If National wins ...

[Cuzzie]

Cuzzie, yes I do have an agenda. I'd like to hope that my children will find a decent job in NZ. That they won't work on lowish pay for 20-30 years before getting enough capital together to play the games that are currently being played with no CGT. That they'll be able to walk the streets of central Auckland without seeing homeless people. That more SMEs will gear up to compete with smart products that have big export and local manufacturing potential.

I don't have a hard job talking up Labour, the stats are there, but you are mainly writing unsubstantiated comments that I'd like to see backed up with data. For example: "Labour drove NZ into massive debt", that is a beauty, even for you Cuzzie.

Shouldn't that be "Labour refused to give in to the Nats and used the strong economy they helped build up, to pay off a lot of historical govt debt". By the time they'd been pushed from office in 2008, all the old debt had been paid off, and newer terms for smaller new loans were in place. A bonus for National, who simply borrowed up to internationally subscribed limits when their income dropped, before they started to do anything useful.

Stick to the facts Cuzzie.

OK I'll stick to the facts:
You said, 'I'd like to hope that my children will find a decent job in NZ.' Well you don't need to like to hope with National as unemployment rates drop - http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/n...ectid=11152321
Lowish pay is up to them and your good self to guide them and instil good work ethics into them to give them the best chance, don't blame that on any Govt. that's just passing the buck on. Your job, do it and don't complain when your kids fail.

Plenty of homeless people during the Laboured years, so what is your excuse for that? This has always been the case but nothing like the rest of the world's homeless people. They are proper poor, not getting handouts from their Govt., free food from the Sally's and begging to fuel their desires. Pointless statement EZ.

Medium to small business thrive under National, what are you talking about. It is Labour that encourage people to sit on their backsides and get hand out every week. I notice both EZ & belboy knocking the wealthy NZers and big business over & over. We need to look after the them too and keep their companies in financial order, why target them if they are doing well? That is very much a lefty thing. Listen & listen closely, if we make the wealthy and their companies poor then NZ really is in the s***. National and ACT understand this, Labour & the Greenies can't work it out. Big difference right there.

You said,"Labour drove NZ into massive debt", that is a beauty, even for you Cuzzie". Just look at the state of affairs Labour left us in and their massive spending. http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/statistics/k...rrent_account/ I know you don't like that stat fact very much EZ and you have tried very hard to knock it down, but here is the fact - you failed as it is still up there on the Reserve Bank of NZ's website. Just look at that spending by the out of control Cullen and Co & you put up on a pedestal?
Hand outs for the lazy, yeah cut their benefits and make them work. I've got two very lazy relatives that have been forced to work for the first time in twenty years and you want to hear them complain, music to my ears. National's putting the pain onto the lazy alright and it is working. There is a problem here for National and it's a big one - none of these lazy useless layabouts vote for National and they will be voting for Labour or Green, hmmm, that's if they can get off their a**.
Easy to see National totally out perform Labour in one blow, one stat and one fact right there with the current account stat.


Easy for me to stick to the facts EZ, not so easy for you.

[slimwin]

Belg and Ez. If you guys pat each other on the back anymore , you'll wear each others shirts out.

[fungus pudding]

Belg and Ez. If you guys pat each other on the back anymore , you'll wear each others shirts out.

Or blouses possibly; unless you know something I don't.

[elZorro]

I'm at work doing a quote, but a brief comment would be that

(i) FP, in previous posts I have affirmed that I am male, married with children.

(ii)I will work on a long missive to refute Cuzzie's post, this evening.

[craic]

Point is, you don't refute anything - you don't prove anything - other than the painfully obvious fact that you are on opposite sides of a fence that neither of you will ever be interested in crossing 'till the day you die. You search for and find fellow travellers who are then the goodies and the friends of the fellow on the other side of the fence are baddies. And all you do is waste vast amounts of time fortifying your position with large heaps of reused rubbish that only you and your fellow travellers believe or value. Sooner or later the public decide and you will not be able to have the grace to say that they were right if the do not deliver your verdict ,and if they do, you will crow like a rooster in the mistaken belief that the worm has turned and you are heading for paradise - but you're not - only as far as the next election.

[Cuzzie]

Point is, you don't refute anything - you don't prove anything - other than the painfully obvious fact that you are on opposite sides of a fence that neither of you will ever be interested in crossing 'till the day you die. You search for and find fellow travellers who are then the goodies and the friends of the fellow on the other side of the fence are baddies. And all you do is waste vast amounts of time fortifying your position with large heaps of reused rubbish that only you and your fellow travellers believe or value. Sooner or later the public decide and you will not be able to have the grace to say that they were right if the do not deliver your verdict ,and if they do, you will crow like a rooster in the mistaken belief that the worm has turned and you are heading for paradise - but you're not - only as far as the next election.

Now that is a fact.

[Cuzzie]

I'm at work doing a quote, but a brief comment would be that

(i) FP, in previous posts I have affirmed that I am male, married with children.

(ii)I will work on a long missive to refute Cuzzie's post, this evening.

Nice to know I've set you a task when you get home. Just leave me out of it when refuting the Balance of Payments statements for the Labour years and then the much better National years. These are stated facts that can not nor would not be altered by anything you state. They are locked in facts that give the best view on how that particular Govt. performed. I will agree that there are certain elements that can cause figures to be blown out somewhat. For Labour they had to deal with the onset of the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-08. National took over that problem and had a couple of earthquakes and a major mining deserter to deal with to boot. You would not know that though looking at their Current account statements from 08 on.
Real interested to hear your take EZ on why Labour performed so badly in better financial times than National performing to fantastic results during very trying times and paying off Labours debt and they did? Real interested indeed EZ. You have much work ahead.

[fungus pudding]

I'm at work doing a quote, but a brief comment would be that

(i) FP, in previous posts I have affirmed that I am male, married with children.

I must confess I seldom read your posts, so my apologies; although I would point out that women are also able to marry, and many have children.

[elZorro]

OK I'll stick to the facts:
You said, 'I'd like to hope that my children will find a decent job in NZ.' Well you don't need to like to hope with National as unemployment rates drop - http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/n...ectid=11152321
Lowish pay is up to them and your good self to guide them and instil good work ethics into them to give them the best chance, don't blame that on any Govt. that's just passing the buck on. Your job, do it and don't complain when your kids fail.

Plenty of homeless people during the Laboured years, so what is your excuse for that? This has always been the case but nothing like the rest of the world's homeless people. They are proper poor, not getting handouts from their Govt., free food from the Sally's and begging to fuel their desires. Pointless statement EZ.

Medium to small business thrive under National, what are you talking about. It is Labour that encourage people to sit on their backsides and get hand out every week. I notice both EZ & belboy knocking the wealthy NZers and big business over & over. We need to look after the them too and keep their companies in financial order, why target them if they are doing well? That is very much a lefty thing. Listen & listen closely, if we make the wealthy and their companies poor then NZ really is in the s***. National and ACT understand this, Labour & the Greenies can't work it out. Big difference right there.

You said,"Labour drove NZ into massive debt", that is a beauty, even for you Cuzzie". Just look at the state of affairs Labour left us in and their massive spending. http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/statistics/k...rrent_account/ I know you don't like that stat fact very much EZ and you have tried very hard to knock it down, but here is the fact - you failed as it is still up there on the Reserve Bank of NZ's website. Just look at that spending by the out of control Cullen and Co & you put up on a pedestal?
Hand outs for the lazy, yeah cut their benefits and make them work. I've got two very lazy relatives that have been forced to work for the first time in twenty years and you want to hear them complain, music to my ears. National's putting the pain onto the lazy alright and it is working. There is a problem here for National and it's a big one - none of these lazy useless layabouts vote for National and they will be voting for Labour or Green, hmmm, that's if they can get off their a**.
Easy to see National totally out perform Labour in one blow, one stat and one fact right there with the current account stat.


Easy for me to stick to the facts EZ, not so easy for you.

I agree that it's important for youths to have good work ethics. But it's hard for them to find part-time work in their interest areas, and with unemployment stubbornly higher at 6.2% compared with Labour's 3.7%, it's harder than it was. Many adults are already in part-time low-paid work. So my point is that unemployment is higher now, than it was under Labour.

You can't deny that food banks are getting more stretched, and I don't think much of it is due to a handout mentality. Energy and housing costs, schooling costs, clothing and food costs, they all add up. Right-wing people are too fond of simply saying "get a job". For some of these people, with their skills, presentation and location not being perfect, there are no spare jobs. Hence the impossible queues for unskilled jobs. I know some people are homeless by choice, but it's not a good look in central Auckland. There are a few scattered around Hamilton too. Homeless shelters are overstretched, again a lack of govt funding that would be in all of the taxpayers' interests.

SMEs have been neglected more than usual by the current National govt, as I frequently point out. Denied access to quote on govt contracts with the advantage of being taxpayers, chopped out of really big deals, R&D credits dropped. Many were upset about that, it made no difference. GST up, more cashflow to be careful about. Watching on while big (overseas sometimes) businesses get the larger govt grants (R&D etc), special deals (SKY), tax breaks (movies). No real action on tax haven companies, which only the wealthy bother about setting up.

In case you didn't notice or research it, the trickle down theory that the Nats and Act are so keen on, is a lie. It doesn't work here, it never has, and it has never worked anywhere else in the world. It widens the inequality gap, very similar to the trend caused by globalisation.

Faced with these facts, Labour did an about-turn in 1999 and set up sensible policy until 2008, that protected the average citizens of NZ, while encouraging SMEs. It worked really well, and you've seen the employment data, the increase in SMEs, the better tax take, the budget surpluses and the paid off old government debt.

You are very fond of the current account trend Cuzzie. It does trend quickly back towards zero just after National got in (2008). Now it's moving back towards where it was when Labour was in office. It was nothing to do with clever policy by National, you must know that.

After the GFC in mid 2008, the private sector stopped buying in overseas goods in a big way. We closed our chequebooks. Some even started saving. But as soon as things started coming right, we all (on average) started spending more than we were earning again. It's not all bad, those wanting to sell houses, cars, etc can spin them on, and it's not as extended as it was. But no govt can hope to change the buying behaviour of the whole country, that's just who we are. I'm more interested in the govt budget figures, and you haven't taken me to task on that.

Pushing long-term beneficiaries out into work is probably a good idea. 20 years should be long enough to find a job, or to train up for one. You'd probably find the jobs are subsidised for a term. But I challenge you to employ a few people yourself, if you want to be on higher moral ground. I'd like to see FP employ someone, for example.

[Major von Tempsky]

A few instructive words on China from The Economist Jan 11, 2014. It seems to me that the NZLP and the Greens are much further to the left in economic policy than the Chinese Communist Party!

"The 3rd plenum resolved that the market should play a decisive role in the allocation of resources. In Foshan it already does. In the early 1990s Shunde, one of the city's districts, pioneered the sale of government backed industries to their managers, workers and outside investors. Foshan now has one private enterprise for every 20 residents. In 2012 they grew twice as fast as the remaining state owned firms.
November's party plenum also called for private capital to play a bigger role in public infrastructure. In Foshan over the past 9 years the government has allowed private firms to bid for over 500 projects, including power generation, water plants and rubbish incineration plants according to Liu Yuelun, the city's mayor.
Ahead of the party's call to consolidate the state bureaucracy, Shunde district had already slashed the number of its departments from 41 to 16."