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Last Friday the report of the Select Committee on Auckland was tabled in Parliament. The lack of media attention is a measure of how almost irrelevant this committee was. It has been clear for a long time that the decisions are being made by a…
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By John Ryall, SFWU National Secretary While The Standard readers know that the air traffic controllers were the excuse that Kate Wilkinson used to signal a repeal of parts of the 2008 Employment Relations Act (Breaks and Infant Feeding) Amendment Act, they are probably not…
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And by any other name it smells as bad. John Key has annouced a reform of the rules for ministerial accommodation allowance. A fixed, automatic allowance will now be paid to all out of Wellington ministers of $37,500 a year for their Wellington accomodation (or $30,000 if they…
bill english corruption housing national/act government parliamentary spending same old national
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Coming soon to a workplace near you, if Kate Wilkinson gets her way: According to this report by Roll on Friday, a receptionist formerly employed by a major US law firm is suing the firm, saying she had no choice but to wet herself. Rebecca…
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Yesterday Infratil got their NZ Bus hand-puppets to announce that they will be going on strike. On Wednesday, if the bus-drivers refuse to donate their time freely to increase Infratil returns to investors, the company will remove bus-services from the commuters of Auckland. If the…
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As usual Rod Oram presents an insightful argument: New Zealand's climate change credibility is hanging by a thread. If the government indulges in bad politics on the Emissions Trading Scheme, the thread would snap. We would suffer instant, serious and long-term damage to our economy,…
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Five years ago Tim O'Reilly coined the phrase "Web 2.0". Now, in this post at TechCrunch, he argues it's time for "Gov 2.0". Gov 2.0 is about more than politicians using Facebook or Twitter or whatever, more than increased transparency, more than the government moving…
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From The Guardian: It used to be loony left local government that attracted ridicule. Now it is the outpourings of mad mayors. ...[UK mayoral problems seem] mild in the pointlessness stakes compared with New Zealand mayor Michael Laws, who scribbled furious replies to two children when…
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Michael Laws: get on with your job and stop prancing around on the media stage. Laws has put out a second (yes, a second) press release justifying being rude to some schoolkids who wrote to him. Apparently, Laws can think of no better use of…
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Like r0b, I'm the new kid on The Standard's block. Sounds like he got the cool initiation. I, on the other hand, had to go to a three hour meeting and, under brutal interrogation, denounce all my previous boyfriends with dubious political credentials. Plus they…
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Auckland bus drivers have been in negotiations with NZ Bus (which is owned by Infratil) for a 70 cent an hour pay rise. Currently, they're on between $14.05 and $16.75 an hour for 13-hour shifts. Many workers are on split shifts, which means up to…
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The last video I posted had Democratic Congressman Barney Frank taking the fight to a woman in the audience of a townhall meeting who had just compared the proposed health care reforms to Nazism. He finished by saying: "trying to have a conversation with you…
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Larry Baldock (organiser of the "smacking" referendum) has decided to launch a petition for another referendum on whether such referenda should be binding. His agenda of course is to keep flogging the dead horse of the s59 debate. Two more years? No thanks. The only…
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Marty G's last post just reminded me of this - visualise who goes under as the oceans rise with Flood Maps. And yeah, before you start, 14m is a big big rise. Just let it serve as a warning to all you Aucklanders to swap…
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The world's oceans reached a record high temperature in July of 16.37 degrees, 0.59 degrees above the 20th century average. That might not sound a lot, and it wouldn't be if we were talking about the variation in day to day temperature where you live, but we're…
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Last month's Time magazine has an article that starts "to understand why the United States is losing in Afghanistan..." It's a bombshell phrase, all the more for the fact that the reporter makes the statement in passing, as accepted fact. The article goes on to…
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In Ponsonby there is a bloody great big hole which is all that remains of the unlamented DYC Vinegar factory. It has been affording the locals some amusement between bouts in hearings. The site was to be a $250 million mall. The hole was dug…
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Climate change is racist. Not literally of course, but in the sense that how people are affected by climate change is going to be largely determined by race. Those who are going to suffer the most are not "white". From The Herald summary of a…
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An old favourite came around on the playlist. It sounded like the ostriches that occupy the sewer and appear here for our entertainment... So I tracked down a live performance by Leonard Cohen. The Man from Uncle version with the studio soundtrack is pretty funny…
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Back in the days of First Past the Post elections, we had what Geoffery Palmer termed 'the fastest law in the West' and the Prime Minister was effectively an elected dictator. The PM controlled Cabinet, the Cabinet controlled caucus of the majority party in what…
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Diffusion of responsibility means that the bigger the group the less chance that anyone in the group will take action. In a typical experiment people are left to wait in a room, which is rigged so that smoke starts coming in under a door. A…
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So, against my better judgement I'm now a card carrying Standardista. Finally managed to get through the initiation ceremony without fainting. I've been issued with a pass card and retina scanned for the Secret Standard Bunker buried deep beneath Parliament. I have access to the…
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Yesterday, National's Kate Wilkinson tried to use a dispute over how to apply the new rest breaks law for air traffic controllers as a pretext for taking away our right to rest and meal breaks. She tried to paint the dispute over breaks as being…
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I've been having a look at the OECD's report on child poverty. A lot of the data is quite of of date and so doesn't reflect the every important impact of Working for Families, rising minimum wage, falling unemployment, and bottom-end tax cuts have had on child…
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The Wanganui District Council (Prohibition of Gang Insignia) Act 2009, which prohibits the display of gang insignia in a public place, so clearly infringes of freedom of expression and association that it's almost as though it was made up as an exam question for law students in a Bill…
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The scientists say we need to reduce our greenhouse emissions by 40% by 2020 and 80% by 2050 if we want to even have a 50:50 chance of not starting runaway climate change (where temperature rises trigger the release of frozen methane and other effects…
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In 1908, the miners at Blackball took a famous strike over the right to take rest breaks at work. For most of the rest of the century this was enshrined in law and in our culture as a basic right of all working New Zealanders.…
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The Greens are leading a petition campaign, asking Parliament to: reject any move to mine our national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, marine reserves, protected islands, the Coromandel's beautiful land and waters, and all other treasured places protected by Schedule 4 of the Crown Minerals Act 1991;…
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I know a dude who went to law school. In one of his lecture theatres was this 'old guy' who was always whining (especially about anything to do with Maori), couldn't keep up with the material, and always seemed intent on making himself the centre…
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There are an interesting couple of posts over at Red Alert about an editorial in the Dominion Post yesterday. Grant Robertson describes it as a bitter diatribe. Trevor Mallard thinks it is a bit over the top. I think that the editor who wrote it…