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  1. #501
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    Quote Originally Posted by POSSUM THE CAT View Post
    elZorro the only accounts with Kiwi Bank I would touch is their notice saver accounts. .
    Their platinum mastercard is good for NZ points. Better than ASB at the time I was reviewing.

    Kiwibank Mastercard is my only non-asb account
    Free delivery worldwide with Book Depository http://www.bookdepository.co.uk

  2. #502
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    Quote Originally Posted by elZorro View Post
    I was going to research swapping my business and private accounts into Kiwibank. Are you guys saying that would be a bad idea?
    If you want to line up behind postage stamp purchasers, parcel senders, prescription fillers....

    Private accounts where 99.9% of transactions done online is probably Ok - their promtion of a "personalised banker" onlin -e not sure how good that really is.
    As CJ says if you are doing something that does not involve going to a branch and/or talking to someone probably Ok
    Last edited by Jay; 26-09-2012 at 03:02 PM. Reason: added comment

  3. #503
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    Thanks for your comments PTC, CJ, and Jay. I don't generally need to go into the bank except for deposit envelopes, we courier them in to save time and fuel. Years ago I was with Trustbank Waikato (later bought out by Westpac). You could go into the branch and have a chat with your account manager in an office, and he/she would be the same person who sorted out personal loans and overdrafts etc. I'd like that again, it's just a forlorn hope I guess.

    Back to the thread..I was having a chat with a client who works in the public service today. Turns out he's a Labour voter like myself, and when I said how bad things were looking generally he - straight out of the blue - mentioned the govt decision to not build the new railway wagons in Dunedin, as a very poor indicator of policy. Where he's working is screwed down, he can see the money tightening up, he knows that people on the dole don't spend like employed people.

    There seems to be an accelerating trend for govt-owned businesses to shed staff at the moment. Maybe they're hoping no-one will notice, because everyone else is taking the opportunity.

  4. #504
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    elZorro even KiwiBank is shedding staff
    Possum The Cat

  5. #505
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    Quote Originally Posted by POSSUM THE CAT View Post
    elZorro even KiwiBank is shedding staff
    Of course you're all correct, I'm not ready to do my banking at a NZ Post counter.

    This message from the Labour Leader today, and I feel it's pretty much on the money.

    Show us the jobs, John


    Dear (Labour supporter)
    This week, miners from the state-owned company Solid Energy came to Parliament asking the Government to help save their jobs.
    I was there with other Labour MPs to welcome and support them. Unfortunately their plea was rejected in a decision that is devastating for the hundreds of workers affected, their families and communities.
    It’s all related to National’s plan to privatise Solid Energy. It’s effectively winding down operations by mothballing the mine and cutting jobs until coal prices go up and the company is more attractive to private investors. This is wrong.
    Labour’s approach would be very different. We don’t believe in selling the country off. We’d treat Solid Energy as a viable business that is suffering a downturn but has good long-term prospects.
    Labour has always stood for decent jobs with decent pay, and for the communities those jobs support.
    That’s why we’ll take steps to encourage job creation, including supporting Kiwi exporters to help them grow and changing the tax system to encourage more investment in productive businesses rather than the Auckland property market.
    We’ll also help Kiwis into jobs in the trades by paying employers the equivalent of the dole to take on apprentices. We won’t sit back and watch 1000 people a week leave for Australia.
    We want to create a country that we can be proud of again - built on jobs, opportunity and fairness. That’s our plan and we appreciate your support in getting there.
    Warm regards,
    David Shearer
    Leader of the Labour Party


    NEWS IN BRIEF
    The Government is so consumed by the Kim Dotcom saga that it’s taken its eye off what matters most to Kiwis – jobs.
    The buck stops with John Key. He has sole democratic oversight of our intelligence agencies but his handling of this issue has been incredibly lax. His claim that he knows nothing about what went on beggars belief. This incident undermines New Zealanders’ confidence in our intelligence agencies, it’s also embarrassing for us internationally and damages our reputation as one of the world’s most honest and transparent countries.





  6. #506
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    There's been plenty more news about layoffs recently, and Fonterra would rather open a new coalmine in green paddocks near a main road, than buy similar coal from Solid Energy.

    Yesterday I read this opinion piece in the Waikato Times, from Federated Farmers Waikato President James Houghton.

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times...s-many-drivers

    This is a thinly-veiled rant that the entire country is just really lucky that Fonterra and the farmers are doing it, paying for all the roads, hospitals and schools, and townies shouldn't be so tough on farm emissions, and regional and local body councils need to pull their heads in, local rates are too high of course ($10,000 per big land area/farm, absolutely shocking price that). According to James, if farmers weren't there, weeds and pests would run rampant through the countryside.

    Newsflash, these would be mostly imported weeds and pests that farmers' forebears brought over from the home country or from Australia, for hunting and for fur, and for hedgerows. Even the grass is imported.

    Not a direct mention about tax being paid to central government, this would be because it's a sensitive area for most, and farmers don't, as a rule, pay very much of it. They must be expecting their suppliers and workers to pay it for them.

    Another newsflash for James - when farmers screw suppliers down so tight by ringing around the stores, the whole supply chain feels it, and this is not going to generate many jobs or much central government tax. Farming is a lossy, low profit business sometimes. So why do many big farmers end up bigger? They buy more farms, often lower productivity ones, commercial buildings, and take on bigger interest bills, because they don't like paying taxes. The big prize is selling the farm and commercial property at the end of the process.

    They could just stick to their main farm and get it running so well that they make serious profits almost every year, and pay off their bank loans. Most ag researchers think farms could easily produce 20% more grass, for example.

    Just one problem with that - "S**t no, we'd have to pay a lot of tax".

    James, you can't have it both ways. Are you paying the taxes the country needs to keep going under this brilliant National Government, or are you helping ensure the profits of the Aussie banks with any spare income instead? I think I know the answer.
    Last edited by elZorro; 03-10-2012 at 12:57 PM.

  7. #507
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    Maybe I had my own rant too, and I know this is far from the full picture. Still, best to keep one's eyes open.

    The US elections are looming, and while reading about the differences between Obama and (business as usual) Romney, I found this writeup on Detroit. Formerly the powerhouse of the US automotive industry, and as many have said over the years, it was on an unsustainable path.

    Now they think small businesses will be what will keep the city alive.

    http://grist.org/cities/detropia-tak...ong-the-ruins/

  8. #508
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    Colin James today:

    Colin James's column for the Otago Daily Times for 9 October 2012


    A matter of our general self-interest


    The United States says Kim Dotcom purloins intellectual property (IP). Well, he does seem to filch the memories of some who come into his orbit. Perhaps they are stashed in a dungeon at his mansion.

    John Banks had a massive memory loss. John Key has owned up to a memory fade about a briefing from the Government Communications Security Bureau, which had a collective memory fade. Detective Inspector Grant Wormald's memory seemed to skip a beat in court.

    On an outer orbit Bill English appeared last week to have a memory blip: his expressed openness to feeding poor kids in schools did not chime with the Prime Minister's dismissal of the notion when it resurfaced in the Children's Commissioner's poverty report and then got a run from David Shearer.

    It appears English and the Prime Minister share less these days than efficient government requires, judging by his not telling John Key about the GCSB's bid to suppress its nefarious goings-on in service of the FBI's mission to uplift Dotcom for infuriating Key's film mogul mates.

    Professional cabinet management demands tight congruence between the top two. When light appears between a Prime Minister and deputy their government loses coherence and then voter trust.

    That applies even when the top two are in different parties. Jenny Shipley fired Winston Peters as her deputy when they fell out over selling Wellington airport in 1998, since when Peters has slagged National, his original party up to 1992. Jim Anderton stayed deputy to Helen Clark when most of his Alliance party walked and eventually in all but name rejoined Labour, his original party up to 1989.

    English is not Peters. He is onside the Key-backed, Steven Joyce-driven dominant economic development agenda.

    For example, he often says only private businesses create productive jobs, which is an argument for smaller government and deregulation to create more space for private enterprise to grow and produce. (English appears to mean a nurse hired by a private hospital is productive and one hired by a public hospital is not but leave that aside for now.)

    The development-is-paramount positioning rests ultimately on self-interest: the materialist self-interest most humans in most places have in more food, drink and goods and services. Anthropologists trace this deep urge back to the hazards of life on the savannah at the dawn of humanity.

    But on the savannah there was a second self-interest: in children's wellbeing as the future of the band.

    It was towards that second self-interest that English, ever the small-c conservative (of a Catholic sort), edged is his reported comment to the New Zealand Herald on Saturday that he was "quite open" to school meals for hungry kids.

    In the case of "kids in homes where there is not a strong sense of responsibility ... the obligation on the rest of us is to do something about it," English was reported as saying. When children missed breakfast, he said, "they are not in great shape to learn". "We are willing to grapple with that," he said, presumably meaning by "we" the government.

    It is a small step from there to recognising that if children are not in shape to learn they won't learn, won't be work-ready at the end of their school years and won't be productive workers (in either private or public jobs).

    And that is not in the self-interest of the rest of us who then pay taxes for remedial education or to pay their benefits and health costs or put them up in prison -- and for their kids after them. The general self-interest is in all children growing up to be productive workers, pay taxes and contribute to general wellbeing.

    This is a long way from seeing government spending as mostly undermining economic development by siphoning off resources that could be going into profit-making enterprises. It fits better with the notion that a society of well-functioning individuals is a good investment for the economy. That in turn argues for a "living wage", as advocated by the Service and Food Workers Union, now with 110 organisations in tow and a couple of cities getting interested. A living wage affords kids breakfast.

    English's repositioning also reflects rising discomfort in the cabinet with the growing media interest in poverty and inequality and suggests the cabinet is starting to reposition to head this off before it arouses too much voter interest. That discomfort was evident in some Beehive heavying of a one-day conference on the Children's Commissioner's poverty report last month.

    On Thursday Paula Bennett will issue her "white paper" on vulnerable children, which she narrowed to the "most vulnerable" in her preface to the precursor green paper, on which there were nearly 10,000 submissions.


    The general self-interest is not limited to rescuing the "most vulnerable". It is in ensuring a fair go for all children so they all eventually contribute fully to the economy and society. English seems now to be sort-of saying that. Is he right or are Key and Joyce?





    -- Colin James, Synapsis Ltd, P O Box 9494, Wellington 6141
    Ph (64)-4-384 7030, Mobile (64)-21-438 434, Fax (64)-4-384 9175
    Webpage http://www.ColinJames.co.nz
    Looks like John Key is more hard-nosed than he appears, at least with Stephen Joyce we know what we're getting.

    On TV this morning, the upcoming manufacturing employment forum - the topics they'll cover are in line with discussions on this thread. John Key won't be going. It'll be interesting to see who Labour sends.

    David Parker with some researched thoughts on the exchange rate, not a "wacky" sound bite.

    http://www.voxy.co.nz/politics/joyce...arker/5/137055
    Last edited by elZorro; 09-10-2012 at 08:42 AM.

  9. #509
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    What does everyone think of the new entrant minimum wage of $10.80?

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/n...ectid=10839349


    Apart from the extension to those in training or who have been on the dole (under20), this only applies to 16 and 17 year olds, and only for the first six months with an employer. The staff so paid cannot be used for training or supervising others.

    This plan seems destined to mop up secondary and first year uni students into the retail and hospitality sector over the holidays. While I believe that any job skills look good on a CV, nothing replaces enthusiasm. Occasionally I'm an employer of new staff. I don't like to observe nothing but retail sector jobs on a CV if they're applying for manufacturing jobs, for example, that should lead on to design and engineering. But the sad reality is that getting a foot in the door is hard.

    Some of the smart ones offer their time for free, just to get experience. If they're that keen, and have demonstrated they also spend some of their own spare time and cash in the same field, I'll try and fit them in at least part-time. And of course I'll pay them, nothing less than above the adult minimum wage.

    If I paid less, what would I be telling them? The message would be - don't even think about setting your sights higher, there is no future here in NZ.

    Is that what National is trying to say? That they agree with some unimaginative employer lobbies, we're doomed to spiral down into a low-wage economy? This attitude is fine if you're at the top of the pile already. What about middle NZ?

    Labour's policies should offer a way through this mess. Although Shearer muddled through his TV spot this morning as per usual, he did make the point that there are other options. Putting it bluntly, we all have to work smarter, not harder. Business owners need to get their operations facing the world if possible, more frequently.
    Last edited by elZorro; 10-10-2012 at 07:08 AM.

  10. #510
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    I grew up in an environment where you took what you could get and that experience has been one of my greatest assets. In more recent years, in a well paid job, I often worked late into the night producing goods for sale in shops and on a weekend stall. My hourly "rate" was often down around the dollar or so an hour but the end result was a pile of dollars in my pocket while others were in the pub bemoaning their state of perceived poverty and spending their money. Now I go in the same pub and they are still there, moaning about capitalism, the money they haven't got and so forth. I go home and cut another cord of wood for sale next winter.

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