Archive for the ‘Thoughts’ Category

Just a thought

Labour want you to save money, so it set up the KiwiSaver and people praised for that;

Nats need money to fund their tax cut,  so they slashed the government contribution and reduced employer contribution into the fund; some people praised for that as well.

But wait a minute  -  for us, especially ones who joined the KiwiSaver, isn't this just politicians play your money around? give you a $1,000 tax cut, and take out $1,000 government contribution from your KiwiSaver?

Em....

4 dead, director arrested.

Questions still remain for the contaminated milk powder scandal. How melamine got into the baby milk powder is still a bit of mystery, although Chinese police has arrested several dairy farmers, alleging them of adding that chemical to the raw milk.

But melamine is almost insolvent to water. If it was added in the raw milk stage, it is hard to believe that San Lu does not have any knowledge on it, as the precipitation will almost occur in the milk.

San Lu, the producer has a motive to add melamine to the milk in the production stage because it gives the end product a false high protein reading. But this possibility is not publicly investigated at the moment.

Just some facts you may be interested to know ...

• Melamine was later found in varies milk powder products, including some reputable Chinese brand.
• However, San Lu's product got an extremely high reading (2000+ mg/kg), compare with 100 or less mg/kg in other products)
• Only one type of  San Lu milk powder product was found to be "contaminated".  It is the cheapest of its type in the market.
• San Lu products were granted exemption from state quality surveillance inspection because of its "excellent performance".

So did San Lu or dairy farmers deliberately added melamine into the milk powder? In my opinion, the short answer is yes, with a long answer "no". San Lu, like nearly everybody else, adds bit of high tech stuff like melamine into their products. But there's no need to boost protein % by add 2000+ mg/kg melamine, so something must gone wrong in the process, which probably San Lu's QCs have no knowledge of.

none of them is/are?

This phrase jumped out of my mind twice today, one in my last blog: (earthquake) none of them was/were destructive, and one in my assignment: none of them is/are up to the standard.

Asked several native speakers and non-natives, none of them (damn again) was/were certain on this, but most people preferred the "are" option.

... which I don't agree with. It just sounds strange, at least I think the word "none" just means "not one", so in "not one of them", "not one" is the subject?

But Google seems to be in favour of the "are" option as well. "none of them are" returned 5,150,000 results, compare with 805,000 results from the phrase "none of them is".

Well I'll follow the crowd then. But I agree with this thread, "none of them is" is the correct way (grammatically); when people say "none of them are", what they really mean is "not many are".

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UPDATE

Another person pointed out a different way of look into this issue. In the example of "none of them is/are the prime minister of New Zealand", "is" is clearly the right answer. But if you change that example to past tense - "were" seems to be the right answer.

I guess it really depends on what follows after that phrase?

Finally...

Just got rid of all the assignments at the moment, great.

Lots of interesting stuffs happened while I’m away, including the latest transport policy from National – a user pay system that charges around $5 for some sections of Motorway in Auckland. It is likely to increase the cost of an average Auckland commuter by $50 a week.

I usually refer people to this clip every time when National announces something. The user-pay system should nicely fit into that category too.

The system sounds fair, but it’s not, it only seeks fairness in the economic sense.

From a planning point of view, I’m more concerned about the accessibility issues, how to ensure that the low income people have the maximum accessibility to the opportunities provided by the CBD? Motorway is tolled; Dominion Road and Great North/South road are all in a miserable state and you cannot see a bus for half an hour in some area - well people need a way to move around a city?

Sure there’s no such thing as a free lunch, but you cannot force people to take one type of lunch or get them unfairly disadvantaged. The toll just shouldn’t go ahead without viable alternatives to people.

About ... Winston

The first thing i wanted to do when I heard that Winnie is in trouble is to laugh out loud, "haha", like Nelson in the Simpsons.

This man was an expert to find other's dirt and plays it, and now the tide is turning.

Anyway, I actually trust Peters this time. I believe he really didn't know anything wrong on his legal fund. Reason? Simple, Peters is a very experienced politician, he knows if he lies on this issue it probably means the end of his life, oh political life I mean.

But whether he intentionally lied really doesn't matter now, public don't care.

I  am not familiar with parliament rules so I cannot comment on whether Peters breached any rules. But in my untrained eyes, there is clearly a conflict of interest when racing businesses start to donate Money to Racing Minister.

About that $100,000 dollars,  I don't know whether donation to a legal fund should be decleared, but there is, again, a conflict of interest. A job-wanting person gives the man who is responsible to dish jobs out 100 grand is clearly not right.

If Peters did not declare either of both he's clearly in deep trouble. Maybe this is the last year that we will see Winston Peters jumping up and down in the parliament.

Oh I'll miss him. He's quite good most time actually, at least there's very few harms he has done. In the situations where Peters is not useful, he'll at least say something entertaining, like the comments regarding immigrants.

vigilante action?

After last week's 15,000+ Asian protest against crime, the people of South Auckland, including the protest organiser Peter Low, are threatening to take the law into their own hands, if nothing has done by the government.

I did not go to protest. I do not like any protest, political group and other stuffs that is racially divided, especially on crime, which is an issue that concerns every single person of the community regardless of their ethnicity, so limit the range to just "Asians" will likely to make other people feel "it's non of our business."

Also I'm quite interested about the organiser Peter Low - my gut feeling tells me he's more than just a boat building businessman from Singapore. I'll run my own sort of background check and see if there is anything interesting pop up.

It's just a gut feeling, though.

I personally support tougher sentencing(except capital punishment), but the trend of setting up vigilante groups really worries me that the movement against crime has just gone out of course. Read more