Written By: - Date published: 11:04 am, May 19th, 2010 - 71 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 10:50 am, May 19th, 2010 - 22 comments
Some how it just seems right for John Key’s “Don’t Be Jealous” Budget. Or if you want something a bit more high brow but still with the big hair, there’s Brian Edwards on $50 Million PM Counsels Poor Not To Envy Rich. Me… I say Eat Them!
Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, May 19th, 2010 - 15 comments
Tomorrow, National will give huge tax cuts to the wealthiest New Zealanders. $12,000 a year for a typical CEO or a Prime Minister on $350,000 a year. $290,000 a year for Paul Reynolds, the CEO of Telecom. The Right are trying a bunch of excuses for this unneeded gift to the richest people in the country, paid for by working Kiwis. Let’s debunk ’em.
Written By: - Date published: 9:12 am, May 18th, 2010 - 53 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 9:48 am, May 17th, 2010 - 20 comments
Nope, it isn’t the budget. It appears that there is a bomb scare. At the beehive there is an evacuation. It appears that people in the rest of the parliamentary complex are not allowed to leave, and no-one is allowed to enter. Pretty freaky how easy it is to shut down the a core of […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:22 am, May 16th, 2010 - 9 comments
Sam Cash writes it’s good news for Auckland with Len Brown opening up a strong lead over John Banks. Len Brown’s campaign seems to have been quietly gathering momentum since he launched his insurgency last year.
Written By: - Date published: 12:32 pm, May 13th, 2010 - 18 comments
Sam Cash has spotted a possible issue with Dodgy John “if I wear my policy on my sleeve, I won’t get elected†Banks’ most recent mayoral poll. Could it be Banks is just polling ratepayers to boost his numbers?
Written By: - Date published: 10:28 am, May 12th, 2010 - 7 comments
The Herald editorial is rightly damning of the government’s lacklustre approach to science funding. The ‘new’ money is a trickle, barely replacing last year’s cuts. A crucial difference between Labour and National has always been that Labour invests in the long-term success of the country while National makes short-term wealth grabs for the ruling elite.
Written By: - Date published: 12:11 am, May 9th, 2010 - 53 comments
One thing that the election in Britain brought home to me, was how much I’m grateful for having Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) representation here. I didn’t start that way. Over time, I’ve grown to appreciate the gradual progress and stability offered by MMP. However the people at the Campaign for MMP could do with a little help in the Internet age. They’re operating like it was 1993.
Written By: - Date published: 3:17 pm, May 8th, 2010 - 23 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, April 29th, 2010 - 39 comments
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.
Written By: - Date published: 9:22 am, April 27th, 2010 - 11 comments
Sam Cash takes a look at John Banks’ latest poll and doesn’t find too much to crow about for the Mayor for Remuera – noting he has only managed to draw even with Len Brown in spite of the huge profile lead he has over his challenger.
Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, April 27th, 2010 - 16 comments
Open mike is your post. It’s open for discussing topics of interest, making announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. Comment on whatever takes your fancy. The usual good behaviour rules apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike…
Written By: - Date published: 9:52 pm, April 26th, 2010 - 12 comments
To paraphrase Muldoon – send a JAFA to Wellington, and we can only increase the average intelligence of both parts of the country. Needless to say, TV news chose to focus on a minor story in Goffs speech. If a future mayor of Auckland, Brown, can sit at the cabinet table on decisions related to […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:22 am, April 26th, 2010 - 22 comments
Remember back in 2007 when Gerry Brownlee took some really bad PR advice and unfathomably released a video entitled “Sexy Coal”? It was bound to come back and bite him; it’s the 21st century after all. What’s particularly salacious is that Lucy Lawless is doing the biting….
Written By: - Date published: 8:02 am, April 24th, 2010 - 58 comments
The Nats are looking to cut $1.8 billion in spending over four years. Where from? What and who will be deemed to be “low quality” in need of “weeding out”? The answers are going to tell us a lot about the National Party’s values…
Written By: - Date published: 8:35 am, April 18th, 2010 - 100 comments
Pete Bethune is one of New Zealand’s heroes. He’s been a successful entrepreneur and gone on to use his wealth to fight the big guys on the grounds of principle. As skipper of the New Zealand flagged hi-tech boat Earthrace, his circumnavigation attempts showcased kiwi ingenuity to the world and demonstrated the value of bio-fuels to […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:56 am, April 17th, 2010 - 42 comments
If you want to read something vomit-inducing this morning, there’s no need to go any further than Audrey Young’s interview with Key about his overseas trip. Key talks about touching Barack Obama, sharing secrets with Stephen Harper, discussing Berlusconi’s boat, and how Angela Merkel knew Helen Clark quite well. If only Audrey Young were taking the piss, it wouldn’t be so yellow and chunky.
Written By: - Date published: 1:45 pm, April 16th, 2010 - 19 comments
Voters of the Auckland region should be very concerned with the news that the Auckland City CBD-based Citrat political party looks set to run a single whipped slate of candidates at this year’s supercity election. The fear is that the C&R CBD old boys are gonna do in Waitakere, Manukau, Franklin, Rodney and the North Shore what they did in Otahuhu. Talk about crushing local voice.
Written By: - Date published: 4:00 pm, April 11th, 2010 - 24 comments
Rachel Maddow has a look at exactly how much Fox News just makes stuff up and calls it news. It uses selectively edited stories like the ACORN ‘pimp’ story, the ‘climategate’ e-mails, and many other highly inaccurate ‘stories’, and promotes them for ratings.
In effect Fox News is the (un)official spin channel for conservative activists to peddle garbage entertainment on. Have a watch of Rachael as she tears the facade of conservative story telling apart.
Written By: - Date published: 7:41 am, April 10th, 2010 - 100 comments
In politics nothing lasts forever. That is it seems, except the Rt Hon Winston Peters. The latest Roy Morgan poll has NZ First at 3%, just below the 5% threshold (Nats 49%, Lab 33%). With Peters once again creeping back into the media spotlight, you’ve got to wonder: Will Rodney Hide’s nightmare come true with the return of Winston Peters to Parliament in 2011?
Written By: - Date published: 9:01 pm, April 6th, 2010 - 10 comments
David Slack says..
“Qantas passenger threatened to bring down flight with the power of his mind. Ten bucks says he’s wearing an ACT T-shirt”
But it made me laugh after a hard weekend. as it perfectly reflects that way I feel about the breed.
Written By: - Date published: 8:42 am, April 6th, 2010 - 23 comments
Last year, Rodney Hide said that John Key is a ‘do nothing’ prime minister, and his fellow ministers were lazy and didn’t pay attention what his was up to. Well, they might like to pay attention now: Hide is keynote speaker at a conference on local government later this month where water privatisation is the highlight of the agenda. Does Key support Hide’s push for water privatisation?
Written By: - Date published: 1:40 pm, March 31st, 2010 - 3 comments
You can say this much for the Key Government – they’re idiots but half the time they’re also cowards. If an issue generates too much public disquiet they’ll flip-flop. It’s easy when they don’t have a real plan or real principles.
Written By: - Date published: 12:24 pm, March 28th, 2010 - 79 comments
Andrew Williams, mayor of North Shore, is clearly a bit of an odd-ball. Maybe the people of North Shore simply feel that a bit of public urination is a small price to pay for having a good mayor. I don’t know or care. But it’s outrageous, frankly, to see Hide once again over-stepping the constitutional limitations on his office. It is clear his call for Williams’ resignation is politically motivated.
Written By: - Date published: 8:01 pm, March 27th, 2010 - 3 comments
This image has been sitting around since October 2007 in a unposted post from all_your_base awaiting someone who deserves it.
I read Marty G’s post today about the infighting in Act.
I’m awarding it to Rodney Hide. He seems to deserve it….
Written By: - Date published: 3:03 pm, March 27th, 2010 - 78 comments
It’s getting nasty in the ACT party. Rodney Hide can’t last as leader. Heather Roy, Roger Douglas, and John Boscawen each have factions backing them to replace him. Disintegration is a real possibility. The consequence of ACT’s straying from it’s economically and socially liberal roots under Douglas and Prebble to reactionism under the nihilist Hide. If a collapse does take place, Key may have to call an early election.
Written By: - Date published: 8:27 am, March 25th, 2010 - 6 comments
When pressed very very hard, Rodney Hide described the set up costs of the Government’s Supercity as “minuscule” even though he couldn’t put a number on it. Now, we have some a number on what “minuscule” is in Hide’s book. The Auckland City Council alone faces a $34 million bill to establish the Supercity.
Written By: - Date published: 1:43 pm, March 24th, 2010 - 66 comments
Andrew Campbell reports that Roger Douglas and the ACT party want to change the law so that student associations will be unable to provide the important services and representation that they currently offer by making their membership voluntary. This will put the clubs and services that many universities offer at risk.
Written By: - Date published: 2:10 pm, March 23rd, 2010 - 12 comments
Remember John Key’s talk about “surgical mining?” It’s like “surgical bombing” – there is a lot of collateral damage. A lot of people get hurt. It’s no good saying afterwards that he didn’t mean for that to happen.
Written By: - Date published: 9:42 am, March 22nd, 2010 - 13 comments
How much is the Huljich Kiwisaver figure-fudging scandal hurting John “the dodgy-director†Banks’ mayoral chances? Answer: a lot.O’Sullivan then explicitly writes off Banks – saying he’ll lose to Len Brown – and joins the long list of commentators criticizing the Huljich rip-off and noting it has damaged Banks’ chances. Think this story is only getting play in the business pages? It’s not.
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