Posts on the economy, work, business, income, and labour
Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, December 7th, 2010 - 25 comments
In a surprise to no-one, John Key has appointed 3 time election loser Hekia Parata to replace the latest of his corrupt ministers to walk the plank – Pansy Wong. I’m hoping Parata will be less of a disgrace than Wong. It wouldn’t be hard, she would just have to actually try to answer questions in the House and actually do something about the wage gaps.
Written By: - Date published: 12:31 pm, December 6th, 2010 - 41 comments
The modern urge to label leaders who perform adequately during an emergency as ‘heroes’ astounds me. Particularly in the case of Pike River. Peter Whitall is a boss who just had 29 workers die on his work-site. While reserving judgment on his blame for that, I’m not going to call him a hero for doing a decent job for the cameras.
Written By: - Date published: 10:24 am, December 6th, 2010 - 17 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 9:40 pm, December 5th, 2010 - 47 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 1:45 pm, December 4th, 2010 - 26 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 10:27 am, December 4th, 2010 - 75 comments
Pike River Coal has been pushing for access to investigation interviews.
This kind of interference needs to be stopped before the investigation is compromised.
Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, December 3rd, 2010 - 20 comments
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?
Written By: - Date published: 7:18 am, December 3rd, 2010 - 63 comments
Written By: - Date published: 1:45 pm, December 2nd, 2010 - 72 comments
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.”
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, December 2nd, 2010 - 15 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, December 2nd, 2010 - 64 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 9:33 am, December 2nd, 2010 - 12 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 11:36 pm, December 1st, 2010 - 121 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, November 29th, 2010 - 24 comments
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
Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, November 29th, 2010 - 5 comments
“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.”
Written By: - Date published: 8:01 am, November 29th, 2010 - 167 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 9:28 am, November 26th, 2010 - 223 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 7:08 pm, November 25th, 2010 - 2 comments
The Fabians’ Resilient Economy series run through this year has been stressing the looming problem with New Zealand’s private debt and the need to focus more on exports. Now everyone has noticed the problem, including the Reserve Bank, the Treasury and Standard and Poors. Financial journalist Bernard Hickey of interest.co.nz and Selwyn Pellett of the […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:17 pm, November 25th, 2010 - 40 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, November 24th, 2010 - 11 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, November 24th, 2010 - 33 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 8:40 am, November 24th, 2010 - 36 comments
Reading the news on the current plight of the Irish with a economy in a tailspin and a tottering government. I can but reflect that it was a bloody good thing that the National party wasn’t in power after 1999. For instance, John Key as recently as 2008 was praising the fragile economic model that […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:41 am, November 23rd, 2010 - 69 comments
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:
Written By: - Date published: 2:56 pm, November 22nd, 2010 - 3 comments
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.”
Written By: - Date published: 9:43 am, November 22nd, 2010 - 23 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 9:57 pm, November 21st, 2010 - 1 comment
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 our approach to economic policy Monday evening in Wellington at Connolly Hall at 5:30pm. Besides writing regular opinion pieces and providing information on his site, Bernard Hickey writes a regular column in […]
Written By: - Date published: 6:05 am, November 21st, 2010 - 11 comments
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…
Written By: - Date published: 12:37 pm, November 20th, 2010 - 28 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 12:27 pm, November 19th, 2010 - 15 comments
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…
Written By: - Date published: 8:52 am, November 19th, 2010 - 33 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 3:38 pm, November 18th, 2010 - 47 comments
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.
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