And another "where are they now moment"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8frP...eature=related
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And another "where are they now moment"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8frP...eature=related
FP, there was a story on Q&A, or was it "The Nation" about Norman Kirk this morning, one of the panelists worked as his secretary. I think they all still had very fond memories of him. Maybe I was too young to know much about his time in office, but I'll take your comments with a grain of salt.
Slimwin, thanks for posting the videos. Don McGlashan, he's a brilliant songwriter. Reminded me of evenings spent being entertained by touring bands in the Hillcrest pub, one of only about 4 live venues in Hamilton at the time.
MPs and Prime Ministers are expected to be even more well-rounded and refined these days, so why did John Key publicly describe an international celebrity and soccer star as being "thick as bat ****"?
In the SST today: Simon Cunliffe (page A16) explained the importance of the American presidential elections.
Quote:
Battle for America's 'soul' will affect us all..
At this year's Democratic Party convention, Obama said
"We honour the entrepreneurs who have always been the driving force behind our free enterprise system but we also believe in something called citizenship - the idea that this country only workswhen we accept certain obligations towards one another and to future generations."
Republicans and conservatives in liberal democracies everywhere used to believe this, too.
Yes, I did see that. I presume you mean The Nation on yesterday morning. It reminded me that only the good, the talented and the extremely popular die. You've probably read enough obituaries and heard plenty of eulogies to know that. Still, he seemed like a reasonable rooster in spite of the supposed temper episodes that were well documented after his death. Most of our PMs have been with the exception of Wallace Rowling. Muldoon had some redeeming features along with his wacky socialist ideas. Even Lange was alright untill he lost his marbles and destroyed his own party before resigning.
Yes, yes, FP, I've heard the guts of that post before. I think Slimwin would understand why Muldoon didn't want to move too far from welfare concepts that he'd grown up with, and Lange in the end listened to the pain being expressed by voters.
I was talking to a secondary school principal yesterday, he's interested in Maori Party ideas, and thinks charter schools would be a good fit for some areas. Trade training, less of the formal examinations, although I thought NCEA offered those options. Principals more directly able to hire/fire teachers. It is a sad commentary that some schools are still subject to white flight, with parents going to great lengths to transport children to other areas. These are issues that are at the heart of a supposedly bicultural state.
Thought he could control everything. Just another meglomaniac in govt. Why else do the job,better pay to be had elsewhere and I doubt it's to serve the country.
I was also talking to a headmaster yesterday who thought charter schools are a good idea. And national standards. Young superstar headmaster thats not resistant to change.
It really depends who gets a charter if it'll be a success in my book. If destiny church or other creationists get one I think there'll be a bit of a backlash. Trade tech schools is a great idea and already being proposed.
Years before that happened, my (pretty smart) primary school teacher said that they could stop runaway inflation by clamping wages and prices at the same time. He then said it'd never happen as it would get that party put out of power. Muldoon tried it, it did make people think twice about putting prices up, for a while afterwards. But I wasn't talking about that, more along the lines of there being no great urgency in dismantling the public sector. Because he realised that working people pay more taxes, are more productive, and that whatever way it's achieved is normally OK.
Muldoon left the Labour Party the opportunity of making large changes, and so we saw a reduced public service and SOE wages bill, but at the same time a few greedy private sector people looted the nation's equity and left some of it in tatters. Most of our copper telephone cables are rotting in the ground, they are slowly being replaced with fibre, the rail system is also in disrepair, and our power reticulation is also in need of urgent investment if we are to attract any more major power users.
So there's a price to pay for letting the market control everything. A few will do very well.
Muldoon was by far our most socialist Minister of Finance - ever, under any government. Government intervention was always the first recourse. Regulations went mad, if it moved regulate it. Like Harold Wilson in the UK he made a desperate attempt to defend a fixed exchange rate, and like Harold Wilson, he lost. He disagreed with nearly every Treasury proposal put up to him. He instigated a payroll tax. He didn't privatise anything, the railways emplyed 22,000 people and there were tens of thousands in the Ministry of Works desperately making perpetual cups of tea. There was no schools rationalisation a la Labour in Dunedin and National in Chch.
He was a bully boy wearing bovver boots. If anyone disagreed with him he would dig up some dirt to dish out to the media on him. The media loved him.
In the 1984 election he lost he instructed NZ diplomats to use their personal credit cards to keep their Embassies going as the Government didn't have the requisite foreign exchange.
And he was our most unsuccessful ever Minister of Finance.
[QUOTE=elZorro;384596] Because he realised that working people pay more taxes, are more productive, and that whatever way it's achieved is normally OK.
Easy as then. Just create more jobs in the public sector and we are all fine ! They are doing it in Argentina at the moment, with a highly corrupt Government that through their many actions are killing all private sector investment and to stay in power, they continue creating jobs all over the public sector. In your words EZ, to keep the population more "productive". Yeah right.
[QUOTE=iceman;384602]Well, everything in moderation of course. I don't have the exact answers, but when the local councils or Transit put down a new layer of temporary bitumen on a road surface, or seal an unsealed road, it's incredibly expensive. And it doesn't last, it requires constant repair quite often. It's a big reason for local body rates increases, as the price of oil goes up. Now compare that with the rail system, one area that has been allowed to decay over the years, in a bid to save taxpayers money. What money was saved? It actually cost us all a lot more, I'm sure.
Couple this loss of jobs and efficiency with less work in the manufacturing sector, because it hasn't been helped along in the last few years in particular, and we have a problem. An overview from government that was more focussed on keeping people employed and the tax base higher, than on helping a few towards millionaire status, would be helpful.
We're only a small country, it's difficult enough to ensure fair play in some business areas without handing over historically expensive state assets in a comparative firesale, whenever the govt coffers are short of cash.
Maybe Muldoon was right, we need another set of state-owned Think Big projects to get things going. History shows that most of those projects were very successful over the medium term.