Written By:
karol -
Date published: 8:30 am, October 29th, 2013 -
51 comments
Categories: benefits, bill english, brand key, business, child welfare, class war, health, housing, john key, national, paula bennett, poverty, slippery, uk politics, unemployment, welfare
Tags:
A charity is taking on the funding of the essential work on monitoring poverty, in the face of Paula Bennett, Bill English and John Key et al failing to do their job: a return to Dickensian & Edwardian times.
Written By:
karol -
Date published: 8:16 am, October 13th, 2013 -
115 comments
Categories: climate change, community democracy, Conservation, greens, local body elections, Metiria Turei, public transport, sustainability
Tags: celia wade-brown
Yesterday was a very good day for the Greens (and the left). Congratulations! It’s hard to predict outcomes for next year’s parliamentary elections based on local elections, especially when the voter turnout is so low. But the left does get a boost from the results. Local councils need to be improved so that are more democratic. [Update: Clow (Labour) for Whau- preliminary result. Waitakere Ranges Board]
Written By:
Guest post -
Date published: 9:05 am, June 10th, 2013 -
31 comments
Categories: john key, winston peters
Tags: Peter Dunne
In politics, one week is a long time.
And for this year, the week on either side of Queen’s birthday weekend was especially interesting. And particularly hectic for some key people!
Written By:
karol -
Date published: 10:08 am, May 17th, 2013 -
130 comments
Categories: accountability, auckland supercity, bill english, class war, democracy under attack, housing, labour, local government, privatisation, same old national, sustainability
Tags: nick smith, phil twyford
Yesterday’s budget is a sop to affordable housing & aims to privatise state housing. Penny Hulse says the government’s related “housing accord” Bill is at odds with the agreement her council has not yet ratified. It overrides local democracy & endangers the AKL “agreement”. [Update] Waitakere News analysis
Written By:
karol -
Date published: 10:46 am, May 15th, 2013 -
37 comments
Categories: accountability, john key, national/act government, same old national, Spying, telecommunications
Tags: GCSB, kim dotcom
The GCSB won’t “confirm or deny” if they spied on individual Kiwis. Concerned citizens might contact the Privacy Commissioner or start a class action. John Key’s rushed GCSB Bill won’t prevent mission creep, surveillance to support international corporate interests or inadequate oversight of the GCSB. [Update]: link to Waitakere News
Written By:
karol -
Date published: 10:54 am, March 7th, 2013 -
53 comments
Categories: auckland supercity, capitalism, climate change, democracy under attack, Environment, housing, infrastructure, public services, public transport, sustainability, transport
Tags: len brown, nick smith
Nick Smith, of the forked tongue, is challenging Auckland council’s plan for affordable compact housing. It will do nothing for housing affordability, transport, the environment. It is undemocratic, over-rides the council, and will enrich developers.
Written By:
karol -
Date published: 8:32 am, January 4th, 2013 -
93 comments
Categories: assets, class war, economy, Privatisation, treasury
Tags: referendum
The Asset Sales petition has the numbers for a referendum, but need to continue to collect signatures til the petition is submitted at the end of the month. Well done! The evidence & the majority of New Zealanders do not support the sales. Keep campaigning!
Written By:
karol -
Date published: 11:59 am, November 27th, 2012 -
103 comments
Categories: brand key, Environment, film, greens, labour, slippery, tourism, workers' rights
Tags: tpp
Today The Hobbit employment dispute is revived, exposing gaps between principle and practice. Jackson defends his role; some of Labour’s ABC club will attend the premier; John Key-speak weaves a contradictory path of populist nonsense, linking the movie, 100%Pure, 100% Middle-earth and Macdonald’s.
Written By:
karol -
Date published: 9:10 am, October 28th, 2012 -
18 comments
Categories: babies, capitalism, child welfare, climate change, david cunliffe, ETS, families, Gerry Brownlee, workers' rights
Tags: planet key, sue moroney
On Planet Key natural body processes are ignored, and nature has been tamed into a golf course. It’s a place where mothers don’t lactate or have a heightened sensitivity to their babies’ cries; a place disconnected from the chaotic consequences of climate change.
Written By:
Eddie -
Date published: 3:15 pm, January 31st, 2012 -
38 comments
Categories: blogs
Tags: clusterfucks, red alert
The same day as we learn that Labour won’t be allowing press gallery journos free access to their wing of Parliament as previously (apparently a desperate attempt at message control by keeping off message MPs and journos apart: someone better tell Fran Mold what a cellphone is), Labour’s bizarre cult of David Farrar has performed its first human sacrifice.
Written By:
lprent -
Date published: 9:05 pm, January 11th, 2012 -
137 comments
Categories: Economy, Unions, wages
Tags:
There has been some interesting material floating around in comments and on facebook about the Ports of Auckland waterside disputing workers wages. Looks like we are starting to get some more information outside of the right wing nut job sites. Ultimately the information has to be provided by the Ports of Auckland because they are the only organisation that holds the wages data across employees. But the figures provided by the P0A (the 91k) include overtime payments, shift payments, superannuation subsidies, medical insurance subsidies and hardly constitute a normal wage that the employee would see..
Written By:
notices and features -
Date published: 10:14 am, October 16th, 2011 -
88 comments
Categories: act, don brash, greens, john banks, john key, labour, national, phil goff
Tags: credit downgrade, Rena, search and surveillance
Two weeks ago I thought that Goff and Labour did not have a chance in this election. National’s lead in the polls seemed too big, the country still seemed to be in love with John Key and Goff just was not getting the media cut through necessary to change hearts and minds. Then something happened. The wheels started to fall off National’s well honed machine.
Written By:
r0b -
Date published: 3:21 pm, October 30th, 2010 -
11 comments
Categories: foreshore and seabed, Maori Issues, maori party
Tags: foreshore and seabed
Seems like the Maori Party conference is off to a rocky start. Likely to get even rockier as they move on to the main event today, the vexed issue of the foreshore and seabed. The differences between the existing Act and the proposed replacement Bill are mostly symbolic. Is a symbolic change enough for the Maori Party?
Written By:
r0b -
Date published: 10:58 am, June 15th, 2010 -
49 comments
Categories: foreshore and seabed, labour, Maori Issues, maori party, national
Tags: foreshore and seabed
If that is the foreshore and seabed debate effectively resolved we should all take a moment to celebrate. It will be good to have the issue behind us as a country and move on. Given the agreement between National and the Maori Party it looks like the whole debate was mostly about semantics. Meanwhile in practical terms iwi say they want the kind of rights that Ngati Porou secured – under the current Act.
Written By:
r0b -
Date published: 9:47 am, May 13th, 2010 -
18 comments
Categories: john key, Media
Tags: online polls, smile and wave
These online polls are always silly, but it’s interesting to track the spread of the “smile and wave” meme.
Written By:
Marty G -
Date published: 3:13 pm, April 8th, 2010 -
28 comments
Categories: news
Tags: matt nippert
According to Roy Morgan, the Herald lost 50,000 readers last year, an achievement only surpassed by the Sunday Star-Times, which shed 107,000 (17%!). After reading a piece that mickysavage alerted me to. I’m left wondering if there’s a link with the quality of journalism in the Herald and those 50,000 lost readers.
Written By:
Marty G -
Date published: 10:19 am, April 8th, 2010 -
39 comments
Categories: capitalism, class war, tax
Tags: 'brain' drain, bankers, george monbiot, the guardian
George Monbiot writes: It’s a bitter blow. When the government proposed a windfall tax on bonuses and a 50p top rate of income tax, thousands of bankers and corporate executives promised to leave the country and move to Switzerland(1,2). Now we discover that the policy has failed: the number of financiers applying for a Swiss work permit fell by 7% last year.
Written By:
Marty G -
Date published: 11:16 am, March 9th, 2010 -
19 comments
Categories: blogs, national
Tags: aaron gilmore, amy adams, colin king, craig foss, eric roy, nationalmps, nicky wagner, red alert, simon bridges
Remember how a couple of months back National set up NationalMPs? It was meant to be their answer to Red Alert, Labour’s frequently raucous, unstagemanaged blog where Labour’s MPs write what they want. But the Nats’ attempt is deadly dull. Either the leadership is gagging them or the Nat MPs are dreadful bores.
Written By:
Guest post -
Date published: 12:00 pm, May 21st, 2009 -
22 comments
Categories: auckland supercity, democracy under attack, national/act government
Tags: john carter, john tamihere, paula bennett
I attended the Paula Bennett-John Carter Supercity meeting yesterday evening in Kelston. This was one of the hastily arranged series of meetings arranged in the Auckland area to persuade ordinary jafas and westies that this Government is really listening and living up to its election promise to consult on the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance’s […]
Written By:
Eddie -
Date published: 5:48 am, March 16th, 2009 -
52 comments
Categories: law and "order"
Tags: sensible sentencing trust
Last week, Tane pointed out that the private prison industry had been involved in corrupting the political process in the US by funding ‘tough on crime’ groups that call for longer sentences (and bigger profits for private prisons). He wondered if the same could be happening here with the Sensible Sentencing Trust. This provoked a press release […]
Recent Comments