The meme of "we cannot afford super, welfare seems to be very powerful. So powerful, that even those who know better have been taken in. http://kjt-kt.blogspot.co.nz/2012/06/on-new-zealands-retirement-income.html "The finance industry have been creaming their pants, for a return to the halcyon days, before the tax rebates…
Clare Trevett details in today's Herald how Key has taken to bringing Ministers with good news to his Monday news conferences "to lambast the media with good news about the progress being made in a certain area." Making use of the captive audience at the…
Stuff is reporting that The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation has purchased a hundred million shares in Meridian, 8% of the total shareholding. I guess this was utterly predictable but the news still fills me with rage. As predicted we are watching our wealth producing…
The Labour Party has always been at the forefront of efforts to ensure that Parliament's makeup is actually representative of the population as a whole. It started off wanting to ensure that the working class was represented in Parliament. Early on it recognised that women…
Why is Treasury providing the government with advice on spinning and disguising widespread changes to Education? Treasury urged education minister to keep `ambitious agenda' for schools low-key Controversial changes to education should be kept as low-profile as possible, official advice to the Government says. Documents…
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy). Step right up to the mike…
Sir Edmund Thomas – Reducing Inequality: A Strategy for a Cause The speaker, a Distinguished Fellow at the Law School at The University of Auckland, argues that the gross inequality in income and wealth which besets New Zealand is the outcome of the neo-liberal economic…
Rebekah Brooks, once Rupert Murdoch's favourite editor, is in the dock in London charged with conspiring to pervert the course of justice. Rupert meanwhile has turned his attention to his former home, Australia, again focussing the weight of his tabloids on Labor, first Gillard then…
So, the same people who were so incensed by the democratic capabilities of MMP, that they launched an (entirely unsuccessful) campaign against it, are now launching a "union" for the greedy and self interested taxpayers. Such people who most usually are anti-trade union, must surely…
Fairfax suffered the double indignity of first having its poll contradicted by One News' hours later and then Key himself mocking the idea that National is on 50%. Still rogue polls happen. That's statistics. But we can try to look through the variation in single…
lprent: BLip is well known on this site for his ever-growing linked lists of the lies of John Key (skycity for instance). But it appears he has been branching out into the role of reporter in this account of the swearing of the Auckland council…
Delegates at the Labour Party Conference in Christchurch will be asked to vote on cutting back NZ Superannuation entitlements as part of Labour's 2014 policy platform. In my opinion, the response from the floor must be an unequivocal “NO WAY: find real alternatives.” Delegates will…
So the US military/diplomats has decided that we should be friends again after nearly 30 years. Whooptee do! Who really gives a pigs arse? Since the USA decided that our domestic policy of banning the use of our territorial waters to vessels carrying nuclear weapons and…
The asset sales have been an unmitigated failure. They've raised less money than expected, they've cost more than twice as much as National said they would, no 'mums and dads' have shown up to buy the shares, and the public is waiting for its referendum.…
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy). Step right up to the mike…
This just in from Stuff: If Solid Energy was partly privatised, it probably would not be in the mess it is in now, Prime Minister John Key says. Continuing to defend the Government's sell-down of state assets, Key said today a deal to bailout Solid…
I wonder who decided to include such a divisive piece of artwork on Queen's Wharf on Auckland's waterfront? Sir Bob Harvey seems to be a spokesperson in relation to it, but I would have expected him to have known better. At least if they were…
So, we now have a charity taking on the funding of the essential work on monitoring poverty, in the face of Paula Bennett, Bill English and John Key failing to do their job: a job that should be looking to ensure all Kiwis are adequately…
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy). Step right up to the mike…
The final Fairfax poll before the last election had National on 54%. At 6.5% off, that was the least accurate of the bunch. The drop from that poll to now in the Fairfax is 4.5%. If you translate that to the actual starting point, National's…
Over the last week or so, further revelations of the extent of the NSA's surveillance reach, in conjunction with at least one of its 5 Eyes' partners (UK's GCHQ) are breath taking in scope. As Seumas Milne wrote last week in The Guardian, its about…
I posted previously on how the fallout from the attempted ousting of Len Brown by forces associated with the National Party and the fight back by the civilised wing of the party was evidence of major internal party dissent. This week things went really strange. Occasional…
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy). Step right up to the mike…