The politics of reproduction
The Nats have a thoroughly unhealthy obsession with the politics of reproduction. They’re talking about “stopping ‘unfit’ parents reproducing”, but Paula Bennet let slip the real agenda months ago.
Economy
class war
Protest in the smartphone age
There’s a lot of analogy between how a guerrilla movement succeeds against a superpower or a state in the era of mass communication and how protest movements can do the same. Unable to win head-on, losing becomes winning as long as the cameras are rolling. It’s about being seen as having a legitimate cause and just as importantly being seen as the victims of disproportionate force and abuse of power.
Class sizes don’t matter?
Another shaming poverty report for the government to ignore
Here’s a prediction for you – the Nats will ignore this report too. They’re not particularly interested in the issue of kids in poverty.
National’s war on the deficit – 2015
Nats pay for booze for the elite, cut home insulation for families
National blew the VIP entertainment budget for the Rugby World Cup by $5 million, despite none of the promised big names actually turning up. They got the extra dosh out of Mfat’s budget. In unrelated news, the government is cutting the Greens’ Warm Up New Zealand programme, which has returned four times its costs in benefits. There’s no money, you see.
Larger classes only for the peasants
So, half the Cabinet sends their kids to private schools. Those schools – which National has upped the taxpayers subsidies for – boast of small class sizes. Kings, where Key sends his kid, says: “Class sizes are limited and our policy of a low pupil-to-teacher ratio ensures students are given greater individual attention in the classroom”. Guess larger classes are only good for the peasants’ kids.
Who’s National looking out for?
We’re told that these are tough times and we all have to share in the pain. Yeah, right. National dug this hole with $2 billion in ‘fiscally neutral’ tax cuts, billions in subsidies to polluters, and white elephant motorways that aren’t worth what they cost. And who’s being made to bear the cost? The rich are doing well, while the poor and middle class go backwards.
Curing Tobacco
So tobacco is a ridiculously addictive drug that offers no accompanying high for the user. It has pretty dire health consequences and was promoted for years as harmless, chic and sophisticated and the government even gave it away to combatants during WWII by the carton load.
But now the government wants it gone.
Picking winners
National’s got this love affair with ‘outcomes, not outputs’. Means funding teachers and community groups on the achievements of their students or clients, not the number they have. You don’t have to have seen The Wire to know the results. Schools and community groups will pick winners, only those who can achieve easily, to protect their funding.
Stockholm syndrome
With enough conditioning, our psyches will adapt to believe almost anything. Like that pain is good.
Fail Budget
Budget reaction here. Seems the Nats’ preferred budget tag line is ‘Investing in the future’. Should have called it ‘Waiting for Godot’. Here’s a quick summary: Zero = Fail.
Update: Nats planning to tax kids’ after school jobs. No, not joking.
McCarten: Waging war on working class
Matt McCarten’s latest column is a must read. There is something nasty going on…
Meatworkers win
News in that Talley’s/AFFCO and the Meatworkers reached an agreement at 5am this morning. The workers will keep their wage and job security provisions and still be covered by a collective. The workers have displayed incredible strength with support from up and down the country. Next time, bosses will think twice before attacking their workers.
Minister pleased with anemic economy
You have to take your hat off to National’s spin doctors, coming up with the plausible-sounding nonsense line that low interest rates mean affordable housing isn’t needed. But it led to this- Phil Heatley: “we’re pleased that we’re managing the economy such that interest rates are so low”. Ten minutes earlier, Tony Alexander: “lower interest rates reflect the weakness of the economic outlook”.
I’d love to see wages drop
Remember when John Key said he’d love to see wages drop? Yep? How about when Bill English claimed our low wages were our competitive advantage. Uh-huh.
Well the changes they’re bringing in to undermine working Kiwis’ bargaining power will do exactly that.
Saveloy Soup! Anyone?
Seems as though Dicken’s Oliver character was an ungrateful little ingrate who actually had it pretty good, all things considered. Gruel has to beat left over savaloy water, no?
The real reason for the secret ballot law
The tories are all puffed up about finally getting their secret ballot law passed. It’s about freedom they say, they’re on the side of the working man.
Thing is it’s not. And they most certainly aren’t.
All in the game
Everyone’s leaped on the Nats’ contraceptives for benies bid to distract from banks.com. Guess I’ll jump in too. Capitalist morality goes: the world/God rewards the good, which is why capitalists are rich – so, the poor, like beneficiaries, must be morally bad – the world would be better without bad people. Eugenics has been and remains a logical endpoint of capitalist morality.
Talley’s cracking
It is a fundamental injustice of our society that one family, which already has more than it can ever need, can hold 1,300 families, who have very little, to ransom just to make a little more cash. But the union makes us working people strong. By standing together, the workers are beating Talley’s in the AFFCO lockout. Talley’s cracked. Wants half them back. The workers have said ‘all of us or none of us’.
Inter-generational theft
Baby boomers strike again. In 1989, University fees for domestic students in New Zealand were less than $300. Moreover, for many students, 90% of that […]
The lucky ticket
By popular acclaim we’re putting this comment by rosy up as a Guest Post. Rosy describes success in life by analogy to winning various divisions of lotto…
Genesis boss living it up on your money
The FYI project and I/S at No Right Turn have uncovered what appears to be massive abuse of expenses by Genesis CEO Albert Brantley, whom we pay $1.2m a year. It puts me in mind of Marie Antoinette. And we know what happened to her. Almost as shocking is the small stuff. Lucky Genesis is subject to the OIA, for now, so this guy could be found out.
What is neoliberalism?
KJT offers a welcome refresher on the dominant economic/political ideology of our time. The one that has lead us to where we are today: Neo-Liberalism is a moral and intellectual justification for greed. A way for those few who accumulate wealth, by impoverishing many, to justify themselves, and keep those they are stealing from docile and compliant.
A society that works for the few doesn’t work
This country produces $200 billion of wealth a year. Yet half of adults have incomes less than $29,000 a year. 200,000 kids live in poverty, may in working families. A tiny few – the 1% – pocket the lion’s share. There is no justification. It is bad for society and the economy. Helen Kelly confronts the greed irrational of one rich family, the Talley’s, and how it’s hurting 1,300 poor working families.
Pokies: the crack cocaine of gambling
A sad story in the Herald today of a man who got hooked on pokies. It has destroyed his family and relationships. He’s started ripping off clients at work. All to put money in the machines that SkyCity profits from. SkyCity has so many addicts customers it says it needs more machines. SkyCity is a cancer. We shouldn’t just stop its expansion. We should excise it.
The other wage gap
In his speech yesterday, David Shearer talked about how wages have lagged productivity gains since the neoliberal revolution. Here’s what he was talking about:
The counter-revolution will be networked
Don’t know if you saw Ruth Richardson’s wee rant in the Herald yesterday. Never realised she was such a bad writer. That was awful. Just a bunch of catchphrases and insensitive mention of Christchurch so she could use earthquake metaphors. Her thrust seems to be that the social media age will make us all free-market libertarians. Couldn’t be more wrong.
Sack or be sacked
Ports of Auckland management admit they gave Slater/Lusk the confidential employment details of a worker who criticised the bosses’ disastrous bargaining strategy. At least 2 other workers were victims of the same misdeed. CEO Tony Gibson needs to sack the senior staff responsible. If he can’t or won’t, he’s incompetent or complicit and ought to go himself.
A(nother) bad day for the dynamic duo
It was a bad day yesterday for the ‘heavy hitters’ of the Collins faction, Slater and Lusk. First, Ports of Auckland admitted supplying them with a workers’ private details. Then, the smear on the Meatworkers that they had orchestrated with Talley’s was shot down by the SFO in record time. Finally, Michelle Boag gave them a public serve on RNZ, fueling civil war talk.
Intro for International Organisation for a Participatory Society
Revolution in Springfield 😉
Milking a Land of Plenty?
NZ milk production has apparently risen by 30% since 2005. And, according to sources used by frenz.co.nz, back in 2006 over 14 billion […]
AFFCO to extend lockout to avoid holiday pay
Talley’s has sunk to a new low in the AFFCO lockout. Not content with trying to starve out 1,000 workers and force them to accept 20% pay cuts, Talley’s-owned AFFCO meatworks are planning to lockout hundreds more workers on the Easter statutory holidays – just to save on paying its workers holiday leave. It’s a despicable, and hopefully illegal, move.
0900 LOCKOUT
While the PoAL dispute has been raging a thousand meatworkers are entering their fifth week of lockout at Talleys-owned AFFCO.
There’s a war on workers on across the country at the moment but you can help fight back.
On incompetent management
Once upon a time, decades ago now, ports were run by a person called the Harbourmaster. He used to be a highly qualified and experienced Master Mariner, who had extensive knowledge of shipping and decades of experience, at sea and within the port. All this competence and experience came at a wage, at most, five times the average wage.
POAL falling apart
Things are not going so well for Ports of Auckland. “Ports of Auckland lifts lock-out amid board rift” sums it up…