Posts Tagged ‘New Zealand’

Weird

Nobody likes to pay taxes, especially Aucklanders and the right. So what happens after government axes the Auckland regional fuel tax proposal? Well,railways have to be built, Auckland needs to move forward, we need to find that money somewhere, and here's how (via Beehive):

• replacing regional fuel taxes with smaller increases in national fuel excise and road user charges, which feed into the National Land Transport Fund
• confirming the government's commitment to Auckland rail electrification
• committing an additional $258 million of the government's capital allocation to land transport over the next two years
• amending the Government Policy Statement on Land Transport Funding to make more money available for state highway construction

I wonder how rural people, especially the nats would think of the first point. But it's a fair measure I have to admit, as the whole country can benefit from a well-funtioning Auckland.

nine-day fortnight work plan released

In one sentence, Government will pay minimum wage of $12.5for up to 5 hours per day to employees who have taken an extra day off. For rest of the scheme:

• Will be available to businesses with more than 100 employees. There are about 1600 companies which fit this category and they employ 580,000 people.
• Will be available to businesses from March 27, 2009 through until December 31, 2010 - but only for up to a six month period within these dates.
• The government’s contribution will be paid direct to employers to give to the workers it has negotiated a voluntary agreement with to reduce work hours to a nine-day fortnight.
• Will be available to up to 10 employees for each averted redundancy.
• Will apply to employees who have been full-time for the two months preceding going into the scheme.
• Is anticipated to be picked up by between 20,000 and 25,000 workers, making the approximate cost $16 million to $20 million.

Overall I'm pretty happy about it, and I think it will be a way reduce redundancies in big companies. In a recession the most import thing to maintain is not just economic growth, but fundamentally, confidence. If employees are given the promise that they will not be made redundant, it will give them confidence, and they are more likely to spend rather than save for the unforeseeable future.

But I do have a mixed feeling about this. Employees are not responsible for the current economic situation, making them suffer should be the last resort to keep this economic going.  There are long suspicions that some employers are using economic recession as an excuse to carry out restructuring. I think this scheme should only be available for companies who are experiencing losses, not just a reduction of profits.   I can see the same greed which was responsible for the current situation, is still in the market. Companies should just accept a significantly reduced profit for now, rather let the same greed take over, dreaming of the high profits they've experienced in the last few years.

The scheme will only work if employers are welling to join it, but I don't think they are. As a employer,  how much can you save from this? Let's assume a company maximises its opportunity, put 10 employee who receives an average $20 wage and work 8 hours a day in this. So the calculation goes like:

13 x 10 x 20 x 8 = $20,800

For a 100 employees company, that's kind of nothing -  make one employee redundant saves more than this, and that size of businesses don't fail for short of 20,000 dollars.

Or maybe the whole thing is just another publicity stunt from John Key?

flinging chopsticks

The Timaru Herald got a very interesting story (in weird way) on a racial clash in Timaru. The really interesting part is not the story itself, in fact, after reading the whole thing, I still don't know how it was started, maybe staffs of the Timaru Herald also need a bit of improvement on writing English, just like I do:)

It is how the witness described the event really amused me:

"Two of them [Asians] were in school uniform and an adult was with them. One had two baseball bats, [and was] flinging them around like bloody chopsticks," a witness said. He said as soon as the youth with the baseball bats appeared everything escalated. “It was just like a rat’s nest being disturbed by a fox terrier, they were going everywhere.

bezdomny ex patria's comment focused on the racial motivation of this witness recall:

...  why? I mean, why use this word “chopsticks” in your seriously warped simile? Could it be the Asian-ness of those doing the flinging around? Some bizarre stereotype of kung fu movies?
And to then follow that up with rats? Wow, you really are trying to reinforce the image of Timaru as a racist, redneck hole, aren’t you?

Well, it sure did a good job on reinforcing the image that I always had in my mind: rural parts of the South Island is the most racist part of NZ. If you are from there, no offence, the bad guys are always the minority.

However, as  a Chinese who get so used to racial remarks, I was really wondering, how did this comment made itself onto the paper, black and white? Regardless of racism part, this chopsticks comment is also factually flawed. It is a common sense that when you are in middle of a fight, you hold on with your baseball bats and smash you enemies as hard as you like, you don't fling them around like "blood chopsticks". I suspect that this witness either exaggerated the situation, or made the whole thing up.

For Timaru Herald, allowing such comments to be published on its paper, really shows how it lacks professionalism.

Even more nanny state stuffs

Parents should be prosecuted for allowing their children to play age-restricted video games, the chief censor says.

Current laws allow punishments of up to three months jail or a $10,000 fine for those caught supplying R-18 games to children. While there have been no prosecutions so far, chief censor Bill Hastings told the Dominion Post the laws should be enforced to help prevent the effects of repeat exposure to violence and sexual violence on young people. (via New Zealand Herald)

Well the first thing I started to wonder is how they are going to enforce that law. Sure that lousy TV3 programme called Target can hire under aged actors to buy restricted games, but unlike illegal selling of tobacco, distribution of games, especially compute games, does not work that way. Today's kids are pretty clever, much cleverer than what we use to. 10 years ago no parental control software can lock me away from computer, today, I recently heard a story from China,  a 14 year old kid is now spying on their parents' activities on computer.

That's a very unique case but most young people do know how to download pirated stuffs online - parents will also be responsible for this if S92A came to force last month (luckily it hasn't) as the Internet access is under the name of a parent. If this happens, I mean, is this really a fault of parents? They tried their best, education, use parental control software, lock out the computer ... but parents aren't nannies, even a nanny cannot watch with children 24/7.

There's a difference of wording, "allowing" or "supplying". Supply is a process that you handed out something that you know it is illegal, allowing can mean you simply don't know. Sure if a parent buys a clearly labelled r-18 games for their children then it is a offence, but if you simply don't know, and don't have access to information on what your children is playing?

New Employment Relation Act effective from today

Now your new boss can fire you at will within 90 days.  You chose that,  you voted for it.

This is what National Party is all about. Like the recent job summit, aimmed to "create jobs", but let's face it, it's just a bad publicity stunt. When you see a group of predominantly white, rich bosses sit around talking about "create and save job", you immediately smells something strange. Aren't they the guys who are responsible for the current situation? In fact, to me, it was more like a discussion on how to save their big fat pay cheques.

My suggestions for this ERA is, refuse to sign any contract that has that 90 days clause in it.  Yes I recognise employers need confidence, but 90 days trial period is too long. 30 days is more than enough to see whether a new employee is a lazy bum and lives up to employer's expectations. 90 days is way to long, it just opens a big opportunity for those bad employers out there.

But if you don't have a choice - then sign the contract anyway.

Copyright Act Section 92A - what copyright terrorists really want?

My friend just forwarded me a link from Computerworld, a leaked letter from RIANZ, showing the points they disagree with the TCF code of Practice, currently at a draft stage.

Yes, they are copyright terrorists,  I have no doubt about that, let's  just see what they want:

RIANZ instead wants users to be required to provide sufficient evidence as to why they believe the alleged infringement didn’t occur via the internet account in question and/or why there is no copyright infringement of the file being downloaded.

Who's accusing who? Why should users prove they are innocent when they are accused by others?

RIANZ opposes having to pay for processing copyright infringement notices and indemnifying ISPs for any costs and liabilities.

So it's not all right when others download musics for free, but it's all right to have others to work for you for free?

Third, RIANZ does not want the notices sent out to users accused of infringement to include evidence that would be admissible in court.

You know this is simply amazing. This is not just guilt upon accusation, it's guilt upon accusation with absolutely with no evidence to back it up. Even the murders have a chance to see the evidence used to against them, but Internet users don't get this right.

Furthermore, RIANZ says its evidence is “highly reliable, well-tested and accepted worldwide”.

This is not the point. The point is, download activities don't mean that download is an infringement of copyright, in many cases, it's legal to download materials, like using downloaded materials as a backup of a disc I already own.

Yes they are right holders, and I do respect their copyright, but if they just want to keep abusing people like this, I'll have no sympathy for them at all.