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From Bill Ralston's latest column on the Richard Worth scandal: Key's predecessor had no qualms about making ministers walk the plank if they failed to tell her everything. Unless he wants to appear weak and risk further embarrassment to his Government, Key will have to…
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While John Key's been bouncing from cloud to cloud, Bill English has been grinding away in the back room. He's finally done the the numbers on Key's cycleway, announcing today that: We won't be spending $50 million on it this year or next year or…
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How big is your water footprint? Find out here.
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The attack on democratic local government is taking shape in the public domain. 1. Hide was not made the Minister of Local Govt for nothing. Radical changes are planned and National chose an ACT Party frontman to deflect public reaction. The Bill about to be…
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Prior to the last election our fearless MSM media uncritically repeated Key's 'NZ Sucks' Crosby/Textor attack lines, framing an historically unremarkable rise in emigration, as evidence of Labour's failure and general perfidy. Lots of examples abound, this being fairly typical. Of course since November emigration…
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The Herald reports: Last week John Key used poor United States sales of the new BMW 7-series - 10 were sold in February, compared with more than 1500 in the same 2008 month - as an example of how much other countries were hurting in…
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For some reason the convolutions in this video reminded me of the twin comedy act of Worth and Grosser this week. Not to mention Key doing a weak-kneed 'bollocking' in a direct contrast to his expectations of what Labour should have done last term. This…
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No Right Turn and David Farrar have written posts on the massive lack of proportionality in the suggested voting regime by the Royal Commission report on Auckland governance. Shades of a rotten borough of 18th century England, it seems to be designed to make some…
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A little while ago we had some discussion here about the Sensible Sentencing Trust and their status as a charity. That's not what this post is about. Rather, I'm going to write a little bit about the functional role groups like the SST play in…
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Falling for a politician's tricks - that's gullibility Seeing those tricks for what they are - that's nous Seeing them for what they are but falling for them anyway and praising the politician - what's that? colin espiner 1 April - ...the PM was overjoyed by…
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One of these things is not like the other... One of these things is not quite the same. Can you guess which one is not like the other... Can you tell me before I finish the game?
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Metiria Turei is at Drinking Liberally next week. Thursday, April 9, 5:30 at Southern Cross. Nice new logo too. Meanwhile, here's Andrew Little from last week.
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Read more about it here.
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Well the G20 process - which many said would "redesign capitalism" - has now finished. Various agreements were reached, which are predictably being touted as "historic". Some of the main points from summaries here: Bankers' pay and bonuses will be subject to stricter controls A…
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The Guardian has excellent video of the G20 protests. Gives you a real feeling of what things are like in the ground. So much better than our coverage. No twit talking all the time and trying to dramatise things. Most of the people there are…
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The Standard has moved the server to an off-shore site. There are many reasons for this. I can get equivalent or better service offshore for about a tenth of the local price. To be precise, I paid for a year of hosting on a better…
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Labour revealed in parliament today that Richard Worth has another secret shareholding that created conflict of interest when he carried out ministerial duties on his trip to India. After Key gave him the famous ‘bollocking' on Monday, Worth can have been under no illusion that there wasn't…
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From No Right Turn. The Law and Order Committee has called for submissions on the Corrections (Contract Management of Prisons) Amendment Bill. Two copies, by Friday, 22 May 2009, to: Law and Order Committee Secretariat Parliament Buildings Wellington The bill would allow prisons to be…
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Tens of thousands of people protested yesterday April 1st in London at the G20 summit. The protest is made up of a multitude of different groups and has no clear overall spokesperson or agenda, other than to draw attention to the obvious failures of unregulated…
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Here's why Fickle Cycle is rapidly becoming the best New Zealand blog focussed on international issues: I wasn't impressed with December's car industry bail-outs in the US and I'm not any happier with the latest round. I have a fundamental issue with giving money to…
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To further enhance their mana Te Ururoa Flavell and Rahui Katene spent their questions in parliament yesterday asking patsies to National. 'How will the government's tax cuts benefit people on low incomes?' they asked allowing Key and English to talk about the wonderful new $10…
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The CIS released a report [PDF link] today entitled Ending No. 8 Wire Welfare: Why New Zealand is Lagging Behind. Its author is Luke Malpass. Predictably, from the right-wing think tank, the paper is an ideologically driven argument for a more punitive welfare system. As…
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On his blog Colin Espiner rejects the argument that National's tax cuts are "unfair because they give more to those who earn more" saying "I'm afraid that's the nature of progressive taxation". That's what National politicians say too. It's wrong. There are infinite tax cuts one could devise…
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Take heed, for the Superpower has spoken. At Round One of this year's international climate change negotiations (in Bonn, Germany) the US has stolen the spotlight with a rousing opening address. President Barack Obama's envoy Todd Stern stressed the need for action and warned countries…
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Someone's set up a swag of fake Twitter accounts under the names of Labour MPs. Apparently Labour came across these on Monday at the latest and wrote to Twitter telling them the accounts were fake. But no-one, including his staff, told John Key the tweets…
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No Right Turn exposes ineffectual government spin on the fire at will act. The select committee procedure would have improved the bill. Perhaps to the point that it at least lived up to the spin. Earlier in the month, Minister of Labour Kate Wilkinson warned…
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The SIS has made its yearly attempt to scare the crap out of MPs and get more funding. Apparently, New Zealand is under constant threat and only the SIS can save us. Lucky they were there to hunt down those hippies in Aro Valley and…
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The tax cuts that National are implementing today are more generous to high income earners, and less generous to low income earners, than the tax cuts that they cancelled (Labour's already legislated for package, see for example here, here, here and here). That's business as…
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What's missing here? Oh yeah. Half the population. Everyone on less than $25,000. According to The Herald if you're not rich you don't even exist.