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notices and features - Date published:
6:00 am, December 19th, 2024 - 34 comments
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Open mike is your post.
For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.
The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).
Step up to the mike …
Te Pati Māori refers to Te Pati Kakariki, and Te Party Labour. Wouldn’t Te Pati Mahi be a better translation?
I'm surprised they're not Te Roopu Maori….'Paati' is a remnant of the colonial oppression by white kants.
The state of our political/economic commentary.
Argument made in a Heraldine analysis.
1.the government is paying for its tax cuts with spending cuts – laying off staff. The government saves money – salary cost being more than income tax paid and the benefit combined
Detail. 10% of those in Wellington have lost their jobs.
Problem – economics is more than accounting, one reason is related to the term multiplyer.
Taking money out of an economy will impact on the businesses operating in it.
2.landlords ones with mortgage debt on their property are taxpayers getting money (paying less tax on their rental income).
Detail.
Those who have property wealth, might be people spending their money offshore (travel), or invest it in owning more assets, or just paying down debt to the bank – no real impact on the operating economy here (little wonder business profits are falling).
Unless they invest in the productive economy, new builds or share issues in start-ups, handing over money to this group is a net loss to the economy.
And if they bid up the price of existing property by looking to buy another existing home, they make owning a home less affordable for others.
https://archive.li/96nti
The Key clue. It begins with a Y. Y= C + I
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/multiplier.asp
There is a pot of gold over the rainbow, if one avoids the order of rule of imperial neo-liberal market order capitalism.
R
Indeed
https://www.stats.govt.nz/indicators/gross-domestic-product-gdp/
A link with no context , I'd be careful if I was you a mod might tell you off!!
R is for recession. R is for repeat. Whoops (economic) apocalypse they keep making the same mistake.
Fair enough, I consider myself told off 🙂
It appeared on RNZ website less than a minute ago when I saw it; it now has the complete article: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/537126/economy-back-in-recession-as-gdp-shrinks-by-1-percent
The government has claimed the change in tax for landlords with mortgages would mean lower rents charged by them.
In the real world, beyond the lies of politicians, catering to a major support group, rents are set in the market – by supply and demand.
I'd add those losing their jobs, moving back with parents (in some cases in a caravan)
https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/12/19/rental-listiin some cases in a caravan)ngs-up-36-year-on-year-trade-me/https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/12/19/rental-listings-up-36-year-on-year-trade-me/
[added corrected link – Incognito]
The irony is crashing the economy ans causing people to flee the country is driving down rents of course wills will claim its her tax cuts.
BHN with Craig Rennie, CTU economist, and Chloe Swarbrick in confab over the unemployment, tax revenues and the austerity.
Rennie: “The only time austerity works is when there's a big structural change that you have to be managed, and in that case you protect the jobs of those involved." "I come from the country that destruction-tested austerity": the UK, which is now full of destitute families who cannot feed themselves, empty high streets, and zero local investment.
Chloe: "The right want us to see the State as something separate, over there. But the State is us"
Link please.
Here the C of C is dedicated to lower incomes. It's main instrument of austerity – but to be supplemented by adding costs onto citizens of "customers" of business providers.
The gratuitous reduction of support to food banks will impact on well-being.
Inflation with wage increases is the only way to make home ownership more affordable. It reduces the value of homes in real terms while incomes rise.
On our current path home ownership falls below 50% and a two tier society is formalised – not the original practice of restricting the vote to those who owned property, but the victory of neo-liberalism all the same.
Then government becomes a matter of class interest (and a rigid class order is realised)
The irony for our colony, is that the UK has a CGT, and estate tax and gift duty and stamp duty. This to tax all income, tax those who have and prevent a return to class division. And this is their bi-partisan consensus.
BHN clip here.
The Umayyad Mosque in Damascus where the Interim Salvation Government Prime Minister of Syria, Mohammed al-Bashir gave his address to the nation and the world.
As a symbol of the multi-ethnic multi religious nature of Syria there could be no more fitting place to give such an address.
I have been there.
There could not be a more fitting place. It is astonishingly beautiful. And large.
Outside the mosque in the courtyard where the following video shows the crowd, the floor is covered with polished marble tiles that gleam. At each corner of the complex is a minaret, the name of one I was told was called the 'Jesus Minaret'.
Inside the mosque itself, the floor is carpeted and wonderfully air conditioned. Between services you see family groups sitting around on the carpet talking and relaxing enjoying the beauty of their surroundings. Above and stretching around the walls, images of paradise, fountains and rivers and mansions and trees and deer and other wildlife in meadows of flowers, all picked out in gold leaf. As per Muslim tradition there are no images of human beings in the tableau of paradise, paradise looks oddly uninhabited to European eyes. The ceiling is immense and distant.
Umayyad Mosque is built in the pattern of the Christian cross, in the middle of the vast carpeted floor is a tiny roofed chapel, with ancient windows made of thick green poured glass, the doors to this little Christian chapel are locked and I was told they are opened once a year for Christian services. Inside is the reliquary to John the Baptist.
The Umayyad Mosque is the only mosque that I know of where the Catholic pope was welcomed in to conduct a Christian service.
The original structure was built by the Romans as a temple to Jupiter it was then converted to a Christian cathedral, For a long period Christians and Moslems shared services there. Until the Muslims became more numerous. In response the Umayyed muslim rulers of Damascus agreed to build a separate Christian cathedral for Christian worshippers. I never visited it, but I am told that while the Umayyad is built like a Christian Cathedral, St. Mary's in Damascus is built like a mosque.
Just outside the mosque, is a mausoleum to Saladin containing two coffins.
One coffin ornately covered in silver filagree in Germanic style. Before WW1 this empty coffin was gifted to the Ottomans by the Kaiser for them to house Saladin's remains. The other coffin decorated in Muslim style is the one that holds Saladin's remains. In my opinion the more beautiful of the two. Outside Saladin's mausoleum is a tiny graveyard holding the remains of WW1 Ottoman pilots who died in aerial combat with the British Empire.
I’m sorted, but look, um, you know, let's be clear – what I would say to you is…
GDP per capita dropped even more (1.1% instead of 1%), so the individual picture is even worse.
Nicola Willis is hands down the WORST FINANCE MINISTER……..EVER!!!!
Don’t need to qualify this.
The evidence is ‘EVERYWHERE’ to quote Tina from Turners.
As her employers, can we sack her?
Only at the next election. Willis won't promise to quit again [good cartoons and comments at end of link], but she was out of her depth well before the ferry fiasco – Aotearoa NZ's current economic track is just ‘confirmation icing’ on the fairy cake.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/immigration-another-annual-record-for-departures-from-new-zealand/GEYCXEAQWFBQLCJMYLVNJNMBZQ/
managed to crash the economy pretty quickly, worst since richardson. maybe not as odious as richardson but certainly out of her depth. Reti in health, willis in finance…….
Not her fault entirely. It would be hard to be a good finance minister with Seymour and Peters countermanding your every action.
An irony here, given we are coming out of a period of "QE" where the RB played its part in "inflating" the economy.
An address citing the reason for and importance of our independent RB – to maintain price stability (and the rise in property values relative to the rest of the economy since)
https://www.rbnz.govt.nz/hub/publications/speech/2000/speech2000-08-26
When James Brendan Bolger removed Ruth Richardson from her job, it was to maintain the chance of winning re-election in 1993. He only won because it was FPP and New Labour and Labour divided the opposition vote – under MMP he would have been ex PM.
It guaranteed that electoral reform was to occur.
Slashing benefits, introducing market rents for state houses and then removing the estate tax on rich people was class war.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/money/360528285/economy-experiences-sharpest-decline-more-30-years
Will free speech be what government says is free speech?
https://bsky.app/profile/acidcorbyn.bsky.social/post/3ldmllyr6bc25
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/strengthening-free-speech-universities
A ruling party getting to define freedom of speech really is bald-faced authoritarianism.
I hear the sound of chickens
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/prime-minister-christopher-luxon-wont-attend-waitangi-treaty-ground-celebrations-will-be-elsewhere/EQ4LKYUKCZA4DHBNIJJ4PK65JM/
What he’s telling us is that he’s not going.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/537126/economy-back-in-recession-as-gdp-shrinks-by-1-percent
And this is two successive quarters, measured by comparison with previous quarters.
This coalition has been in power for four quarters.
Its not Labours fault, or public servants fault, or the ferries fault or…
Those in the government who have come out and said 'Im prepared to be accountable ' need to front and centre.
Where are they?
Did this following case of IDF soldiers being denied entry to Australia get any main stream media coverage here?
Does New Zealand vet visiting IDF soldiers to determine their involvement in genocide?
Middle East Eye
Surviving genocide by gardening.
Surviving a total siege, and a relentless non-stop bombing campaign
Fishing, and gardening in Gaza, is a death defying act.
No genocide is ever total. There will always be some survivors determined and resilient enough to overcome all odds to bear witness.