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National have not had a great year, but the class size fiasco last week has raised the bar on their awful. Worse: the nice man Mr Shearer first raised their stupidity on class sizes, and their poll ratings have dropped noticeably. So it's time to…
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Announced this morning before Question Time in Parliament that John Judge will be replaced as Chair of ACC on a temporary basis by Paula Rebstock. Judge is going to chair the ANZNational Bank; Rebstock has been chairing the advisory body to WINZ. It will be…
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NRT on the situation in Canterbury: When the government dismissed the elected councillors of Environment Canterbury, suspended elections, and replaced them with a clique of unelected dictators, they assured us that it was only a temporary measure. Once ECan's internal administrative divisions were resolved, elections would…
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People are driving less because of high fuel prices. That means less road tax for the government - a $120m shortfall in the last two years -, which pays for the transport budget. The biggest slice of the transport budget - the uneconomic roads of…
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Times are tight, right? You've probably been told that when your boss says you can't have a pay rise that keeps up with inflation. Yeah, well. It seems that doesn't apply to managers. The largest jump in median weekly income has been for managers -…
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Parents and teachers are calling for Key to apologise over the stress and anxiety that his government has caused them over the last 2 weeks. Want to guess how Key handled it? The Prime Minister is refusing to apologise to parents and teachers over the…
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John Key doesn't stand for anything in particular. He prefers political expediency, being popular, not scaring the focus groups too much. He is so ill defined that, famously, he "can't remember" his position on the defining political event of his youth, the 1981 Springbok Tour.…
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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...
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Scott at Imperator Fish has kindly given us permission to syndicate posts from his blog – the original of this post is here. The Sun will continue to shine New Zealand has been enjoying a long period of uninterrupted sunlight, and this looks likely to continue until at…
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When Righties say we can't afford to support solo mums, what do they think we can afford instead? Cost of DPB for the 3,000 teenage solo mums and their kids: $50 million Cost of tax cuts for the top 1% of earners under National: $600…
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Sharples and Turia remind me of an old couple running the family store with no kids to pass it on to. They want to retire. If they do, that'll be curtains for everything they've built. Without them, the Maori Party goes to a well deserved…
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National flip-flopped on increasing class sizes, not because it was a bad policy but because the pressure came on and the polling showed the public was strongly against it. With over 75,000 people having signed the petition to have a referendum on asset sales already…
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Great cartoon by Guy Body in today's Herald.
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No need to get too excited about polls, especially more than two years out from the election, but the last three have all been good for the Left. The Roy Morgan on 18th May had National down 2.5% to 44.5%, Labour up 1.5% to 30%…
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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...
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The Prime Minister chairs Cabinet. The Budget is signed off, policy by policy, by Cabinet. Any competent Prime Minister would be intimately familiar with the major policy changes well before they even get to Cabinet. So, it was very interesting to see Audrey Young's 'insider'…
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Three are puppets, one's a muppet?
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I have never been prouder of NZ than I was when we went Nuclear Free. We put principle ahead of profit, we stood up to some heavy diplomatic pressure, and we spoke our piece to the world. Lange in the Oxford Union debate - magnificent…
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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...
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Before the captions, some serious analysis, because this new Nat promo photo really astounds me.I honestly don't know what the Nats were thinking. It might work if Key were a nationally-adored figure, a kindly uncle, who had delivered a golden age for the country (fat-arse…
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The Nats' agenda. You don't usually see it stated as succinctly as this: While middle New Zealand buys the idea of Budget surplus, it seems less keen to make the necessary sacrifices to achieve it. English can only suck so much by way of savings…
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Most economists seem to be stuck in an an orthodoxy rut, leading many to wonder why we take economists so seriously: Why all this panic, though? Aren't economists in charge of it all? Yes. And this is the problem. These highly skilled people carry on,…
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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...
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Last week I wrote about how the mass arrest of protesters last week was planned by police from the beginning. A couple of days later I was told that 10 minutes before the march a Police Liaison Officer spoke to protest organisers and stated that…
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Weekend social is for non political chat. What's on for the weekend, gigs, film or book reviews, sports, or whatever. No politics, no aggro, why can't we all just get along?
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The neoliberals hate democracy. It tends to get in the way. Especially local government. It's easier to control a single unicameral Parliament than it is to control 70-odd territorial authorities. National has attacked local government, particularly in Auckland and Canterbury but now they're going all…
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A coalition of parents, teachers, and educational organisations at all levels has just forced the government into a substantial backdown on its ill conceived plan to increase class sizes. Well and good - but don't waste the momentum! While the links and the energy that…
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After hearing 150 oral submissions and receiving thousands more written ones, National's members of the Finance and Select Committee shut down the Committee's consideration of the evidence they had heard on the asset sales bill after just 1 hour. And why not? They had had…
democracy under attack democratic participation privatisation
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I am a bad person. I know this because I got a bit of a kick out of right wing loon Matthew Hooton's latest column: Govt fiscal strategy to unravel after humiliating education u-turn The government’s humiliating but inevitable rout over its dopey plan to…
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Two major new reports out yesterday show the earth is headed for a tipping point: our consumption is unsustainable, and we're degrading the environment. Soon it will be beyond the point of return. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has a 5 yearly Global Environment Outlook…
climate change Conservation disaster Environment sustainability water