Wednesday 18 May 2011

waiting for the budget

it turns out that the man haranguing me at the meeting on monday is an ex-waikato times reporter who wasn't even a member of the group i was speaking to. he'd gate-crashed the meeting and come especially prepared to have a go at me. nice. it really bothers me that people like this have been part of our media, but what can you do. i mean, garth george. need i say more?

i've put up a couple of posts at the hand mirror: one about the rural sector centred around tax, prices & the unethical behaviour of the banking industry, and another about media treatment of the woman allegedly assaulted by the IMF head.

i see the federated farmers are trying to defend their members who have been paying very little tax over the last couple of years. funnily enough, they make no mention of farmers changing the livestock valuation method they use in order to get a pretty favourable tax position. many farmers have done this, so that they are showing losses when they have a significant level of earnings. and even with the drought in 2008, the rise in the fonterra payout that year meant that farmers didn't suffer too much financially.

budget day tomorrow, and i'm not looking forward to it. it's unlikely that we'll see any measures to increase government revenue. just more cuts to be rammed through, with very little thought to the long-term consequences. we can haz nu guvmint plz?

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