In the cartoon Calvin and Hobbes, they play a game called Calvinball. "The only consistent rule states that Calvinball may never be played with the same rules twice". It's a bit like that trying to call this government to account. One day they have legal…
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So far... Looter's Bonus Loyalty Scheme $250,000,000-$500,000,000: Treasury Best guess: $360,000,000: Finance and Expenditure Select Committee Could be: up to $1,000,000,000 No idea: John Key Brokerage fees $90,000,000: $7 million this year, $66 million next, $17 million in 2014 $1,100,000: spent so far Won't say:…
National's internal polling is telling it people are losing faith in the brighter future, and want to hear about how it plans to get there. According to No 1 cheerleader John Armstrong in the Herald: National believes - or rather its polling is telling it…
Ha ha ha! Wasn't it funny when Judith Collins brandished a TASER at the National Party conference and said she wanted to use it on Trevor Mallard. I guess it's alright for me to whip out an airgun or a knife next time I'm at…
The usual National Party cheerleaders in the media are trying to make out the modest size of the protests at the Nat's conference in the weekend means that opposition to National is weak. John Armstrong writes: National’s annual conference was not short of protests. But…
John Key doesn't want to go ahead with plain packaging of cigarettes. The cancer sellers would sue. It could cost a few million to beat them in the international courts (me, I would just create a law of corporate homicide and nationalise their NZ assets).…
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike...
Scott at Imperator Fish has kindly given us permission to syndicate posts from his blog – the original of this post is here. I see that Bill English has been talking about Planet Labour. It sounds like a terrible place. Imagine a place with a stagnant…
Two headlines almost side by side in The Herald this morning. Bennett increases pursuit of welfare 'rorts' Social Development Minister Paula Bennett says more work is under way to detect beneficiary households, where multiple members are being paid the accommodation supplement. She said it was…
Another example of cronyism from disgraced former minister Nick Smith has emerged. He overrode officials at the Ministry for the Environment, who had declined an application for $200,000 for meetings to resolve disputes between farmers and environmentalists in the Mackenzie Basin and Waitaki Valley, so…
I did posts on submitting against National's Local Government Bill a while ago, but the end date for submissions is on the 26th, so here's a reminder. The government's bill will further move power to Wellington. We are already a very centralised country, politically speaking,…
One of the things that makes politicians lives easier is that we all have a tendency to believe what we want to believe, and thus to hear what we want to hear. Some politicians play on this tendency by telling different groups different things -…
'National's made a complete cock-up of this and everyone's pissed, but it doesn't seem to be hurting them in the polls, where they're still strong'. You can find that stereotype sentence in the media all the time, particularly in the coverage of the weekend's National…
On Breakfast just now, Petra Bagust asked John Key what's so great for the economy about listing our assets on the stockmarket. A good question. The answer was pure lies: "our companies need capital and they can raise that one of two ways, borrow the…
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