Bennett’s reforms aim to cut the costs of government spending on welfare. But what this means is that more of the necessary caring and service work in NZ will be unpaid, or underpaid. It doesn’t mean people will necessarily work harder or longer. It’s a…
Key has said we all have to wait and see what is in the Neazor Report on the GCSB spies' illegal spying on Kim Dotcom.* He won't even answer basic questions like: 'what section of the law did the GCSB breach?' Funny that Key's so…
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There is something well and truly stinky wafting from the 9th floor of the beehive. I think the rot set in with Key's TranzRail lies, and was well and truly established after Bill English's housing rort. When the Nats were allowed to get away with…
Scott at Imperator Fish has kindly given us permission to syndicate posts from his blog – the original of this post is here. The week has started badly for John Key. Yesterday we learned that National are down in the latest political poll, and today we hear that…
A couple of days before it was surely all going to come out - very messily and very publicly - in the Dotcom court case, Key has revealed that his spies illegally spied on Kim Dotcom. But, beyond that, Key won't tell us anything apart…
With Key's willful ignorance on Banks' police report and the GCSB's activities, and "brighter future" becoming a cruel joke as the job losses rack up, a new National slogan is in order.
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So Key knew about the GCSB's 'unlawful' actions for a week before he bothered to tell us. He happened to know that this Monday state owned companies would be announcing they were causing the loss of 500-600 jobs (including contractors). A terrible story for the…
A couple of encouraging polls. Here in NZ, the Labour / Green block continues to chip away at National - and has now taken the lead (pending margin of error of course). The latest TVNZ poll has National 45% (down 3) Labour 34% (up 2)…
Welcome to National's economy: Kiwirail has just announced 158 infrastructure and engineering job losses, and this afternoon Solid Energy will probably announce the loss of 300 jobs at Spring Creek, and 200-250 elsewhere. This on top of the swathe of job losses in Huntly and…
Reprinted with permission from Dave Kennedy (bsprout) at Local Bodies. Hekia Parata has released the first statistics available from the collection of National Standards data and was able to claim that 76% of children in years 1-8 were above the Standard for reading, 72% were above the…
The Righties are wetting themselves because the national standards supposedly show higher results in larger classes. Of course, you can't compare data between schools with any validity - "they are not moderated, so one school's "well below" may be another's "at" or "above"" writes the…
Paula Bennett on Q+A: "I don’t think that every child actually needs to be in early-childhood education" says Bennett. There will be cases where parents can do just as good or better job for their child (especially if they're not working anyway) Yet, her policy…
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