No tax cuts; that’s good

I will looking with interest at the comments surrounding Bill English’s announcement that tax cuts are deferred.  Handing out money in the form of tax cuts, in the current economic climate, would be as wrong as not giving tax cuts when the economy was good.  Both actions, giving tax cuts in a recession and not giving tax cuts in the good times, have the effect of strangling the economy and suffocating productivity.

My 2c worth.

How to peeve people off….

Just received this email from a trusted source.

Hi folks, we’ve just found out about NZ Post’s “PO Box Direct List” – which they’ve told us they are selling for direct marketing purposes. When we asked them, they said it was a case of PO Boxholders opting out, rather than them asking you if you want to receive all the junk mail … So if you have a PO Box number, you might want to email this guy Geoff.Pearce@nzpost.co.nz or someone like him, and tell him, no thanks!

Watching with interest

I am watching with interest the by-election in Mt Albert…curiouser and curiouser. Lee vs Shearer; interesting….the result may just reflect the mood of the country. 

The results for the 2008 election were that Labour got 42% of the Party Vote and Helen C got 58.6% of the candidate vote, National however got 35% of the Party Vote but only 28.5% of the Candidate Vote.  Here are a few questions.

1. if both candidates are unknown will that affect how people vote?
2. Will voters vote more for along party lines because of this?

I think so.  (Yes I know there is no PV in a by-election). It’s only going to take a 7% swing in people’s voting to change the colour of this electorate to blue.  Go Melissa.

Well that’s a bloody shame

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business//2379814/4000-land-agents-lose-jobs

4000; how many were there to begin with?  Did they increase at the same rate as Labours bureaucracy? How many used car salesmen are now redundant? So many questions.

Should it be TAHINI Virus?

Or TiAH1N1 virus to be more correct, since the WHO has instructed us to call it The influenza A H1N1 virus.  Would stop all this stupidity.  Still that would probably put sesame seeds at serious risk

ACC Motor Vehicle Levy Up

Yep it’s going to cost us an extra $32 per vehicle per year in ACC costs plus an increase in the levy on fuel. This is what it takes to try and fix the bloody mess that Labour left ACC in. ACC should not be a free for all at the physio. Currently all you have to do is say “I Tripped” and you are covered!!! I personally don’t go to physios but have a very good (though slightly odd) osteopath AND I willingly pay the $35 it costs me to go and see him.
Having said that I did go to a physio recently (desparate and the Osteopath was very busy) and she (the physio) had 6 people all lined up in beds at various stages through their treatment. My knee injury was given half an hour of electric shocks and a long rest before the final cursory massage…then sent on my way. I hate to think how much she racked up in an hour for these so called treatments. My osteopath only ever has one patient at a time and you are being treated for the full hour. I only ever need to see him three times at the most for an injury.
Rant over.

Global Financial Crisis Explained

The financial crisis explained in simple terms:*

Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Berlin. In order to increase sales,
she decides to allow her loyal customers – most of whom are unemployed
alcoholics – to drink now but pay later. She keeps track of the drinks
consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans).

Word gets around and as a result increasing numbers of customers flood
into Heidi’s bar.

Taking advantage of her customers’ freedom from immediate payment
constraints, Heidi increases her prices for wine and beer, the
most-consumed beverages. Her sales volume increases massively.

A young and dynamic customer service consultant at the local bank
recognizes these customer debts as valuable future assets and increases
Heidi’s borrowing limit.

He sees no reason for undue concern since he has the debts of the
alcoholics as collateral.

At the bank’s corporate headquarters, expert bankers transform these
customer assets into DRINKBONDS, ALKBONDS and PUKEBONDS. These
securities are then traded on markets worldwide. No one really
understands what these abbreviations mean and how the securities are
guaranteed. Nevertheless, as their prices continuously climb, the
securities become top-selling items.

One day, although the prices are still climbing, a risk manager
(subsequently of course fired due his negativity) of the bank decides
that slowly the time has come to demand payment of the debts incurred by
the drinkers at Heidi’s bar.

However they cannot pay back the debts.

Heidi cannot fulfil her loan obligations and claims bankruptcy.

DRINKBOND and ALKBOND drop in price by 95 %. PUKEBOND performs
better,stabilizing in price after dropping by 80 %.

The suppliers of Heidi’s bar, having granted her generous payment due
dates and having invested in the securities are faced with a new
situation. Her wine supplier claims bankruptcy, her beer supplier is
taken over by a competitor.

The bank is saved by the Government following dramatic round-the-clock
consultations by leaders from the governing political parties.

The funds required for this purpose are obtained by a tax levied on the
non-drinkers.

The D Word

Someone has finally used the D word,Depression, and I’m not talking about the sort that can be fixed with pink and purple pills. No this Depression was used to express Japan’s economy.
This article states that Japan’s economy shrunk by an annualised 12.7% over the December quarter (interestingly they didn’t use the work annualised on BBC, CNN or TV1 news yesterday which gave me cause for greater concern :-0) AND they don’t state that Japan is actually in a Depression but what they do say is that the economy fits the description

The collapse in growth fits the profile of a depression — a deep recession in which annual GDP falls by 10 per cent or more.

This definition just leaves us to define ‘deep recession’

However another definition doesn’t leave that much wriggle room

A good rule of thumb for determining the difference between a recession and a depression is to look at the changes in GNP. A depression is any economic downturn where real GDP declines by more than 10 percent.

We are just left defining the word ‘real’ in ‘real GDP’.

Truth is there is no formal definition of Depression, the word recession was employed after the 1930’s Depression as previously every downturn was termed a Depression but obviously a small downturn did not fit as a Depression in the minds of those who had lived through a real one. The panic that the use of the D word would have conjured up would have been unsettling too.

Throughout this current economic cycle commentators have been loathed to use the word Depression; I guess it still conjures up images of soup lines and those doen’t fit well with the luxurious positions we have found ourselves in, in recent years. I am also NOT saying that New Zealand is heading for a Depression, nor am I saying that the world is plunging into a Depression, what I am simply  saying is that someone has finally used the D word, correctly or not; and I find that interesting

The NCEA Blues

Child number two has recently received her NCEA level 2 results and while she passed everything it took us a long time to figure out the actual outcome of the results.
English was the bugbear. She ended up with 12 credits and out of a possible 24; so she passed 50 percent of the unit standards (NZQA speak for subjects within subjects e.g. Level two English contains 8 units standards). So I thought she passed however to get UE you need 8 credits in English but 4 have to be from writing unit standards and 4 have to be from reading. Nowhere on the examine results does it tell you which unit standard is reading and which is writing; daughter number one had to find it on the NZQA website!
Solution: please put (W) or (R) next to the result.

I am also a believer in needing to learn from your failures. As a student, when scaling was still around, I got 47% from 7th form calculus. I was stunned as I had only completed 17% worth of questions; yes the exam was that hard they scaled it that much. I learnt lots from that we experience (don’t give up). While I can tolerate the A,M,E marking system it would be much much more beneficial if there were percentages next to the grade. As I have mentioned previously there can be a 10% range in your mark, say 50% to 60%, and you still get a A for achieved.

Another thing I found out is that the exam questions are broken into sections of Achievement, Merit and Excellence questions. The scurrilous thing is that if you get all the Excellence questions right but muck up on the Achievement questions (as can happen) you can only get Achieved.
Daughter number two was particularly unimpressed with her economics results, she passed everything but not to her standard. She just doesn’t know where she went wrong and is querying whether it is the ‘even if you get the excellence questions right you have to pass the achievement questions first’ rule; if it is she is going to be ticked off and I wouldn’t want to stand in her way; feisty.

So please let the child (and parent) know where they sit in their range of grades. They have worked hard, they deserve to have all the information.

Humour in HB

Heh

Apparently some consultant from MWH doesn’t find it amusing…..http://www.stuff.co.nz/4818532a4560.html

Yeah watch out if this keeps happening a wave of smiles may spread across New Zealand.

I’m afraid I have to put this in the Very Well Done basket.