Charity begins at the IRD

In today's Herald, the Mactional Government are still banging on about widening tax rebates/loopholes for charitable donations.
This despite the fact that studies have shown that for most people, the incentive of a tax rebate is low on their list of reasons for giving.

When in opposition, National made noises about how 'complicated' the tax system is and how it needed to be 'simplified' yet now in Government, they want to add an additional layer of complication of which the net benefit to the country will be close to zero. However companies and individuals will now have new ways to avoid/evade paying tax by claiming rebates for 'gifts' that were going to given anyway or imagined 'gifts in kind' that do not exist except on a filed tax return.

In a rather hamfisted way I did try make this point in a comment at The Standard yesterday, but as is traditional amongst Standardnistas it was ignored in favour of calling people 'fuckwits' and 'pricks'.

Zero Tolerance for ACT's paedophiles

From today's Christchurch Press

A 60-year-old former teacher and ACT Party general election candidate from North Canterbury has been found guilty on 24 child pornography charges.

Malcolm Albert Spark of Kaiapoi was yesterday remanded in custody after the jury returned guilty verdicts at the end of a three-day trial in the Christchurch District Court. Spark stood for ACT in the 1999 election, winning 584 votes in the Waimakariri seat. He was also on the party list, at No 41.

...

The jury convicted him on all the charges: 10 counts of making an objectionable publication and 14 counts of knowingly possessing an objectionable publication.

The publications related to child sexual exploitation.

The department's case was that Spark had taken part in on-line chats with girls aged from nine to 15 in 2005, which led to him obtaining images which he put with a summary of what he had learned about the girls during the chats.

It seems that in 2005, Mr Spark was already feeling pangs of guilt and wrote a letter to the Press editor in what now appears to be a blatant attempt to justify his own predatory behaviour.

Burning witches?
Sexual fantasy is an area kept mostly out of the public arena. I imagine there are a huge number of sexual fantasy categories of which sex with a child is one.

In order to avoid creating more victims, we need to find out if people who engage in sexual fantasies actually expect to live out those fantasies in real life and if there is any evidence that sexual fantasies are lived out.

If these people actually don't pose a threat, then we need to be very careful we are not burning witches.

Soon digital artists will be able to create photograph quality images of people to satisfy many people's sexual fantasies. When viewing becomes truly victimless, will a crime still be committed?

Finally, are we running the risk of heading towards a society with a new category of police -- thought police?

MALCOLM SPARK Kaiapoi
THE PRESS, 26 FEB 2005, Edition 2, Page 12.

Perturbed by the lack of response to his suggestion of legalising child pornography, Spark tried again the following week.

Why no discussion?
Last week I wrote a letter on sexual fantasies and child pornography under the heading Burning Witches (Feb 26). It is an issue I perceived to be important and I fully expected a large amount of correspondence. To date, apart from two supportive phone calls, there has been no correspondence.

I conclude the subject is of no importance, or it is too frightening for most people to speak up about. If it is the latter, then it is a sad commentary on the state of our free society.

For a society to be truly free, any subject will be able to be discussed openly. The test of freedom comes when the subject is a difficult one. If I am right, in NZ we have still some distance to go before we can consider ourselves part of a free society.

MALCOLM SPARK Kaiapoi
THE PRESS, 5 MAR 2005, Edition 2, Page 12.

Two things we can learn from this,
1) This guy makes David Garrett look like a fine upstanding citizen.
2) If this wannabe-pedophile was ranked #41 on ACT's list, what does that say about those ranked 42 or below?

Show us your Titular Honours!

The Mactional Government has unleashed it's newest and most futuristic idea yet to turbo-charge New Zealand inc. Bringing back Sirs and Dames!
This is wonderful news for (soon to be) Dame Jenny Shipley, now she'll be able to command a much higher fee to sit on the board of a Chinese bank.

And a note to Allen Stanford, if Antigua ever takes that knighthood back off you, we've got plenty for sale down here in NZ.

Video analysis follows.

The 0.0001% Doctrine

In recent comments to the extremist Investigategate magazine Prime Minister Brian John Key said that climate change legislation needs to have flexibility built into it in case "the climate sceptics are right".
It is an interesting proposition to have government legislation written with discredited conspiracy theories in mind.

Perhaps PM John could implement this style of conspiracy aware government into other policy fields. Here are some helpful suggestions to get him started.

1. Rewrite Kiwisaver legislation for the possible return of Jesus and the ascension of true believers to heaven.
2. Ask MFAT to develop an action plan in the circumstances that President Obama declares the US to be a Muslim caliphate.
3. Commision a study into the link between vaccines and autism.
4. Ask for flexibility surrounding restrictions on the sale of tobacco for the possibility that it does not cause cancer.
5. Ask the DPMC to investigate links between himself and the Illuminati.
6. Direct the Civil Avation Authority to create guidelines for the piloting of alien spaceships in NZ airspace.
7. Do away with regulations on air and water pollution so as to pre-emptively appease the future robot masters of New Zealand.
8. Investigate links between the consumption of KFC and impotence in Pacific Islanders.
9. Double the amount of electric lighting in government institutions so as to further dissuade lizard people from taking public office.
10. Remove fluoride from the public water supply for fear it causes schizophrenia.
    

Live from the Job Summit

Guilt upon exaggeration

Guilty upon accusation is a good brand to sell this issue around, however it is just ever so slightly hyperbolic. We have various characters going around saying how "guilty upon accusation" in Section 92A is unfair and not the kiwi way. Yet the Mactional Government recently passed legislation under urgency that allows employees in 'small businesses' to be fired within the first three months with virtually no recourse.
Being fired from a job for no reason, is that not "guilt upon accusation"?
Where is the anger in the NZ wankosphere about this law that comes into effect next week?
There is little outrage about "my rights" and "freedom" around this law since it will mainly affect people on lower wages - the working class (are we still allowed to say that?), not a significant demographic in the NZ blog clique. That's not to say opposing Section 92A is the wrong thing to do, the law is an ass. But it seems people are very choosy and myopic about "rights" and "freedoms" nowadays.

Our Precedent is Black

The 'controversy' around Section 92A exhibits all the traits of modern ridculousness, the act itself is absurd, as too are the opinions of the media industries that support it. But so too is are some of the protests against it. A strong and forceful message has been sent to the Government by thousands of people changing their profile picture on Facebook and bebo. And twitter as well!!! That will really stick it to them.

And while the Power/Joyce/Finlayson troika are reeling from that killer blow, the NZ wankosphere is going to 'black-out' their webpages for two whole hours!!! Of course you can still access rss feeds and read any new material after the 'protest' is finished. But hey, it's symbolic man, all the wankosphere joining together to deliver a meaningless act of self-expression that will invetiably recieve a meaningless and empty response.

Orewa Resurrection

Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!

Clint Rickards and John Key BFF?

At last Wednesday's lunch where John Key announced Mactional's minor changes to business tax policies, among the 400 invited guests was none other than Clint Rickards, the rapist.
It's disgusting the way Rickards has slithered his way back into the system, using ethnicity as part of his defence for his despicable behaviour. But it's not surprising that the old cronies are protecting him, deeming him to be a fit and proper person to practice law and embedding him within the Waipareira Trust. There's probably an expectation that in a few years time we'll all have forgotten about what that "crazy bitch" said about innocent Clint and he can inch his way back up into a position of power. But some of us will never forget what this scumbag did, and his presence at any sort of governmental function other than inside a prison is totally unacceptable.

The idiocy of the "rolling maul"

Metaphors are funny things, in response to the economic crisis, we've had talk of Obama's Large Stimulatory Package and K-Rudd administering an "amphetamine shot" to the Australian economy.
Yet here in New Zealand we shy away from metaphors evoking the mainlining of hard drugs or large Presidential appendages. As a group of simple folk we prefer more earthy metaphors, be it weather, food, or of course Rugby. John Key's so-called "rolling maul" of "economic initiatives" appears to be the brainchild of a "marketing expert" who thinks that Rugby is synonymous to the national identity of NZ but does not actually follow the sport himself.

The rolling maul is a tactic that in modern times is used occasionally by skilled teams such as the All Blacks. However it is more commonly employed as a "go-to" tactic by distinctly average teams like England or East Coast. This tactic enables a team to achieve far more against superior opposition than they would have otherwise.

Even though NZ has a Rugby team that doesn't rely on the rolling maul to succeed, perhaps Key's metaphor makes sense in the spirit of the "little Kiwi battler", but in that case who are NZ's superior opponents? Our trading partners, Australia and China? Venezula? Iran? The invisible hands of the global economic crisis that are all around us? If so, shouldn't we be playing touch?

But whoever the opposition is, what happens when NZ finally collapses on the line to "score"? Do we get back up? And if so will we revert to the exciting back play NZ is renowned for or will we be forever condemned to playing the economic game in the style of Clive Woodward?

But the main reason John Key's metaphor is so bad is that there are currently experimental rules in international Rugby (ELVs) that include changes specfically designed to counteract the "rolling maul" tactic. The rules allow the defending team to collapse the maul without penalty, thus making the tactic far less useful, especially for a mediocre team like England.

So the "rolling maul" is not only ill suited to NZ's modern style of play, it is ineffective in the new global enviroment. Our "opposition" can collapse the "maul" stranding us far from where we want to be and we lose possession.

In the end, perhaps the "rolling maul" will turn out to be an apt description of his government's approach to the economic crisis though maybe not in the way Key intends.

MSD MIA

Funny how our new and wonderful Minister of Social Development was not present at the economic summit/meeting/talk-fest of Ministers yesterday. Her ministry is going be taking on massive numbers of new 'clients' in 2009 and MSD programs should be an essential component of any poverty alleviation and economic stimulus measures.
Instead Mactional's 'plan' so far seems to be to funnel taxpayer money through business and cutting public spending in a repeat of the failed trickle-down policies of the past.

New minister pulls plug on costly summit

An emergency jobs "summit" due to be held by the Prime Minister in February has been axed after Social Development Minister Paula Bennett declared it a waste of money.

Ms Bennett said she was surprised the PM had continued with plans for the conference after his repeated warnings that he wanted careful spending of public money.

"As you can imagine, sipping my tea at 11 o'clock at night reading that made my face turn blue," she said.

"I then suggested quite strongly to the PM that he might like to revisit that in the current economic times. I told him I didn't think the New Zealand public would see this as a good spend."

Change we can believe in

11/7/96 The Press

New law will ban inefficient appliances

The Government will pull the plug on the sale of some energy-inefficient appliances and electrical equipment.

Energy Minister Doug Kidd yesterday announced new energy-efficiency legislation would be developed that would effectively ban the sale of some categories of electrical products that did not meet new energy efficiency standards.

Standards would initially apply to domestic hot-water cylinders, fluorescent lamps, and fluorescent ballasts for office lighting, but could also be extended to electric motors and domestic refrigerators and freezers after more analysis.

The legislation, which is expected to go before Parliament next year, will not apply to existing installations of appliances and equipment.

Mr Kidd said the new measures would benefit consumers through lower energy costs, benefit the economy through savings to businesses and reduced pressure to construct new energy generation plants, and benefit the environment through reduced carbon dioxide emissions.

Officials have estimated the net national economic benefit of the standards could be as high as $70 million over 15 years. Total carbon dioxide emissions are also expected to be cut by more than one million tonnes over the same period.

Mr Kidd said consumers would still enjoy a wide choice of models from each product type, but the least energy efficient and most obsolete technologies would be ``knocked out of the market''.

Standards would be developed in consultation with manufacturers and suppliers would be given time to dispose of stocks of non-complying products before the new legislation took effect, he said.

2/12/08 NZ Herald

Eco bulbs unlikely to be compulsory - Key

A proposal to phase out incandescent lightbulbs is extremely unlikely to go ahead under the new National Government.

Prime Minister John Key stood by National's policy in opposition against the Labour Government's plan to implement a new standard for lightbulbs, which would see old incandescent lightbulbs phased out by the end of next year.

"We have real concerns about telling people that they have to move to energy efficient light bulbs by decree," he said.

"We want to encourage people to do that, we think there may be benefits for them to do it, but it should be a choice they make as consumers."

Global Peace and Justice are Mossad Agents

Seriously, that's the only logical explanation I can think of for the way the nutcase left is behaving over the Israeli Government's ongoing war crime in Gaza.
It's an obvious outrage that is dominating news coverage right now. People are angry and have every right to protest, but why do it in such a self defeating fashion? Why smear 'blood' on a memorial to Yitzhak Rabin who was murdered by one of his own people because he sought peace? What is the point of standing outside a tennis tournament demanding penance from a 22 year old tennis player?

The IDF bombed a school in Gaza that was flying the UN flag killing upwards of 40 children, the death toll is now approaching 700. Yet these misguided trivial actions distract focus from the story of what is going on in Gaza and allows those who defend and/or endorse the war crimes to shift the conversation away from the atrocities.

The New Boss

The Board of Directors have spoken and the new guy is in charge.
An emerging national identity has been put aside to refocus on becoming the best performing subsidiary of Worldwide inc. This new NZ era of managerialism will be fronted by a man from Christchurch who combines the bravado, thick accent and MBA management of pre-9/11 George W Bush with Steve Carrell's character from the US version of The Office.