Written By: - Date published: 12:14 pm, June 25th, 2024 - 5 comments
Keith Locke, ex Green MP, died last week aged 80 after a long illness. I am going to miss him because he was a hell of a nice person, extremely bright, very well informed, and fast at figuring out where there was common ground and room to work together. I think that NZ will miss him and those like him over the decades ahead.
Written By: - Date published: 2:29 pm, June 13th, 2024 - 19 comments
National and their minion parties just announced another massive $400 million R&D subsidy for agricultural greenhouse gases by taxpayers for the low profit industry of pastoral farming. This joins the other large and hidden subsidies levied on tax and rate payers to support rural and state roads capable of sustained heavy agricultural and forestry trucks.
Written By: - Date published: 12:14 pm, June 4th, 2024 - 41 comments
Today is my 65th birthday. So I’m trying to check out a PDF letter on MyMSD which probably has some details about superannuation. But I get ERR_CONNECTION_RESET consistently. Looks like the idiots in this government have managed to screw up the efficient systems already. The MyMSD site is currently partially dead.
Written By: - Date published: 11:49 am, March 27th, 2024 - 41 comments
I don’t agree with people from New Zealand Initiative often. Mostly I just growl. But Oliver Hartwich who is the Initiative’s Executive Director wrote a article in The Australian “Christopher Luxon’s challenge for NZ economy: fiscal discipline or tax cuts”. Hard to find anyone aware of the current recession who could disagree outside of a small political minority in the National caucus.
Written By: - Date published: 2:06 pm, March 14th, 2024 - 30 comments
I was incredulous that this lummox Christopher Luxon had ever paid attention during even a basic economics course. Landlords aren’t going to pass any cost reductions on to tenants in rent values. They charge new tenants the rental rates that the market can bear. In the absence of significiant new housing or a reduction in population, that is directly related to what tenants can afford to pay
Written By: - Date published: 10:18 pm, December 23rd, 2023 - 118 comments
Unlike Mike Smith and other noisy members of the imperialist cohort, I applaud that NZ foreign policy has remained consistent in upholding UN and ICC policies against invasions and forced annexations. Ardern, Hipkins and now Luxon have all said the same thing.Supporting the UN charter has massively reduced war casualties over the last 70 years. Clearly the Russian Federation finds this constraining.
Written By: - Date published: 8:58 am, December 4th, 2023 - 48 comments
After 59 days after election day, parliament will finally sit today with a new government. The process has mostly been notable for its incoherent dithering, inexperience, and general stupidity. It is a coalition based on chaos,lack of usable policy and based on wrecking rather than work. It took so long because of wishful thinking and laziness.
Written By: - Date published: 8:48 am, November 25th, 2023 - 48 comments
On Friday, three parties finally signed agreements to gain a slim majority in parliament. What this means is that some time on Monday Governor General Dame Cindy Kiro will be able to swear in the new ministers of the Executive Council. On Monday Labour and the Greens will have their constitutional muzzle removed. On December 5th parliament will lumber back into work. Then the fun begins for this political blogger.
Written By: - Date published: 2:38 pm, November 3rd, 2023 - 166 comments
National loses 2 electorate seats to Labour. Te Pāti Māori picked up two electorate seats from Labour which means that parliament will have a 2 seat overhang. Greens gain a seat. Nact needs a coalition buddy. Now we’re looking at the coalition phase of the long wait. Time to pull out the popcorn.
Written By: - Date published: 10:48 am, November 3rd, 2023 - 32 comments
Today we will get the final election counts. It will now include the estimated specials of 20.2% of the vote. This can change the precise balance in parliament. A NAct coalition will probably require a partner party to secure a reliable majority. Unfortunately past political history is going to make that awkward. The chaos will be great for a political blog of the left. Not so good for the country.
Written By: - Date published: 9:47 am, October 16th, 2023 - 57 comments
As it stands right now with the indecisive election result, we’re probably into having a caretaker government for some time. The election results after the special votes are targeted to be declared on November 3rd. The last day for the writ is on November 9th.It may then take some time to form a governing number of seats in parliament.
Written By: - Date published: 7:45 pm, October 13th, 2023 - Comments Off on Election day rules
The rules about election day are pretty clear. You may only keep existing election material up on a website or social media if all the following apply. This time we will start moderating all comments with rules at midnight. OpenMike will be the only open post. Normal service back at 7pm
Written By: - Date published: 3:03 pm, June 20th, 2023 - 21 comments
The latest from the fledgling Democracy NZ is a classic schism by people who don’t want to actually achieve anything useful. It has lost about a third of its senior candidates. Classic for those who prioritise their own personal freedom over cooperation and community in their pursuit of power.
Written By: - Date published: 12:45 pm, June 12th, 2023 - 29 comments
Last night I watched Christopher Luxon in a interview with Jack Tame on Q&A from youtube. My takeaway from it was that I don’t want this fool anywhere near actual policy. He exhibited a blissful ignorance about downstream effects of genetic engineering, climate change, and productivity in our economy. Even where I agreed with him like on GE – I didn’t want this idiot implementing policy on it.
Written By: - Date published: 10:04 am, May 19th, 2023 - 28 comments
Almost all of the extra heat that humans have captured by adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere over the last few centuries has wound up warming the deep oceans. We’re now starting to feel the effects of that excess heat.
Written By: - Date published: 12:24 pm, March 2nd, 2023 - 36 comments
The candidates for the Mt Albert Labour selection to replace Jacinda Ardern are Helen White MP and Camilla Belich MP. The selection meeting is on Saturday 11th March at 10am in the Western Springs School Hall. This is an important electorate for Labour which has held it since 1947 through changing demographics. I have my preference.
Written By: - Date published: 10:36 am, January 21st, 2023 - 101 comments
Chris Hipkins is now set to become prime minister. I rather expected that would be the likely outcome. Helps the election campaign as it will mute the revolting misogynist arsehole conservatives of the right and some on the left. I’m really tired of listening to them, and I suspect that way more than half of the countries population are as well.
Written By: - Date published: 10:39 am, January 9th, 2023 - 48 comments
I’m back at work at my home office desk today and the weather sucked in Auckland and the north of the North Island over my break. Waiting for Luxon and minons blaming the government for not controlling La Niña – now in the third year of her current reign.It seems like all that National can do these days – blame the government for external events.
Written By: - Date published: 10:36 am, January 5th, 2023 - 86 comments
Been watching C-SPAN in the US House of Representatives trying to elect a speaker. Last time that there was more than one vote to get a speaker was in 1923. This figures, the author of this political madness, Donald Trump seems to be a law and tax evading crook worthy of the 1920s or 1930s US.
Written By: - Date published: 10:09 am, January 4th, 2023 - 23 comments
This morning a estimated 5.1 earthquake close to Te Aroha shook Hamilton, Tauranga, Auckland and Rotorua a region of half of our population. Only a day earlier National’s number 3 14 stupidly criticised a programme designed to diminish the risks in earthquakes. As usual National has no policy on dealing with earthquake risks that I can see. National simply aren’t ready for government.
Written By: - Date published: 9:15 am, December 10th, 2022 - 47 comments
Brian Easton at Pundit provides a clear overview on what is happening in out large generator / retailer market at present. Their implicit collusion on excessive pricing is profiteering and even using future capital to pay off investors rather than improve the cost of and efficiency usage of power.
Written By: - Date published: 2:17 pm, November 28th, 2022 - 12 comments
The Liberal/Nat victory that Newscorp had been promoting in the Victorian state elections simply didn’t materialise. For some reason pandering to the loud and noisy just isn’t what it used to be. Fortunately those who still rely on traditional media and who haven’t been immunised against the idiots on the net are a diminishing voting resource.
Written By: - Date published: 12:34 am, November 22nd, 2022 - 15 comments
The Great Twit at Twitter has been cauterising off staff in excess. I suspect that the platform is going to go down the toilet for that (amongst other reasons). My concern here has been to preserve the embedded tweets in posts and comments on this site if the idiot engineer manages to destroy the platform through simple stupidity.
Written By: - Date published: 8:22 am, November 10th, 2022 - 29 comments
Except in Florida, where Ron DeSantis led a convincing set of Republican gains, the Republican party in the US have had a disappointing mid-term election. The Democrats expecting to face a mid-term vote against incumbents, will be pleasantly surprised. There are still a lot of votes to count. This being the US, lawyers will be trying to set court dates.
Written By: - Date published: 9:35 am, July 1st, 2022 - 38 comments
Yesterday Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern gave a speech/comments to NATO outlining our position on NATO, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, multilateral diplomacy, our region, and nuclear proliferation. Plus of course she helped to finally get the EU trade treaty over the line. Her ‘comments’ are worth reading and commenting on because I suspect that they align pretty well to our societies general position.
Written By: - Date published: 1:31 pm, May 13th, 2022 - 13 comments
JuiceMedia have done their high quality opinionated but fact based satire Honest Government Ad describing the lowlights of the current Aussie shitshow. If you haven’t seen it yet, then be my guest.
Written By: - Date published: 12:22 pm, May 11th, 2022 - 33 comments
The early voting polls have opened in Australia, so the election there is nigh. Reading on the election there has been interesting. The weirdness of marginal seats. The burgeoning dissatisfaction and probable deciding impact of Aussie women on this election result.
Written By: - Date published: 12:22 pm, April 16th, 2022 - 38 comments
Everything has been too serious recently and kind of gross.
Lets keep the gross and but go for the satirical.
Enemas! Pimples!
Written By: - Date published: 11:35 am, March 2nd, 2022 - 230 comments
The Russian armed forces obviously didn’t expect much resistance. I get the distinct impression that they had believed their own ridiculous propaganda (always a characteristic of dumb-arse dictatorships) and expected the Ukrainians to fall weeping in gratitude at their liberation. That clearly didn’t happen. What next…
Written By: - Date published: 7:56 am, February 25th, 2022 - 266 comments
Russia has invaded a neighbouring state with no more justification than an vague appeals to the same arguments that underpinned 19th century gunboat diplomacy. It was unacceptable in 1938, and is just even more unacceptable now. We should hep deal with this now without trying to appease an aggressor before we wind up with a future conflict that kills, maims, and displaces people in job lots of millions.
Written By: - Date published: 8:17 am, February 15th, 2022 - 16 comments
It sounds like the Industrial and Trades sector of the economy has had a significiant wage rise over the last year. While we wait for the wages stats data, this is an interesting indicator. The national median hourly pay in the sector is now $27 an hour, up $2 from 2020/21. But this isn’t just here, the world labour market is shifting just as the supply chains are.
Recent Comments