Written By: - Date published: 10:05 pm, November 5th, 2012 - 99 comments
The Pike report is welcome good sense.
But why has it taken the deaths of 29 men to get attention to health and safety regulations in mining?
Written By: - Date published: 4:00 pm, November 5th, 2012 - 184 comments
Breaking news: Kate Wilkinson has resigned her portfolio due to the Pike River Mine report. Updates: News reports. Damning official report: cold comfort for the families of the victims. Video of John Key’s press conference today. International news coverage. Video of Shearer’s response (7 mins)
Written By: - Date published: 11:19 am, November 5th, 2012 - 33 comments
John Key won’t be on the West Coast today when the Pike River report will be released. He’ll have a tightly managed press conference at the Beehive, instead. Key promised that he would stand by the Pike River families. He promised that all efforts would be put in to get the bodies out, no matter the cost. It was all hollow talk from a hollow man.
Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, November 4th, 2012 - 1 comment
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: inequality, language on social media, and feminism.
Written By: - Date published: 7:50 am, November 2nd, 2012 - 133 comments
On the back of Duncan Garner’s scathing piece on David Shearer, David Farrar endorses Grant Robertson for leader. Yeah, because his last recommendation’s worked out so well. Call me cynical, but I just don’t think National’s pollster has the Left’s interests at heart. No, I don’t think people will be looking to the Right for advice on who should lead Labour again.
Written By: - Date published: 8:27 am, November 1st, 2012 - 65 comments
Campbell Live had a piece on Monday based on a leaked report into the benefit cost ratio of National’s Kapiti Expressway project. Now, in its evidence to the EPA hearings on the project, NZTA has claimed the BCR was 0.93 – ie you only get 93 cents worth of gain for each dollar spent. It turns out that was a massive exaggeration. In reality, we get 20 cents of value for every dollar spent.
Written By: - Date published: 9:34 am, October 31st, 2012 - 33 comments
If any good can ever be said to come from a natural disaster, then let the good of Sandy be its function as a clear and present wake up call. It’s a crisis, and it’s an opportunity.
Written By: - Date published: 1:55 pm, October 30th, 2012 - 43 comments
No Right Turn on the overthrow of local democracy in Canterbury…
Written By: - Date published: 7:47 am, October 30th, 2012 - 53 comments
The US Presidential election is close. Really close. The political futures markets favour Obama about 2 to 1 but polls of the nationwide popular vote and the polls in key states, such as Ohio and Virginia, are essentially tied. Enter the October surprise – Sandy, the latest ever recorded Atlantic storm, now coming ashore and pounding key battleground states.
Written By: - Date published: 1:02 pm, October 29th, 2012 - 62 comments
Bugger the environment – who needs it? That’s the message from National, both domestically and internationally.
Written By: - Date published: 9:10 am, October 28th, 2012 - 18 comments
On Planet Key natural body processes are ignored, and nature has been tamed into a golf course. It’s a place where mothers don’t lactate or have a heightened sensitivity to their babies’ cries; a place disconnected from the chaotic consequences of climate change.
Written By: - Date published: 11:21 am, October 25th, 2012 - 9 comments
The Maori Party has pulled its support for the latest weakening of the ETS. As usual Peter Dunne will be personally responsible for propping up the worst of the Nats’ agenda.
Written By: - Date published: 9:28 am, October 24th, 2012 - 95 comments
Housing is too expensive. It has been driven up by ‘investors’ in pursuit of a safe, hands-off, tax-free return. 8% of the people own about 40% of the houses. That’s the problem – over-allocation of savings from the upper-middle class into housing pushing prices up, out of reach of the middle and working class, who become their tenants. The Nats’ solution: more sprawl.
Written By: - Date published: 2:32 pm, October 23rd, 2012 - 28 comments
As expected, the High Court advised today that the government should hold off sale of Mighty River Power. The government is complying.
Written By: - Date published: 8:28 am, October 23rd, 2012 - 17 comments
Labour MP Shane Jones appeared on TVNZ’s Q&A show over the weekend to debate with Gareth Hughes over plans for a Ross Sea marine reserve. Despite not being Labour’s spokesperson on conservation or fisheries. Labour hasn’t actually determined its position on the issue. So why did Jones appear at all? Did he get clearance from David Shearer before appearing?
Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, October 21st, 2012 - 5 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 11:24 am, October 19th, 2012 - 9 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 10:08 am, October 17th, 2012 - 62 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 5:50 pm, October 15th, 2012 - 37 comments
Amidst all the current scandal and chaos, the Nats’ privatisation agenda grinds on.
Written By: - Date published: 1:05 pm, October 15th, 2012 - 30 comments
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…
Written By: - Date published: 9:45 am, October 11th, 2012 - 18 comments
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?
Written By: - Date published: 11:09 am, October 3rd, 2012 - 38 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 10:16 am, October 1st, 2012 - 16 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, September 30th, 2012 - 17 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 1:41 pm, September 28th, 2012 - 11 comments
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?
Written By: - Date published: 12:42 pm, September 28th, 2012 - 17 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, September 28th, 2012 - 34 comments
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…
Written By: - Date published: 5:28 pm, September 27th, 2012 - 7 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 11:15 am, September 26th, 2012 - 5 comments
Public Lecture on Sunday 30 September, 1pm-3pm, Auckland University Fisher & Paykel Auditorium, Owen G Glenn Building, University of Auckland Business School.
Written By: - Date published: 8:55 pm, September 21st, 2012 - 44 comments
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?
Written By: - Date published: 12:31 pm, September 20th, 2012 - 30 comments
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?
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