Blog Bits

Thursday, May 15th, 2008 at 3:58 pm

Stephen Franks has ordered a book: Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. I must borrow it after he gets it!

Jeanette Fitzsimons blogs, asking whether the wheels are falling off the ETS. She addresses the issue of the so called thermal moratorium and how Genesis, an SEO, is using a loophole to get around this.

Whale Oil has photos of more potential EFA breaches. Russell Fairbrother’s caravan certainly looks like an advertisement with statements about proud to support interest free loans, nuclear free NZ.

Blair Mulholland asks whether it is worse to have a swastika on your roof, or preventing someone from doing it. While I think Councils go way overboard with their controls on what you can do on your house, I think there is a property rights argument that there should be some restrictions. Put it like this. If you buy your place for $500,000 and someone buys the house either side of you and covers them in swastikas, or even paintings of men’s penises, then your house value will drop significantly as there won’t be many buyers. Note in this case the swastika was the Hindu one, not the Nazi one.

The Visible Hand in Economics looks at the case for and againgst a tax free threshold.

Jordan Carter looks at the travails of Gordon Brown in the UK.

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ACT conference coverage

Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 9:49 am

Several items re ACT.

Claire Trevett in the Herald talks to John Ansell:

He said right-wing parties internationally had difficulty portraying that they had “heart” – and his main job was to put heart into right-wing policies.

The strategy showed in a presentation he made to Act’s conference at the weekend, when he showed an ad depicting “the priorities of Labour.”

It said Labour could afford $25 million to save an endangered snail, but could not afford the same amount to fund Herceptin for women with breast cancer.

“We’ve got a default socialist country, but we are killing people with kindness.

“People think if you throw money at people, you’re caring for them. It’s not only incorrect, it’s immoral … ‘

I think people will be hearing more on the $25 million on snails instead of Herceptin.

Tracy Watkins says Sir Roger is being lined up for Cabinet. I think people should wait to see his list ranking before they get excited.

And finally Blair Mulholland gets so excited he wants to be ACT’s candidate in Mt Albert.

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Posted in NZ Politics | 35 Comments »