politicans

bill english

ImperatorFish: John Key’s Reshuffle Analysed

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 7 comments

The biggest winner is Dr Nick Smith. He returns to Cabinet after his fall from grace last year, and is appointed as Minister for Creating a Perception of Crisis in Order to Justify Savage Cutbacks in Entitlements.
The biggest losers are Kate Wilkinson and Phil Heatley, who have been dropped from Cabinet altogether. Both have failed to perform, and their inability to communicate with the smoothness of someone like Hekia Parata will have counted against them.

Hello everybody! Hi Dr Nick!

Written By: Bunji
Date published: - 39 comments

So Nick Smith is to be returned to cabinet after spending nearly a year on the bench for his ethical flaws.  Presumably 10 months on the back benches heals all those desires to abuse your powers to try to help your friends get money.

The dark side

Written By: karol
Date published: - 75 comments

Fran O’Sullivan & Audrey Young are awestruck by Judith Collins as ruthless Force. FO’S does a fan-girl rave, slipping into fanfic mode.Was the Binnie episode a daring bid to become the next Nat leader? Will English & Joyce respond with callous, socially-destructive manoeuvres?

English puts us on a slippery slope to Greece

Written By: James Henderson
Date published: - 32 comments

The amount we have to borrow from the rest of the world is due to hit $17b a year by 2016. Our current account deficit is already the 2nd largest in the developed world and will soon be hitting disastrous levels. But English says ‘don’t worry, if that happens, our economy will just collapse, Greece-style’. I’m not reassured.

It’s not the growth that’s grumpy

Written By: Zetetic
Date published: - 11 comments

The last time unemployment was this high, Bill English was Finance Minister and his government was facing electoral oblivion. I don’t remember his excuses last time but this time he’s taken a different excuse from Key and Joyce. English calls this ‘grumpy growth’. Of course, it’s not growth, it’s the exact opposite. If this is ‘grumpy growth’, I suppose Hurricane Sandy was ‘grumpy sunshine’.

On the tip of his tongue

Written By: James Henderson
Date published: - 36 comments

It was almost funny listening to Bill English on Checkpoint. He had identified all, or at least most of, the problems with housing in Auckland: in short, nobody’s building affordable houses, the prevelance of bespoke houses pushes up prices, and speculative capital raises them even more. But his solutions were all, well, not solutions: try to make consenting even quicker, more sprawl.

Where are the resignations?

Written By: James Henderson
Date published: - 87 comments

John Key refuses to accept any responsibility for what his spies get up to. The only point of democratic responsibility for our spies doesn’t monitor them and won’t take the blame for failing to do so. He won’t fire a corrupt, lying minister, either. The rot is spreading to the public service. There has been not one resignation, not a single one, due to the Dotcom debacle.

Nats lied – power prices to rise

Written By: Anthony R0bins
Date published: - 36 comments

Minister after Minister denied it, but it turns out that common sense is right. Private power companies charge more. Privatisation surely means that prices will rise. Is it even news when this government lies these days?

The cost of asset sales

Written By: Ben Clark
Date published: - 25 comments

Loyalty Scheme:   $360 million.
Brokerage Fees:   $90 million.
Advertising/PR:   $30 million.
Iwi Settlements:   $unknown.
Lost Revenue:   $100 million/year.

ImperatorFish: Whose Planet Is This?

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 17 comments

Imagine a place with a stagnant economy; led by a government that is anti-growth, doesn’t have any plan, and is not prepared to make the tough decisions needed to ensure the future prosperity of its people; where most people struggle to get ahead; and where those who aspire for better things are probably thinking of leaving.

Bill sez ‘time youse f*ck off’

Written By: Eddie
Date published: - 124 comments

An all-time record 53,900 people left New Zealand for Australia last year. Remember when John Key was going to stop the exodus by closing the wage gap? Yeah, that was a pretty funny joke. Now, here’s the punchline: Bill English now says that it’s a great thing that everyone is leaving for Australia. And the kicker, he wants to attract talent by driving down wages.

What’s Bill smoking?

Written By: James Henderson
Date published: - 40 comments

We’re getting used to the Nats running bash the beneficiary /poor /Maori /unemployed /criminal /etc distractions but it’s getting pretty bad when Bill English gets in on the act. Weirdly his idea of drug-testing beneficiaries seems to have been picked up from a Daily Show piece on how it failed in Florida – costing money, not saving it, and proving beneficiaries use drugs less than the rest of the population.

Efficient market hypothesis

Written By: James Henderson
Date published: - 87 comments

Bill English has attacked the MED numbers showing that private electricity companies are 12% more expensive than public ones saying that argument assumes “that hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders are systematically paying more for electricity than they could?”. Um… Has English heard of Powerswitch? That multi-million dollar government campaign is based on exactly that premise.

The Nats’ succession problem

Written By: Eddie
Date published: - 58 comments

John Key’s days are numbered. His personal popularity is falling. His brand is tied to unpopular asset sales and a pokies for convention centre deal that is now subject to an Auditor-General investigation. He’s not winning the next election. So a change of leader is coming: pre-election or post. But who can succeed him? Parata? Collins? Joyce? They’re all shot.

Retail Deposit Guarantee: When’s the enquiry?

Written By: Bunji
Date published: - 14 comments

Labour are pushing for an enquiry into how Treasury oversight of the Retail Deposit Guarantee Scheme was so poor that it has cost us hundreds of millions of dollars. Bill English can’t be allowed to hide this under the plus Treasury carpet, so his lack of oversight of Treasury isn’t shown up.

Stealth taxes

Written By: Bunji
Date published: - 8 comments

Bill English has introduced a number of stealth taxes over his time in office, to partly balance the loss his tax cuts for […]

Four years of failed promises

Written By: Eddie
Date published: - 22 comments

Labour has published its budget website and a video ripping John Key’s record of broken promises. It’s pretty damning. Yet Key and English want to claim that there’s nothing wrong and growth has been in line with projections. It’s like they’re operating in a parallel universe.

Banks has got to go

Written By: Zetetic
Date published: - 182 comments

Key should go because of his dirty deal with SkyCity. Joyce too. Collins should go over the ACC leaks. Brownlee for sheer incompetence. English for shit-eating grin every time he fails to meet his own growth forecasts and announces more cuts. Add Banks to the list. His position in now untenable. The accusations are serious and credible. His excuses and memory lapses implausible. He must at least be stood down.

Nats’ economic failures just another excuse for cuts

Written By: Zetetic
Date published: - 16 comments

Didn’t take much clairvoyance to see that National would fail to meet its promise of a Budget surplus by 2014/15. You’ve never seen a Finance Minister have his forecasts cut so often and look so happy about it. His failure against his own artificial target gives him an excuse to cut. His party’s ineptness to blame but we pay. Students look to be his target this round.

Employers back Paid Parental

Written By: Bunji
Date published: - 43 comments

When even your friends are telling you you’ve got it wrong, it’s time to reconsider. So Bill: the Employers Union (EMA) and Family First want Paid Parental leave. It’s not too expensive, it’s back by all childcare experts, and the cost is even delayed. Just do it.

Nat Civil War: Nothing to see here

Written By: Eddie
Date published: - 21 comments

Every time Simon Lusk’s name gets mentioned, Whaleoil (which is only Cameron Slater and has nothing to do with Lusk </sarcasm>) responds with a vitriolic and revealing tirade. In the latest, Whaleoil insists there are no National factions, before insulting and demeaning each of the factions except Collins’, and accidentally confirming the leadership tussle is on.

Nat Civil War: The perils of monolithism

Written By: Eddie
Date published: - 63 comments

Despite losing nearly 1 in 4 of its supporters, 300,000 voters, in a little over 6 months according to the Roy Morgans, National’s 44% still looks superficially impressive. Until you realise they need to be able to form a  majority more or less alone. The Right’s monolithism doesn’t just place extraordinary demands on National’s leader, it’s the root of the current civil war.

Blinglish’s Treasury not so hot

Written By: Bunji
Date published: - 12 comments

Bill English and Treasury adopted a “see no evil, hear no evil” approach to the Retail Deposit Guarantee Scheme. And it’s cost us $2 billion. The Deputy Auditor General has delivered a damning report on a ministry used to judging others, not suffering any oversight itself…

Good for the goose…?

Written By: James Henderson
Date published: - 7 comments

Treasury has repeatedly proven itself incapable of forecasting its way out of a paper bag but, for some reason, that doesn’t stop it trying to tell everyone else how to do their jobs. Currently, they’re pushing for larger class sizes in the reduced education budget. Someone should ask why the education budget is under pressure but Treasury’s isn’t. Wait, someone did.

ImperatorFish: English Says Asteroid Strike Good For Country

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 3 comments

Scott at Imperator Fish has kindly given us permission to syndicate posts from his blog – the original of this post is here.

Scientists yesterday announced that a giant asteroid is on a collision course with the Earth. They predict that the huge rock will hit the southern part of the North Island tomorrow, destroying most of Wellington and leaving hundreds of thousands of people dead.

However, Finance Minister Bill English said there was no need for panic over the news.

FIFY

Written By: Anthony R0bins
Date published: - 25 comments

Bill English: “A government can’t have a lot of impact on the job market. It is what it is.” He’s only half right.

Even English’s made-up asset sales numbers don’t add up

Written By: James Henderson
Date published: - 20 comments

Bill English admitted yesterday that his new estimate that asset sales will net $6b in revenue, $800m above book value, is just a guess – the midpoint of the previous guess of $5-7b. And that’s not all that’s made up. The forecast foregone profits are way under-estimated. Even with these fiscal frauds, English still can’t get asset sales to make economic sense.

And so it begins

Written By: Ben Clark
Date published: - 218 comments

Mighty River Power is first on the block, to be sold in the third quarter of next year (weather conditions permitting).

InvisiNats: Bill English

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 17 comments

Key is avoiding the hard questions, but his photo-op face is everywhere. The rest of the Nats are working hard at being invisible. Let’s bring a little sunlight into that darkness!

Today’s InvisiNat is Bill English.

Creating opportunities

Written By: Anthony R0bins
Date published: - 16 comments

The Nats admit that they’ve failed to close the gap between rich and poor.  In fact, of course, it’s getting worse.  Bill English says they’ve “created opportunities”, which is Tory speak for doing nothing at all.