On Sunday, April 16, 2017 at 12:24:44 PM UTC+12, jmschri...@gmail.com wrote:

On Saturday, April 15, 2017 at 4:25:51 PM UTC+12, nor...@googlegroups.com

wrote:

george152 <gblack@hnpl.net> wrote:

On 4/14/2017 3:53 PM, Crash wrote:

Your comments imply NZ and its pollies measure up poorly.

Mediocre sums it up. The ever-thoughtful Crash reckons such people don't

last very long. Be that as it may, as mediocre political dinosaurs go, Bill English would take some beating; the terrible irony being that, as the nation's
current top smell, he
now lords it over the very same sightless, garage-dwelling economic stasis that he and other of his stripe have so complacently bestowed on this country.
Not one scintilla of original thinking, vision or plan. All I see is a bunch of half-educated
self-satisfied seat-warmers, drowned and pickled in the stale formaldehyde of their own lofty smugness, and not one whit different from their political forebears described by Len Bayliss in his 1995 book, "Prosperity Mislaid."

You call that progress? Really?

I have

lived most of my life in NZ but have also spent a few years in the USA >> and the UK. If you were to be equitable in commenting on their
respective leaders and pollies you would have trouble finding enough
superlative put-downs.

Point taken, but this **is** nz general.

Because of our small population, simple political structures and
frequent elections those with the attributes you despise don't last
too long.

Five bob says that he's never been out of the country let alone done
much within it.
Was in Britain in the Maggie Thatcher days and the US with Ronnie Reagan. >Tell me about it :)

Then you'll remember Thatcher squandered the UK's oil wealth supporting those

northerners whom she had made redundant by laying waste to their industries and
working lives, only then to do little if anything to redress the consequences of her socially
destructive policies.

And you'll also recall that Reagan ran up US debt to an irretrievable level

that still rumbles on to this day, most of it now held to ransome by China.

Nevertheless, these two political giants knelt slavishly to the siren call of

their great educator and mentor, Alan Greenspan. This is one and the same Alan
Greenspan who, in 2008, as the world economy teetered on the brink, declared - and I
paraphrase him - "Oooops! I got it all wrong!"

(If you think I'm making all this up, then think again.)

You might want to send the five bob to Crash assuming he took the bet. Keith was in fact employed in London during the sixties and perhaps even earlier and/or later.

We have both worked at various times for BBC TV, I from 1962 through to the

later 70's.

I have lived for many years in two other countries and have visited the USA

on

business and for holidays for a total of more than 8 months. I have also

had

the privilege of visiting other countries for shorter periods.

All positive grist to your mill. Not that this is a pissing contest, but

over a span of almost 20 years I've also worked and had homes in Spain and in five Middle-East countries, and as others will attest, the latter were no place
for complacency or
indolence.

There is little doubt in my mind that although there have been periods of

great

difficulty (the Muldoon and Lange government for instance)

All of it superbly articulated here:

http://www.radionz.co.nz/programmes/the-9th-floor/story/201839427/the-reformer-geoffrey-palmer

or:

http://tinyurl.com/ko3q9o5

(BTW, Radio New Zealand is now providing high grade, ad-free television for

grown-ups!)

we have come a long

way in the last 8 years and what Moody's think of us is important

Important, maybe, but in actual fact little other than a touchy-feely bromide

for the febrile straw-clutcher.

New Zealand's tiny, overpriced, overspent economy now has no possible way of

paying back its total national debt of half-a-billion dollars,

(Correction, half-a-trillion dollars)

and rising. Again, the fact that a country has yet to stiff its creditors is
guarantee that it never will.

Proudly topping the debt pile, we have that dirty little word, Fonterra, and

its $7-plus Billion of **unsecured** debt. If this profligate, over-salaried outfit's 2016 demand for 90-day terms from its 20,000 suppliers doesn't denote
a company
experiencing working capital and/or cashflow problems, then I don't know what does.

The survival of this same outfit, remember, is all that stands between New

Zealand and the IMF's bovver-boys. Now look a little closer:

A year ago, Fonterra had a market value of $8.9 billion, which is well in

excess of the largest listed NZX companies. However, it had total borrowings of
$7.56 billion all of which, with the exception of $169 million of financial leases, is unsecured.
I repeat: unsecured.

A year ago, the Reserve Bank statistics showed dairy farm debt then stood at

$37.9 billion, compared with $30 billion only five years previously.

Dig a little deeper to find this isn't even the half of it, yet Fonterra and

the dairy farmers continue to spend money they don't have like its going out of
fashion.

And this just when Gluckman reports the rapid decline towards the

tipping-point of our environmental sustainablity - virtually all of it down to the irredeemable destruction wrought by New Zealand's biggest contributor to the nation's **real** GDP.

As one economist put it so succinctly: "Strength through exhaustion." But,

of course...

"She'll be right mate, no worries, eh?"

[Attribution: 2016 Fonterra stats from Brian Gaynor: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11596222]

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

On Saturday, April 15, 2017 at 4:25:51 PM UTC+12, nor...@googlegroups.com wrote:

george152 <gblack@hnpl.net> wrote:

On 4/14/2017 3:53 PM, Crash wrote:

Your comments imply NZ and its pollies measure up poorly.

Mediocre sums it up. The ever-thoughtful Crash reckons such people don't last very long. Be that as it may, as mediocre political dinosaurs go, Bill English
would take some beating; the terrible irony being that, as the nation's current
top smell, he
now lords it over the very same sightless, garage-dwelling economic stasis that he and other of his stripe have so complacently bestowed on this country.
Not one scintilla of original thinking, vision or plan. All I see is a bunch of half-educated
self-satisfied seat-warmers, drowned and pickled in the stale formaldehyde of their own lofty smugness, and not one whit different from their political forebears described by Len Bayliss in his 1995 book, "Prosperity Mislaid."

You call that progress? Really?


I have

lived most of my life in NZ but have also spent a few years in the USA
and the UK. If you were to be equitable in commenting on their
respective leaders and pollies you would have trouble finding enough
superlative put-downs.

Point taken, but this **is** nz general.

Because of our small population, simple political structures and
frequent elections those with the attributes you despise don't last
too long.

Five bob says that he's never been out of the country let alone done
much within it.
Was in Britain in the Maggie Thatcher days and the US with Ronnie Reagan. >Tell me about it :)

Then you'll remember Thatcher squandered the UK's oil wealth supporting those northerners whom she had made redundant by laying waste to their industries and
working lives, only then to do little if anything to redress the consequences of her socially
destructive policies.

And you'll also recall that Reagan ran up US debt to an irretrievable level that still rumbles on to this day, most of it now held to ransome by China.

Nevertheless, these two political giants knelt slavishly to the siren call of their great educator and mentor, Alan Greenspan. This is one and the same Alan
Greenspan who, in 2008, as the world economy teetered on the brink, declared - and I paraphrase
him - "Oooops! I got it all wrong!"

(If you think I'm making all this up, then think again.)

You might want to send the five bob to Crash assuming he took the bet.
Keith was in fact employed in London during the sixties and perhaps even earlier and/or later.

We have both worked at various times for BBC TV, I from 1962 through to the later 70's.

I have lived for many years in two other countries and have visited the USA

on

business and for holidays for a total of more than 8 months. I have also had the privilege of visiting other countries for shorter periods.

All positive grist to your mill. Not that this is a pissing contest, but over a span of almost 20 years I've also worked and had homes in Spain and in five Middle-East countries, and as others will attest, the latter were no place for complacency or
indolence.

There is little doubt in my mind that although there have been periods of

great

difficulty (the Muldoon and Lange government for instance)

All of it superbly articulated here:

http://www.radionz.co.nz/programmes/the-9th-floor/story/201839427/the-reformer-geoffrey-palmer

or:

http://tinyurl.com/ko3q9o5

(BTW, Radio New Zealand is now providing high grade, ad-free television for grown-ups!)

we have come a long

way in the last 8 years and what Moody's think of us is important

Important, maybe, but in actual fact little other than a touchy-feely bromide for the febrile straw-clutcher.

New Zealand's tiny, overpriced, overspent economy now has no possible way of paying back its total national debt of half-a-billion dollars, and rising. Again, the fact that a country has yet to stiff its creditors is no guarantee that it never will.

Proudly topping the debt pile, we have that dirty little word, Fonterra, and its $7-plus Billion of **unsecured** debt. If this profligate, over-salaried outfit's 2016 demand for 90-day terms from its 20,000 suppliers doesn't denote
a company
experiencing working capital and/or cashflow problems, then I don't know what does.

The survival of this same outfit, remember, is all that stands between New Zealand and the IMF's bovver-boys. Now look a little closer:

A year ago, Fonterra had a market value of $8.9 billion, which is well in excess of the largest listed NZX companies. However, it had total borrowings of
$7.56 billion all of which, with the exception of $169 million of financial leases, is unsecured. I
repeat: unsecured.

A year ago, the Reserve Bank statistics showed dairy farm debt then stood at $37.9 billion, compared with $30 billion only five years previously.

Dig a little deeper to find this isn't even the half of it, yet Fonterra and the dairy farmers continue to spend money they don't have like its going out of
fashion.

And this just when Gluckman reports the rapid decline towards the tipping-point
of our environmental sustainablity - virtually all of it down to the irredeemable destruction wrought by New Zealand's biggest contributor to the nation's **real** GDP.

As one economist put it so succinctly: "Strength through exhaustion." But, of course...

"She'll be right mate, no worries, eh?"

[Attribution: 2016 Fonterra stats from Brian Gaynor: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11596222]

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

On Sat, 15 Apr 2017 17:24:43 -0700 (PDT), jmschristophers@gmail.com
wrote:

On Saturday, April 15, 2017 at 4:25:51 PM UTC+12, nor...@googlegroups.com wrote:

george152 <gblack@hnpl.net> wrote:

On 4/14/2017 3:53 PM, Crash wrote:

Your comments imply NZ and its pollies measure up poorly.

Mediocre sums it up. The ever-thoughtful Crash reckons such people don't last

very long.

Be that as it may, as mediocre political dinosaurs go, Bill English would take

some beating;

the terrible irony being that, as the nation's current top smell, he now lords

it over the very

same sightless, garage-dwelling economic stasis that he and other of his

stripe have so

complacently bestowed on this country. Not one scintilla of original

thinking, vision or plan.

All I see is a bunch of half-educated self-satisfied seat-warmers, drowned

and pickled in

the stale formaldehyde of their own lofty smugness, and not one whit different

from their

political forebears described by Len Bayliss in his 1995 book, "Prosperity Mislaid."

You call that progress? Really?

You expect to be taken seriously when you insult the intelligence of
the kiwi electorate that elects politicians that you whose attributes
are as you describe above?

I have

lived most of my life in NZ but have also spent a few years in the USA
and the UK. If you were to be equitable in commenting on their
respective leaders and pollies you would have trouble finding enough
superlative put-downs.

Point taken, but this **is** nz general.

Self-evident. How is this relevant to the comment I made?

Because of our small population, simple political structures and
frequent elections those with the attributes you despise don't last
too long.

Five bob says that he's never been out of the country let alone done
much within it.
Was in Britain in the Maggie Thatcher days and the US with Ronnie Reagan. >> >Tell me about it :)

Then you'll remember Thatcher squandered the UK's oil wealth supporting those northerners whom
she had made redundant by laying waste to their industries and working lives,

only then to do little

if anything to redress the consequences of her socially destructive policies.

And you'll also recall that Reagan ran up US debt to an irretrievable level that still rumbles on to this day,
most of it now held to ransome by China.

Nevertheless, these two political giants knelt slavishly to the siren call of their great educator and mentor,
Alan Greenspan. This is one and the same Alan Greenspan who, in 2008, as the

world economy teetered

on the brink, declared - and I paraphrase him - "Oooops! I got it all wrong!"

(If you think I'm making all this up, then think again.)

You might want to send the five bob to Crash assuming he took the bet.
Keith was in fact employed in London during the sixties and perhaps even
earlier and/or later.

We have both worked at various times for BBC TV, I from 1962 through to the later 70's.

I have lived for many years in two other countries and have visited the USA on
business and for holidays for a total of more than 8 months. I have also had >> the privilege of visiting other countries for shorter periods.

All positive grist to your mill. Not that this is a pissing contest, but over

a span of almost 20 years

I've also worked and had homes in Spain and in five Middle-East countries, and

as others will attest,

the latter were no place for complacency or indolence.

There is little doubt in my mind that although there have been periods of great
difficulty (the Muldoon and Lange government for instance)

All of it superbly articulated here:

http://www.radionz.co.nz/programmes/the-9th-floor/story/201839427/the-reformer-geoffrey-palmer

or:

http://tinyurl.com/ko3q9o5

(BTW, Radio New Zealand is now providing high grade, ad-free television for grown-ups!)

we have come a long

way in the last 8 years and what Moody's think of us is important

Important, maybe, but in actual fact little other than a touchy-feely bromide for the febrile straw-clutcher.

New Zealand's tiny, overpriced, overspent economy now has no possible way of paying back its total national
debt of half-a-billion dollars, and rising. Again, the fact that a country

has yet to stiff its creditors is no guarantee that it never will.

Proudly topping the debt pile, we have that dirty little word, Fonterra, and its $7-plus Billion of **unsecured** debt.
If this profligate, over-salaried outfit's 2016 demand for 90-day terms

from its 20,000 suppliers doesn't denote a company

experiencing working capital and/or cashflow problems, then I don't know what does.

The survival of this same outfit, remember, is all that stands between New Zealand and the IMF's bovver-boys. Now look a little closer:

A year ago, Fonterra had a market value of $8.9 billion, which is well in excess of the largest listed NZX companies.
However, it had total borrowings of $7.56 billion all of which, with the exception of $169 million of financial leases, is unsecured. I repeat: unsecured.

A year ago, the Reserve Bank statistics showed dairy farm debt then stood at $37.9 billion, compared with $30 billion only five years previously.

Dig a little deeper to find this isn't even the half of it, yet Fonterra and the dairy farmers continue to spend money they don't have like its going out of

fashion.

And this just when Gluckman reports the rapid decline towards the tipping-point of our environmental sustainablity - virtually all of it down to >the irredeemable destruction wrought by New Zealand's biggest contributor to the nation's **real** GDP.

As one economist put it so succinctly: "Strength through exhaustion." But, of

course...

"She'll be right mate, no worries, eh?"

[Attribution: 2016 Fonterra stats from Brian Gaynor: >http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11596222]

So given that you:

- have such a dire view of our politicians and our economy
- have lived in many other countries from time to time

do you not see the whiff of hypocrisy in choosing to live here despite
your views expressed above?


--
Crash McBash

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)