Posts on the economy, work, business, income, and labour
This collection of articles from recent days illustrate the class war going on within this country. In a time of economic, environmental, and social crisis, either the established elite can be reined in or it will use its power to cement its position and take a greater share of the wealth. Because we’re letting them, the elite are winning the class war.
Warners bludge $30 mil out of us. Kiwifruit growers get a blank cheque while other firms go under. Farmers have their hands out cause it hasn’t rained. Rich finance investors get us to cover their losses. Now, a $10K a night resort wants us to pay for some royals to stay there. Apparently, it’ll be great value for money – that’s what corporate bludgers always say.
I confess that I am used to thinking of China as a polluter, not much concerned with environmental standards or green technology. I am very pleased indeed to find that I am wrong. Green technology is yet another area where China is drawing ahead of America and much of the West.
Pike River Coal has been pushing for access to investigation interviews.
This kind of interference needs to be stopped before the investigation is compromised.
It was pretty cool that the next Finance Minister wrote a post about my post yesterday. Even if was to say I was dickishly misinterpreting him 😀 I’ve got a couple of points in reply but the biggest is why is Labour talking about (restrictive) privatisation and PPPs policies when there are much more important economic issues at hand?
Given the importance of this debate, I thought I’d just lift this straight from David Cunliffe’s post on Red Alert:
“I guess it’s all in a day’s work, but MartyG on The Standard misintrepeted my position on PPPs in this recent post.”
Remember how Peter Jackson and Warner Bros pulled the old Hollywood shakedown on us? By making a hollow threat to film elsewhere they got an extra $30 million and a law passed just for them. This was supposedly necessary to save a vital economy gain for the country but the Government knew that was bollocks all along.
The other week, Lynn and I made fun of John Key’s dream that New Zealand would become the Ireland of the South Seas. Does he still believe we should emulate the Irish? The answer is yes. Key wants to abandon proper process and speed up work on an international financial centre for New Zealand, just like the one that helped get Ireland where it is today.
The recommendations of the Nats’ welfare working group are, predictably, good old fashioned Tory welfare bashing. In contrast a report released last week by the Anglican Social Justice Commission shows just how misguided the ideology underlying this attack on welfare is.
When they’re not polluting our rivers or fighting animal welfare laws, our farmers, the ‘guardians of the land’, are opposing having to pay for their greenhouse emissions. Now, with the Earth having just clocked up its warmest 12 months since records began, farmers are scratching their heads at the early start to the summer drought.
It seems I’m not alone in feeling outrage at attempts to bury any sensible debate on the shape and extent of New Zealand’s coal operations
“New Zealand investors are facing an accounting crisis. This is because domestic companies have rejected many of the new international financial reporting standards (IFRS) and are declaring “adjusted”, “underlying”, “operating”, “excluding non-trading” and “from continuing operations” profits that vary significantly from audited IFRS-compliant profits.”
By backing private public partnerships David Cunliffe has potentially given the government a free pass on privatisation – one of the biggest issues of the next election.
That’s bad policy and bad politics. I expected better from him.
It’s a special breed of people who can deny workers a cost of living pay increase while pocketing a hundred thousand dollar a week pay cheque. It’s a special breed who can take people’s livelihoods or risk their health and safety to add a few cents to the share price. Research names that breed: psychopaths. Capitalism is built by and for them.
The Fabians’ Resilient Economy series run through this year has been stressing the looming problem with New Zealand’s private debt and the need […]
I’m not going to waste a lot of time on the Welfare Working Group’s report. It follows the Brash-esque formula of mis-representing the issue as some massive problem and then presenting ‘solutions’ that have failed overseas. Like the Brash reports, it will be used by the Nats for bait and switch, making their actual cuts seem moderate by comparison.
In Question Time yesterday, Bill English said Ireland is an example of how bad the recession might have gone in New Zealand. That triggered a memory of John Key three years ago saying we should follow the Irish economic model. I guess we can just be thankful Key wasn’t in power at the time to put that crazy ‘aspiration’ in effect.
As of April 1 next year, I’m going to be a whole lot less confident moving to a new job. If I do, I’ll probably find the new contract gives the boss the right to fire me without giving me the right to justice if the firing is unfair. Reducing workers’ confidence to change jobs is just one of the stupid consequences of universal Fire at Will.
Reading the news on the current plight of the Irish with a economy in a tailspin and a tottering government. I can but […]
Standard and Poor’s shock move to downgrade our credit rating caused markets to plunge late yesterday. Bill English’s reaction, predictably, is to pretend nothing is wrong. John Key says it’s about debt, even as he borrows for tax cuts. But let’s look at what S&P says is wrong with us:
Seems Eric Cantona wasn’t listening.
I particularly liked the response given by Valérie Ohannesian of the French Banking Federation who, seemingly devoid of any sense of irony stated that, “One of the main roles of a bank is to keep money safe. This appeal will give great pleasure to thieves, I would have thought.”
A new Horizon poll shows that the vast majority of Kiwis at all incomes level, but especially low-income families, feel worse off after the Nats’ October 1 tax swindle. John Key claimed the vast bulk of us would be better off but clearly we aren’t; shuffling money around and giving more to the rich leaves the rest of us with less.
Financial journalist Bernard Hickey of interest.co.nz and Selwyn Pellett of the Productive Economy Council will discuss the need for a complete rethink of […]
The Spirit Level is the book that the loony right of politics loves to hate. Today, Sunday morning political analysis show Q+A features Emeritus Professor Richard Wilkinson, co-author of The Spirit Level (9am on One). Should be an interesting programme…
John Armstrong’s straight-faced piss-take of John Key’s holiday very important diplomatic mission to Japan last week is very very funny. Without a hint of irony, Armstrong reveals how Key achieved nothing, talked big only to be put in his place by the big boys, and filled in his diary that was devoid of important meetings with pissant PR.
National Bank has joined NZIER in estimating the economy shrank 0.2% in the September Quarter and all the projections say it’ll go backwards this quarter too. Bill English now admits John Key’s ‘rapid recovery’ isn’t happening. But he insists it’s coming – tomorrow, no, the day after for sure. We’ve just got to keep waiting…
Labour picked up on the statistics I revealed yesterday that show the median income of Maori has fallen 11.5% under National and the Pacific Island median income is down an astounding 19%. Kris Fa’afoi and Annette King put out press releases. Then King took the battle to Bill English in the House, who it seems is also a reader.
Bill English is always busy trying to put lipstick on the pig of our moribund economy. His latest attempt is to argue that we are experiencing a “savings based recovery”. There’s no such thing. He’s just making excuses for the fact that people have no money to spend, or are desperately trying to pay down debt in these uncertain times. Enough with the lipstick. Enough with the empty promises of jam tomorrow — National are never going to deliver.
Democracy is quietly dying in NZ but you’d never know it by the media’s response. The government is rushing through a slew* of […]
Last year, over 13,000 New Zealanders got some measure of satisfaction from ANZ’s part-owned ING in New Zealand. For over a year, half a billion dollars in investors’ funds had been locked up, during a nasty dispute between ING/ANZ and their investors. How has ANZ made things right for everyone who was hurt? They’ve renamed ING as ‘One Path’
Bill English and brother Conner, CEO of Federated Farmers, share a vision for the world. It’s one where the environment and workers are exploited to the hilt in the name of ‘growth’ and the fruits of that ‘growth’ flow to a privileged elite (like the Englishes). Yesterday rich-boy Conner chided the rest of us with a speech titled “There is no free lunch”
Here’s a little something that Kris Fa’afoi and his team might like to being to the attention of Mana voters as they prepare to go to the polls. On National’s watch, the median Maori income has fallen 11.5%. For Pacific Islanders the fall’s 19%. Pakeha are down 2.6%. No tax cut for the rich can cover the gaping holes in those family budgets.
Who would have thought that while Hone was talking up Matt McCarten in Mana the other day he was getting ready to vote […]
I know it’s in National’s DNA to fight regulation where ever they find it but it looks like the meat industry and government ‘watch dog’ MAF’s […]
So people get sick and become less productive. I would have thought that that was pretty much stating the obvious.
Spending tax payers money trying to quantify how much imaginary wealth these sick people could have created for their employers if they had been perfectly well, seems to me to be bordering on lunacy.
