Explore the archive
Find articles and conversations by date, subject or search expression.
Searching: posts Sorted by: newest Results: 1–30 of 50
Post
National have just backed down on their opposition to interest free student loans. Back in 2005 Key called this 'a policy that tells young New Zealanders to go and borrow to the hilt What a cost to the country! What an unaffordable and irresponsible cost…
Post
Madness is a key ingredient in politics. Always has been. J'accuse. Far queues. I think, therefore I am. Martin Luther King went to the mountain top. I have been to Geneva. Good things ought not be rushed. Freshly cooked meat ought not be rushed. Masticate…
Post
Jacinda Ardern, former Young Labour president and political advisor, has just been elected president of the International Union of Socialist Youth - a group encompassing socialist, social democratic and Labour Party youth organisations from more than 100 countries. IUSY is a massive organisiation and holds…
Post
I don't know if this is breaking some cyber protocol (oh, but I don't much care if I am) but I want to put Jordan Carter's post on Helen Clark's speech up here on The Standard. The reason is that while I agree with a…
Post
The Army has said it doesn't want to run National's boot camps - they prefer to train people who actually want to be there. So the question now is who do they plan to get to do it? They're not saying much at the moment,…
Post
I haven't had time to do a thorough analysis of Clark's speech but from a quick once-over I can say with certainty that it is underwhelming. Let's face it, this was her chance to take the front foot and show the government had a policy…
Post
Mike Moreu from The Press is shaping up to be quite a fine cartoonist. Here's his take on the Religious Right's petition to restore the riding crop lady's right to beat her children. Meanwhile the folks over at Newzblog have done a great send-up of…
Post
So this is John Key's ambition: throwing troubled teens in boot camp, beating up on beneficiaries and criminalising our children. I've only had a quick read through the speech in my lunch break so it's possible I've got this wrong, but I get the distinct…
Post
I've always wondered what happens after I hit 'publish' here on the blog. Wired's goneAll information about free download free verizon ringtones samsung. and put together an infographic, so now I know - click to zoom and drag to pan. (Via BoingBoing)
Post
Hidden away today at the bottom of the Herald's story on further data from the latest DigiPoll is the news that only 3.8% of those surveyed rate the Electoral Finance Act as a vote influencing issue. You can just about feel the Herald's despair that…
Post
A must hear for anyone interested in political marketing and influencing voters. This item played on Chris Laidlaw's Sunday show on Radio NZ National yesterday. "When we decide who to vote for, are we making a rational choice? Or does emotion dictate our voting choice?"…
Post
Terrible Tim has launched another campaign to attack the Electoral Finance Act by using as much sexual double-entendre as possible for Truth's Page 2 readers. However this campaign's main aim is to double the weekly's circulation by the end of the year, in which case…
Post
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's not the first aspiring leader to try and present himself as 'down with the bros', but this is truly cringeworthy. Stephen Colbert asks the question everyone's been wondering: More Stephen Colbert over at Comedy Central.
Post
As you will know National Party Blogger David Farrar gave us a wee razzing for publishing an out of date list of Bob Clarkson's vast parliamentary achievements on Friday. Much high-horsing followed: [DPF: I now understand why you don't post under your full name. You…
Post
It would appear David Farrar is deeply concerned about the amount of traffic his mate Bill has been drumming up for The Standard this week, judging by his strange attack on our site this evening over a trifling error in our earlier post on Bob…
Post
New Zealand Labour movement activists will support Irish unionists - the political sort - who wish to remove Reform Prime Minister Massey's statue from Limavady in Northern Ireland's Derry County. Massey is remembered without affection by trade unionists here for the mounted special police known…
Post
The Dom reports today that the Japanese whaling fleet has ben "spotted steaming towards the Ross Sea" - part of our territorial waters. They're presumably coming here having had their activities in Australian waters declared illegal last week. The Greens have just just called for…
Post
Jon Stewart had a good piece last night on why we shouldn't just trust the economic and financial "experts". People deserve better from the media than the dehumanising econo-speak about 'soft labour markets' and housing 'corrections' that dominates our Business pages, so it's good to…
Post
After much speculation, National MP Bob Clarkson has finally announced he will be standing again in Tauranga, apparently to work on housing affordability issues. What a gift. For those who missed it last time, here's Bob's entire contribution to Parliament since August last year: (17…
Post
After Brash and the extreme right were exposed in The Hollow Men the Nats changed their leader hoping for a fresh start. What's becoming apparent is that National's shady backers haven't changed. The policy and the cash are coming from the same people they always…
Post
Well it looks like Free Speech Coalition founder Cameron Slater has taken a break from stalking John Minto and photoshopping underage bloggers' faces onto porn and decided to finally publish the Coalition's updated donors list (and only a month after he said he would). Interestingly,…
Post
Congratultions to Jonny Reid for his win in the Taupo A1GP sprint race on Sunday. He also managed to finish fourth in the feature race which gives the NZ team the series lead. What was also a world first is that all of the teams…
Post
I see the Free Speech Coalition hasn't learned anything from the ramshackle PR fiasco that was their launch and have posted up another billboard in Invercargill today, this time featuring Robert Mugabe and criticising the government's 'silencing' of Mayor Shadbolt, who is ironically one of…
Post
Armando Iannucci from The Observer wonders whether he's the only person to find Barack Obama dull: Like Will Smith, who in the new film I Am Legend wakes up to find himself the last man alive in a world of zombies, am I now the…
Post
Yesterday The Herald reported that: Demographia, an international survey business run by Hugh Pavletich of Christchurch and Wendell Cox of the United States, today issued its fourth annual report, showing New Zealand has slipped drastically on an international scale. Now quite aside from the shoddy…
Post
Ruth Laugeson has an article in the Sunday Star Times about the increased numbers of communications staff employed by ministries. Entitled "Spinning govt yarn costs $47m", the article is in many ways a lovely piece of spin in its own right. The basis of the…
Post
Remember how I asked who was funding Tim Shadbolt's campaign to "bring down the government"? Turns out the Southland Times was interested too and they've found out his move to deliberately break electoral law is being propped up by the Talley brothers, who appear to…
Post
Today's Age gives a few insights into "constituency matters" the Brethren discussed with John Howard from 2003 to 2006, the last about the same time they were commissioning private investigators to dig dirt on our Helen. Support for George Bush and the war in Iraq…
Post
From Time: A lot is riding on the the world's cheapest car. In the words of Ratan Tata, chairman of the company behind the upstart econobox, India's "People's Car" will be a "safe, affordable, all weather vehicle for a family which is today traveling on…
Post
Yesterday's supposed scandal over an email exhange between Michael Cullen and a National Party activist was an absurd piece of political activism from the Herald. Recently the paper has been running almost daily attack articles on the government, but this was surely scraping the bottom…