For just $2.4 million a year, the Prisoners’ Aid and Rehabilitation Society and its 500 volunteers help 25,000 inmates and ex-inmates with rehabilitation and readjustment each year. Their efforts help turn people away from crime. But the Nats cancelled the funding. All they believe in is putting the boot in harder even though it doesn’t stop crime.
Beloved Leader of People’s Constitutional Monarchy of New Zealand, Honourable John Key, attended glorious opening of school building on Tuesday.
Several youths were overcome by the glory of Honourable Leader’s appearance as were several members of the press corps.
You know, I struggle to see how the government can justify cuts to Radio New Zealand’s funding after its outstanding coverage of the tsunami yesterday. While the other radio broadcasters were jammed up with bee pollen adverts and deer horn aphrodisiac jingles, RNZ had informative, up to the minute information from all over the country.
If National is going to legislate democratic procedures for unions taking industrial action, aren’t they bound by consistency to do the same for employers?
Requiring a secret ballot of shareholders before lockouts are allowed would be a good start.
No Right Turn covers the latest UMR poll on MMP, which shows a good but by no means unassailable lead for MMP over less representative systems.
With the forces of reaction once again emerging to undermine our democracy we all need to get in behind the Campaign for MMP.
A certain National Party pollster is having a cry over the story I ran yesterday on Murray McCully’s shares in Widespread Portfolios.
The story got widespread media coverage because it raised legitimate questions that needed to be answered.
Two industrial relations bills from the Right were pulled from the ballot today.
The first, Roger Douglas’ bill to restore youth rates, is just the usual ACT Party kick the poor stuff.
But Tau Henare’s bill on strike ballots is just plain stupid.
Crime is not, as Judith Collins seems to think, evil people doing evil things that can be repressed by ever greater state violence. Deterrence doesn’t work because crime, especially violent crime, is not a rational outcome of weighing costs and benefits. A crime policy that doesn’t reduce crime isn’t really a crime policy, it’s a con.
The Government is driving ahead with its plans to open up our National Parks and other protected environments to mining. The Standard can now reveal that Murray McCully has shares in a company that stands to benefit directly from National’s mining policy.
Over 2,000 people a day are joining the Facebook group to save Radio New Zealand from National’s cuts, which would turn it into another crap commercial outlet. There are a lot of outraged people who voted for a ‘brighter future’ among those 10,000. The backlash is growing.
Tracey Watkins writes that National is pissing off important constituencies and Labour’s messages are resonating. Key promised the world to everyone, he has failed to do anything for anyone except the wealthy elite. And public opinion is turning.
The Northern Action Group has, with the support of 80% of Northern Rodney District, been petitioning the Government to leave Northern Rodney out […]
An interesting piece from One News. Bill English gave another underwhelming speech on National’s economic plan, which basically boiled down to ‘tax cuts!’. A young businesswoman in the audience told English she wanted a real plan. His response: ‘tax cuts’. But he could give no proof his tax cuts would improve the economy.
The backlash to National’s attack on Radio NZ is beginning, and it looks like Jonathan Coleman may have bitten off more than he can chew.
Take the Save Radio New Zealand group on Facebook. In less than 24 hours it has 1700 2800 3500 supporters, with 10 more joining every minute.
BLiP gives the best definition of the Key Government’s billion dollar Whanau Ora plan to date: “Whanau Ora = privatisation of social services.â€
Yeah, it does. But I’m still struggling to understand what social services. Will Whanau Ora providers be running hospitals and clinics? Will they be running schools? Will they be making dole and super payments?
It’s hard to decide which is worst: Do Nothing John Key flouncing around the country while thousands of Kiwis lose their jobs, the Joyce cabal pushing their hard-right economic agenda, or the rest of them who don’t have two brain cells to rub together.
Guyon Espiner isn’t exactly what you would call a critic of John Key’s government, so when he has a blog post titled “John Key’s sloppiness as costly as it is charming” you know things are bad.
Colin Espiner: “Is that uranium I can smell on John Key’s breath? Or too much garlic in the lamb rack the prime minister cooked for his wife on Valantines Day? Go on, laugh. But both seem to be legitimate topics of journalistic interest today”
You know how the world has been through the worst financial crisis in decades? You know how countries like Ireland and Iceland who had made themselves into financial hubs via tax breaks for banks are now deep in the crap with burgeoning debt and unemployment? Why don’t we do what they did?
The Standard has been sent copies of documents (1,2,3,4) released under the Official Information Act which show that one of National’s first acts in government was to trim a Conservation Park at the request of a mining company, ignoring local concerns and official advice, to let the company dig up the land for coal.
The other day I wrote: I reckon we probably will see a passing reference to the ‘underclass’ for appearance’s sake [in John Key’s […]
Over the last month or so National’s pollster David Farrar has been running a series of posts desperately trying to pin the spike […]
“An unscientific poll yesterday of 846 readers asking whether they would be happy to pay more GST if it meant they paid less […]
Number of jobless Kiwis = 276,000 Number of jobs plans from Key Government = 0 Key can make all the vague references to […]
Apparently promises made before the election don’t count. GST was different then anyway.
“This is his most important speech since he entered Parliament in 2002.” That’s Duncan Garner on Key’s speech today. Other political commentators have […]
I was thinking the other day about John Key’s underclass speech. It was always pure gimmickry, as was the whole exploitation of Aroha. But how long would he keep up the facade once the PR value had worn off?
A panicked, chaotic series of excuses poured forth from John Key’s mouth yesterday as he attempted to shift the blame for the shocking […]
Well, there can’t be any doubt now, Anne Tolley is this government’s worst minister. A failure that stands out among failures. She had […]
Does anyone else think it’s a coincidence that Granny Herald has tried to start a meaningless debate over the national flag – ’11 […]
So, John Key and Pita Sharples put Hone Harawira in charge of deciding which flag will fly to represent Maori on government buildings […]
Welcome back, John Armstrong. In your piece today you wrote about John Key’s emergency efforts to cover for Anne Tolley’s disasterious handling of […]
Foreign Minister Murray McCully is refusing to contribute any New Zealand money to a fund that will buy-off the Taliban’s foot soldiers. The […]
A good appearance from Phil Goff on the first Q+A of the year. I liked this part especially: Guyon Espiner: You spoke in your […]
John Key has told us that his government’s unrelenting focus this year will be the economy. He has also said his government will […]
