Written By: - Date published: 2:20 pm, April 3rd, 2014 - 3 comments
Last month, we learned that Judith Collins had taken time off a taxpayer-funded trip to China to endorse her husband’s company – a company which had also donated significant sums of money to the National Party. The endorsement appeared to violate the Cabinet Manual, but John Key stepped up and claimed that the Cabinet Office said it was all OK. Then, just a few days later, he admitted that he’d lied about that. In the process, he implicitly raised serious questions about the quality of the Cabinet Office’s advice.
Written By: - Date published: 12:22 pm, April 3rd, 2014 - 22 comments
All of us, in our diversity, can make a big impact this election year. Time to end the “neoliberal” tyranny! Crime stats are celebrated masking the continuing impact of income & social inequalities. Rogernomics fractured gender politics & rape crisis intiatives.
Written By: - Date published: 6:24 am, April 3rd, 2014 - 52 comments
When so-called iwi leaders condemn teachers for daring to highlight the massive failings of the New Zealand education system for Maori children in case the minister of Education might be embarrassed, then they show themselves up as a sad and pathetic group for whom the warm embrace of government has become more important than the needs of their own children and grandchildren. Just who the hell do they think they are, trying to hide the truth of New Zealand’s failed policies just because the international community is in town?
Written By: - Date published: 10:45 am, April 2nd, 2014 - 51 comments
No Right Turn notes the typical response from politicians to the Fifth IPCC Assessment report. Perhaps that promoting legislation with a penalty of long prison terms for political negligence would help? It sounds like a good way for lazy politicians to retire. After all the law recognises negligence as being a criminal action in other spheres – why not for our political servants?
Written By: - Date published: 10:31 am, April 2nd, 2014 - 52 comments
There was an Audrey Young piece in the Herald yesterday, in which John Key talks about Labour’s plan to increase eligibility for free Early Childhood Education. So Key thinks this policy will cost at least ten times as much as Labour does. That’s a very big claim. But Andrey did not appear to ask for his sums, she just printed Key’s figures without comment. That was a pity because John Key’s figures are a bare-faced lie and are quite impossible.
Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, April 1st, 2014 - 88 comments
We can now put a dollar figure – a conservative, probably-underestimated figure – on the cost of domestic violence to New Zealand business. That’s due to a report commissed by the Public Service Association, released yesterday in conjunction with a Member’s Bill from Green MP Jan Logie which will change our law to protect victims […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:57 am, March 31st, 2014 - 32 comments
Just spent a couple of hours in “The Goose” in Walthamstow watching Liverpool outclass Spurs 4-0 to go top of the Premier League table. Nobody gave them a chance at season’s start, but what a difference good strategy and management can make – belief, commitment, determination and the willingness to work for each other.
Written By: - Date published: 5:00 pm, March 29th, 2014 - 148 comments
Maybe this is one of those open political secrets – if you’re in the know, you already know, and it seems obvious. If you’re not, it’s a total mystery. Just who is the MP Kim Dotcom has ready and waiting to jump waka in 2014? I’ve got no idea, but I approach these things like […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:47 am, March 29th, 2014 - 275 comments
Standardista, andy (the other one) nails it: “Two days, two articles, two different media outlets admitting that they know National use Slater/Farrar to smear and dissemble.” Trotter raises questions about sources.
Written By: - Date published: 4:16 pm, March 28th, 2014 - 5 comments
No Right Turn nails the political value of the Internet Party in this post. In itself it probably isn’t that politically useful. However it’s mere existence means that the net becomes a political issue. It forces the typically technophobic and illiterate pack of antiques called Members of Parliament to start dealing with issues arising from it. It moves them outside their comfort zone
Written By: - Date published: 2:07 pm, March 28th, 2014 - 63 comments
Tomorrow Today: Support the important Day of Action across NZ against the TPPA – the TPPA is anti-democratic, pro-corporate & will make life harder for ordinary Kiwis; Support the NZEI demonstrations in Auckland & Wellington, for a living wage, for an excellent public education system, against poverty that undermines education. [Update: photos & reports]
Written By: - Date published: 10:33 am, March 28th, 2014 - 88 comments
Rob Salmond looks at the Internet Party’s launch and rather shallow vision. But is this politics?
“So the Internet Party had a good launch short term, but its longer term problems with policy and vision remain.”
Written By: - Date published: 3:11 pm, March 27th, 2014 - 21 comments
In 2008 New Zealand was internationally ranked in the top seven for educational achievement, and when you compared us with other countries that were also culturally diverse and were experiencing growing inequality we were extremely successful. A National led Government was elected and New Zealand’s public education system came under heavy attack… Hekia Parata continues this.
Written By: - Date published: 3:05 pm, March 27th, 2014 - 13 comments
The Genesis Energy share float is imminent and Mum and Dad shareholders are no longer a priority.
Written By: - Date published: 11:20 am, March 27th, 2014 - 18 comments
No Right Turn put this up on tuesday. It is worth re-running it to note how a smear campaign operates at multiple layers.
“Since their botched raid on Kim Dotcom’s mansion last year, the New Zealand government has faced a PR problem over their handling of the case. And that has been hammered home at every opportunity by Dotcom himself, who turns out to be quite good at winning the hearts of ordinary kiwis. But now the government has a solution: gag him”
Written By: - Date published: 11:15 am, March 27th, 2014 - 14 comments
Rob Salmond’s view on the Internet Party launch today.
“Today is the day the Internet Party, which amusingly abbreviates to IP, will actually launch. More importantly, today marks 146 days until Kim Dotcom winds up the Internet Party because it isn’t polling near 5% and has no deals with others to secure itself an electorate seat.”
Written By: - Date published: 11:42 am, March 26th, 2014 - 10 comments
I can’t think when the last time I’d been along to a gig or a concert was. Years probably. But Lyn dragged me (kicking and screaming) to the concert by Billy Bragg last night at the Powerstation in Auckland that was pretty damn good. These days I’m pretty portably connected so I don’t feel like I’ve left half of my brain behind when I head off on holiday or to a social event. So I was watching for trolls while Billy was singing about them…
Written By: - Date published: 2:36 pm, March 25th, 2014 - 4 comments
“Loomio is a user-friendly tool for collaborative decision-making” … because “Democracy isn’t just about politics – it’s people getting together and deciding how things should be”…
Written By: - Date published: 10:04 am, March 25th, 2014 - 48 comments
There has been a long struggle by the Problem Gambling Foundation & others against SkyCity & the powerful and secretive Pokie Trusts. The government has tended to support the trusts, while maintaining their distance from them. The defunding of the PGF is the latest chapter in the struggle.
Written By: - Date published: 7:39 am, March 25th, 2014 - 32 comments
[Satire] I has a dream… Winston retired from politics and went on to set up a bird rescue centre in a remote spot in the Raukumura Range, but the centre was burned down after two teenagers high on glue broke in and set it alight. The delicious smells of hundreds of roasted native birds attracted the attentions of the poor for miles around… desperate and hungry people tore at each other to get into the still-burning sanctuary… I awoke in a fever and ran to my computer, and in seconds flat I had my NBR column finished.
Written By: - Date published: 5:29 pm, March 24th, 2014 - 37 comments
In the ongoing saga about the Problem Gambling Foundation, The Salvation Army were unaware that the Ministry of Health had decided that they would take over as the national provider. They hadn’t even applied for it. It appears that only thing driving the ministry’s decision was the complaints from the gambling industry about the PGF trying to reduce problem gambling…. Is the gambling industry is thoroughly corrupting National’s ministers?
Written By: - Date published: 9:19 am, March 24th, 2014 - 22 comments
There is danger of reading too much into polls months out from an election. Commentators were claiming that National was too strong to lose the next election based on a rogue poll. Few looked at multiple polls, accounted for the margin of error nor the trends over past months. The last fortnight has seen a National with the latest Roy Morgan Poll plummeting from the Colmar Brunton result of 51% to 45.5%. And it is based on a lack of ministerial performance…
Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, March 21st, 2014 - 15 comments
“Rockstar economy”? Let’s hear it for another chorus of,”There is no depression in New Zealand”! Demographia reports on absolute food and housing poverty for too many Kiwis. Simon Collins reports on the ethnic inequality gaps & high rates of Maori imprisonment.
Written By: - Date published: 7:06 pm, March 20th, 2014 - 4 comments
From an environmental economics perspective, mining is a wealth transfer, shifting public wealth (minerals) into private profits of mining companies. Along the way, it creates jobs, but it is basically spending capital. When the resources run out or become unprofitable to extract the jobs disappear and a regional economy geared solely to resource extraction withers and dies. NZ First wants to change that.
Written By: - Date published: 4:50 pm, March 20th, 2014 - 100 comments
Making sure every rental property is a warm, dry home should be a no-brainer in the 21st century. Parliament will shortly get the chance to vote on my Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill. The vote will sort the parties for whom this is a genuine belief from those who just pay it lip service.
Written By: - Date published: 3:48 pm, March 19th, 2014 - 39 comments
Labour announced policies today seeking to reinvigorate the Forestry Industry and to promote more local processing of logs. And the Greens have announced a policy designed to increase the use of wood in local buildings.
Written By: - Date published: 6:01 pm, March 18th, 2014 - 38 comments
The biggest single threat to civilisation from human initiated CO2 forced climate change is going to be in food production and distribution. In a leaked version of the IPCC’s AR5 second volume ” the report predicts that climate change will reduce median crop yields by 2 per cent per decade for the rest of the century – at a time of rapidly growing demand for food.”
Written By: - Date published: 2:24 pm, March 17th, 2014 - 60 comments
No Right Turn reacts to David Cunliffe’s speech on Friday. “…one thing is clear: we need to move our economy away from a focus on milk. Our environment can’t sustain it, and its not delivering for anyone other than a narrow class of wealthy farmers.” “… rich economies have multiple sources of income. And they consciously develop them through industrial policy.”
Written By: - Date published: 12:37 pm, March 17th, 2014 - 107 comments
Rob Salmond at Polity looks at the draft Green party list. “The Greens have released their draft party list today, in advance of a party member STV vote. The top 20 is…”
Written By: - Date published: 10:10 am, March 17th, 2014 - 8 comments
Simon Collins article on reducing inequalities for Māori & Pacific people. Māori and Pacific youth have become significantly disadvantaged in employment. However, the article supports charter schools, without examining how such neoliberal intitatives are ultimately damaging for Māori & Pacific people.
Written By: - Date published: 9:43 am, March 17th, 2014 - 46 comments
Yesterday Hekia Parata floated the idea that funding of schools should be based on measuring the periodic change in academic standards. This is a retrograde proposal which almost inevitably would penalise poor schools and worsen educational standards for many. Today she has been trying to dampen down the idea and has emphasised that it will not be considered until after the next election. A better reason to vote this Government out I cannot imagine.
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