So, it turns out that our ‘foreign trusts’ regime is being exploited so that billionaires from developing countries can avoid tax in their countries. We’re a tax haven. And the Government sees nothing wrong with that. It’s legal, so it’s OK. Yes, we’re helping a foreign elite avoid paying their fair share and rip off poor people, but hey, this is a National Government – that sounds like paradise to them.
John Key likes to reference Singapore as a model for New Zealand. He’s meeting their PM today. Obviously, we can’t move New Zealand to the world’s busiest shipping route but what else can we do to emulate Singapore’s economic success? Singapore hasn’t sold its SOEs – it has built them into a massive investment fund. And it doesn’t let its currency raise to kill its exporters – it intervenes.
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
I turned on the news hoping to see the Nats’ rebuttal of the Greens’ detailed plan to protect Kiwi manufacturing like our competitors are doing. Instead, I saw a smirking fuck who has overseen the loss of 40,000 manufacturing jobs say ‘the high dollar’s good’. Joyce actually says a over-valued dollar is a good thing. ‘Flat-screen tellies are cheaper! Pity you don’t have a job to buy one!’
Parasitic blogger takes on Very Important Columnist who does Real Journalism Work to bring to her readers Informed and Insightful Commentary on The Issues That Really Matter.
40,000 manufacturing jobs gone in four years. Manufactured exports in free-fall. Tourism revenue collapsing. If that’s not a crisis, what is? Why is […]
There is increasing concern about New Zealand’s housing situation, with an escalation in homelesssness, people living in totally unacceptable conditions, and the lack of sufficient affordable housing stock.Update: Government close to unveiling plans for “cheap” housing on city fringe and ‘brownfield’ sites.
40 jobs in a hi-tech business repairing jet engines are set to be lost. The business’s profits are being slaughtered by the high dollar. The Bluff smelter could close – 900 jobs directly on the line, plus thousands more in the local economy – as Rio Tinto can’t make a profit with the dollar so high and aluminum prices down. How much longer will we do nothing?
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
Hazel Armstrong will deliver the second presentation in the Fabian Light-handed regulation series on Monday night 8 October in Connolly Hall in Wellington at 5:30pm. It is very timely in the light of the current review of work safety. Hazel’s presentation will use deregulation in rail as a case study. Its a salutary story. All are welcome to attend.
CTU President Helen Kelly talks about the Government’s Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety and the need for as many workers as […]
The narrative that the Government has tried to sell, and which has been largely accepted to date, is that the GCSB’s illegal spying on Dotcom was a cock-up. They claimed that Key wasn’t briefed, when he was. The Nats also claimed only a change in immigration law in 2009 protected Dotcom. Now, we know that’s rubbish. Cover-up it is.
Teachers are terrible at national standards. Almost half of them get them wrong, on one standard 97% of teachers were wrong. This is an outrage! Teachers are terrible!! Right? Am I right? Or is there an alternative hypothesis…
It looks like National are going to increase funding for food in low decile schools.
That’s great news for the kids but gives the government the chance to brush the question of why they were hungry in the first place under the carpet.
Just like any good third way policy should.
Welcome to Poverty Watch, a weekly update on National’s lack of response to the urgent and growing issue of poverty in NZ. This week, immigrant Pacific Island families in poverty, and a thoughtful and challenging piece on the role of philanthropy in NZ.
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
David Shearer’s weekly e-newsletter, this week on trust, household incomes, and the brighter future.
We’re happy to post similar newsletters from other opposition leaders – our email is on our contact page.
Weekend social is for non political chat. What’s on for the weekend, gigs, film or book reviews, sports, or whatever. No politics, no […]
We have some tickets for tomorrow for someone. You have to be in Auckland and you’ll have to pick them up from me.
Frankly Speaking has a nice compilation of some of John Key’s “brain fades” in the last couple of years. Funnily enough, it tends to be that the things he forgets are his direct linkages to government embarrassments – Dotcom, SkyCity, the new BMWs, the Mediaworks bailout, the credit downgrade. To Frank’s list, you can add the Tranzrail shares and probably many more.
It’s now clear that National are unfit for office anywhere but Planet Key. Which is unfortunate, because here on Planet Earth, things aren’t going so well. We need new ideas, we need action, we need results. We aren’t going to get them from National.
Today there have been protests around NZ, against Paula Bennett’s punitive welfare reforms.
Updates: Include ODT article link and extract, photos of Henderson protest, and links to several news articles.
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
People who think Mike Tyson should be allowed into NZ keep talking about “giving him a second chance”. But that doesn’t actually mean what they think it means …
Draco T offers a radical formula for economic renewal.
If it weren’t for the fact that the Prime Minister is a) covering up for a corrupt, lying minister because he heads a support party and is, therefore, above accountability on Planet Key and b) being exposed as an inept and asleep at the wheel in his oversight of the nation’s spies, then Hekia Parata would be clinging on to her political career by her fingernails right now. Still, plenty of time for that.
Call me cynical but I just don’t think it’s credible that it took over two weeks after Key supposedly learned of the GCSB’s involvement in the Dotcom raid before they realised he given a presentation featuring Dotcom by GCSB a month after the raid. They’re amateur, they’re not that amateur. No, I think the ‘presentation on a laptop screen’ is a red herring.
As Key heads off to the US to promote the NZ film industry, I look back at the Hobbit union-busting case and the issues it raised. Will Key’s latest mission to Hollywood, boost the economy, increase jobs and provide benefits to the NZ film industry? Or will it actually undermine the NZ’s economy and democracy, further Americanising NZ’s culture along with it?
Watch this video of John Key being interviewed by the media on January 24th. 1: Key is clearly well-briefed on Dotcom. 2: he knows that Dotcom is a resident, so why didn’t he raise that a month later with GCSB? 3: How did Key know that Dotcom was a resident and GCSB didn’t? 4: Banks has told media he had dined at the mansion with Dotcom – months before denying remembering that meeting.
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
Ed Miliband’s speech was splendid. No lectern, no notes, no teleprompter for 65 minutes. Fluent, self-deprecating, funny at times, “One Nation Labour” wasn’t any timid move to the centre. Claiming the 99% for Labour’s project, Miliband at one stroke shifted the centre ground of British politics to the left, and the divide between Labour and the Conservatives to the 1% line. Brilliant.
Key is trying to subtly rewrite history on his denials re Dotcom. Unfortunately for Key his categorical denial is on record.
What can one say to the latest. No Right Turn says…..
“So, having told everyone that he wasn’t briefed about the Kim Dotcom spying fiasco until September, it now turns out that John Key was told about it back in February. ” … “That whistling noise is the PM’s credibility shrinking even further. His amnesia is just too convenient here to be believed”
Updated: Added links to his next two posts.
As Shane Jones makes a complete dick of himself in public yet again in a traditional display of Labour party backbench egotism. I’m left shaking my head at the apparent complete inability of the Labour caucus to settle down to the task of being an effective opposition.
Greenie bashing season has just opened and that could see the end of Bennie bashing for the mean time. Over the last week two high profile and one low profile National politicians (Steven Joyce, Nick Smith & Colin king) have come out in the media with scathing comments attacking opponents to two high profile environmental cases currently before judges.
