2008 October

The Usual Suspects

The usual suspects are at it again with:

Imagine if officials in a Government department were to allege that the Clark administration was caught in a massive corruption scandal, and leak ministerial documents that will leave two Ministers and a former Minister facing the music?

Imagine if it was the biggest political scandal the Clark administration has ever faced, bar none.

Sounds interesting, but they could have gotten somebody with a bit more credit than Ian Wishart to push their election scandal – you know, someone like Nicky Hagar!

After their last little joke that went too far you would think that they wouldn’t be in a hurry to repeat that little performance. So I just guess and see what comes out when Wishart gets squeezed.

Destiny’s Child

A “new” comer to the election is the Family Party. Well, that’s what they want you to think, anyway. When really, they’re the reincarnation (or they would be the reincarnation, if they believed in that sort of claptrap) of the infamous Desitiny Party.

Not to be confused with the Kiwi Party, who are the jilted militant Christian wing that has split from the new and boring United Future.

On the North Shore, the Family Party is pushing their candidate for East Coast Bays, Paul Adams. You know you can trust him because he owns a car workshop. He seems to be campaigning on the fact that McCully does pretty well ’round this neck of the woods and seems to be standing on the logically unsound premise that if you give your electorate vote to Adams, McCully will ride in on National’s party list and East Coast Bays will have TWO MP’s in parliament to represent them.

If but it was so.

What’s more likely to happen, if he has any success, is he’ll split the National/Fundy vote and second-place Labour candidate Vivienne Goldsmith will ride in on a minority. Oh the joys of First Past the Post.

By being dishonest on his hoardings and leaflets he feels he can trick voters into getting him into parliament and a few on the list if he can too.

With this power, he promises to “fix” the smacking law (pretty sure we already did that, pal), rebuild the marriage culture (by stopping couples that love each other but are not man/woman couples) and easing the burden on families by doing things such as giving huge tax breaks to married couples (no room for abuse, there!), removing GST of food and petrol (instead of targeting families directly like Working For Families does) and best of all, tackling the global warming myth.

I really dislike the groups that push the cause of “the family” to drag us back to the dark ages.

If you enjoy being berated and accused of insanity, enjoy their promo video below.

Washed Out

photo credit: Bashed

For those who like to get their news from National Party Press Releases, you may have heard about shower-gate.

This dishonest attack on the “nanny state”, National’s scrapping of the fund to insulate homes and the outpouring of foam from the opposition shows that this is all still a joke to these people! John Key himself attacked Clark during the debate saying that Kiwi’s powerbills had rocketed under Labour’s watch.

Make your decision, guys, either it’s a priority or it’s not.

Depending on who you hear it from, shower-gate is a rock hard regulation from Labour, or the Greens. They’ll have black-clad (with respirators) Green police that’ll come break down your door, rip your shower curtain and uninstall your high-flow shower head.

Nice, but don’t ignore the facts. It wasn’t a Green Party policy, or a Labour party policy. It was a standard policy proposal from a ministry. These sorts of things pop up all the time, but Nick Smith seized the opportunity to beat the nanny-state drum.

Evern worse, was the policy isn’t all that bad! Flow regulation would only apply for new houses over a certain size, using the least efficient water heading method! And the very best part is that over 70% of New Zealand homes already have a moderate-flow showerhead!

According to Frog:

80% of all hot water used in homes goes for showers

Out of approximately 1.6 million homes in NZ, 460,000 have high pressure water systems.

This means that 71% of existing homes already have a low-flow shower! (And they are not complaining either.)

If just a third of the high pressure systems in NZ were to switch to a high efficiency shower head of between 6 and 9 litres/min, they would each save on average 1500 kWhs per year, or about $300. They would also collectively save enough power each year to run the entire city of Nelson for that same year. This is not small peanuts. And we don’t need to go to 6 litre/min shower heads to do it!

Also, Steve Pierson weighs in with a Standard Line.

You’re Not The Only One

Mike Moreu from Stuff hits it on the head again.

I’m going to buy one of his books…

11 Things Worth Knowing About The Financial Crisis

Joe, from 2parse shares the 11 Things He Learned While Trying to Figure Out the Financial Crisis.

A very, very interesting read and I highly suggest that you take a look at it. My favourite ones include:

2. The Martingale. Wall Street fell for a 400 year old sucker bet, the martingale. You always win in this betting game – as long as you can cover your losses. But once your losses are too great, this “double-or-nothing” game leads to catastrophe. The formula to understand this is simplified as:

(0.99) x ($100) + (0.01) x (catastrophic outcome) = 0

In other words, playing for $100, there is a 99% chance that you will make at least $100 dollars playing this game. But there is a 1% chance of a catastrophic outcome. If you never stop betting, the catastrophic outcome is inevitable.

A very succint, but not quite accurate way of looking at things. It’s much more delicately laid out in the Slate article he links to but a very interesting fact indeed.

7. The Shadow Banking System. Existing alongside the regulated banking system is what is called a shadow financial system – including money market accounts, hedge funds, investment banks, and countless other financial creatures. This system was invented in order to avoid government regulation of various sorts. This crisis has been mainly but certainly not exclusively in this shadow system – and those regulated banks have been the big winners in all of this (aside from Goldman Sachs.) Even the remaining independent investment banks – Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have chosen to be subject to greater regulation. Nouri Roubini speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations explained that the shadow banking system is on the verge of collapse because of their lack of transparency and because they took risks they would not have been able to if they were subject to regulation.

As usual, we have those trying to circumvent the rules for peoples happiness and safety screwing it all up for everyone.

And don’t miss his #11: Damn it feels good to be a banksta!

Michael Laws Has Had an Election…

Oh, and National won. Thanks for playing.

Here’s a few tips, from the inexperienced youngster to a battle-hardened old git:

• Don’t try to call an election result based on poll results.
• Especially ones that are undergoing rapid change
• If you pre-write your column for delayed publication, please try and correct your factual errors before going to press.
• Never, ever, EVER write off Winston Peters
• If you imply that Labour are poisoning National in the next term in your headline, try and elaborate on how it’s the scum sucking socialists fault and not the last decade or so of baseless banking speculation, free market capitalism and greed that you fight so hard to defend.

And don’t remind me about Bob Jones’ column, I mean… ah I give up.

Gameplanet Store Evolves – Mighty Ape Launches!

Gameplanet Store, one of New Zealand’s last 100% NZ owned independent player in the gaming industry, has just launched the next generation of their store and undergone a complete rebranding.

The new store is called Mighty Ape and has expanded it’s already impressive product range, going from Games, DVD’s and Music to include Toys and a massive section of over 800,000 Books.

For those familiar with Gameplanet Store service, you’ll be happy to know it’s the same shareholders with the same team (with a few additions, myself included!). So have a look around, see if there’s anything you like or any products you would like to see and let us know

Happy Shopping!

Disclaimer: I am a long time Gameplanet Store customer and Web Developer for Mighty Ape.

National’s KiwiSaver Plan

National recently announced some changes to Kiwisaver which will be used to find part of their tax package. It’s pretty much what we all expected. Nerf employee contributions and reduce tax breaks from the government etc… But it’s not all bad!

They plan to reduce the minimum employee contribution from 4% to 2%. I like this change. It will enable the people who couldn’t afford to take away 4% of their salary. They also want to change the minimum employer contribution to 2% as well. I’m not totally adverse to this change, but I think the employer contribution should mirror the employee contribution from 2% to 8%.

The other change they plan to make is allowing an employer to include their contributions in the employee’s salary package. This will enable employers to basically pay employees that enter KiwiSaver less. But, they’ve said that they won’t allow employers to reduce wages if an employee joins KiwiSaver. To me, that’s the same thing… Quick example:

John and James start at a company doing the same job. John joins KiwiSaver, James opts out. James gets paid more than John but the net cost to the employer is the same as James requires no KiwiSaver contribution. 6 months later, they both get a payrise and James decides to join KiwiSaver. James is now being paid more than John for the same job

Not fair. The only way to make it fair is to leave it out of the salary package. At 2% there is very little reason not to join KiwiSaver, so if you want the employer contribution you have to join. You can’t just pocket it.

This is the usual kind of stuff we’ve come to expect from the Nats, though. Putting the power back in the hands of the already powerful and helping those with the means to help themselves.