
Hi Belg, I probably shouldn't comment on the Claudelands centre being good for all ratepayers, as I haven't been inside it since it was done up. My kids have. But the old place was an eyesore, and the council couldn't stand by and let it represent the best of Hamilton's general purpose event centres. Founders Theatre is getting tired too.
Pensioners always have a moan about rates, what's new. I think it's because with a limited income coming in, and owning properties that might have appreciated over the years, they see themselves as being stung a bit hard, and they have time to watch the local news and form an opinion.
Rates are generally a small part of business costs, the trick is to ensure your income swamps out background costs like rates and other overheads. I don't see the government stepping in with fancy projects inside the city boundaries - if ratepayers tell council they'd like to see some improvements to the area, and it gets voted into the 10 year plan, then as a whole the ratepayers must cover it.
But it's not black and white, most councils get plenty of stick about overspending, so the controls are mostly there anyway.
This was predictable: National starting to admit their policies probably won't be good enough to bring us back into surplus by the time of the next vote. They did succeed in one thing: the tax take is down, they managed to save the already well-off, some of their taxes.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/n...ectid=10807475
I just caught the end of a story on Cambell Live: a solo mum bringing up three kids after the father left, working long hours for $13.50 an hour, and one school-aged child having to work also, to help. Employers should be ashamed, paying that little to an adult, but of course there are many more unemployed in the wings. A great National policy.
FP, you might get your wish tomorrow..
http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/budget-...rise-wb-119276
Not my wish. CGT is a messy tax and does a lot of harm to businesses, farms, motels and the like when trying to expand. All I have ever said is trhat if we ever do have one it should be an exit tax (have a repatriation clause). i.e. payable only when the gain is retained for personal use. It hasn't done any good in any economy and NZ won't be any different.
Thank goodness FP, I thought you'd fallen asleep ..:sleep: yes it'll be interesting tomorrow.
But in the general theme of a bit of a dialogue here, how does the thought of an eventual CGT put someone off expanding their property-based business? Do you mean they have to sell something first? Because that is not often required, the new asset is borrowed against if it's any good.
At last, some sensible policy, even if it's from the opposition.
http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/boost-e...rges-dw-119265
http://nzresources.com/showarticle.a...3&gid=30003313
John Walley wades in too.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/n...ectid=10808000
True, but many of those investors won't be affected b y a CGT as they are are already classed as traders by IRD and are currently subject to income tax on gains. The difficulty is motel operators, farmers etc. Moteliers often start as lessees and trade up to a freehold, or larger lease, etc. It's a massive financial hurdle for most, and to tax them at that stage, when all the capital from a sale goes straight back into earning their living, is where I have a real objection. The gain should be allowed to accumulate and be paid on exit from an asset class. Actually NZ's system of applying income tax to traders works fairly well. Other than appeasing the envious, who largely seem to think all landlords, developers etc, make squillions and pay no tax, it would do little good. (Most do actually pay income tax on gains) If it's paid on exit only, it's hard to argue with. Then of course holiday homes and the like (non income producing assets) would be taxed on a transaction basis. And Labour's proposal to extend CGT to non icome , financially useless assets , like art etc, gets really messy and close to impossible to administer. It's sufficient to leave the status quo of clobbering the traders. Finally,here are a few hobbyists who spend years restoring some beaten up old car and eventually make a buck of sorts. I would hate to see them clobbered as per Cunliffe's ideas.
Fair enough FP, I can see there are issues about the applications. Perhaps it's more likely the weird loophole on baches will be closed. Apparently you can set a very high lease on the bach, get no takers, and then claim interest and overhead costs for almost all of the year because it was available for rent. That is a rort, no doubt.
CGT on exit from an asset class, that does sound fair enough. As long as the new transaction is bigger I guess. If a farmer sold the big farm and bought a hobby block, surely there would be CGT to pay on the difference.
Yes, as that releases capital, and the new purchase would be unlikely to be an economic unit anyway. . Your point abnout setting a high rent and getting no takers is not lawful. IRD rules in all countries forbid schemes that are designed to avoid tax. The odd-bod might get away with such nonsense, but the odd bod also gets away with simply not declaring income. Thinking about schemes, you may recall some Australian clown a few years ago who was running around the country promoting his scheme - essentially swapping houses with a mate - thus both becoming loss making landlords. Completely illegal as anyone who tried it would soon find out - or maybe not, because if NZ's tax system has one flaw, it is that it is under-funded and doesn't catch as much as it should, so the laws are okay, but the policing is a little hairy. .
The Budget, haven't spent much time checking it over, but the heralded increase in the R&D spend is actually not much above inflation for the next year. And a big chunk of it is going to what used to be IRL, the home of many expensive projects that never went anywhere. I heard of one project where an IRL researcher quit and later completed the work privately, after the original client ran out of cash for IRL. It then turned out to be a winner, so I guess that counts..
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/n...ectid=10808290
Again, John Walley is on the mark, R&D tax credits would be so much better for NZ.
Dear John, the National government doesn't even trust their own people and voters to fill out accurate tax returns, so it's a lost cause. By donating a lump sum to IRL the R&D job is done, it's so much easier..
Meanwhile National takes away some technology teaching resources from schools?? Still to research this, but kids who pull things apart and try to make stuff at a young age often go on to be the engineers of the future. Any moves to halt this process in schools has to be roundly criticised.
No, taxes are not harmful FP, they are there to value the currency..because let's face it, the government could simply print more money if they need it. Thinking about it, that would devalue the NZ$, just like our exporters are wishing for....
OK, longer term, we need better exports. Not more volume, more profit. Without a margin, we are doomed to be price takers, like every farmer. Yes, R&D is a bee in my bonnet, because it's a very important driver of these future profits.
The government's job is not to back just a few likely corporate developers of our new prosperity, they must give us all a chance to get there. They need to set the taxes up as a guideline towards that future, in other words reinstate the R&D tax credits that Labour set up, in line with Australia, and many other countries who are more enlightened on the potential of their manufacturing sector.
It's looking more and more likely that Labour will be back after the next election, so I only have two years to wait.
FP, should I stick to basic business, hunker down and forget any new product development, as the govt is saying, until 2014, or should I keep up with my plans for world domination in just one or two tiny little niche areas?
Please yourself, but you can do all the R+D you like right now, but if you aren't prepared to do so without tax credits, then I really wonder why you are in business at all. You are right that next govt. will probably include labour, which of course means former communist* Russell Norman almost certainly as Finance minister; but NZers are mainly socialists, and the promise of robbing Peter to pay Paul always brings the Pauls out of the cupboard.
* He is possibly the only one on the planet who believes he's changed his stripes.
FP, you know I'll be out here in the provinces spending my own cashflow to get my R&D done. I've seen it work, I know I'll get the money back at some stage. It's all the other businesses I'm worried about. They need to get their first R&D projects under way.
I had a look at Russell Norman's wikipedia page. For a kickoff, he has one. He has had a bit of a look at lots of different political arenas, it seems to be his calling all right. And I like the way he gets the sound bites in on TV, he's good. I would welcome a Labour-Greens coalition, I'm not scared of that at all.
Green Party moving in new direction.
Yeah, I loved that "give my flag back " sound bite.
CRI, IRL, ATI : three letters that mean large public sector group with a low accountability for R&D results per dollar invested.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/n...ectid=10808890
I'm not even sure the universities are much better, but they are more fleet-footed, that's for sure. Again, neither have channels to markets. Do all the R&D you like, don't you have to sell it to someone? That is the domain of the private sector, that's where the R&D spend and directive should come from.
Funny thing, heh heh heh, food for thought for those who bitterly contested my thesis that most of those that emigrate to Australia vote Labour in NZ.
A nice cartoon in The Press today.
A banner going through the top of two boxes saying " People Leaving in Record Numbers".
In the left hand box Shearer looking glum thinking "We're losing all our constituency" and underneath the cartoonist has added "And your credibility".
In the right hand box Key looking delighted thinking "We're losing all our unemployed!".
So, Roll On the Great Migration :-)
MVT I had a look at the figures on Statistics NZ website and there is no correlation between migration and governing party. It actually showed slightly more left under labour. (Although not corrected for population growth)
Also assuming they are all (majority) labour supporters, they can still vote for them from over here.
I’m a bit confused on why you are happy with willing workers having to leave NZ to get a job?
My main reason for moving is I refuse to pay for all the unfunded liabilities that make up the bulk of the welfare costs, Aged health care costs and superannuation.
Here’s and excerpt of what I sent to Rodney Hide: “A lot of people complain about the unemployment, DPB and even interest free student loans as big budget costs, however these costs are miniscule compared to health and superannuation costs, but if I were part of the baby boomer generation (who make up a significant portion of the voting public) I wouldn't vote in a government whose policy is to make budget cuts to these areas. I doubt the youth are prepared to pay for these unfunded liabilities and will likely move overseas and leave the mess for someone else to clean up and fair enough too.”
Rodney’s response: “you’ve hit the nail on the head”
Seems I’m somehow sympathising with ACT!! I’m ashamed of myself…..
Hey Major, thought I would use something a little more calculated than a cartoon for my argument. Based on the 2008 election results, more overseas voters (by a majority) voted National, fact. Maybe the next election will be very Red & Green for NZ with all thses national supports heading offshore?
Attachment 3998 Attachment 3999
Good try Pumice :-)
I suspect a pretty low proportion of AUSTRALIAN domiciled NZers actually vote in NZ elections. National/conservative voters are far more conscientious than Labourites in terms of registering and actually voting even though its raining (unlike the wharfies who won't work when its raining :-0 ).
So, yes, thank you to our Australian domiciled National voters for actually registering and voting and equally, thank you to our Australian domiciled formerly Labour voters for not bothering and going to the League, placing their bets, having a fag and/or getting drunk instead :-)
However the UK domiciled Kiwi voters tend to be more professionals and very patriotic and register and get out and vote National.
Wild unsubstantiated claims supporting National there MVT.
We need higher profits all round here, more innovation. Building things up, not tearing them down.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/7032...rms-innovators
Balancing the books and living within your means is something I agree with so support National in that regard. I even think John Key was unfairly treated re Skycity and the conference centre. Trying to encourage a conference centre that might bring in some overseas conferences and dollars seems like a good idea to me. Good to see an MP doing something practical.
My problem with national is that it is the young (the future of NZ) that have to take make the sacrifices. They are increasing class sizes reducing support to people studying at University at a post graduate level (if it is tech classes at school that are getting cut then that may mean less engineers and scientists.)
No mention of raising the retirment age or reintroducing means testing for National Superannuation( i.e. if you don't need social welfare from the rest of NZ you don't receive it) I know National's needs to pander to greedy boomers who want/expect a continuation of their cradle to grave welfare but at the expense of the young it is getting a bit much. John's a polictician not a statesman. Even Fungus Pudding must be starting to feel a bit guilty about the oldies screwing over the young in NZ. A lot of those young people are already leaving. Some are protesting. Next elections I hope they can get off their arses and vote.
Whose doing the robbing Fungus the people who got free education, free healthcare and now expect welfare in retirement even if they don't need it. Welfare should only be there for people who need it in my opinion. NZ Super made up 43% of the welfare spending to June 2011 and will be expected to grow in future years. I bet there could be some significant savings made there without anyone starving that could go to education and health (I wonder what age group uses up most of the health spend)
The clash of the generations .... bring it on
Only problem is that will take 10 years or more to sort it out .... but I have faith in the Millenials to come up with a resolution
While I am ranting, removing the child tax rebate and the under $9,880 rebate seem like asking those who can least afford it to make sacrifices for the good of the country.
Imagine earning $9,000 for the year and being expected to pay $945.00 in tax. That might be quite tough going to be fair even if it is only 10.5% of your income well less than half the 33% people earning over $70,000 have to pay. After tax weekly $9,000($154.91($173.08-$18.17)) $90,000($1,334.23($1730.77-$396.54) at least we don't have a flat income tax rate yet.
Increasing the tax take is another way to balance the budget. (That would not include increasing GST as we all know this is a regressive tax) Capital gains tax could be a consideration if it wasn't so complicated.
I'm not sure of your point. Is that a rhetorical question? I read it as 'Who's doing the robbing Fungus? The people who got free education, free healthcare and now expect welfare in retirement even if they don't need it?' I agree that welfare should be limited to those who need it. I'm not sure wehat you mean by welfare in retirement. Don't sickness, unemployment etc. stop once superannuation payments kick-in? Superannuation is not welfare, and those who don't need it because of other income, get very little after their marginal tax kicks in. My point was simply that socialists generally would rather put their hands out for a share of someone else's hard earned money, than pay the price necessary to generate their own. That price being working long hours, in isolated places or offshore if necessary, going without for many years, living below their means, saving, scrimping, investing, taking risks etc. None of which is a comment on those who need welfare assistance through no fault of their own.
Isn’t that one of the problems? "That price being working long hours, in isolated places or offshore if necessary" I moved offshore and more than doubled my income, but NZ'ers won’t benefit from the increased tax I and many other younger people pay (and nor should they). So Nz loses about $12k of tax, but gains only $3k or less in student loan interest (less if they don’t have a SL).
I had plans of coming back to NZ, but after living in Australia, it’s impossible for me to come back. I’m more than happy to pay a higher tax rate in Aus, of which I an ineligible for any benefits. I am happy to pay for my own health care and superannuation on top of that.
NZ needs to catch up to Australia on policy as well as financially.
Maybe I'm wrong I am just not as cunning as Key & English
http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/john-ke...er-plan-120247
At least it stops the debate being between old and young if everyone starts making a sacrifice to balance the books.
Just as a matter of interest, the gross cost of Universal Superannuation is significantly reduced by the income tax we oldies pay on the Super. And just like everyone else, we have 15% GST deducted from the remainder. As a couple, we have paid out over $30,000 of our savings on urgent surgery that the public system was unable to deliver in a reasonable time. We also pay out lots of tax yearly on our investments/savings. I am fit enough to work, even in a manual situation and if I did, I would take a position and create an unemployed person who would then cost us the unemployed benefit. Adding to the super age will cause many oldies to stay in work. Not only will the have to work up to the age but the psychological effect may overcome the perceived "need to retire' for many. Key is shewd enough to read the signs but every government in the western world has been overturned at least once since 1998 except Merkels and she is about to lose her next election. Voters throughout the world are running back and forth like headless chickens and we have to live through these times.
I wasn't going to claim National Super until successive governments of both stripes and CommComm confiscated most of the shareholder value from TEL without compensation.
So I decided to claim Super until I had reconfiscated my stolen shareholder value.
My grandfather lived into his 103rd year in good health :-)
When Ruth Richardson put the means test on super a lot of accountants told all those that were not in the super high income bracket To spend up large or gamble & hope to have big win as you could not in most cases be any worse off. As in most cases you would be living on approximately the same amount as the super provided by your savings. While those that had spent everything got about the same amount from super. No wonder the savings of New Zealanders declined from this point. Go back to the two age that we used to have. One age for a means tested pension & another for a universal non means tested one.
You should be extremely grateful that dopey outfit was sold, and for huge money at the time. 22,000 employees, mostly doing next to nothing, among the highest charges in the world and still massively subsidsed by the taxpayer. If you are old enough, you will no doubt remember that toll calls were only made on special occasions. The oldies still shudder in their boots at the thought of making a toll call, ringing someone in another city, let alone another country. All phones had to be rented from the post office; we were not allowed to use our own, even those who had smuggled one back from overseas. You needed a special permit to install an answerphone, or rather to allow the post office to install one. It was a dreadful outfit. Well done to the govt. for dropping it. Rest assured, you have been well compensated. If they had given the show away we would still have won, but as it so happens, when it was sold it was one of the highest transactions in the world that decade.
Fungus pudding I got a new phone connection faster in those days (1970) & with less hassle than in (2006). Shows you how poor the private management was. The installer moaned when he was asked to do the job properly instead of tacking wires round the skirting board in a near new house & if I remember correctly it cost $99.00. So do not tell me it was better under private management. There are still places in Auckland that you can only get dial up Internet.
On the world stage the item below is a lot more important than any temporary poll gain by Labour in NZ. Look for a famous victory by Scott Walker in Wisconsin tomorrow :-)
"Punching Out
Labor is already on the defensive. Although Ohio voters last year repealed by 61 percent a law limiting bargaining and requiring increased pension and health-care insurance payments championed by Republican Governor John Kasich, it has lost ground elsewhere. Governor Mitch Daniels and fellow Republican lawmakers made Indiana the nations 23rd so-called right-to-work state Feb. 1 by exempting nonunion employees from paying dues when working alongside unionized colleagues.
The rate of U.S. union membership fell to a record low in 2011, with collective-bargaining units representing just 6.9 percent of employees in nongovernment jobs, down from 7.2 percent in 2009, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Numbers Talk
Wisconsin membership in the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the states second-largest public union, fell to 28,745 in February from 62,818 in March 2011, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cited an anonymous source.
While membership has declined, the numbers published by the Journal are wildly inaccurate, Bob Allen, a spokesman for AFSCME Wisconsin, said in a telephone interview and e-mailed statement. The union doesnt disclose its membership numbers, he said.
If Walker is recalled, it will be a shot in the arm for labor, said Robert Reich, who was labor secretary under Democratic President Bill Clinton.
Clinton campaigned for Barrett last week. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has been part of a cadre of Republicans stumping for Walker.
Barrett and Walker hopscotched around the state today to encourage people to go to the polls. Election officials have forecast 60 to 65 percent of registered voters will cast ballots. While the recall will officially end with tomorrows vote, members of both parties said wounds will not heal quickly.
"
Fungus pudding that is your belief. Mine is different have had at least 20 faults in last six years. One took nearly a week to fix even after I paid for a computer technician to try another modem on the connection because the one I was using was not supplied by Telecom. Even after this expense I had to abuse hell out of them every three or four hours to get them to do anything. Give me the old P&T any day. Imagine living in Auckland & having to struggle with Dial Up internet.
Technology changed dramatically not long before the old NZPO was privatised. TEL had the benefit of electronic exchanges and subscriber toll dialling installed by the NZPO and were not handicapped by the far larger numbers of staff required to run mechanical exchanges and manual toll boards or having to provide a new connection to almost anywhere in the country . Roger Douglas having paid large numbers to leave. Given the restrictions imposed by both parties on capital expenditure and the political pressure applied by MPs in marginal electorates at election time the NZPO wasn,t as bad as FP would have you believe
Westerly
Fungus Pudding If the P&T was bad how do you class Telecom still trying to work with 10th century standard of service or have you got a better idea
Fungus Pudding this cat is probably older than you & the present telecom service is far worse than I ever had from the P&T. And how do avoid Telecom all the others are using Telecom services at some point
You always get some twisted, obsessed, perverted Telecom hater whose nephew works for 2 degrees, aunty for Vodafone or secret lover for Telstra-Clear or who once spoke to the Telecom Help Desk and got some accent they didn't like.
I bet most of them have had anti-harassment orders out against them and/or secretly watch porn/child porn. They always have the same sort of whinging Pom personality....
Major Von Tempsky No none of my relatives work for those companies but a nephew did work for telecom about 20 years ago now works for Tait & has done for many years. If you had over 100 faults in the last 6 years you would say Telecom was Sh*t to The neighbours in my area say the whole area was cabled with cheapest & nastiest cable they could find. Are you judging others by your own personality
All I know is, my Hamilton City copper cable and the broadband hardware connected to it by Telecom must be poor, because a guy in Delhi has better broadband than me. Vodafone tell me that the gear here is older version, but also add that unless my modem drops out (by itself) at least 10x a day, they won't be bothering too much about it. Frustrating when it's been raining and the wires go static..on top of the overloaded or slow hardware. I have to admit, today it's good.
It's been absolutely perfe
c
t
Nope, I'm judging it by own experience. Whenever we've had a problem, and it's been seldom, we've rung up and they've fixed it. My wife gets an el cheapo package cos of her work that none of the pretenders can match in the long run.
Major von Tempsky have you considered that you get priority service from Telecom because of your wifes work
The dodgy National Party again..
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/poli...-to-dodge-poll
Consider that consummate politician, our previous PM Kiwi Keith Holyoake who won 4 elections and retired as PM.
He was a master of looking at political currents and when he deemed it expedient he would alter course, back off, go into reverse, regaining the majority.
If I was Labour I would be sobbing heavily at the thought of facing another Kiwi Keith..... :-)
Isn't this type of brainless policy the reason National got dumped for three terms? To put the flip-flops another way, you can't trust them in general.
Colin James follows the recent win for Labour over National. Shearer still needs coaching for being in front of the camera, but this was a win.
Quote:
Colin James's column for the Otago Daily Times for 12 June 2012
A win for Shearer. But much work still to do
It was a clear win to David Shearer, his first against John Key. Shearer instantly sensed parents' likely reaction to notes from teachers about Hekia Parata's brilliant scheme to raise class sizes to pay for more teacher training and a pay-for-performance system. He ran it top of his budget speech.
On Thursday Parata scrapped her scheme. Key said from Europe (his polls no doubt saying what by then Labour's were) that it was her decision.
Keep the boss clear of the mud, the tacticians say. Helen Clark was skilled at that. But it stretches plausibility rather tight that Parata could be still promoting her policy on radio one day and the next suddenly pushing senior ministers -- one a former woodwork teacher, another a tough-it-out tactician -- into scrapping it.
Why downgrade class sizes? Professor John Hattie, inventor of a method for teachers to test their effectiveness, told a Treasury semi-public lecture a few years back that class sizes are far less effective than other factors in lifting learning. Professor Dugald Scott backed that last week.
But parents, especially National-leaning parents, get skittish about their kids' education. To get parents onside would have required long, research-rich and well-led public debate -- of the sort preceding the 2010 tax changes and now starting to be prepared for a rise in the pension age. The only class size "debate" was a speech by Gabs Makhlouf, Secretary to the Treasury, not an agency parents would instinctively turn to for guidance on kids' education.
Makhlouf's minister should have twigged how parents would react. As education shadow minister, Bill English made hay out of Trevor Mallard's amalgamation of small schools, also aimed at improving learning. Clark squashed that fast when she saw how parents reacted.
Three points arise from the Parata gambit.
One is that, while the government will recover as this gaffe fades from the news, it will have lost a sliver of trust. This bit of political mismanagement, coming on top of several this year, could generate a downward momentum out of the recent small slippage in National's poll readings. And reversing momentum is a lot harder than forestalling it, especially if background factors -- consumer confidence and right-track-wrong-track readings particularly -- are also sliding, as they are right now.
The second point is that there is a public interest in good political management: stable policy. Poor political management leads either to backoffs -- remember the retreat from Gerry Brownlee's plan to dig up national parks in 2010 -- or to policy ping-pong as the next change of government reverses a policy for which there is not a solid voter majority.
Thus, National heavily softened Labour's emissions trading scheme and the next Labour-led government will likely toughen it again. National is reversing a swag of Clark-government workplace laws, which will in turn be reversed. The jury is out on SOE selldowns: if the sky doesn't fall in after the first one or two, public opposition will likely melt but the politics need managing much better than up till now. Unstable policy is bad for investment and bad for voter trust in the system.
The third point about the Parata gambit is that Labour's morale is up a notch and Shearer has taken one more step towards filling out as a party leader in a form recognisable to the public. Even if most voters won't have noticed, it is his first decisive win over Key.
The risk for Labour as its morale builds is to think it might sneak into office without changing too much.
That risk is not so much that voters might sniff out a coaster and deny Labour in 2014 nor that it leaves out the Green part of the governing equation that needs to be sorted well before election day. It is that the resultant government might be short-lived.
That puts the heat on Davids Cunliffe and Parker, Grant Robertson and Jacinda Ardern.
The two Davids' job is to cherry-pick the now fast-evolving international economic policy thinking to fit a Labour agenda. Cunliffe, who has the pivotal economic development portfolio, was to emphasise investment in human and physical capital in a speech yesterday after this went to press. Shearer wants a "new economy", research-based.
Robertson's role is to freshen environment and education thinking, oversee a general reapplication of Labour principles to modern conditions -- decades overdue and a Shearer ambition -- and lead the deal-making with the Greens. Robertson has yet to generate much of that but these are early days.
Generation-Y Ardern's role is to recast social assistance policy. She has been pushing the child-centred policy which Labour curiously neglected in the election and has been gathering a group to rethink "welfare", which she is calling "social security", thereby reviving the original 1930s notion of reciprocity.
Few outside a small circle will quickly notice much of that. But it is every bit as important as Shearer's win over Key on class sizes.
-- Colin James, Synapsis Ltd, P O Box 9494, Wellington 6141
Ph (64)-4-384 7030, Mobile (64)-21-438 434, Fax (64)-4-384 9175
Webpage http://www.ColinJames.co.nz
In 2008, the IRD scored the best recent results for clawing back some unpaid taxes from the top tier wealthy. This was an amount of over $100 million. Labour was out of office in 2009 and now the target is back to the average. The top 250 individuals in terms of wealth (or ability to control wealth) have been asked to pay evaded dues of at least an extra $500 million over 10 years.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/n...ectid=10813402
$50 million per year on average is only 0.08% of the tax take, but perhaps it wouldn't cost too much to target a smaller group like this. Except one of these individuals had 197 companies, and it would appear that many use tax havens and other avenues, some of which are not illegal per se.
It appears that the word 'aggressive' means (in this group anyway) that IRD will be taking a good look.Quote:
"Aggressive tax arrangements can include the use of tax havens, transferring profits to associated offshore entities, using trusts to divert taxable income, and showing lifestyle and luxury assets as business assets," said IRD investigations manager Stuart Duff.
I suspect it would make interesting reading to see the average tax rate paid by these people on extremely high incomes, and I doubt it would be anywhere near the highest tax rate.
Bill English extols farmers to ensure their own staff are trained well, and to keep on the path of improvement in productivity.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/n...ectid=10816094
He was on safe ground in that meeting. But from the sidelines, there is much to be bemused about with the farming sector. Here is an entire group of people who arguably focus on paying as little tax as possible, and they can achieve that by being only averagely productive most years. Every so often the sector will see bumper prices and favourable weather, and that is the time to pay a bit of tax, sell the farm and take the tax-free capital gain. A simple proposition that has worked for generations.
Why am I so sure of myself on this? You just have to look at the power requirements for milking sheds around the country for example. Most run completely off the mains supply. There are heat exchangers available to recover the warmth from the vat chillers and use it to heat the washdown water. The payback period would be 2 years. Solar tubes could be used to heat the water with an efficiency of 85%, an even quicker payback. But farms overwhelmingly choose not to buy this equipment, even though it would free up power for industry without requiring a new power station.
The reason they don't buy this gear, and lots of other equipment like it, is that dairy farms are often worked by a contractor or a sharemilker. These people don't have an interest in capital items of plant, because they might be off the farm next season. But they also have to pay for all the power on the working side of the farm. The farm owner doesn't buy the gear because they will only see a long-term gain perhaps, and the plant might expire before the farm is sold off.
So this is why you can walk into a dairy plant and see all the equipment that was there 25 years ago. It's still working, very inefficiently, and the farming sector puts up with it because of their crazy job contracts.
el Zorro Are these farmers on take or pay contracts. I have had nothing to do with this industry for some years, but in those days most farmers left their house & cowshed lights on 24hours a day amongst other power wasting options & were still only paying their guarantee payment. They had to contract for this large minimum payment or the power boards would not supply them. All facts are needed to give a judgement not just your side of it. Have you even taken the extra interest costs into consideration, even if they can borrow that amount of extra capital. Also who pays for it the farmer or the share milker. It just sounds like sour grapes because you cannot sell your product.
If a farmer, or any other business operator can see a genuine efficiency increase, or profit increase by spending they are generally in boots and all. Yes, there will be exceptions. But you seem to suggest that farmers deliberately have higher overheads to avoid spending capital. Sensible capital expenditure adds to plant value, so can be depreciated and largely recovered on sale. Worn out, obsolete plant will mean the sale price will suffer. There may be a small degree of not bothering to upgrade due to an impending sale, but that's a business decision applicable to everything in life. Very few home owners would chuck in a new kitchen and bathroom prior to sale, unless it was likely to add more to the sale price than a dollar for every dollar spent. Your challenge to prove it is naive. I have no ability to mind-read every farmer in NZ, to assess his thinking, and neither have you.
No, you've missed the point FP. There is absolutely no incentive for a farm owner to save on power bills in their plant, because it's not their cost. They signed someone up to take that on, and a host of other on-farm costs like any milk grades, most of the fert bill, lameness costs, farm vehicle costs, dog feed costs etc. The contractor or sharemilker might take quite a few seasons to figure out what a low-cost farm overhead system looks like, and meanwhile there is a new rash of people wanting that same bad job, who will accept the poor efficiency of the farm operation.
Have a look at blog sites for farm workers and watch them moan at their plight, and how after all their work the farmer owners turfed them out for someone who would accept a lower rate, a poorer contract than they would accept, after being in the situation and struggling for a sensible capital expenditure that never eventuated.
Of course this is not true for all farms. Owner operators have their own interests at heart, but even then I know of some who despite being technically savvy, stick with the old gear and do it the hard way.
Possum, I don't sell power saving gear, one of my customers does. But I have observed a very slow uptake of farm technology, a word-of-mouth system that has a gestation of 10-15 years, even if the product costs $400 as a one-off and saves several thousand dollars on overheads for every year of use. This is the madness of it all, and I've only just started to realise that the farm contracts are behind it. It's a stupid system that pushes the costs of inefficient farming onto a hapless contractor, who is trying to move through the system into farm ownership. We all pay for it with low productivity. Farmers sit back and take the capital gain, that's where the real money is usually.
Sheep/beef farms are even worse of course. A huge sheep station supports one, maybe two families. Imagine if it was planted in vegetables or fruit, how many people would it support then? Assuming the output could be sold at a profit..
el Zorro you are still assuming that these improvements will make the farm more profitable? That is what I am pointing out about minimum power bills. Also the other point you over capitalize the farm to the point it is priced off the market people would buy cheaper ones & you cannot sell.
No, PC, from what I understand bigger dairy farmers do get a better power price than most of us townies, but they are paying per kWHr once the power lines are in place. Tiwai Point smelter might be paying 5c-7c per kwHr, that would be the best deal anyone can cut, townies pay over 20c for most of theirs. I've said it before, any power and fuel that farmers pay for is just a tiny fraction of the power they use up in their operation, they're just very lucky that most of it comes from the Sun for free.
I'm not in the game of selling big capital items either, yet I can see probably scores of smart items costing less than a few thousand dollars each that would increase farm profitability, most of which are not deployed on more than 10% of farms. You would have to be in the business trying to sell this sort of stuff to see that the rural supply stores don't want to stock it because the turnover is too slow, the farm contractors won't buy it because it might have to stay with the farm, and the farmer owners won't buy it because it's not their problem being solved. It's still great gear that is a no-brainer in a 'normal' situation.
I don't know what the answer is to such a major issue (well in my mind it is), but I can tell you that the likes of DairyNZ are not interested either. It won't bring in extra research money or occupy their 'highly skilled staff' on leading edge research papers. It's just not exciting.
But with all this in mind I take great umbrage at farmers moaning about a lack of town-style broadband at the farm gate. They just need to pay a bit more as a business cost and point a dish in the western direction, and get satellite broadband. Then they could use the faster comms for smart purposes to make more profits, which would more than cover their extra monthly expense. Telecom will not pay $60,000 to upgrade a modem box for about 5 subscribers, (figure it out, how long it would take to get the capital back).
El Zorro you are probably right they do not pay domestic rates but their minimum power bill could be two or three thousand dollars A month or more. As minimum charge even if the metered use did not add up to that amount. It was at one stage called take or pay & at another it was just a minimum billing amount guarantee. They were burning power like there was no tomorrow trying to use it. As they had to pay for it anyway. Other wise they would not put in the power lines to supply them. I can remember back to when some rural Townships had the same system. Minimum guaranteed power accounts. So power saving devices could end up being a dead loss. I know of some residents in country townships with wooden fired stoves for cooking & water heating etc. That were buying big electric stoves water heaters & electric bar heaters in every room to try & use the power that they had to pay for even if they did not use it. They even had to make an exception in Auckland for business consumption guarantees during the big cable fault around about the turn of the century.
PTC, I didn't know about a take-or-pay electricity contract for farmers. What a crazy idea. Almost as bad as the take-or-pay Maui gas deal in the 70s -80s. In that case the gas had to be taken out to get at the oil. So we all converted our cars feverishly to CNG with great encouragement from the govt, only to find it was a crap source of energy and the gas bottles meant we had to waste more energy going up hills, and the rear suspension had to be worked on etc etc..
Here's a more recent contract, a special deal for farmers who supply Fonterra. No mention of minimum power take, but you get a special rate if you can prove you have a Fonterra number. Contract milkers and sharemilkers pay for all the shed power, the farm bikes, some rubberware, etc.
http://www.mercury.co.nz/Terms-Condi...ming-Plan.aspx
But I chose this power saving stuff as an example. There is a lot more room for better efficiencies on farms. My point is that only some are seeking these improvements. Farm advisors on the web remind farmers that their sharemilkers have a right to get a share of an increased milk payout. Sounds like other farmers deliberately lock the milksolids payment to so much a kg by using a contract milker. The payout could double, but the contractor will stay on the same return. Fair? I suppose at least their income can't go down.
Farmers are also advised to head off disagreements by ensuring their plant, races, and fences are in good modern condition to give the contractors or sharemilkers the best chance at an adequate return on their investment of time, equipment and animals. All too easy to just let a new person try it next season, as it is.
el Zorro as a contract milker they do not have to own the herd. Take or pay power supplies were quite common in the 1960's & 70's for rural areas for residential customers also
Yep, I realised that sharemilkers were the ones with the bigger investment of some equipment, plus a herd. It's just that I read one 2007 web article from an advisor addressed to farm owners, where it was pointed out that they couldn't begrudge having to pass on part of a higher milk payout to sharemilkers. The implication was that shared costs in other areas of the agreement come under scrutiny, leading to disputes.
Perhaps I should point out I had a family member in this type of situation a few years back. The Queen St farmers with more equity made his working position untenable to the point he had to exit the equity partnership, just the year before one of the biggest payouts ever.
Sometime this week, I have an opportunity to meet John Key. I will try and mention R&D tax credits..does anyone know how to politely lead in with a topic like that, or should I just bail him up?
OK, FP I have to confess I didn't gather enough courage to speak to Mr Key, but I did watch him do an impromptu camera stint that was on the news that evening. Tough job, being PM. He gave a nice speech to the small crowd there.
He wasn't so sharp the other day when he stated that the govt doesn't need to act on the findings of the Waitangi Tribunal. All true, but he should never have voiced that.
Another legacy of the National Govt, Wellington house prices are staying much lower than Auckland's, after the rout of the public service.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/n...ectid=10818725
Yes. His choice of words could have been more diplomatic. I don't know if courage is needed to speak to him. He's extremely affable and approachable in person. Most politicians I have ever spoken to are. (There are exceptions)
As far as auckland house prices go - why would anyone want any other city to follow? They're over-the-top by world standards. In fact, looking at median Auckland prices and known average incomes, I'm damned if I know how anyone can live there. So good on National for taking some of the steam out of the Wellington market.
Good on them for sacking a whole lot of people and placing them in the dole queue, and increasing the flight to Australia? In what way is that a good outcome? OK if you're a property buyer in Wellington, and expecting a gain in future. But not so good for most taxpayers.
There is no benefit in employing people to do unnecessary things. None whatsoever. Necessity is the mother of invention, and that certainly applies to industry. Only when new jobs are required, will new jobs be found. Or would you prefer we still had a blacksmith's shop on every corner? Should we all throw our auto washing machines out and re-open the chinese laundries that used to be everywhere? Out with computers - think of all the telegram delivery jobs they cost; the printing businesses who lost work. I was just reading that there used to be over 100 pie-carts in Christchurch. All gone. Should the govt. have nationalised them and kept them open? All industries die. I'll guarantee that most of your acquaintnces are doing jobs that didn't even exist fifty years ago. Certainly the transition from old to new commerce can be painful for employees (and a damn sight worse for employers) but it's simply the price of progress, and it's progress that eventually makes us all better off. And have a look at some statistics. The no. of bods reaching 65 is going to leave heaps of vacancies throughout the country. Things do change.
Some of what you said here I can agree with FP, like industries needing to change. Most businesses can morph into more profitable areas if they are given enough time. They should never sit back and assume they're only good at one thing. The National Govt has not helped businesses work this out more quickly, because they took away the R&D tax credits for example. So that is a fail grade for them as far as I'm concerned.
I've worked in the public sector for a few years, and it was very good training for me. I was doing unnecessary things, like my first major coding project under supervision. Several thousand dollars cost for a little widget that was a one-off. But it was alongside other profitable or cost-saving work that I performed for the public sector enterprise, and I used that knowledge to later employ others in the private sector.
So the public sector has other uses besides keeping people off the dole. Of course each employee will pay a lot more taxes and buy more goods elsewhere than someone on the dole, and many of them will be getting training in areas that might spin off into who knows what.
Your pro-National black and white opinion on the public sector cannot be all of the truth FP.
Good heavens! I didn't know I was pro-National; although I did vote for them in one election. You may like to see public sevants employed who are not necessary, doing thankless tasks. And i'm well aware of your stance on R+D. Both over employment in the public sector, and R+D creits costs each and every other business and tax-payer. It's all about not picking winners. Its far better to run taxes on businesse at tyhe lowest level possible. All businesses - not having a higher tax and then crediting back to a selected few. e.g. R+D credits.
Except growing the 'employed' sector is good for the govt tax take, and all of us. It shares the burden for state-supplied goods and services. Labour were good at this.
Governments always seem to be bad at picking winners, no matter who is in power. But I still think that a small R&D carrot dangled in front of most of the private sector is likely to give the best result. Not a whole lot given to larger firms that will spend on R&D anyway, because they have to, to retain market share.
Actually I didn't think you were a National voter FP, which has me puzzled.
National...x
Labour....xx
Greens...xxxx?
NZ First? Possible
Act? Probable.
Not that this matters, but I'm just not sure which party has policies in line with your thinking.
llExpanding the work force by paying the wages out of the tax take is pain stupidity, as well as immoral. I'm not talking about necessary workers on the public payroll. I mean inflated numbers to reduce unemployment statistice. Despicable politics. As far as voting goes, I rarely have voted for a party; rather, i use my vote in the most effective way I can against the party I least like. Next election I will use it in the hope that it helps keep Labour out. It will be that way as long as Cunliffe is around ready to pounce on the Labour leadership.
OK FP, so you don't like David Cunliffe, he's just one member of the party..:)
Anyway here's an interesting article on R&D from earlier on in the year.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/n...ectid=10795493
Again I hear that word from the National side about the Labour policy: rort. They haven't put up a policy that is any better, just casting about hoping something might happen by refitting a building or two.
The tenor of this article is that 18-25 year olds will be our innovative salvation if they get the chance. As in many other areas, youth is wasted on the young. They might be keen to do long hours, but each one of them will probably only hit their straps 10-20 years later, unless they get very lucky. They need to set up their contacts and sales channels first, the same problem that the CRIs have. That's why we are poor at commercialising our innovation, we need to network more, and stop trying to do our own thing in small cells.
In defence of Labour, I have already proven that the tax take went up most years while they were in office, ending near a high. The money flowed round, and it would be hard to separate the seat-warmers from the workers in many firms, public and private. Most operations work out profitably because the average return from each person is above their cost to the firm. The public service is always there when we need them, despite the mixed messages they must be getting from National and Labour.
One area that is certainly not trickle down is the Maori tribes after their Waitangi settlements.
The Chief and all his relatives award themselves huge salaries and expenses and cars and holidays and make bad investments.
And yet they are the people claiming water (and everything else they can think of) as Maori and whom the Labour Party are strongly supporting.
Makes you think doesn't it. Maybe Cunliffe would be better....
That's so far from the truth here in the Waikato MVT: Tainui were initially sucked into some poor investments with their $170mill settlement from 20 years ago, but have recovered from that strongly to build Hamilton's most advanced shopping centre (The Base, Te Awa), and be large shareholders in a Hotel in town, amongst many other investments that employ people. But even now, if all settled, the investments would only pay each tribe member a few thousand dollars. In the great scheme of things, spending by the top brass of Maoridom is modest, we'd certainly hear about it if that wasn't the case.
Maori are not claiming water etc, they are stating their position that it is very important to their culture. Tainui are behind the large project to clean up the Waikato River banks and the river itself, prime movers in a country that has in recent decades spoiled many waterways. NIWA, DOC, Federated Farmers, local regional councils have observed and reported and debated on this, but in effect little has been done to stop the trend.
A positive view is possible:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/ar...ectid=10821126
Many of the companies we're investing in will have cornerstone shareholdings owned by rich individuals and families. Too often, I have seen evidence that many are using tax havens to hide their involvement from the tax man.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/economy/ne...821400&ref=rss
No surprises about them usually being right-wing voters.
Just getting back to the public sector issue, I had to visit Waikato Hospital today, for work. There are a lot of projects going on up there at the moment. I had to go all the way to the 12 floor of the carpark building, because it was full of contractor's vehicles. But a big public sector is always bad, right?
I recall at least one younger Maori of my children's acquaintance who inquired about financial help to go to Varsity after his tribe received a generous Treaty of Waitangi settlement only to be told, not even politely, to shove off - the settlement was in effect just for the chief's relatives and mates.
Then there's Tuku Underpants Morgan. They're as bad as corrupt 3rd World dictators at the top of the Maori tribes.
Hard to tell why the sponsorship was turned down when we don't know all the facts..
Tuku - I have met him, he has mana still, probably always will. I read the book about the underpants leadup. Looks like the TV company (who had a contract with govt) produced a lot of TV footage on a small budget, and at the end as a parting gift from management he was given an allocation to buy some good clothes for parliament. That store had the goods on the shelf, obviously for sale to someone. But as it later turned out, the public was made to think that buying fine items is something that most should never aspire to.
I have to wonder at the morals of the till operator who was happy enough to make the sale and take the cash (perhaps the commission also), but then handed over the docket to the National Party as a trophy. You and I both know that rorts, tax dodges and outright scamming on a massive scale have been perpetrated by (business) people from many walks of life. Difficult to compare these situations.
Tuku was earmarked by Tainui when he was still at college, he's been a leader in many areas, even recently. He's done a lot more moving and shaking than most of us. Just sit back and think, if he was not of Maori descent, would the underpants saga have flown? If he was middle aged and pakeha back then, it would not have been a story. You know it.