Parata on The Nation: “what we’ve had is a five-fold increase in the number of teachers while we’ve only had a 2% increase in students”. There are 52,500 teachers. Is Parata really saying there were only 10,500 a decade ago? The minister needs remedial maths, methinks. This is the tragedy: our kids’ education being toyed with by nincompoops and dullards with a dumbarse ideological agenda.
Wellington’s electricity network was privatised 20 years ago. The water network wasn’t. Tomorrow evening (Tuesday) researchers Peter Harris, Dick Werry and Jim Turner will present their outcome comparison to a Fabian seminar at St John’s Church Hall in Wellington at 5:30pm. Water network costs rose by 17% over the period, electricity network costs by four times that amount. The reach of both networks is similar – the lesson is that the required return on appreciating assets from privatisation drives up the costs. All welcome to come and discuss. You can register here.
Tomorrow night in Auckland four University teams from Auckland, Victoria and Otago will present their visions and prescriptions for New Zealand’s economic future in an event which is
open to the public, and will be held from 5.30pm at the University of Auckland Business School. All are welcome to attend – it should be interesting.
The Greens launched their Budget alternative this morning. Titled “Smart Green Economics” it lived up to the billing. Extra heft was provided by BERL economist Dr Ganesh Nana paper arguing that the Government’s asset sales programme leaves the government accounts permanently worse off. It was also good to hear about opportunities and their alternatives. We’ve had enough of TINA.
National is going to cut 125 police staff. They’re not sworn officers but who’s going to pick up the work they were doing? Sworn cops, of course. Course, tying up cops with paperwork will help the crime stats drop. And with the navy so underfunded half its inshore patrol vessels are being mothballed I bet illegal fishing instances drop too. Funny that.
Last Budget, National promised 36,000 jobs in the year to March 2012. We got 20,000. They promised 1.8% growth. We got 1.1%. They promised a $9.8 billion deficit. Now, it’s heading for over $12 billion. Ready for a repeat on Thursday?. English will say last year’s failures were all someone else’s fault. Key will grin and make some weak jokes, the beakbenches will hoot and holler. But will anyone outside National be smiling this time round?
Remember ‘ambitious for New Zealand’? Remember ‘brighter future’? National used to at least say they wanted to do something significant. At what point did all that get replaced with ‘surplus by 2014/15’? Key and National have $70 billion a year to play with to better this country, and the best thing they can come up with is making sure government operating revenue exceeds operating spending by about half a percent in three years time.
This week, Minister for Talking Big and Not Delivering, Steven Joyce, had his second opinion piece in the Herald of the year and, naturally, it bore no relation to the ‘vision’ in the previous one, or any of the 5 point strategies or 8 point action plans he has produced to date. Instead, it said ‘wouldn’t it be great if more international students came here?’. Problem is, his actions are driving them away.
Another poll to add to current mix. Not a big shift, but in the right direction, and getting the right kinds of headline. And here’s another headline that isn’t going to help the Nats – the wage gap with Australia is growing at the rate of $1 a month.
The government is, softening us up for higher prescription charges, fewer teachers, and a further assault on beneficiaries. Meanwhile, they’re spending billions on “Roads of National Significance” that do not meet basic cost-benefit tests, to service a declining demand for road transport. The Greens are right: this is not “fiscally responsible”.
You have to take your hat off to National’s spin doctors, coming up with the plausible-sounding nonsense line that low interest rates mean affordable housing isn’t needed. But it led to this- Phil Heatley: “we’re pleased that we’re managing the economy such that interest rates are so low”. Ten minutes earlier, Tony Alexander: “lower interest rates reflect the weakness of the economic outlook”.
John Key is doing his best to keep poor people from coming to his electorate. Whilst it’s not like he visits there often himself, he’s still aiming to keep poor people committing the “economic vandalism” of living in a nice suburb – where apparently only the rich should reside.
No Right Turn on the latest case of Banks failing to declare donations. Banks has broken the rules. The credibility of Parliament is at stake.
Today there was the characteristic signature of a Talley’s Group company spin that I’ve observed over the last five years on this site with their worker relationships. They lie, prevaricate, and fracture the truth. They appear to be completely untrustworthy and incapable of good faith bargaining. In my view they are the absolute arseholes of NZ managers and companies.
If there was any doubt that National has an anti-teacher, anti-education agenda, it’s gone. Increasing class sizes will ‘save’ $43m a year by reducing the number of teachers that would otherwise be required by 500. National standards will be used for performance pay. It’s a cut to the frontline, a cut to our kids’ learning. And Parata’s comments suggest more to come.
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
The Jackal raised the issue of corruption in relation to John Banks in a comment here and has written more about it on his blog. It appears on the evidence of DotCom’s lieutenant that when he was a Member of Parliament Banks was offering to accept a financial consideration in respect of any act to be done by him in his capacity as a member of Parliament. This makes Philip Field look like a Good Samaritan. Banks has to go.
His policies (such that they are) aren’t working, his government is now being questioned, his economy is stuck in the doldrums, so naturally Key is looking for someone to blame. The media!
Rebekah and Charlie Brooks have been charged with perverting the course of justice in relation to the News International phone-hacking affair. Now it’s in the courts, this albatross will hang around Cameron’s neck through to the next election.
A short, poignant guest post.
Unemployment’s up, wages are flat, retail and export prices in freefall. Last budget National promised 4% this year – it’s 1%. But never fear, the brighter future is just around the corner – again. Key says growth will be strong in 2013/14 -2 years from now. Does anyone still believe him?
Gay marriage looks set to become a “key election issue” in the Obama vs Romney presidential contest. How utterly depressing.
Remember National’s ‘fiscally neutral’ tax cuts? Turns out they’ve cost $2 billion in their first 18 months. Now, the Right’s story changes, of course. Without those reckless tax cuts, we wouldn’t be facing zero budgets. They were never meant to be fiscally neutral, they were stimulus spending – right, cause this economy is so stimulated.
I chuckled to read Fran O’Shillivan on Sunday: “John Key has made a strategic decision to burn some political capital and front-foot major Government decisions” – yeah, all those major decisions: $1m for contraception, ‘tackling cyber-bullying’, a petty pokies for convention centre deal, even their centrepiece policy – asset sales – won’t benefit the economy a jot.
Labour has gambled on Shearer’s broad real-world experience and appeal to the electorate. Over time the contrast with Key, who is now well and truly just “another bloody politician”, will be more and more pronounced.
It is the Nats’ belief that those on a benefit have fewer human rights than the rest of us. They can simply be told what to do. So now we have a compulsory vaccination debate.
Seems as though Dicken’s Oliver character was an ungrateful little ingrate who actually had it pretty good, all things considered. Gruel has to beat left over savaloy water, no?
Key looked the Pike River families in the eye and promised to get their mens bodies out. It was a promise he never should have made. But he did to make people like him. He wouldn’t even talk about it today. Coward. And what of his promise to make things right for Christchurch? Or his promise of an aggressive recovery? Or his promise to help the underclass? Or that brighter future?
Bet there’s some last minute changes to the Budget happening. A few mil to reverse the bio-security cuts now the fruit fly’s in. A few mil for monitoring MSD contracts – Bennett’s ‘high trust’ (ie too lazy/cheap) model clearly isn’t working. They could find savings by not giving money to fronts for gangs and other corrupt groups, predictably, sucking on the Whanau Ora teat.
Here’s a quick way to reduce your carbon footprint: don’t have kids and save 80 years worth of human greenhouse gas output per child… This is my Voluntary Human Extinction Movement post.
With the debate raging about free contraception for women and their teenage daughters, inevitably the conclusion is that irresponsible teenager girls are making poor decisions. Why do they get pregnant? That’s the easy part – teens not using contraception, of course. Why teenage pregnancy is an intractable problem is a much more complex question.
The Government’s ‘sinking lid’ on homicides means that John Key can personally garotte 3-5 enemies and the overall number of killings will still decrease, a smiling Prime Minister told journalists today. “On current trends, the number of murders is dropping by half a dozen a year. Which means no-one should mind if I bump off a few annoying arseholes” said Mr Key
At first glance it seems strange to have Sue Bradford, a former Green MP, against what is a very ‘green’ policy – free contraception. But she has a point when she talks about beneficiaries feeling forced into sterility they don’t want. Meanwhile, what’s with the right’s obsession with targeting women having babies while on a benefit?
