When I heard about the proposed ‘cost of living payment’, aimed at workers who earned less than $70,000 a year, I just knew it was going to be another Labour debacle. IRD already has a staffing shortage, and to force them into operating a system of such great magnitude
My son has recently taken up a job in Paris. Before he went, I encouraged him to brush up on his school French, which he had studied for four years. He duly found an online course, worked on it for a while and started to feel a bit more confident
The annual inflation rate, revealed last week, has purportedly been 7.3 per cent. This is the highest inflation rate in over 30 years and yet something doesn’t seem quite right. Inflation was 6.9 per cent in March 2022. That was a big increase from December 2021, although
Those of you who were readers of Whaleoil may remember that four years ago I was writing a lot of articles about the removal of ‘single use’ plastic bags from supermarkets. They were not actually ‘removed’ from supermarkets, of course; they were just no longer given out for free. Supermarket
You may remember that, shortly after the current Government came into office, they allocated $1.9 billion to additional mental health services. It has to be said, at the time, that seemed like a hell of a lot of money, but now it seems paltry, such has been the chronic
Information Opinion I came to New Zealand in the 1980s as an expat. It was a lovely place. Friendly people, low levels of traffic, fabulous beaches, jobs easy to come by. I thought I had come to heaven. I raved about the place to family and friends back home. Now,
I had an interesting phone conversation with a client today. He was very angry. And scared. First he said he was very relieved to hear my voice “because I have been to so many funerals this year”. This is a sign of the times. Should I be surprised to find
Information Opinion There is a very stark contrast between the fortunes of Boris Johnson and Jacinda Ardern at the moment. Both are prime ministers who started well but ended up being caught out by lies and deception of which they were both guilty. Boris has had a fairly rough year
Hey! You wanna come to New Zealand? It is a great place to visit! Please come on over – we would be delighted to see you. But there is just one thing. We are slightly short on workers right now, so how about… you change your own sheets? We’ll give
Jacinda is wrapping up her European tour, which her minions in the media are describing as an unmitigated success. Pictured in a white, floaty dress with Boris Johnson, she looked more like a bride than a prime minister. She ought to confer with Mrs Johnson, who is commended for her
I fully understand why people were outraged when Christopher Luxon told Simon O’Connor to take down his comment celebrating the US Supreme Court decision to overturn the Roe v Wade decision. On our side of the political divide, we believe in free speech and freedom of opinion, and this
And just like that… It’s all over. We left off where my son and the lawyer were both AWOL and I was required to persuade them both to provide personal ID information in triplicate and also to sign Account Operating Authority forms… even though neither of them had access
My Trust bank account, which has been in existence for 16 years, is under scrutiny from the BNZ. They claim to need all my ID information in quadruplicate, and they claim they do not have copy of the original Trust deed. This cannot be true, of course. They must have
I have been a BNZ customer since the 1990s. We had a mortgage with them back then, and when I went into business in 2001 I set up a business account with them too. I set up a trust in 2006 to protect the family home, also with the BNZ.
Information Opinion So the true position is finally being revealed. The economy started to turn downwards at the beginning of the year. This is a ‘surprise’ to RNZ and a ‘puzzle’ to Stuff, but it is no surprise to most of us. We have been in a decline for months…
TV1 News has led with the story about the resignation of Breakfast host Kamahl Santamaria for at least the last 4 days. I cannot imagine, when China is running rampant in the Pacific and the war in Ukraine is taking a worrying turn, why this story is the first item
