The nub of the issue
John Key can’t admit there’s a crisis in manufacturing. His response is to huff and puff and call people bozos. Not good enough. Here are some basic questions that Key should be able to answer…
Eddie
Bridges caught out by own bullshit
Simon Bridges’ loose relationship with the truth has got him in trouble just a few weeks into his first big test as Minister of Labour. It started last week when he got caught off guard by an innocuous question from Darien Fenton…
Requiem for a doofus
Well, Slater’s reverse midas touch has struck again. It’s remarkable that Slater should be able to take a 125-year old publication and kill it in 6 months, especially when Judith Collins says he’s better than the mainstream media. Or, perhaps, he had been so successful in turning Truth into the new media dreadnought that its jobs was done. Ah well, lets remember how it began.
Inconvenient indeed
Your favourite smug, self-aggrandising Tory and mine, David Farrar, wrote a post yesterday about something called the “Performance of Manufacturing Index”, which is a wee survey that the BNZ does. Apparently, it shows manufacturing on the grow. ‘How inconvenient’ for people worried about the crisis in manufacturing, Farrar chortled. Then, Blenheim’s largest manufacturer laid off 84 workers.
A fighting liberal
Lieutenant General David Morrison schools the misogynists and shows how you can be tough and liberal.
Best quote:
“You may find another employer where your attitude and behaviour is acceptable but I doubt it. The same goes for those that think toughness is build on humiliating others.”
Why can’t the Right face the manufacturing crisis?
The NBR (motto: ‘our circulation’s falling at 12% per year’) and the Right blogs are all aflutter after supposedly proving that Russel Norman is wrong and there haven’t been 40,000 manufacturing jobs lost since 2008. NBR’s Rob Hosking claims the number is only 10,000-20,000. Because, you know, that would be OK. But the truth is, Norman’s right – 40,000 manufacturing job losses since June 2008.
Positioning and reality
There’s a lot of talk at the moment about whether Labour is too close to the Greens. Lately, we’ve seen spin coming out that Labour might be able to govern without the Greens, favouring NZF instead. Meanwhile, the Greens seem happy to talk about a future Greens-Labour government. National’s leaking to Peters and Peters is playing the race card. What’s going on?
Key’s credibility hit
At the same time as Russel Norman was laying out the Key Government’s flagrant disregard for democracy in powerful terms (and weren’t the Right’s pundits quick to circle the wagons around Key after that?), a poll was out showing the public is agreeing with Norman’s view of Key. 43.5% of Kiwis trust Key less than a year ago. 49% think its time for a change of government.
Lusk papers 2 – selling out to America
Here’s the second of the Lusk papers that we were leaked, as was to be covered in today’s Sunday Star Times.
This paper confirms that a faction within National sees New Zealand as a vassal of America, and wants to see American influence (and American money) gain control over our politics.
The Lusk paper
This is the first of the Lusk papers, as leaked to us a couple of days ago, and as currently being discussed on The Nation.
Out of the shadows
Well, its not taken long for the counter-strike. After Judith Collins’ main brain, Simon Lusk (better known as the cogent Whaleoil) went public last weekend threatening backbenchers that their careers would be short if they didn’t back Collins’ leadership bid when Key goes. Now, documents by Lusk talking about a ‘party within a party’ have been leaked.
That Lusk article
I’ve been meaning to write something on Andrea Vance’s very good piece on Simon Lusk. It tells us a lot that we already know: Lusk is the brains behind Slater; Lusk was involved in the demolition of Gilmore; and he’s very tight with the Collins camp. What’s interesting is why he has come out in the public light now. And the messages he is sending to National MPs. The leadership battle is heating up.
‘Cleared’
So, Neazor’s written his report into the 88 New Zealanders that the GCSB spied on. In the spirit of open government, National’s suppressing it. But we’re told it find that the GCSB ‘arguably’ didn’t break the law. That’s coming from the guy who excused them in the Dotcom case, too, remember. And, it’s hardly ‘clearing’ the GCSB as the Nats claims.
Political science
As I/S pointed out yesterday, the Government’s “innovation” agenda is nothing more than a cuts to R&D and hidden subsidies.
Today in the Herald that’s confirmed
The gift that keeps on giving
First Collins fails the replicant test. Now Scott catches her openly plotting against her leader…
Budget summary
Nothing on poverty. Nothing on affordable housing. House prices forecast to keep rising. Attacks on local democracy. More fear into the lives of the poor (reviewable tenancies). Stealth privatisation of state housing, sorry, ‘social housing’. A ‘surplus’ of 0.03% of GDP. Weak growth outlook. $200b national debt. And a promise of 171,000 more jobs that’s just as credible as the last one.
City Rail Link in the Budget?
A reader sent us a comment from another blog by someone who was polled a couple of weeks back. The questions are very interesting, especially once you realise that it’s clearly being done for National and the Right in Auckland (one of the questions gives it away). Have a read, then I’ll tell you why I reckon the Nats are going to fund the City Rail Link in the Budget.
Stealth privatisation of state housing in budget
There’s more than one way to fleece the public of our assets. While attention is the energy companies, there’s also privatisation in the form of public organisations selling of their operations (eg Orcon), and opening public funding to for-profit companies (eg. charter schools). More seems on the cards for our state housing as National offers to give over control to private organisations.
The meaning of utu
Aaron Gilmore has promised ‘utu’, or reciprocation, against a select band of National insiders. What’s going on behind the scenes?
Claudette Hauiti
After a brutal smear-campaign from Key, Gilmore is gone. Nothing he did made him unfit to be an MP ,* but lying to Key meant Key had to get him out of the caucus or look weak. And the only safe way to do that was have him resign. That done, we get Claudette Hauiti. Who’s she? Well, here’s a measure of her calibre. In a 2010 Auckland local board competition, she came 10th out of 12.
What’s done can be undone
SkyCity will get more pokies and cashless gambling in return for building the convention centre that it always wanted to build. (…excuse me, I’m just trying not to puke watching Len Brown on Breakfast as he shrugs off the problem gambling increase from this deal…) The convention centre will be a white elephant. SkyCity should know that what’s done can be undone.
Update: Anyone buying in to the Nats’ “Labour did it too” line should read Russell Brown’s demolition of that lie.
The King stay the King … the pawns, in the game, they get capped quick
So, Key wants Gilmore gone. Gilmore lied to Key about the whether he threatened the waiter with the wrath of the PM’s office. Bringing Key’s office itself was bad enough but Key accepted Gilmore’s lie. When that lie was exposed, Key knew his authority as leader had been trifled with. Gilmore now has to go. But Key can’t boot him. So, out is coming the dirt.
Selling Mighty River cost you $100m
National admitted today that the sale of Mighty River cost around $100m, and that the paltry 2.5% of New Zealanders who bought an average of $8,000 each are not typical Kiwis. The figures themselves are shocking but the politics is really revealing. English didn’t try to avoid the unpalatable failure of asset sales, he was flippant. He is so out of touch he doesn’t see the problem.
Warehouse adopts living wage
The Warehouse has adopted a policy of paying a living wage of $18.50-$20 an hour for longer-term employees. It’s a really positive move and The Warehouse is to be congratulated. It’ll cost about $2.5m a year, or 5% of profits. As we’ve seen in the NZ Power debate, it’s a rare thing for major companies to look beyond their balancesheets to the community they exist within. Now, who’s next?
Why Phil O’Reilly wants you to keep paying too much for power
Yesterday, Phil O’Reilly’s Business New Zealand basically declared war on Labour and the Greens. Their ‘open letter’ demanded opposition parties to withdraw the NZ Power policy or risk a capital strike. Unprecedented in modern NZ history. It was a boots and all attempt by the capitalist elite to try to monster the Left. It proves that they think NZ Power is both practical and popular.
Why Brian Gaynor wants you to keep paying too much for power
To say Brian Gaynor is excited about the Mighty River sale is an understatement. Of his last five Herald columns, two have been about how great it will be, and two have been about how awful NZ Power is. His other media appearances have been in a similar vein: Mighty River = good, NZ Power = bad. It’s in his financial interests that investors aren’t scared off Mighty River.
Why First NZ Capital wants you to keep paying too much for power
A couple of people have questioned this series of posts outing the financial interests of supposedly ‘independent’ commentators who are coming out against the Green/Labour plan to lower power prices. ‘Everyone has links to everyone in New Zealand’. Maybe so, but not everyone is paid by the people whose interests they’re protecting while pretending to be independent in the msm.
Why Allan Miller wants you to keep paying too much for power
Hot on the heels of electricity industry funded Lewis Evans publishing an op-ed about how terrible NZ Power is, another academic has popped up to claim the policy is the end of the world.
Why Lewis Evans wants you to keep paying too much for power
Lewis Evans had an op-ed in the Dompost yesterday. It attacked NZ Power in confused terms. Evans claimed, for instance, that all the savings from lower costs would come from lower dividends to the Government, when a moment’s thought shows you that’s not true and will be even less true after the asset sales. The disclosure statement at the end of Evans’ op-ed doesn’t mention Contact and Meridian pay him.
Why Doug Heffernan wants you to keep paying too much for power
John Key has committed to giving up the National Party’s leadership if he loses the next election. That didn’t stop him from committing the next National Government from reversing NZ Power and putting up electricity prices whenever it comes to power . It got me thinking about the people who are so keen to kill NZ Power in its cradle and why. Today: MRP CEO Doug Heffernan.
Meanwhile, in the real world…
So, John Key, Bill English, and Steven Joyce are now devoting all their energy into trying to stop the asset sales programme collapsing after the Greens and Labour gave notice the excessive profits are going to end, and National confirmed they’re for real by suspending the sale. While the government’s wasting its effort on that, real families are suffering.
12,000 posts
I just noticed that we passed 12,000 posts a few days ago. Appropriately, it was our stalwart, Anthony, who hit the mark with a post on Mini ‘W’. As always, it’s about the community. 12,000 posts from us would be just pissing in the wind without your 551,000 comments.
Whose interests are the Nats working for?
Why are National and the Right pitching a fit at the prospect of the Crown and foreign institutions losing superprofits when that’s the price of households and businesses getting lower power prices? Real businesses are looking forward to paying less for power but National says ‘stuff them, we’re looking out for the Crown’s stealth tax and Origin Energy’s profits’.
Westpac workers fed up with pushing debt
Bank profits are up again. A 10 per cent increase over the past three months it was announced yesterday. What we don’t often […]
Pull the other one, it’s full of sarin
New Zealand is, famously, a nuclear-free country. We’re also signatories to the Chemical Weapons and Biological Weapons Conventions, which outlaw them. So, if you’re looking to learn about weapons of mass destruction, New Zealand’s the wrong place to go. It’s laughable that Key’s inventing WMD-seeking terrorists to justify legalising spying on Kiwis.
Key and Thatcher’s ghost
