Written By: - Date published: 11:23 am, November 9th, 2010 - 17 comments
Do you remember when John Key declared War on P a year ago? The action has been… underwhelming. The Police have been getting on with quietly doing a good job, to be sure, but when you grandiosely declare “War” on something, you expect a bit more attention to have been paid to it.
Written By: - Date published: 6:38 am, November 9th, 2010 - 26 comments
The Herald just accused Key of “blood on his hands” for failing to act on alcohol abuse. That’s an extraordinary rebuke. It far exceeds anything I can call from that pulpit directed at Helen Clark. John Key just lost another big chunk off his Teflon coating.
Written By: - Date published: 10:04 am, November 7th, 2010 - 8 comments
With all the crap this government’s spewing out at the moment, sometimes it pays to take a breath and look at something a bit lighter. Lynn posted a while ago about some of the oddities of the internet, noting how “milk bottle” was one of the most frequent search terms used by visitors to this […]
Written By: - Date published: 3:27 pm, November 5th, 2010 - 43 comments
Labour Party leader and PM of Japan John Key talks to visiting US President Hillary Clinton.
Written By: - Date published: 1:00 pm, November 4th, 2010 - 56 comments
How come John Key called Paul Henry’s racist comments completely unacceptable and Henry was forced to resign but Maurice Williamson’s racism is defended as ‘humour’ by Key and no punishment results? A question you might like to put to the PM. Well, if you try to ask it on Newstalk ZB they’ll let the PM’s staff censor you.
Written By: - Date published: 9:17 am, November 4th, 2010 - 25 comments
National are continuing their privatisation by stealth. Hospitals services and a new prison are the current targets. Tony Ryall, Judith Collins and Bill English are the ministers currently pushing their ideology in their respective areas.
Written By: - Date published: 3:30 pm, November 3rd, 2010 - 9 comments
A pot-pourri of a few things that have come up in the media of late, and thoughts on other media matters…
Written By: - Date published: 1:30 pm, November 3rd, 2010 - 52 comments
In a highly-charged debate like the Hobbit fiasco, it’s easy to lose sight of the real issue amongst the claims and counter-claims over petty details. In a second post that strips things back to what matters, Blue asks the big question: ‘how exactly did NZ taxpayers end up handing over tens of millions of dollars to Warner Brothers?’
Written By: - Date published: 8:28 am, November 3rd, 2010 - 47 comments
National is finding new exploitative ways to try save their by-election campaign in Mana.
Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, November 3rd, 2010 - 12 comments
Last week Speaker Lockwood Smith rolled back transparency on MPs expenses, by making travel spending secret again. John Key came out “against” the move. Yesterday Labour and the Greens called his bluff by releasing their details. Over to you John, once again you’re too late to lead, but you can still follow…
Written By: - Date published: 3:39 pm, October 28th, 2010 - 21 comments
Scoop’s Gordon Campbell has written a long piece on the Hobbit settlement and its implications. Key said that we couldn’t match the tax deals offered by other countries, but according to Campbell’s calculations that’s exactly what we have done. Campbell also has harsh words to say about Key’s “skill” as a negotiator, and advice about strengthening the film industry in NZ.
Written By: - Date published: 8:30 pm, October 27th, 2010 - 180 comments
The Government will give the Hobbit producers an extra $33 million to stay in New Zealand and it’s going to use this ‘crisis’ as an excuse to slam through more anti-worker laws. New Zealand has been played like naive hicks. The Hobbit was never leaving. We let Jackson and his Hollywood mates whip us into a frenzy of fear – now we’re paying the cost.
Written By: - Date published: 7:15 pm, October 27th, 2010 - 179 comments
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, October 27th, 2010 - 13 comments
It’s highly unusual for a new PM to meet a foreign leader of the opposition before she meets her fellow leader. But Julia Gillard’s direct snub of John Key is a fair payback for the leaks by the Key Government to try to help his mate Tony Abbott win the Australian election. Key didn’t set up the Gillard-Goff meeting. But his actions certainly cleared the way.
Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, October 27th, 2010 - 17 comments
At the last election we chose tax cuts and unemployment instead of stimulus and stability – which was the more ambitious, high wage way to go?
National are not fulfilling their government’s core reason for existence: closing the wage gap with Australia. No, we’re fast going backwards on that score, and it’s predictable: high unemployment causes low wages.
Written By: - Date published: 11:30 am, October 26th, 2010 - 30 comments
Otago Law Professor Paul Roth says possible law changes by the Key Government to provide more tax-payer funded charity to corporate giants Warner Bros Entertainment is ‘Third-World’ lawmaking and a ‘race to the bottom’ in an attempt to compete against developing nations with little or no labour rights. Roth says if we ‘lie back and prostitute ourselves […]
Written By: - Date published: 7:18 am, October 26th, 2010 - 156 comments
Lucky John Key – he’s going to have a great week! It’s hard to see how he can lose. He’ll either be the man who single-handedly saved The Hobbit, or he’ll be handed a big stick to beat the evil unions with forever. In reality, however, the decision to keep the movies here is probably already made. Key’s ego will be just another tool used against him in negotiations as the studios go for the best deal they can get…
Written By: - Date published: 2:01 pm, October 24th, 2010 - 75 comments
The Hobbit ‘crisis’ is all about money. It’s about the producers of this long-troubled production, who are in financial difficulty, wanting to minimise their up-front costs. The mark in the con is the only one with cash to offer on the scale they need – the Prime Minister. He’s the one with the most to lose and the most ability to pay.
Written By: - Date published: 9:35 am, October 22nd, 2010 - 27 comments
Every time I think John Key can’t get any more cynical and hypocritical in his messaging, he manages to take it to a new level. Apparently spending money on the education system will create “a noose around the neck of young New Zealanders”…
Written By: - Date published: 7:04 am, October 21st, 2010 - 25 comments
In three short years John Key and National have gone from economic bravado, to failure, to lies, excuses and whining. As the economy languishes they will have nothing to offer except more lies and excuses.
This is a time for fresh thinking, both globally and locally. But we won’t get it from National.
Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, October 20th, 2010 - 32 comments
Trying to get my head around the economic arguments going on. Hearing contradictory things. Who’s telling the truth? ls Labour’s new overseas investment policy Stalinism that will ruin the economy, as Key claimed on Monday and Tuesday? Or is the same as the existing law, as Key claimed on Monday and Tuesday?
Written By: - Date published: 11:24 pm, October 19th, 2010 - 40 comments
This post isn’t about National cutting education at every level, which will damage our country for decades to come. Nor is it about how they’re cutting cost-efficient preventative medicine to fund ‘sexy’ elective surgery. It’s not even about how they’re pouring billions into holiday highways in the era of peak oil. This is about the Cullen Fund.
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, October 19th, 2010 - 16 comments
Different voice, same message: instead of Stephen Joyce or John Key, we now have Bill English saying that they don’t have any money for Public Transport. Just money for roads. They’ve been forced to commit to $1.5 billion of ongoing Auckland rail projects, and that’s all it’s going to get, thank-you.
Written By: - Date published: 1:22 pm, October 18th, 2010 - 43 comments
Phil Goff made an excellent speech yesterday. One that showed far more direction, and a lot of promise for going forward. Hopefully Labour can capitalise on this much better than they did on the excellent “The Many, Not The Few” speech. They should be able to – yesterday’s “Kiwi Dream” speech contained much more meat […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:14 pm, October 18th, 2010 - 25 comments
The Sunday Star Times had an interesting piece quoting a National MP on growing discontent within the party. Discontent at the public perception of National as a “one man band”, and the way that the party has been reduced to “The John Key Show”. With National’s failure on the economy growing ever more evident, is the power of brand Key enough to carry the Nats to a win in 2011?
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, October 18th, 2010 - 35 comments
Yesterday, former National media trainer Paul Holmes and former National Party President Michelle Boag attempted an extraordinary hatchet job on Phil Goff on Q+A. No analysis of the real policy divide that Goff and Labour with National carved out at the national conference, just attack – why? The economy, policy, Key’s fading brand, and the polls.
Written By: - Date published: 8:32 am, October 18th, 2010 - 32 comments
Labour’s conference in the weekend seems to have gone well, and been well received by the media. Here’s a roundup of headlines and comment.
Written By: - Date published: 8:39 am, October 16th, 2010 - 53 comments
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, October 15th, 2010 - 103 comments
Russel Norman asked Bill English about the economic impacts of coming oil shocks and how transport infrastructure planning takes them into account. I’m not sure which was more surprising: English’s matter-of-fact acknowledgment that peak oil is coming, or his attitude that the government doesn’t need to act because the market will sort things out.
Written By: - Date published: 9:19 am, October 15th, 2010 - 37 comments
So John Key was unusually forthcoming to a question this morning – he was very keen to give poor Kerry Prendergast a job.
Key knows how hard his government has made it to get a job, so he’s eager to help her out.
Written By: - Date published: 9:15 am, October 13th, 2010 - 17 comments
It was a year ago that Paula Bennett first declared victory over rising unemployment. Since then, John Key has been working his economic strategy hard: high-fiving every schoolgirl he can find, playing with spiders, announcing and re-annoucing literally tens of kilometres of cycleway, smiling and waving till it hurts. But dole numbers are rising.
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