2008 February
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008
by Chris
photo credit: Simon Oosterman
Last week, I sent an email to Brad Cranston, General Manager of Bunnings Warehouse New Zealand expressing my displeasure on the handling of negotiations with their workers union, NDU (NRT, The Standard). I have a few friends involved in this industrial action and spoke up not on their behalf, but by their side. It seems that from the people I know that contacted him, I am the only one that recieved a reply so far.
Thank you for your correspondence, as I am sure you will appreciate there are two sides to every story.
We have been negotiating with the National Distribution Union since May 2007,during this time we have lifted the average wage for all team members by 6.4%.This includes wages for union members despite being unable to reach agreement with the NDU. In addition Bunnings has also provided additional benefits which the NDU chooses to ignore such as 6% contribution to Kiwisaver, an offer to all team members of $1000 worth of shares in the company at the cost of one dollar, bonuses for all team members measured against store targets, dividends on shareholdings, to name a few.(around 80% of Bunnings NZ workers are shareholders)
Although the NDU publicly includes all Bunnings workers by insinuation in its press releases and pamphlets in fact they represent a little over 300 of our 2400 team members of which less tan 200 have joined in the industrial action taken.
We have a strong commitment to employing great people who want to work for us because it is a great place to work and in the main we believe we are achieving that goal despite the activities of the NDU.
I realise it is your choice where you shop but appreciate the opportunity to put the other side of the issue to you.
Ok, Fine. In my reply to him I acknowledged that the judging renumeration on wages only is flawed – but I wonder how many of those benifits are also offered to Australian workers, along with their wages. I like the 6% contribution to Kiwisaver – employers are only required to contribute 1% rising to 4% over the next 4 years. However, I bet you dollars to donuts that their counterparts in Australia get those benifits too (minus Kiwisaver – they have compulsory super).
Anyone that works/worked there feel like commenting?
Monday, February 25th, 2008
by Chris
Heh, over at WhaleOil’s there’s a post on Phil Goff, wholly, categorically, in a way that not even the most skilled spin doctor could twist his words, denying any intention or wish to see Helen Clark out of office:
“I have absolutely no aspirations in that direction at all. I am 100 percent behind Helen Clark as prime minister of New Zealand. I think she has done an absolutely superb job. I have no criticism at all.”
Hearing that, I think it’s natural to jump to the conclusion that “She’s screwed, it’s just a matter of time”
Although it’s fun and easy to pick on him, it’s the same all over the place around the sphere. Both left and right wing bloggers picking apart news releases, from sources they apparently don’t trust anyway. If some don’t say what they like, they’re liars. If they do, they’re an irrefutable unbiased and non-partisan source
The Standard report on the U-Turn executed by Colin Espiner, previously championed by the right for his damning of Labour now with his guns pointed squarely at National, surely to only be damned by the blogs singing his praises but a week ago – if not flat out ignored. Unfortunately this is only contributing to the idea that political debate by partisans is hopeless…
Friday, February 22nd, 2008
by Chris
Streem is the new microblogging site on the block. With some features of the popular Twitter, it’s more like a socially-connected Tumblr, or Tumblog.
The idea behind Tumblr is the “micro-blog”, little snippets of things you come accross in life or the internet. Whether it be a quote, a link, an audio file or a full blown blog post you feel like writing, you’ll see a microblog can be also expressed as a “life stream”. So although the traditional life streams are nice, it’s difficult to share and collaborate with your friends. This is why Twitter has been so popular, allowing you to follow people as they post small 140-char messages about their life as it happens, from the internet or mobile phone.
Thats where Streem comes in. By making use of “tags” and the social network idea of the Facebook’s and Bebo’s of this virtual world, they can very easily find interesting content from your friends with what you like. Although the site is simple, not to mention colourful, the idea is definitely solid and it’ll be interesting to see where this goes! Of course, social networks are useless without people and it’s useless to a person if their friends don’t come to the party, but Streem is definitely something to keep an eye on.
Friday, February 22nd, 2008
by Chris
In surprising and interesting news, Stanford has given it’s financial aid program a shot in the arm.
The gist of it runs: If your family earns under $100,000 per year, your qualify for financial aid to cover all your tuition fees. Additionally, if your family earns under $60,000 you qualify for financial aid for all your tuition and all your living costs!
Stanford is a “need-blind” university which means that your selection to study there is not dependent on your finances or whether you’ll be able to pay the fees. This change has come along as recently the school has been generating tax-free profits (or endowments) reaching into the tens of millions of dollars, attracting the saber-rattling of lawmakers gently reminding them that their purpose is not to operate with massive surpluses, but to provide education to those out of school. After all, they do get the large tax breaks and other government perks.
Although this is in America, and not New Zealand – I do wonder how a scheme like this would work out here. Of course the right would balk at the idea of them paying and someone else not and to an extent, I agree. But isn’t it everyones right to a decent education, not just those who can pay the ever increasing fees? Don’t we deserve to not be reliant on this horrible student loan scheme, who’s only purpose is a half-assed attempt to keep people in the country?
Thursday, February 21st, 2008
by Chris
“Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: I am sorry I excite the member so much. I did not realise I had that effect up him.”
via.
Transcript is a good read, actually.
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008
by Chris
I think I may be totally missing something with this issue. The ever-echoing right-wing blogohemisphere hear a snippet of news regarding Owen Glenn, Mike Williams, Winston or Dail Jones and suddenly they’re the investigative journalists with their nose on a scent.
“An Outrage!” they cry.
“They need an on-record denial of this travesty!” sound the screams.
“It never happened” is the official reply…..
“Outrageous! Hypocrites!” it continues to echo, folding in and feeding on itself.
Everyone needs to stop and get a grip, Mainstream Media included. However, I feel that the RightHype ™ machine is peaking too early. The election is projected to be around November this year. Who will remember except the partisans currently milking this issue for all its worth? National know better than anyone that a quick ambush at the appropriate time is enough to ruin an election. Even then, after the hype calms down this storm in a teacup will pan out to be nothing.
Well, They’ve managed to bury the “We would like to see wages drop” comment just coming to light at least. Although that in itself shouldn’t be a huge surprise to anyone – at least they’ve expressed how they intend to keep their tax cuts non-inflationary.
Back to the issue; I hear a lot of people are saying that donating to a political party to be given honours is terrible political patronage and corrupt and I agree. Mostly. I believe this is a special case. The man donated a whopping $7.5 million dollars to the Auckland University School of Business, several orders of magnitude higher than what he is attributed to have given to the Labour Party. Also hundreds of thousands of dollars of other donations to worthy causes (In my opinion, Labour being the unworthiest). But he had also been “passed over” for an Officer of New Zealand title no less than 3 times previously. Perhaps he should wait and if his contributions are deemed to be worthy he will be recognised by a future government… when?
Meanwhile, there’s still no evidence of donations to New Zealand First, nobody wants the “honorary counsul” position in Monaco except for Glenn, he didn’t give any money to the Maori party either and the Whaleoils of this world continue to pronounce the death of the political left and grasp at straws.
Update: Lo and behold, a nice little piece by Peter Wilson this morning puts it better than I can!
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008
by Chris
The SST reports that Barbara Bishop, who was frequently at the forefront of a pro-smacking lobby group “Family First”, is in jail for assaulting her teenaged son. Details of the attack mention that the child was hogtied, kicked and beaten.
Maybe he was trying to stick his finger in a light socket or something.
Family First is the organisation trying to get together a referendum to repeal the latest anti-smacking law. Bishop had previous convictions for violence and even “attempting to procure the murder of her ex-husband”. I have to hand it to Family First for selecting the most suitable candidate to portray as a “victim of the state” and just being a normal mother trying to keep her kids under control. Not to mention demonising CYFS for stepping in and Labour for pushing through this anti-family legislation.
In interesting points across other blogs, Russell Brown writes:
While we’re at it, perhaps the other news media could forswear from fanning cheap outrage every time one of these “smacking” cases becomes news. Jimmy Mason’s recent account of having “flicked” his son on the ear was almost universally reported as fact, for example, when it would have been wise to avoid treating the defendant’s characterisation of events as gospel until his two consequent child assault charges have been heard in court.
That whole fiasco was ridiculous really. Almost as sad, is that the mainstream public appeared to have believed without question that a man flicking his son’s earhole required a response of 6 policemen, via an off duty cop and it didn’t even occur to them that someone was telling porkies.
Bomber also covered this briefly but signed off with
What part of “don’t hit your kids” do these people not understand?
Good question.
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008
by Chris
The Press has just published an article summarising the political blog climate here in New Zealand. The article includes commentary from both Russell Brown (Left) and David Farrar (Right) but focused, I felt, more on the Left-wing blogs out there. Of course, this has whipped the “Kiwiblog Right”, dubbed due to their natural habitat lurking in prominent right-wing blogs, into a frenzy as they appear to interpret this as an attack to their legitimacy and beliefs.
The article makes a point that the left, relative to the very vocal right, is under-represented in New Zealand blogs. Perhaps another voice is what we need! It’s good to see them talking about No Right Turn who I regard as one of the unsung heros of the Blogosphere. Very little mudslinging and personal attacks, just gets on with his high quality analysis and political commentary. Unfortunately, due to the amount of abuse he received in his comments he has had to disable discussion on his posts.
In stark contrast to N.R.T, I have read a lot of rubbish being spewed from some blogs. Clint Heine, who the article represents as having ties to the ACT Party, has reposted his disgusting little picture on the front page of his blog, proving what was written in The Press piece about the juvenile crap spewed from that side of the fence. His masterly summation and rebuttal consisted of “The Press are a bunch of wankers” and accused the author of trying to stir up the cesspit that consist of a lot of “right” NZ blogs (no link due to some heavy NSFW content on his page). Not to mention that any discussion that involves Whale Oil, bless him, is likely to get out of hand fairly quickly.
The left have their share of puerile nonsense as well with frequent bad behavior in the comments of other peoples blogs – but with free speech one of the most valued rights in the political world, bans on commenting are few and far between. However, shitting in threads is not allowed!
I like David Farrar and what he writes in Kiwiblog. I believe he is a part of the “Grown-up Right”. Although I take issue with the imbeciles he attracts in his comments section. A lot of bloggers have pointed out that the scum he lets reside on his blog reflects very badly on him and he is frequently accused of “dogwhistling“. However, it is always amusing to read the comments related to any story that he posts and see how the commenters can blame anything on Labour (or Liarbore), Clark (or Klark), or their “lickspittle, pinko supporters” and their “communist” or “socialist” ways (used interchangeably). It really is like playing political Madlibs or perhaps Buzzword Bingo!
Although I’m only a part time politics follower and blogosphere small-fry, I hope to weigh in on a few issues in the future.
Sunday, February 17th, 2008
by Chris
Like the look of the new MacBook Air? Pondering buying the new MacBook Pro’s that are rumored to be released at Apple’s event coming up late Feb? Or are you just looking to make the switch like everyone else?
We all know Apple’s products come at a price premium, so here are a few tips to make the most of your hard earned money
- Don’t pay the “Mac Black Tax”
If you’re buying a MacBook, the difference between the mid-range and the top-of-the-line model is +40gb HDD space, a black finish and about $300. Considering Apple will upgrade your HDD to 160gb on the mid-level model for a mere $125, $175 is a lot of cash to pay for a colour!
- Don’t pay Apple for RAM upgrades
Most people want to upgrade their RAM. MacOS X loves RAM and RAM is cheap – unless you buy it from Apple that is. Upgrading from 1GB of RAM to 4GB of RAM on the vanilla MacBook will cost you $1420 from Apple. If you buy RAM from almost anywhere else, you’ll pay about $80 per DIMM (of which you’ll need 2 for the MacBook) for a saving of still over $1000. Note: You can install RAM by yourself, quite a simple procedure, without voiding your factory warranty or AppleCare. If you send it off for repair they’ll take it out and ship it back to you when they return the system.
- Don’t pay Apple for HDD upgrades
A few systems allow for user-upgradable HDD’s. You can easily save $100-200 by upgrading your own system with store-bought parts instead of paying Apple’s premium.
- Buy AppleCare for laptops
Worth every penny for laptops with very few user-serviceable parts in it. And you’ll bet that trying to get your Mac repaired out of warrenty will cost you a bundle with Apple’s proprietary hardware! This is a fairly decent rule for all Laptops – not just Apple since you’d be out of luck trying to get a lot of the components replace 3rd party – especially in NZ!
- Don’t buy anything straight before a refresh
Although Apple don’t usually let on when they’re about to refresh a product line with updated hardware, it’s usually fairly easy to predict. MacRumors Buyers Guide can help with the timing and have hints on when it’s a good time to buy.
Any more tips, leave ‘em in the comments!
Sunday, February 17th, 2008
by Chris
After numerous, debilitating blows to HD-DVD and it’s backers, the final blow has come in the form of it’s biggest stakeholder pulling the plug on production of the High Definition format players. After this announcement, Microsoft is the only big player still behind this technology. HD-DVD still have two fairly large studios behind them – Universal and Paramount – but with both companies on a timed exclusivity contract, or with Get Out Of Jail Free cards built in that allow them to jump a sinking ship, it’s only a matter of time.
This leads the way for Blu-ray to plug the gap in consumer-level High Definition format and finally bring some composure to the industry.
A lot of people are worried that lack of format competition will cause prices to jack up and stay up. All though all the “Buy one get one free†deals happening on both sides of the divide recently may add evidence to this theory I don’t believe this will cause inflated prices for the remaining Blu-ray format. On the contrary, I predict that many of the fence-sitters (that is, end-users, studios and hardware developers) will feel much more inclined to pursue a HD strategy going forward now that there appears to be a clear winner. This will cause production to ramp up and as everyone knows cheaper production costs lead to cheaper consumer costs. Anyway, most price competition will come from the studios battling each other – not the group that controls the format as they are only entitled to a minimal licensing fee per-unit.
Don’t worry, Sony & Co. still has a big chance to mess this up – although they are only part of a board the governs direction of the Blu-ray format. Should they continue to pursue heavy DRM, nixing backwards compatibility between Profiles and other anti-consumer practices that is definitely a way to turn end-users off to this still budding format.
A big downside of Blu-ray compared to HD-DVD is the studios absolute, pig-headed insistence that removable media be restricted by region! As a lot of people have found out, region-locking is a big problem over here in New Zealand. With more retailers selling Region 1 & 2 DVD’s (JB Hi-Fi is one culprit) alongside with Region 4 to which NZ belongs – people are getting bitten when they take their new purchases home to find out they can’t watch them without either applying warranty-voiding hacks to their players/computers or buying an entire new machine.
Having seen one or two Hi-def movies in my time of both formats I can’t wait for this technology to become more commonplace. In the meantime, goodbye HD-DVD and a warm welcome to Blu-ray. But unless Sony and the other stakeholders stop pandering to the greedy studios who would happily sell you the same content 3-4 times could they get away with it, consumers will quickly get tired of having restrictions on the content they payed a premium to own.
