The arrogance of government

Increased GST rate applied to September bills - National - NZ Herald News

But the Government introduced legislation to allow companies to charge GST at the lower rate for invoices up until October 11 for goods and services provided before October 1. Revenue Minister Peter Dunne said it was regrettable that companies had decided to ignore the new legislation, which would have saved their customers money.

They go out of their way to make things complicated. Do they really expect everyone in the country to learn their whole new system just for one invoice in one particular month? what difference does it make anyway?

GST is charged on everything all the time every month. Every time anyone buys anything anywhere, GST must be calculated and handled by people who need to be paid to do this - twice in fact, once by business and once by bureaucrats. If you really want to complain about GST, there are much better targets than businesses who don't hire extra accounting staff every time the government has a whim.

The fuss about Paul Henry

This has blown all out of proportion - it seems everyone's talking about it. Here's one article in particular.

His resignation is being framed as a "freedom of speech" issue. It's not.

If he had been charged with a crime for what he said, that would have been a freedom of speech issue. If he had been sued for something he said, that would also be a freedom of speech issue. If he had been fired for something he said in his own time, that would arguably also be a freedom of speech issue.

This is about something he said at work, as part of his job, representing his employer. This is about how he does his job, and whether that is acceptable for his employer.

In the article above, Wallace Chapman explains that, while he hates what Paul Henry said, his job should have been protected from any consequences of what he says. I have the opposite opinion. I have no problem with anything Paul Henry has said (though I never watched his show), and while i agree that all speech should be protected from legal consequences, employers should be able to direct employees in the way they do their job - including the way they represent their employer while at work.

There was nothing wrong with firing Paul Henry.

Ipredict

Well, I think i'm doing pretty well...

This is all on a $20 base, the x axis runs from 26 april 2010 to 9 october 2010. I have so far made an 88% return, in just under 6 months. Not much compared to other ipredicters, but i'm happy with it.