My regular Sunday piece of interesting, longer, deeper stories I found during the week. It’s also a chance for you to share what you found this week too. This week: plutocrats, the New World Order, benefits and solving slavery and extinction.
Two years on and the chief executive of the Canterbury District health board David Meates has started to see some worrying trends showing up in Christchurch/Canterbury. People are failing to take their meds. Binge drinking and other dangerous behaviours are on the increase. Government is adding to the problem, not fixing it.
Key denied promising the Pike River families that the bodies of their loved ones would be retrieved. Now that his faulty account has been corrected by new video evidence, he owes it more than ever to the families to do the right thing. Key made the promise – he should honour it.
Amidst all the current scandal and chaos, the Nats’ privatisation agenda grinds on.
In 2010 the largest protest for a generation in NZ marched down Queen St to oppose mining. But by squinting sideways at some rigged polling questions, industry advocates (aided and abetted by dumb headline writers) would have you believe that we the people support mining…
Why is John Key backing the flagging tourist industry as a major export earner for NZ’s future? His trip to Hollywood was partly about using the Hobbit to promote NZ as a tourist destination. Why is the government so fixated on attracting more US tourists?
Greenie bashing season has just opened and that could see the end of Bennie bashing for the mean time. Over the last week two high profile and one low profile National politicians (Steven Joyce, Nick Smith & Colin king) have come out in the media with scathing comments attacking opponents to two high profile environmental cases currently before judges.
We’re told 36,000 workers are needed for the Christchurch rebuild. But since the earthquakes began 2 years ago, 9,000 people with the skills needed for the rebuild have left New Zealand. We’re making no effort to keep the skilled workers we have but the Government thinks those 36,000 workers will just magically appear when needed.
My regular Sunday piece of interesting, longer, deeper stories I found during the week. It’s also a chance for you to share what you found this week too. This week: Obama the Tory, fish, Planet Key and the UK’s hit political single.
I was reading an article looking at the aftermath of the Rena shipwreck in the Herald. In it I read some ridiculous statements by Gerry Brownlee that seemed (like so much from him) to come from the early part of the last century. It appears that he (and his minons in the M0T) haven’t quite caught up on rapid progress of the digital age in nautical circles. Hasn’t he heard about AIS? Or computers?
Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce has launched a broadside against the environmental opponents of the privately owned Denniston mine project. To do this Stephan Joyce has tried to draw a bow linking those who wish to stop the opening of the Dennistion mine, with the closing of the Spring Creek mine.
Another report confirms the findings of the 2006 Stern Report. The future economic costs of doing nothing far outweigh the current costs of taking action on climate change. But National is taking us backwards…
MrSmith has been following National’s new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hearing considering an application by New Zealand King Salmon for a plan change and resource consents so it can create nine new fish farms in areas of the Marlborough Sounds where aquaculture is prohibited. It seems fishy and at odds with the stated intent of the EPA.
Public Lecture on Sunday 30 September, 1pm-3pm, Auckland University Fisher & Paykel Auditorium, Owen G Glenn Building, University of Auckland Business School.
Clean green 100% pure New Zealand?
Or the only nation in the world to vote against measures to stop the extinction of the world’s rarest dolphins?
Anyone notice that the Right’s arguments against ownership of water – apart from being a willful confusion of ownership in rights to water, which is what iwi are actually inserting and which are clearly enjoyed by a range of people under our law at present, and ownership of water itself (something, apparently, limited to bottled water sellers) – would apply equally to land?
Only 12 people turned up to Key’s first sham talks with iwi. He might have gotten a better turnout if he had come with cupcakes or, you know, a genuine intention to negotiate in good faith.
It seems that whenever a matter arises that involves some claim of collective ownership or control by Maori, John Key comes up with what he describes as an ‘elegant solution’. If Key can come up with a string of such solutions I thought maybe I could give it a try. Therefore, this is my attempt at developing an ‘elegant solution’ to the matter of Maori claims to the ownership of water.
The Nats are beginning their sham consultation with a handful of tame ‘Iwi Leaders’ today. The hui will be by invitation and will not include the Maori Council, which iwi have appointed to lead for them on the water rights issue. Of course, National doesn’t want a real debate. It won’t genuinely discuss shares plus. This is a fake process. And it will all end up in court next year.
Guest poster Andy-Roo reflects on a ride through the Christchurch Red Zone, the social contract, and Gerry Brownlee…
With proposed ETS changes National is abdicating our responsibility on the world stage, and sending the bill to the taxpayers. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment calls it ‘a farce’. It’s cowardly, it’s weak, and it’s shafting the working Kiwi.
My regular Sunday piece of interesting, longer, deeper stories I found during the week. It’s also a chance for you to share what you found this week too. This week: torture, charter schools, economics and development.
Yesterday’s national hui on water rights has resulted in the best possible outcome for Maori, a decision to present a unified front in the face of National’s divide and rule tactics.
Puddleglum at The Political Scientist has written an encyclopedic and scathing critique of the Nats’ dictatorship in Canterbury.
So the government is announcing the “lifetime cost” of social welfare payments today to soften the ground for cracking down on beneficiaries.
By coincidence they’re also in the process of rushing through changes to the emissions trading scheme that will cost the taxpayer billions of dollars in corporate welfare.
While Labour and the Greens are laying out concrete policies to tackle poverty and its consequences that lead to life-long problems (child payment and home insulation from the Greens, food in schools and reading recovery from Labour), National MPs are acting as slum landlords, refusing to spend a few thousand dollars to bring their rentals up to standard.
No Right Turn on the Nats’ continuing contempt for democracy in Canterbury.
Something struck me as weird about the Spring Creek closure. Why have they stopped mining immediately even though the future of the mine hasn’t been decided and the miners are still being paid? Why did Solid Energy consider it more economic to pay the miners to leave the coal in the ground than dig it up? The answer has big implications for the government’s mining obsession.
It’s easy to see why Key has forbidden National MPs from attending the national water rights hui – he’s playing divide and rule with Maori. More difficult to understand is the Maori Party’s craven decision to stay away. Hone Harawira condemns them in the strongest possible language.
There are perfectly good reasons that NZ as a country should remain GM free. And we should stand up and say so in the face of inept and blatant lobbying from the GM industry.
There’s a major housing crisis in Christchurch. People are living in unsafe, cold houses and their health is suffering. Rents are at criminal levels. And people are still fleeing the city. So, what’s the Government doing about it? As I/S at No Right Turn reports, OIA requests show that they are doing nothing and leaving it to the market to house people after a national disaster.
Greenpeace has a case in front of the Court of Appeal today. It is going to be important for any number of small charities who do some advocacy work that may be considered to be ‘political’.
But Greenpeace deserves a resounding cheer for taking this case when it is far more important to other advocates from poverty groups to churches to climate deniers than it is to themselves.
It is two years since the first big Christchurch earthquake. For far too many families the aftermath lingers on…
Spring Creek miners and their families will lead a community March for Work in Greymouth tomorrow calling on Solid Energy and the Government to secure the future of the town and ensure the mine stays open.
Planning permission has been sought to construct the world’s largest windfarm off the Scottish coast. Estimated to cost around 4.5 billion pounds and […]
Gerry Brownlee has announced $12.3 billion of road spending over the next 3 years. Asset sales will pay for less than half of it. Does it really make sense to lose control of our strategic assets – with all the income they bring in – for just over 1 year’s worth of roads?
