Dark Brightness

Everyone else in NZ seems to be doing this but I think I’m fairly right-wing for a kiwi so:

My Political Views
I am a right moderate social libertarian
Right: 5.78, Libertarian: 2.64

Political Spectrum Quiz

MacDoctor | Political Spectrum Quiz – Your Political Label.

and on foreign policy I’m with George HW Bush.

My Foreign Policy Views
Score: 4.1

Political Spectrum Quiz

So… I’m further from the centre than the Mac Doc, but given that the US centre is at the right for NZ… a quick comparison confirms I’m WAY to the right compared with the average kiwi, and a tad more libertarian.

via xkcd – A Webcomic – Voynich Manuscript.

This is simply a cool idea: the weather was fairly fine but coolish — at 5 PM it was down to one degree in ceontral yesterday. They made $2000 for World Vision

Good on them.

“Colour and attitude are going to get us there,” Waitaki Girls High School pupil Rose Elphinstone-Hayes declared as she and her friends strode along State Highway 83 on Saturday pulling a bath.

via Girls’ novel plug for charity | Otago Daily Times Online.

Barenard wrote in yesterday’s Herald. Read the full article, but his 10 suggestions are:

1. Flatten and simplify the income tax rates to a single rate of.

2. Remove the various middle-class welfare entitlements.

3. Reduce the corporate and family trust tax rates to the same rate as the single income tax rate

4. Set a limit on core government spending as a percentage of GDP in some sort of “Fiscal Responsibility Act”. .

5. Impose a flat tax on land, as is the case in Hong Kong.

6. Keep the promise to pay all retired people that is, not means-tested New Zealand Superannuation at 66 per cent of the average wage, but lift the retirement age to 70.

7. Increase GST to 15 per cent to encourage investment rather than consumption.

8. Impose flat and low tuition fees for university and polytechnic courses.

9. Tax earnings from investments in managed funds, stocks and other assets at the same 25 per cent rate as for income, profit and corporate taxes.

10. Remove tax exemptions and move most tax returns online. Aim to cut the size of IRD and the private tax advice industry in half.

via Ten tips to tax NZ out of dire straits – 07 Jun 2009 – Show Me the Money – NZ Herald Blog.