Nice little racket you’ve got going there……

8 Responses to Nice little racket you’ve got going there……

1. Ronbo says:

   August 27, 2012 at 20:09

   When read an article like this, I wonder how many Swedes are looking at google maps for the location of the nearest Mosque while they fill their magazines with hollow point rounds. :gunner

   Yes, I know Sweden has strict gun control, but the so did Norway and that didn’t stop a determined man from killing 77 socialist enablers of Islam.

   What comes around, goes around…and I suspect Muslims and their Enablers are going to get a rude awakening some day soon.
2. Rob Ripley says:

   August 27, 2012 at 20:24

   Dear , oh dear.

   The only reason rates go up is the council strikes a rate larger than that of the previous year. Rising and falling house prices have no effect what so ever on tha rise and fall in rates. You house value affects your share of the new rate, not the amount of it. If all house prices go up by the same percentage, your rates won’t change, unless the council decided to steal more from it’s people by way of rates.

   Ask Len Brown, he knows all about it. Not only does he increase the rates but he introduces a new tax so that he can tell you he’s actually decreased rates – or something. In the end you pay about thirty percent more to flush your own shit down the drain.
   • KG says:

     August 27, 2012 at 20:38

     Don’t fucking patronize me, Adolf. The simple fact is, rates go up and Masterton Council, in a long series of correspondence, justified it by saying the value of our house had increased by x%.
     They also used my rates money (rates levied despite the fact we had no reticulated water supply, lighting, kerbing and garbage collection) to provide free internet access for unemployed yoof and new netball courts in Masterton and also used those to justify the increase.
     Now take your snooty patronizing attitude elsewhere. I’m tired of it.
     • The Gantt Guy says:

       August 28, 2012 at 04:22

       Really? Multiple pseuds? That’s low, even by his standards.
3. KG says:

   August 27, 2012 at 20:41

   “Rising and falling house prices have no effect what so ever on tha rise and fall in rates.”
   What I said – had you bothered to read it carefully instead of jumping in with both superior feet – was: “rateable values miraculously keep increasing, as do rates.”

   Now spot your error.
4. Flashman says:

   August 28, 2012 at 04:37

   In an unguarded moment, shiney-arsed jobsworth at the Nelson City Council stated that as far as the bureaucrats are concerned, council spending is effectively uncapped. They work out their dream budget, chisel off a few bits and pieces so that it can be claimed in a presser that “rates have been kept down” and then divide the balance by the number of rateable properties. White elephants like velodromes [whatever the hell they are], sports stadia, performing arts centers, street “beautification” projects, and pet “arts projects” involving parking up bits of old scrap iron with 6-figure price tags are all part of the mix; as are “funding grants” to zero-value “social and community” groups and projects.

   Of course, recourse to “smoothing loans” and “targeted rates” are additional wizard wheezes to keep the Cha-Ching! Machine spinning its numbers.

   Rates never go down in real terms – ever.
5. Darin says:

   August 28, 2012 at 08:54

   The very least the bastards could do is call it what it is-RENT

   Property ownership has become nothing but a myth.
6. KG says:

   August 28, 2012 at 09:06

   “Property ownership has become nothing but a myth.”
   Yep–and a damn expensive myth, at that.