In politics, one week is a long time. And for this year, the week on either side of Queen's birthday weekend was especially interesting. And particularly hectic for some key people! Mickysavage has raised the point that both the events relating to the Prime Minister…
There's a lot of talk at the moment about whether Labour is too close to the Greens. National's ridiculous spin is the Greens are leading Labour. Lately, we've seen spin coming out (presumably from Labour) that Labour might be able to govern without the Greens,…
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Yesterday The NZ Herald's John Armstrong followed the Lusk plan in attacking The Green Party: he picked up and ran with accusations made by "right wing bloggers". In his attack on recent changes to remit procedures at the party's annual conferences, Armstrong used as much spin-and…
A Sunday feature - each week a random section scanned from a copy of The Standard, September 15th, 1938. Find out more here. Click on the image for a bigger version.
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike...
The year isn't over yet, but I reckon Tracy Watkins has already secured the prize for Tory journalist of the year. The Opposition should be careful what it wishes for after it claimed Peter Dunne's scalp in the long-running spy saga. Mr Dunne fell on…
This series has recently been reviewing the Office of the Children's Commissioner (OCC) 2012 report "Child Poverty in New Zealand evidence for action". Last week the government released its "response" (PDF), and I summarised the - highly negative - media coverage. In this post I…
Useless parties die, new parties appear. Want to be in on the ground floor of the newest political party in NZ? Could be fun: Why we’re registering a political party To help us reach our goal of 500 members so that we can become officially…
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Having resigned as Minister, how long before we see a by-election in Ohariu as Peter Dunne's credibility keeps dripping away? And will we see an early election?
Update: Peter Dunne - still denying it but cannot be ruled out. Update: Breaking news - Peter Dunne has resigned as a minister. https://twitter.com/Michael_Parkin/status/342842575364972544/photo/1 Key is making an announcement at 3:30 on who leaked the Kitteridge GSCB report. 3 News will stream it live. Chat…
Weekend social is for non political chat. What's on for the weekend, gigs, film or book reviews, sports, or whatever. No politics, no aggro, why can't we all just get along?
The NSA has direct access to servers at Google, Apple, Facebook, and other Internet giants, and they collect pretty much whatever data they like. We shouldn't be surprised. The Guardian has the story: NSA taps in to internet giants' systems to mine user data, secret…
I/S at No Right Turn on deep water drilling off our coast line. If you can't cap it, don't drill it Next year Anadarko - one of the companies responsible for the Deepwater Horizon spill - will begin drilling in deep water off our coast next year.…
So the fuss about Russel Norman comparing John Key to Robert Muldoon is still rumbling on - almost a week later. National Party spinster David Farrar helpfully rounded up all the outraged editorials. Typically hypocritical of Farrar given the various times he compared Clark to…
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike...
Dr Brent Layton of the Electricity Authority has produced a 28-page paper to refute the claims of Molly Melhuish, Dr Geoff Bertram and Bryan Leyland that "the Authority's approach is a light-touch approach to regulating the electricity markets." He says Geoff Bertram's chart, showing that…
Well it turns out I was wrong - you can be a leader of nothing! The Speaker has ruled that Peter Dunne keeps all his leaders perks, despite having no party to lead. Trevor Mallard, and the whole New Zealand First caucus have walked out…
I was impressed by this press statement from the Mana Party on the ground in the Ikaroa Rawhiti by-election reporting that they door-knocked over 1000 houses over the weekend and found that support for their candidate was over 70%. As a political campaigner of many…
John Key's government hasn't been kind to large numbers of women, especially those on benefits, and those working in relatively powerless low paid jobs. For them the top jobs mostly go to men, with women largely fronting on lower status and less powerful portfolios/positions. Jan…
As noted in Open mike this morning, ominous words for Auckland: Minister gives Brown a hurry up on plan Housing Minister Nick Smith has told Auckland Mayor Len Brown to get a move on with the Unitary Plan so more houses can be built in…
Peter Dunne's status as a party leader in Parliament (i.e. funding and perks) is under threat: Dunne's parliament recognition on the line United Future leader Peter Dunne could lose his status as a party leader in Parliament in the latest twist in a nightmare week…
I was impressed by Phil Twyford's analysis of the Government's housing policies announced in the budget. I thought his best point was that only this Government could announce a housing affordability policy with the eviction of 3000 state housing tenants as its centre piece! I…
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Both sides of the political spectrum will draw some comfort from the recent OECD report on our economy, but overall the report is much better aligned with Labour / Green policy. As the 3 News summary puts it: An OECD report on New Zealand supports…
Here's English on the likely take up of the sale of Meridian: We would expect that it will give New Zealanders the opportunity to invest in a large New Zealand company, and tens of thousands of them are likely to do so. Tens of thousands.…
This speech follows Metiria Turei's (previous post). In which John Banks (facilitated by Eric Roy) indulges in some good old fashioned Parliamentary sexism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mt2WyqhbucY