The Standard

Author Archive

National starts political year beneficiary bashing

Written By: - Date published: 11:14 am, January 22nd, 2019 - 70 comments

National has kicked off the year by reverting to type and engaging in a classic example of beneficiary bashing based on a distortion of official statistics.

Housing affordability and urban form

Written By: - Date published: 3:07 pm, January 21st, 2019 - 35 comments

Hugh Pavletich thinks that Auckland’s housing crisis is because of restrictions on urban sprawl and that loosening up would be a good thing. I disagree.

D Day for US shutdown

Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, January 20th, 2019 - 160 comments

Donald Trump is to make an announcement today concerning the shut down. And Buzzfeed has suggested that the Mueller Investigation has uncovered evidence suggesting that Trump instructed his lawyer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress.

Family First thinks there is a Cafe porn watching crisis

Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, January 19th, 2019 - 104 comments

Family First thinks that there is a crisis of porn watching at cafes. And has commissioned Curia to see if others think the same.

National shafted us with the MOM privatisation

Written By: - Date published: 7:20 am, January 17th, 2019 - 318 comments

Five years on how are the benefits from the Mixed Ownership Model privatisation process the last Government engaged in working out?

Chinese Herald changed Herald articles to be more China friendly

Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, January 15th, 2019 - 70 comments

Stuff has reported that its opponent, the New Zealand Herald, has via its Chinese version amended stories to make them more acceptable to the Chinese Government.

David Seymour can’t handle criticism

Written By: - Date published: 8:21 am, January 14th, 2019 - 112 comments

ACT MP David Seymour has lashed out on Facebook at Dianne Khan apparently for successfully fact checking him.

National has lots of questions

Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, January 12th, 2019 - 38 comments

National asked 40,000 questions of Ministers last year. This seems excessive.

New Zealand needs a Government that understands climate change

Written By: - Date published: 9:58 am, January 10th, 2019 - 47 comments

In an opinion piece in Stuff National Spokesperson on climate change Todd Muller has cast doubt on National agreeing to a political consensus on climate change.

The Bigliest shut down ever

Written By: - Date published: 10:34 am, January 9th, 2019 - 95 comments

Donald Trump in the longest presidential temper tantrum every is refusing to reopen the US Government unless Congress agree to funding his Mexican Border wall.

Mood of the workforce shows urgent need for change

Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, January 8th, 2019 - 81 comments

The CTU has released the results of its recent cost of living and income survey. The results suggest that urgent change is needed.

Drug testing at music festivals

Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, January 7th, 2019 - 18 comments

Police Minister Stuart Nash has said publicly that he wants to see all New Zealand music festivals to have drug testing kits by next summer.

National just wants to have some friends

Written By: - Date published: 9:55 am, January 6th, 2019 - 63 comments

National clearly needs new friends if it is to regain power. Could the nutty New Conservatives be a possibility?

Farrar criticises Genter for not solving National’s transport safety mess quickly enough

Written By: - Date published: 10:17 am, January 5th, 2019 - 119 comments

David Farrar has accused Julie Anne Genter of saying she can do nothing about the road safety when she said nothing of the sort.

Political punditry in 2019

Written By: - Date published: 8:57 am, January 4th, 2019 - 79 comments

The media has recently reviewed its predictions from last year and made a few new ones.  How did it go?  And what is going to happen in the next 12 months?

What can we do about climate change – air travel emission offset

Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, January 2nd, 2019 - 257 comments

How do you reconcile your desire to do what you can about climate change with taking air travel?

Matt King goes full nut job

Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, December 29th, 2018 - 77 comments

National MP Matt King has claimed that Stuff has been censoring comments that are critical of the Government and that an article expressing concerns about the run down of health infrastructure, the increase in child poverty, the use of private contractors to spy on us and the inability of NZTA to properly regulate WOF inspections is “left wing claptrap”.

The Standard a decade on

Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, December 28th, 2018 - 113 comments

LPrent and I had the chance recently to talk about the Standard and how it is going.

National’s brave new world of MOAR ROADS!

Written By: - Date published: 11:35 am, December 27th, 2018 - 132 comments

National has taken to criticising the Government for not building roads that had no coherent business case and no proposal to build.

The Taxpayers’ Union* responds to the Clark and Thompson spying fiasco

Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, December 24th, 2018 - 9 comments

* not a real union.

National’s varied response to the Thompson and Clark report

Written By: - Date published: 7:33 am, December 20th, 2018 - 26 comments

Simon Bridges and Gerry Brownlee have offered diametrically opposed versions of how to respond to the crisis presented by the report into Thompson and Clark’s activities.

A tale of two Christmas speeches

Written By: - Date published: 7:15 am, December 20th, 2018 - 31 comments

The last sitting day in Parliament yesterday gave stark evidence showing how Jacinda is wiping the floor with Simon Bridges.

The Eminem decision and National’s electoral return

Written By: - Date published: 4:20 pm, December 19th, 2018 - 27 comments

The Court of Appeal has determined that National should pay Eminem $225,000 for use of his music. This may create rather large legal problems for them.

Review into Thompson and Clark finds widespread breaches of Citizens’ rights of privacy

Written By: - Date published: 7:43 am, December 19th, 2018 - 129 comments

A State Services Commission investigation review has released a damning report into the use of private investigator Thompson and Clark’s services by a number of Government agencies.

Unhappy Gilmore loses to well known Union Socialist lawyer

Written By: - Date published: 8:31 am, December 18th, 2018 - 22 comments

Former National MP and in his imagination potentially the next Prime Minister Aaron Gilmore has reached the headlines for not paying compensation to a former employee of his company as agreed and for describing her lawyer as a well known union socialist.

Labour’s budget wellbeing objectives

Written By: - Date published: 6:46 am, December 15th, 2018 - 12 comments

The Government has announced that the next budget will include well being objectives as well as fiscal objectives.

Trump’s smocking gun

Written By: - Date published: 9:09 am, December 14th, 2018 - 82 comments

This week in America former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen admitted electoral finance violations by using campaign money to pay off two hookers to stop them going public during the last election campaign with news about Trump’s infidelity.  And Russian national Maria Butina was convicted of conspiring to infiltrate the NRA.

National’s Sroubek fizzle

Written By: - Date published: 7:40 am, December 13th, 2018 - 159 comments

National are trying to manufacture a conspiracy out of revelations that someone who knows Karel Sroubek and has met Jacinda Ardern sent her a text.

You’ve got to lively up yourself …

Written By: - Date published: 7:18 am, December 12th, 2018 - 44 comments

National have responded to the Government’s medicinal cannabis law by suggesting hordes of cancer sufferers will hang around schools smoking joints.

The Air New Zealand Industrial dispute

Written By: - Date published: 7:49 am, December 11th, 2018 - 53 comments

Air New Zealand has provoked industrial action from its workers by trying to wind back wages and conditions at a time it is making near record profits.

Labour’s education reforms

Written By: - Date published: 9:08 am, December 9th, 2018 - 58 comments

The Government has released a discussion paper proposing radical change to our education system, including the establishment of regional hubs to improve cooperation between schools and provisions to strengthen the proposition that kids should attend their local well resources and well run school.