Written By: - Date published: 10:32 am, July 18th, 2022 - 37 comments
I watched the Rugby test on Saturday night. One side played with passion and vigour. Their forward pack dominated and the defensive effort from the backs was superb. The other side was the All Blacks who displayed all the passion and vigour of a National Party conference.
Written By: - Date published: 12:02 pm, November 19th, 2021 - 24 comments
The New Zealand state is gaining power again, but is it what we want?
Written By: - Date published: 7:48 am, October 28th, 2021 - 23 comments
COVID has reminded us how good New Zealand is, and we should remember how we were reminded.
Written By: - Date published: 8:40 am, September 4th, 2020 - 78 comments
Everyone has recently had an education on “Socialism” working in practice.
And a graphic illustration of the shortcomings, of under regulated “Free market” Capitalism, Globalism, tax cuts for the rich, and the mania for monetising everything in sight, and “running it like a business”.
Written By: - Date published: 9:06 am, August 29th, 2020 - 304 comments
The Green Party is facing major push back from members relating to a decision to give shovel ready funding to a private school involved in education about the environment.
Written By: - Date published: 12:27 am, July 11th, 2020 - 4 comments
On the day of the council vote, we organised for the effected Citi-Ops workers to sit in the public gallery in the Council rooms wearing their High Viz’s and work gear. I was one of three speakers for the union, expressing opposition to axing these jobs. The Council debated the issue for about 30 minutes. Those councillors in favour of making the workers redundant argued that they should not interfere with management decisions. Those against the decision felt that management did not have the mandate to make this decision. The vote ended up being 7-7, so Green Party Mayor Celia Wade-Brown used her casting vote to uphold management’s decision to outsource these workers jobs. The Citi Operations staff were sitting in the room, so Celia and the councillors were looking at these workers as they made them redundant.
Written By: - Date published: 5:44 am, July 3rd, 2020 - 6 comments
20 days after being elected President of the Wellington Tramways and Public Passenger Transport Employees Union (we just called it Tramways), drivers at Go Wellington were locked out. The City nearly ground to a halt with thousands unable to get to work and traffic congestion a nightmare. Certain journalists were quick to call this a communist conspiracy.
Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, May 1st, 2020 - 71 comments
Former Prime Minister John Key has said that under current conditions employers are going to sack 20 per cent of their workers even if the company is doing well and that employers should never waste a crisis.
Written By: - Date published: 6:32 am, April 15th, 2020 - 112 comments
After the lockdown, it is tempting to try and go back to what we had before. To the familiar and comfortable, especially for us that were comfortable. Forgetting that for so many, things were anything but, comfortable. That won’t be happening. “Before” no longer exists.
Written By: - Date published: 11:18 am, December 12th, 2019 - 18 comments
Millions of people and an entire region of the UK left out of polling calculations….
Written By: - Date published: 2:09 am, September 19th, 2019 - 21 comments
France President Macron’s remarkable and wide-ranging speech to French ambassadors after France hosted the recent G7 conference in Biarritz is well worth a read. He lays it all out – so much better than Trump’s tweets or BoJo’s bluster.
Written By: - Date published: 8:33 am, July 3rd, 2019 - 98 comments
John Tamihere has caused jaws throughout the region to drop by proposing that half of Watercare is privatised.
Written By: - Date published: 4:15 am, June 6th, 2019 - 7 comments
London feels surreal. Joined the demo against Trump, in town to see the Queen, see off the Prime Minister, and plunder the NHS in the name of ‘free trade.’ Saw the play “The Last Temptation of Boris Johnson,” which might be prescient.
Written By: - Date published: 5:05 pm, February 3rd, 2019 - 56 comments
Polymath economist Professor Michael Hudson’s latest article is a geopolitical panoramic masterpiece, sparked by outrage at a series of concurrent events on January 31 which he predicts means that 2019 will be the “year of global fracture.” Definitely worth a read.
Written By: - Date published: 7:20 am, January 17th, 2019 - 318 comments
Five years on how are the benefits from the Mixed Ownership Model privatisation process the last Government engaged in working out?
Written By: - Date published: 4:30 pm, September 6th, 2018 - 27 comments
For a country the size of Melbourne, we have a ridiculously complex state, and this layer of accountablility is largely a complete waste of our taxpayer money and degrades our agency as citizens. Can we do better?
Written By: - Date published: 12:35 pm, August 1st, 2018 - 44 comments
Hand in hand with “compassionate liberalism”.
Written By: - Date published: 6:30 am, July 12th, 2018 - 101 comments
Perhaps the Labour-led coalition might choose to reflect on it priorities – the sufficient funding of essential public services or buying billion-dollar war machines from the Donald Trump regime.
Written By: - Date published: 11:29 am, June 13th, 2018 - 32 comments
If the political class think liberalism has failed, then why is it that the process of killing off NZ Post is approaching completion?
Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, April 6th, 2018 - 43 comments
or more accurately one. A failed vanity flag referendum.
Written By: - Date published: 7:03 am, January 28th, 2018 - 51 comments
Who are the bigger criminals?
Updated.
Written By: - Date published: 2:11 pm, January 21st, 2018 - 35 comments
A feature in yesterday’s Domion Post Weekend lays bare the extent of the scandalous selloff of huge tracts of our high country. The tenure review of the high country has been conducted since 1992 to privatise some of the land and also bringing parts into the conservation estate. The process has been followed by both National and Labour governments.
Written By: - Date published: 3:03 pm, December 11th, 2017 - 19 comments
Not only did National’s policy to sell off state houses fail, but now we’ve found out a similar Thatcher policy in the UK just handed many social houses to private landlords. Should we consider making it harder to sell off state houses in New Zealand?
Written By: - Date published: 7:39 am, November 14th, 2017 - 40 comments
TVNZ’s board has decided to respond to a massive plunge in profitability by paying it chief executive a bigger salary package and a large bonus.
Written By: - Date published: 9:07 pm, November 8th, 2017 - 99 comments
Written By: - Date published: 7:39 am, October 25th, 2017 - 73 comments
Do we want to be owned by capitalism and stay in its trap of wage and debt slavery, or do we want to boldly go to post-capitalism, whatever that might be.
Written By: - Date published: 11:34 am, October 9th, 2017 - 318 comments
Gross political incompetence, not immigration, is what lies behind and beneath New Zealand’s infra-structure problems. Only a excited donkey’s dick waving in a stiff breeze might point accusingly towards immigrants and immigration as the problem.
Written By: - Date published: 1:16 pm, July 20th, 2017 - 28 comments
Today thousands of IRD workers face the prospect of losing their jobs while two MOT workers who lost their jobs for whistle blowing are vindicated. Who would be a public servant?
Written By: - Date published: 8:59 am, May 19th, 2017 - 134 comments
The Government is attempting through coercion and cajoling to get Auckland Council to privatise Ports of Auckland.
Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, February 7th, 2017 - 78 comments
Some time in the next 12 months it is likely that the forgone dividend payments and loss in share value from the Power Company shares and Air NZ share sale will be greater than the amount received, only three years after the sale.
Written By: - Date published: 11:59 am, January 25th, 2017 - 20 comments
The problems we have identified many times, with privatisation of essential services, continue.
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