Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Quick comments

Therapeutic Products and Medicines Bill

I am with I/S on this one - it is a victory for stupidity. Healthcare medicine is he wild west. I know of product which if it actually had the ingredients that it says it has would kill you in minutes. It did not of course but the fact that it was actually sold in NZ says something in itself. Others have long term side effects that aren't clear in the advertising.

parliament goes live and satire
I am concerned that parliament will be televised although I will try to watch some. I think that it may promote bad behavior. When did media coverage ever promote good behavior? If it did Paris would be an angel. What it seems to do is lower our expectations of politicians and encourage them to waste time playing to the media and trying to get sound bites.
I also am one of the few people who support the anti satire house rules. This is because the informative content of our media is pretty damn low. I really don’t want to know if a politician picked his nose. And the fact that he is supposed to stay awake through hours of puff questions asking how lovely the government is and being responded to with “yes we are lovely” is really quite ridiculous. Let the poor chaps have a nap. Frankly let them go home and watch the debate on the internet with a nice cup of coco for all the value they add. More fool us if we think that every MP is required to be in the chamber and fully awake for such entertainment.

as to national's position on this Jordan has a good point about it being just politics.

the polls are still showing national well ahead of labor although I expect Key will be a weak finisher. His weakness on .. well policy... already annoys me and may annoy others as one comes closer to the election.

David Farrar keeps banging the failure to deliver on 20 hrs free education wagon. this seems like a bit of a cheap shot if you don’t actually support 20 hrs free education. after all any movement in the direction you want is a good thing right? and anyone who actually supports 20 hrs free education should really hate the guy who opposes it much more than the person who supports it but fails to deliver. I guess if our education system is decent I support it - education being one of the tax investments that tends to pay off in the long run.

the kiwi dollar continues to rise. the issue here seems to be fairly fundamental - its a great idea to borrow overseas and buy nz dollars for the higher interest rates you can get with them. So what to do? well obviously you need to use more tools than just interest rates - again what is funny here is that national complains and the only thing they come up with as a solution is to reduce the rate of government spending increases. that’s a pretty slow and weak little tool they are proposing there.
At least labour has actually proposed some solutions to inflation besides interest rate controls - while national seems to just reject everything.

NZherald and national (OMG) are both in favour of local bodies coming together.. I hope national gets more traction than labour...

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