Once upon a time, the Post Office and Railways were full of deadwood.
You know the ones. Always leaning on a shovel or generally milling about, waiting for the smoko whistle or knock-off. The old codger who pushed a broom around a workshop, making no impression on the dirt. The cretin who's sole job was to 'Look after the gang's truck'. The terminally useless slattern who made the tea.
They are all gone now.
Or are they?
My latest observation is that they have devolved into NZQA.
(BTW, I'm off on a course for the next two weeks, so I may be a little quiet here ON ACCOUNT OF ALL THESE FRIGGIN' ASSESSMENTS!)
4 comments:
While you do have a point relating to deadwood, those entities, such as NZ Rail, never had to make a profit.
They kept whole communities afloat, they trained scores of apprentices at a time in trades ranging from upholstry to heavy engineering.
Once sold off to overseas interests, the communities that supported those entitieswithered. The inhabitants, instead of supplying products, rates, taxes, services, went on the dole and actually cost the rest of NZ.
Telecom. Asset stripped 3 times so far by overseas interests.
NZED, sold off - you saw the results of the lack of maintainence and capital works that ensued as a result, yesterday.
lame twat boonie:
what a complete load of codswollop. Your whole argument is a flawed and counters itself:
how is it possible that "entities, such as NZ Rail, never had to make a profit", employed people to not produce anything, yet saved the taxpayer money? So the govt employed someone in a $250 per week job, and then taxed them 125 for the privaledge, so net cost to the taxpayer was 125. The dole only cost us $70. Your maths is shite.
The facts are that freeholding deadbeat industries liberated 100's of thousands of people into jobs that actually had some form of production come out of it. that product gets exchanged for some foreign currency, and we get to buy better stuff than we had available before.
How can Telecom have been asset stripped 3 times? have you renewed the phone lines into your house 3 times since 1984 (obviously if you have built 3 new homes in that time then the answer is yes, but if not then you're talking thru a hole in your jacksie).
If anyone is doing the asset stripping it is the current government. Don't believe me? OK then, how much has the govt taken in dividends from it's SOE power compnies since Labour took office?
How much has those same SOEs reinvested in new generation, or transmission? What are the actual percentages for comparison between turnover/ sales from the SOEs and proportion spent on new generation and transmission initiatives? I'm happy to be proven wrong, if you can come up with verifiable figures, comparing the last 3 respective govts, that should give a reasonable cross assessment.
I don't know the answers to these questions, but I do know that Labour have held office this time, the price of power has tripled, and the govt receives special dividends from their SOE power companies, even to the extent that orders were given to CEOs to borrow against assets to be able to pay such special dividends.As an example, didn't the govt just receive a special dividend from meridian for $800m?
Well, lame twat pispot, what a load of shit you spout.
You sound just like one of thiose libitarian fuckwits.
The did, in fact keep communities afloat, not just those that worked for the entity, [such as NZR] but all the feeder businessses, from atlas shovels, to the greengrocer in main st.
Err, if you dont know how asset stripping works, then I suggest finding someone from Telecom that has been there since the days of the P&T - they will be able to illuminate you.
The facts are that freeholding deadbeat industries liberated 100's of thousands of people into jobs that actually had some form of production come out of it.
ROTFPML
We now come to the only point in your diatribe that I agree with.
Successive governments have ripped the heart out of the counties infrastucture. You appear to have a particular hatred for labour - I believe that national carries an equal blame. However, all politicians are cheats, liars and not worth the gas in a pigs fart, in my opinion.
Is the NZ economy bigger today than it was when the fat communist bastard muldoon was in power?
Does the country produce on a per capita basis more?
The answer is undeniably yes. Where did all this new productiion come from? Is it not possible that people standing around doing effectively FA, being retrined/ reskilled might be a plausible reason for it? Instead of paying 50% taxation businesses were able to invest the additional 15% into new machinery to improve production.
"Keeping all the feeder business afloat";what and people aren't going to eat or dig a hole just because NZR got sidelined from losing the taxpayer 300m a year? More bollocks.
I will agree with you in the issue of both major parties, they are both obstructionist. National have been the most destructive in terms of infrastructure investment stiflement. They were unwilling to put the cash in themselves, so tried to rely on market forces to fill the gap justifiably too, but did a piss poor attempt at it. Namely they introduced Labour's RMA, the single most obstructive legislation ever passed into law. Nothing gets built in a timely manner in NZ because of this nonsense legislation, and the only people to prfit from it are lawyers and beauracrats. Labour has been complicit in the hamstringing of private investment, e.g. they haven't altered/ repealed the RMA, promised public-private roading endeavours have not eventuated despite assurances in 2 election campaigns they would, new infrastructure has been actively blocked from being built despite legal consent and due legal process being undertaken.
Do you not agree that the current govt are creaming it wrt electricity profiteering?
As for your assertion about me being a Libertarian, then I guess if it means that I like capitalism, despise socialism, defend property rights, and desire not having some deadwood asshole beauracrat telling me how to live my life, spend my money, or worse still taking it from me to spend on shit they think is important despite all evidenc to the contrary, then so be it, I'm a Libertarian.
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