Posts on the economy, work, business, income, and labour
National has claimed that Jacinda Ardern ruled out national strikes during the last year’s election campaign. And has trimmed a video and taken comments out of context to justify its claim.
If we can’t see the wood for the trees, shouldn’t we simply step back a bit and look again?
Take a look around the room you’re in. Or if you’re out and about and reading this on some mobile device, then take a look around the next room you enter. Closely.
Twitter in the right hands can be a very dangerous thing. As shown by Jessica Williams when she questioned the intellectual grunt of the taxpayers union in this series of tweets.
Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage has incurred attacks from the right by refusing to allow the desecration of conservation land on the West Coast.
The Government has announced that all employees in the core public service will be paid a living wage from September 1, 2018.
…on reclaimed land. (Dunedin) – because water features are nice things to have.
If the political class think liberalism has failed, then why is it that the process of killing off NZ Post is approaching completion?
Liberalism was meant to be the New World Order and even (so the briefly celebrated Fukiyama reckoned anyway) an End to History. Big stuff then. But it seems the placid and complacent consensus is fraying round the edges.
In New Zealand there is sufficient evidence to show that poor peoples’ lives are cut short because of poverty related poor nutrition. While food banks are alleviating the worst impacts of hunger, their kindness may well be contributing to the problem. Food poverty is a systemic issue and requires a systemic response, a response that successive governments are able to avoid while charities continue to provide a buffer for the system.
Darien Fenton writes about Business New Zealand’s early approach to the Fair Pay panel.
Matthew Hooton and Fran O’Sullivan have claimed that the Government’s decision to ban off shore petroleum exploration is “Orwellian”, part of an attempt to divert attention from other issues, bad for the environment and bad for jobs. Are they right?
Remember when you could pay a mortgage, keep the kitchen cupboard full, take the kids to the movies now and then, by working as a bus driver, a freezing worker, a journalist, or any number of other solid middle-Kiwi jobs? When a decent working life was a given…
Perhaps the idea that it’s necessary to have national objectives and realistic plans to achieve them, is overrated. Seems to be working for Trump.
National thinks that getting back to full employment, having wages and conditions sufficient to allow a working family to live in decency on one full time wage, and home ownership rates of about 70% are a bad thing.
National MP Parmjeet Parmar has been accused of threatening to tell the employers of submitters to a Select Committee what they had said in evidence if they did not withdraw their statements.
Some conversations about poverty are harming those in need. Those conversations contribute to the stigma and shame experienced by struggling families, who are barely surviving, but still trying to maintain some dignity. As a result even those in need are differentiating between the deserving and undeserving poor.
Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth according to a Guardian headline.
Yeah. No it’s not.
Quietly mulling on the difference between foreign interference (malign) and influence (benign).
The Prime Minister’s chief science adviser Peter Gluckman has described the previous Government’s policy on methamphetamine in Housing Corp houses as hysterical and concluded that there has never been a documented case of someone getting sick from third-hand exposure to methamphetamine.
Not just, ‘we’ve got to make the good outweigh the bad’. I mean: why should dairy farming exist here?
For the first time possibly ever a National leader has supported the right of the rank and file to engage in industrial action to improve their living conditions.
Being a nimby is the least of Mark Richardson’s problems. His disguised hate speech is harmful to his victims and anyone else in need of help who are left feeling the shame imposed upon them by such careless dialogue.
New Zealand has a low carbon energy future plan. What is the strategy to achieve this?
Is NZ’s fishing industry just a domestic version of the tobacco companies? And how much would that really matter?
On Thursday 31 May at the University of Auckland, the Fabians are hosting Max Harris on the topic “Is it time for an independent foreign policy?” What would be the costs of a really independent foreign policy, over the benefits of salving our conscience with greater national independence? And where does Trade fit in?
Sam Stubbs, a longstanding outspoken commentator in New Zealand’s financial industry, continues to advocate for a Royal Commission into banking and insurance.
In a welcome move by Labour to relieve energy poverty on those with fixed, low incomes, all beneficiaries (including pensioners) are to get up to $700 extra automatically over winter.
National obviously hate this.
National has made a meal of its first critique of Labour’s budget with a poor performance by Simon Bridges and with four claims about the budget that are clearly wrong but which National keep repeating.
Some proposals on why we just got the budget we did.
The National Party has recently been on the Government’s case for increasing strikes under their watch. But is that really a fair criticism, and does it jive well with the other things the Opposition has been claiming to value?
Simon Bridges has committed the twin political sins of not only believing in trickle down but in publicly confirming his belief.
This is as good a year as it is going to get to squeeze your employer for a fair wage.
Jim Parker dissects the Australian customs around the presentation of the Budget with comments that are just as applicable to New Zealand’s system.
Flying kites is…
In spite of all the sharp intakes of breathe going on across media outlets, there will be no war between Iran and Israel. Here’s why.
