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The Hobbit To Be Filmed In New Zealand After All
An anonymous reader writes "John Key, Prime Minister of New Zealand, has confirmed this afternoon that The Hobbit will be filmed in NZ, after weeks of uncertainty. From the article: 'The future of the $670m production hung in the balance after an actors union issued a no-work order on the films last month. Talks were held overnight with studio executives from Warner Brothers to resolve concerns about industrial laws in New Zealand.'"
I can't wait to see the Duke Nukem Forever trailer that's debuting with it.
If Flight of the Conchords taught me nothing else, it's that New Zealand is the happening place to be (it's like Scotland, only further) and a great place to film The Hobbit. It's an excellent location for more walking.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
You could say that New Zealand bribes Warner to get the Hobbits. From TFA: "Mr Key also announced The Hobbit will get a $20million ($15m US) tax rebate - US$7.5m per film" and "The Government will also offset U$10m of Warner Brothers' marketing costs."
Sounds like commie talk to me, you pinko traitorous bastard. Don't you understand that unions are the source of all economic ills? Not to mention the cause of childhood obesity, teen pregnancy, and genital warts? That, were we to banish the blight that is organized labour, we could, as a society, finally build a utopian paradise?
Well, a society of individuals each working for their own benefit... if we worked together, we'd be dangerously close to something resembling a union, and that's communist talk, you pinko traitorous bastard.
...and Bilbo paid the actors union the funds they wanted, and everyone lived happily ever after.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
While some of what you say is true, as one who works in a forced union environment, I can tell you that currently the main goal of unions is not protection of the worker, but the protection of the lazy and incompetent so they, the unions, can continue to siphon money from the workers.
The unions will use any excuse for why someone who literally does nothing all day should not lose their job. It's job protection, pure and simple, and has nothing to do with making the workplace safer. It's to protect their own interests which is money from nothing so they can party. Period.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Unions brought you the 40-hour work week, the weekend, workplace safety laws, and non-exploitative wages. People fought and died in the streets against huge moneyed interests for all that and other little things, like keeping your 6 year old kid from working six 16-hour days a week down a methane-poisoned coal mine.
What part of that don't you like?
Are unions perfect? No, they are imperfect (and at times stupid) human institutions. But go read about what life was like in the workplace before them (workplace realities in 19th century England and America would astound you). See what Pullman and Carnagie and Ford and GM and so many others were doing to their workforce before unions. Bet you wouldn't choose to go back there yourself...
i have a great example from my beautiful country - coal mining in Poland.
Situation is simply ridiculous. I don't know if the Polish coal mines have been profitable for more than 2 years in the last 2 decades. They are not a private business, they cost the budget a metric fuckton of cash in taxes they can't and don't pay, yet the miners are the holy cows - they get 13th and 14th salaries, have shitload of other bonuses and can retire much much earlier than the ordinary taxpayer. And there is way too many of them. IIRC in the last 20 years coal mining sucked in something between 10 and 20 gigadollars of taxpayer's money, which is a respectable score for a rather poor by european standards sub-40million country. I've found some data from 2003 - in the Coal Company which manages several mines there were 28(!) unions.
When they don't like the ideas discussed in the parliament, they gather in Warsaw, demolish the streets, burn tires, throw stones and bricks and in the end they get any shit they want from the spineless politicians. Nobody can touch miners and their unions.
At least in this case worker unions are a fucking parasite and should be blasted into oblivion.