While it rains, thousands of homes are rotting, a legacy of the stupid deregulation of the building industry by National in the 1990s. The current government is proposing that huge costs be passed on to ratepayers, and tonight Wellington City Council votes on the plan. There are no good solutions to this mess.
John Key’s “Don’t Be Jealous” Budget has done little to stop the European contagion from ravaging our sharemarket – at time of writing down […]
Hone Harawira does not want to vote for the ‘don’t be jealous’ budget and he doesn’t think the Maori Party will be standing true to its principles or supporters if it does. Harawira sought permission to vote against the Budget. Tariana Turia, who is awfully comfortable in the back of her Crown limo, refused. Let’s hope Harawira has the courage cross the floor anyway.
Inequality is terribly damaging to society. National want to increase inequality by transferring wealth from the poor to the rich. They argue that this provides “incentives” for the vast majority of the rest of us to “get ahead”. But this aspirational argument is both incoherent and absurd.
The US Republican Party faces destruction at the hands of the Teabaggers, a reactionary movement based on ignorance and fear that the Republican leadership purposely created. National faces a similar risk. It cynically fed its members anti-climate change conspiracy theorist nonsense. Now the Nats have to govern but their knuckle-draggers are fighting back.
Yesterday I posted on John Key being named “Dim bulb of the week” by the San Francisco Examiner. Continuing with a dim bulb theme – let’s talk about Edison Hour, as it is explained to us by a budding genius from ACT…
The Greens have released their alternative budget, “Mind the Gap”. It focuses on the inequality between rich and poor in NZ (rightly called “the scourge of modern societiesâ€). It’s great to see the Greens tackling this issue head on.
It is always amusing listening to Matthew Hooten being a spinster on politics. But it was rather ironic for him to be in a conversation about John Key’s “loose lips” on NatRad this morning. He talked about this site posting conspiracy theories, but he was talking about a post at Tumeke and attributing to us.
“Loose lips” appear to be rife amongst the right-wing politicians and political commentators these days.
Our PM is now an international laughing stock, having been nominated by the San Francisco Examiner as “Dim bulb of the week” for his cannibal joke. Nor are Key’s most recent comments on the Tuhoe deal likely to help matters…
The headline for the Herald’s editorial today says a lot about where the media are at with National at the moment. The Government and its […]
David Farrar has finally made a comment on my “Hey Chubby…” post. It raises more questions than it answers. So I ask some of the obvious questions, and conclude that he has forsaken the principles of “free speech” that he so enthusiastically espoused only a few years ago.
The United Nations declared 2010 to be the International Year of Biodiversity. They have stated ‘It is a celebration of life on earth and of the value of biodiversity for our lives.’ National has taken up the cause wholeheartedly in a variety of weird ways. They seem hell bent on enacting policies that will do nothing but destroy biodiversity in the name of the economic growth.
Hey thanks John, you’ve really helped put New Zealand in the international spotlight yet again. First it was your clown act on Letterman, […]
There appears to have been a recent and sudden shift in the attitude of John Key and the National party towards Maori. Marty Mars has drawn my attention with a ballistic comment to the latest insulting and distasteful ‘joke’ by John Key about the Tuhoe.
Update: His ‘joke’ has now gone international. Our clueless Tourism Minister has just ‘lifted’ our profile abroad. Thanks John…
Phil Goff has delivered his speech on Labour’s economic vision ahead of the Budget. It’s a good one, filled with core Labour values and ideas that will get New Zealand moving ahead. Goff talks about fairer tax rather than tax cuts for the rich, better monetary policy, and investing in New Zealand’s future.
You can’t mix oil and water. You can swirl things about for a while and it may appear you’ve mixed them but there is an essential difference that can’t be crossed. Likewise, there is an illusion that John Key, like some alchemist of old, has magically transcended fundamental political facts to make a National/Maori Party relationship work. But illusions can’t last forever.
A recently released UMR poll commissioned by right-wing think tank the Maxim Institute shows strong support for the policies of the last Labour […]
A headline on Newsroom caught my eye a couple of days back: “Deficit Falls Further”. Good news, so, well done the Nats? Turns out no, not so much…
Tuhoe had settled their compensation deal with the Crown. It was to go to Cabinet for sign off and the deal would be announced at a hui on Friday.But then John Key was confronted by the Nat’s pissed off hick base at the regional conference. What was he to do? The right thing by a people whose land was stolen from them? Or the thing that would best help his poll ratings? Guess.
Congratulations John on your latest speech. We especially like the line “Let me be clear: there is no room for separatism in New […]
Bill English is trying to assuage National Party member who are concerned that the Party is betraying its principles (ha!) and giving too much to the Maori Party saying “all those decisions are being made in the context of the longer-term view, reaching our objectives over the next four or five years” – winning a second term trumps principle. It’s about power for its own sake.
The budget for Whanau Ora, which has been billed as a magical, ineffable revolution in social welfare will be just $33 million a year. What a joke. Whanau Ora’s budget will be less than twice that of that other great fizzer, the John Key Memorial Cycleway. I predict it will have about twice the effect as well.
I’m glad to see Labour is stealing a march on the lazy Nats and building an alternative economic vision ahead of the Budget. It looks to be just the vision New Zealand needs, built on the twin planks of economic sovereignty and a fairer distribution of wealth.
Apparently Paula Bennet is not aware quite who she has appointed to advise the Welfare Working Group…
In 2000, Labour gave permission for two companies to carry out traditional gold-panning for tourism purposes on Schedule 4 land. National seems to think this is a great scandal. As if zero-impact gold-panning in rivers is comparable to gold cast mines and massive tailings lakes. They’re really getting desperate, aren’t they?
We’ve passed “the honeymoon”, we’ve passed “the honeymoon is over”, and we’re now on to discussions of “the tipping point” for the National government. Not before time.
This is not a time for mixed messages. Phil Goff is quoted today as saying: “They [the Government] have got to back down from both Great Barrier Island and the Coromandel”. No! Labour’s position, and the position of the biggest single protest march since 1938, is no mining in any Schedule 4 land! Don’t dilute the message…
A new report says that building the half a billion worth of new rail rolling stock for Auckland in New Zealand would boost GDP by $250 million, improve our current account deficit by over $100 million, add $70 million to government revenue, and create 1200 skilled jobs. But the Government just want the cheapest price for the rail cars, and that means going overseas.
Most of this country’s mineral wealth lies under private land, according to the government’s own figures. So, why are the Nats so determined to override public opinion and let their mining allies dig up our precious protected lands? Simple: mining on private land means paying a lease to the owner. Mining on public land is cheaper: we’re played like chumps for bigger profits.
50,000 New Zealanders march against the mining plans of this government. For many, the mining agenda is yet another black mark against this government that has done nothing positive about the issues that matter – jobs, wages, health, education, the environment. But the capitalist elite who so desperately wanted their party in power are getting pretty pissed off too.
The Nat/ACT/Maori Party government has seen 55,000 more people go on benefits. They want to work. There aren’t enough jobs. How to make […]
Labour’s Darien Fenton is a gutsy, tireless advocate for working Kiwis. She was left gobsmacked by the Maori Party’s decision to vote for weakening Kiwis’ rights to work breaks. Maybe there’s a cunning plan that the Maori Party’s backing of a party that wants higher unemployment, weaker work rights, and lower wages will see more Maori in better paid jobs with improved conditions.
It’s fantastic to see Labour working on an Open Government policy as a major plank for the next election. And taking an open approach to the policy development is a stroke of genius. Politically, Labour has an incredible opportunity to position itself in contrast to the secretive and undemocratic National party. More than that, this stuff matters.
The choices between Labour and National are becoming clearer by the day. Next election the public is going to be offered two very different futures for New Zealand. Not between Labour and a dissembling “Labour Lite”, but between Labour and the true National agenda exposed.
Last week, the Maori Party endlessly praised National for the meaningless DRIP. Yesterday, we got deathly silence as Trevor Mallard revealed that the Government is giving whare kura schools only $50,000 in base operating funding. Mainstream schools get $130,000. The Government is treating kids at Maori immersion schools as second-class citizens and the Maori Party is OK with it.
National is predictably planning to put the cost of polluters’ actions on to the rest of us by canning the major parts of the ETS. This stupid game of pass the buck is played out all over the world – polluters refuse to accept their responsibilities, governments refuse to act – as more greenhouse gases are pumped into the atmosphere, locking us in to economic and ecological devastation.
