WorkinWords Comments and occasional rants on agribusiness and other topics – mainly New Zealand

I  notice it is getting on for 12 months since I last posted any ramblings, which means I have been fluffing about trying to decide where I go to now.

I finished the Copy Editing and Proofreading course and started seeking work with all the enthusiasm of a naive greenhorn. However I quickly found there was a dearth of reasonably paid work for someone who does not have a track record. And with the tight economic conditions there were any number of job seekers prepared to work for what I regard as a pittance. as I am not relying on such editing as a regular source of income the paucity of work coming my way does not bother me to much; I can always go and play golf.

We are in the lead up phase to this year’s budget presentation from the Minister of Finance and we have been assailed by dire predictions of the state of the government accounts and the mounting level of government debt. This is no doubt designed to soften us up for another push to persuade us of the need for a partial sale of state owned assets. But, other than a rather facile debt reduction argument, there has been no convincing presentation of the rationale behind this proposal. The cynic in me suggests that the proposed sales are purely a means for the National party supporters to get their hands on these assets to screw more money out of the long suffering Kiwi taxpayers. No one has shown how we benefited from the last state sell off; so how will the current proposal be any better?