Nasty stinking and uggly
11/02/2004 10:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
izmeinaIt's a nasty stinking 30 degrees outside and that's two hours after sunset! Tomorrow is going to be just as icky sticky but will get up to 39 degrees. Will just have to lurk in the Min where there is airconditioning - unlike the Izzie lair.
Was also getting rather nostalgic today. Hard to believe that it was exactly a year ago that Iz was admiring the one ring and the Gorgeous Gollum grabbing it outside the Embassy Theatre in Wellington. Petunia does not understand Izzie's infatuation with this most interesting of creatures.
Yesssss. It was this very day last year that Iz found her way to the One exhibition to rule them all Very nearly did not get to see it at all and was so so glad that I did. Managed to dispose of Petunia for an hour or two. While she went shopping, Izzie went drooling.
But these are not the reasons that Iz is seriously considering the idea of eventually hopping on the broomstick to live in Middle Earth. One cannot live on beautiful scenery alone and the Izzie staple diet of cheese and wine is extremely expensive in the shire but at least there one is safe from the spreading tentacles of the giant $quid.
Izzie had her suspicions back in March when our Prime Miniature committed troops to the Coalition of the Killing without even consulting Parliament. A phone call from King George was considered sufficient.
But now we really truly have become the fifty first state as of some time in the early morning of Monday 9 February 2004.
Funny how the USA wants everyone else to adopt free trade but are not so fond of the idea themselves - especially during an election year.
The handful of commodities that we can do cheaper than them - sugar and beef - have been well and truly kept off the agenda. Well as far as Iz is concerned - 18 years before total removal of tariffs is as good as off the agenda.
I mean the Europeans are also notorious for throwing tons of tax payers money at their inefficient agricultural industries but at least they don't go around on a smug holier than thou pompous preaching campaign about the virtues of free trade.
And when there is some one out there like China who can compete with the USA advantage of economies of scale and large domestic markets, instead of accepting the fact that they cannot be Number One all the time, they whinge about artificially low currency exchange rates and slave labour. Well the latter happens to be true but that does not seem to bother the shareholders of all those American companies (and others) who move offshore to China to take advantage of the dirt cheap wages and non-existent labor and environmental laws and regulations.
Everyone is going on about how wonderful it will be to get increased access to US agricultural markets - as if there is a snowball's chance in hell of such imports competing against farming subsidies. None of the manufacturing and mining mob here are complaining so they obviously expect to do well. But it is in the area of the invisible where the 'agreement' is most insidious.
Not too long ago the present government introduced the Goods and Services Tax. There was all sorts of debates about the price of chickens and tampons. But Iz figures - forget the goods - it's the services where we are going to get really screwed. Plumbers, car repairs, computer repairs, restaurants, hairdressers - the list is endless and just about no one paid any attention to this insidious aspect of the tax until it was way too late.
And same with this so called free trade agreement.
It will be the unfettered access for US companies to increase their market share for movies and tv entertainment to be even bigger than the 90% plus that they already have by weakening govt regulations on local content for television and radio broadcasting, to white ant the present pharmaceutical benefits schemes that subsidises a whole range of medications and keeps them affordable, to apply for government contracts in education and health and who knows what else and to use the agreement to get around quarantine regulations and dump GM junk on us.
It won't be too long before they will be taking the post office to court like they did in Canada for 'unfair subsidies' because the cost of sending a letter is the same from Darwin to Tasmania as it is in from one street in dreary Dursleyville where Izzie lives to another in the same town.
At least the lawyers will be happy. If this is the uggly sort of thing they do to us before signing, then the mind boggles at what they have planned for the future.
Patent laws that were designed to protect inventions and other forms of creativity are now being used to promote theft on a massive scale. If some one did not have the foresight to protect their invention in the USA market by taking out a patent there, you could reasonably say -well it's just bad luck and do it right next time, but to then have these nasty stinking thieves coming over HERE gloating and sueing left, right and centre - well... it pisses Izzie off extremely and makes my wand finger very itchy.
The new Izzie phrase of the year will have to be "I told you so" and "With friends like these, who needs enemies"
Was also getting rather nostalgic today. Hard to believe that it was exactly a year ago that Iz was admiring the one ring and the Gorgeous Gollum grabbing it outside the Embassy Theatre in Wellington. Petunia does not understand Izzie's infatuation with this most interesting of creatures.
Yesssss. It was this very day last year that Iz found her way to the One exhibition to rule them all Very nearly did not get to see it at all and was so so glad that I did. Managed to dispose of Petunia for an hour or two. While she went shopping, Izzie went drooling.
But these are not the reasons that Iz is seriously considering the idea of eventually hopping on the broomstick to live in Middle Earth. One cannot live on beautiful scenery alone and the Izzie staple diet of cheese and wine is extremely expensive in the shire but at least there one is safe from the spreading tentacles of the giant $quid.
Izzie had her suspicions back in March when our Prime Miniature committed troops to the Coalition of the Killing without even consulting Parliament. A phone call from King George was considered sufficient.
But now we really truly have become the fifty first state as of some time in the early morning of Monday 9 February 2004.
Funny how the USA wants everyone else to adopt free trade but are not so fond of the idea themselves - especially during an election year.
The handful of commodities that we can do cheaper than them - sugar and beef - have been well and truly kept off the agenda. Well as far as Iz is concerned - 18 years before total removal of tariffs is as good as off the agenda.
I mean the Europeans are also notorious for throwing tons of tax payers money at their inefficient agricultural industries but at least they don't go around on a smug holier than thou pompous preaching campaign about the virtues of free trade.
And when there is some one out there like China who can compete with the USA advantage of economies of scale and large domestic markets, instead of accepting the fact that they cannot be Number One all the time, they whinge about artificially low currency exchange rates and slave labour. Well the latter happens to be true but that does not seem to bother the shareholders of all those American companies (and others) who move offshore to China to take advantage of the dirt cheap wages and non-existent labor and environmental laws and regulations.
Everyone is going on about how wonderful it will be to get increased access to US agricultural markets - as if there is a snowball's chance in hell of such imports competing against farming subsidies. None of the manufacturing and mining mob here are complaining so they obviously expect to do well. But it is in the area of the invisible where the 'agreement' is most insidious.
Not too long ago the present government introduced the Goods and Services Tax. There was all sorts of debates about the price of chickens and tampons. But Iz figures - forget the goods - it's the services where we are going to get really screwed. Plumbers, car repairs, computer repairs, restaurants, hairdressers - the list is endless and just about no one paid any attention to this insidious aspect of the tax until it was way too late.
And same with this so called free trade agreement.
It will be the unfettered access for US companies to increase their market share for movies and tv entertainment to be even bigger than the 90% plus that they already have by weakening govt regulations on local content for television and radio broadcasting, to white ant the present pharmaceutical benefits schemes that subsidises a whole range of medications and keeps them affordable, to apply for government contracts in education and health and who knows what else and to use the agreement to get around quarantine regulations and dump GM junk on us.
It won't be too long before they will be taking the post office to court like they did in Canada for 'unfair subsidies' because the cost of sending a letter is the same from Darwin to Tasmania as it is in from one street in dreary Dursleyville where Izzie lives to another in the same town.
At least the lawyers will be happy. If this is the uggly sort of thing they do to us before signing, then the mind boggles at what they have planned for the future.
Patent laws that were designed to protect inventions and other forms of creativity are now being used to promote theft on a massive scale. If some one did not have the foresight to protect their invention in the USA market by taking out a patent there, you could reasonably say -well it's just bad luck and do it right next time, but to then have these nasty stinking thieves coming over HERE gloating and sueing left, right and centre - well... it pisses Izzie off extremely and makes my wand finger very itchy.
The new Izzie phrase of the year will have to be "I told you so" and "With friends like these, who needs enemies"
