I’ll be in Manchester tomorrow to hear Ed Miliband speak at the UK Labour Party conference. Labour are ahead in the polls, and Miliband’s leadership is more secure than Cameron’s or Clegg’s. Ed Miliband has surprised those who thought Labour chose the wrong brother. Ed is receiving plenty of free advice about what he should say; I suspect he will continue to be himself. Interesting parallels to New Zealand; I’m looking forward to it.
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.
David Cunliffe has given another excellent economic development speech. I think what’s interesting is that he’s not really proposing new policy – what he’s saying is largely in line with the platform Labour ran in on 2011, but he’s articulating the vision behind those policies – the why, rather than just the how – which was lacking from Labour in 2011. Great stuff.
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
David Shearer still doesn’t get why judging beneficiaries from across the road isn’t compatible with leading the Labour Party. QoT perseveres in trying to explain it to him, using short words.
Split Enz once sang, “History Never Repeats”… Or does it? Destructive prejudices separating ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor have been around a very long time. When the likes of Paula Bennett pander to such ill-informed vindictiveness with punitive social welfare reforms, they will damage large numbers of children – our future citizens.
John Key refuses to accept any responsibility for what his spies get up to. The only point of democratic responsibility for our spies doesn’t monitor them and won’t take the blame for failing to do so. He won’t fire a corrupt, lying minister, either. The rot is spreading to the public service. There has been not one resignation, not a single one, due to the Dotcom debacle.
Labour has written to Key calling for a much wider-ranging investigation into the Dotcom spying affair than Neazor’s narrow, tell-us-nothing-we-don’t-already-know report. They would have been better to go straight to the Auditor-General. The Greens have gone for the established illegality and called in the cops on the GCSB – cleverly citing the same offence Key claimed in the teapot tapes.
QoT has a shiny new author login and she’s not afraid to use it! And Labour? You definitely still need feminism.
David Shearer’s weekly e-newsletter, this week on privatisation, jobs, and Dotcom.
We’re happy to post similar newsletters from other opposition leaders – our email is on our contact page.
John “power at any cost” Key isn’t ruling out a deal with Peters in 2014. Peters isn’t ruling it out either. Deputy PM Peters anyone?
John Key put on a display of incompetence in the House yesterday over the Dotcom spying affair. He claimed not to know a laundry list of basic facts that, if he didn’t know them before, he bloody well ought to have been briefed on by now. In some instances, his memory failed him over Dotcom. Yet he then showed he could recall exchange rates from 20 years ago. I think he’s lying. The alternative is too scary.
There’s a lot of it about in right-wing parties at the moment. For John Key, John Banks and David Cameron it appears to be becoming the strategy of choice. It’s not working very well for any of them.
The Christchurch Press as part of Fairfax released National Standards data, but had a number of articles with a curiously sensible line on it: “…the standards’ main effects will be to impose on schools a crude, misleading and unhelpful form of accountability and to focus attention on learning targets that are inappropriate for many children.”
“Ignorance gets us nowhere”, it’s National’s new slogan and it certainly applied with Key’s feigned ignorance in answer to questions on Banks’ corruption […]
Key has said we all have to wait and see what is in the Neazor Report on the GCSB spies’ illegal spying on Kim Dotcom.* He won’t even answer basic questions like: ‘what section of the law did the GCSB breach?’ Funny that Key’s so keen for us to wait to read this report. But will he read it? Or will it be like the Banks Police Report, which he won’t read? And when will anyone get to read Banks’ statement?
Key has failed to uphold high ethical standards for himself, his Ministers, or his government. The GCSB illegal spying fiasco is just the latest example.
Reprinted with permission from Dave Kennedy (bsprout) at Local Bodies. “While National Standards has cost around $60 million to force onto schools many programmes designed to address the causes of underachievement have been under resourced or cut altogether.”
The Righties are wetting themselves because the national standards supposedly show higher results in larger classes. But the data is unmoderated – you can’t compare schools to get national data. And the apparent link is down to special schools and deciles. So, what have we learned? Nothing. Certainly nothing about the impact of class sizes, anyway. But maybe a little more about the Rights’ willful blindness.
I reckon my theory that the tobacco industry’s stupid ‘agree/disagree’ ad campaign is actually just a way of chucking millions at cash-strapped media outlets to buy their silence (and even backing from Granny) has been confirmed. By one simple fact. The new TV ad, which appeals to crass nationalism to argue that we shouldn’t adopt the Aussie plain-packaging law, is voiced by an Aussie.
John Key on the impoverished Chatham Islands, holding a huge crayfish. He says ‘big as a horse, freshly cooked, $80 a kilo.’ He kisses the cray, then looks at the camera and says ‘jealous?’ Christ, what a cock. Those 270,000 kids aren’t jealous, arsehole. They’re hungry. The fact he knows the price of cray off the top of his head but not how many Kiwis are unemployed tells you all you need to know.
So the first ‘ropey’ National Standards data is slipping out. It may not bear comparison, and not be moderated or indeed standardised, but Hekia Parata can now divulge the great wisdom that National’s StandardsTM provides.
No Right Turn on the waste and divisiveness of charter schools in the UK.
National is celebrating the creation of 1300 jobs (only 300 permanent) with a prison. How many more prisons would they have to build to reverse the increase in unemployment under their watch and create 65,000 permanent jobs? Only 217. It’s ironic that the only job creation the free-market loving Nats can trumpet is a government-paid for prison.
What exactly did John Key mean when he said on 31 July – “That is my reading of the police report”?
David Clark’s private member’s Bill to increase the minimum wage was voted down 61 to 59 last night. Shame on John Banks and Peter Dunne.
I think that Kim Dotcom is actually a very savy operator. Turning up to Parliament on the second day of questions (not today, when Key won’t be in the House) was inspired. It ensured another day of coverage. Then, his words: “I think the Prime Minister has had to make a choice, am I going to uphold high ethical standards or do I want to remain in power?”
Over the last week, the government’s off-world set of distorted realities has come to the foreground: those of “Planet John Key” and “Planet Paula”. These worlds highlight the way Bennett’s latest welfare reforms wage war on the poor and undermine fairness and democracy.
Shane: …he revealed a meat cleaver from beneath his suit jacket and charged into the front row of the audience yelling “die, you meddlesome crones!” Had he not tripped and fallen over there could have been a bloodbath. Isn’t that a serious incident?
John: That may be the view of some people. But I’ve sought an assurance from Gerry, and he has told me he did nothing wrong. If a minister tells me, “This is my position, and this is what I’ve done,” I accept their word in good faith, unless it’s proven otherwise.
Notice how the only people who “believe” John Banks are the ones who haven’t (and won’t) read the police report? What do we call it, when someone deliberately avoids the reality that everyone knows exists?
In the House yesterday, Metiria Turei threw National’s ‘Planet Labour/Planet Green’ line back at Key, asking if ordinary people get to break the law too or if that privilege is reserved for ministers on Planet Key. Like all little bullies, Key couldn’t take it back. He lashed out and, like Romney’s fatal gaffe the same day, it exposed something of Key’s real world view.
Get ready for a week of farce in the House. The Opposition will be peppering Key and Banks on the numerous holes in their position. Key will play dumb. But the Opposition has to plug away with persistent, forensic questions. One of them will crack in time.
So, this is what Key is reduced to: refusing to read the Police Report on John Banks so that he can avoid answering questions on it. Key’s circular position is that Banks will remain a minister as long as he has Key’s confidence. The test: Banks’ll continue to have Key’s confidence as long as Key trusts him and Key has to believe whatever Banks tells him.
