National blew the VIP entertainment budget for the Rugby World Cup by $5 million, despite none of the promised big names actually turning up. They got the extra dosh out of Mfat’s budget. In unrelated news, the government is cutting the Greens’ Warm Up New Zealand programme, which has returned four times its costs in benefits. There’s no money, you see.
Winston Peters is on the attack over Tariana Turia’s slush fund again. This time, Turia and John Key find themselves defending a $60,000 grant to a rugby club to investigate “undertake whanau development research”, on the spurious grounds that ‘the old way doesn’t work, this is something new, so let’s try it’. In that spirit, I have a proposition for Mr Key.
There was a time when John Key used to promise solutions to any problem you could name. Or he would act sympathetic and concerned by the consequences of his government’s own policies. But the broken promises and falseness wore thin. Key’s new tactic is simply to pretend that problems don’t exist. Apparently, that’s called leadership in National Party circles.
National has copped a hell of a backlash for increasing class sizes. The internal polls are said to be diabolical. There are a million parents of school-age kids out there, and they’re pissed off. Now, they’ve flipp-flopped and dipped into the emergency money. They won’t say how many teachers they’re cutting but it’s at least 400, probably 1,000.
So, half the Cabinet sends their kids to private schools. Those schools – which National has upped the taxpayers subsidies for – boast of small class sizes. Kings, where Key sends his kid, says: “Class sizes are limited and our policy of a low pupil-to-teacher ratio ensures students are given greater individual attention in the classroom”. Guess larger classes are only good for the peasants’ kids.
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
No Right Turn on the World Wildlife Fund report which finds us failing to meet the major commitments agreed to at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, 20 years ago.
National is crowing that 8,600 people downloaded the Budget App. Pity it doesn’t work. And, of course, you can view the budget via your phone or tablet’s browser already without an expensive app. The Nats reckon the $59,000 cost is ‘free’ because it came from printing fewer paper editions – a bit like how if you save $100 at a sale it doesn’t matter if you set $60 on fire.
Is the government coming to its senses on the matter of reducing class sizes? That would be a rare pleasure indeed…
Colin James contrasts Shearer with Key: At a post-budget standup on Thursday he lacked leader-like fluency, deferring readily – and necessarily – to finance shadow minister David Parker who had his lines off pat.This factor should diminish over time as Shearer settles – though don’t expect him to become the sort of glib performance artist John Key has become. Shearer is too earnest and too aware of complexity.
We’re told that these are tough times and we all have to share in the pain. Yeah, right. National dug this hole with $2 billion in ‘fiscally neutral’ tax cuts, billions in subsidies to polluters, and white elephant motorways that aren’t worth what they cost. And who’s being made to bear the cost? The rich are doing well, while the poor and middle class go backwards.
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
Riveting television for politicos on-line at the Leveson enquiry tonight at 9pm as Tony Blair is questioned by the silken Robert Jay QC. More details on the mating of porcupines will no doubt come up. Revelations of the hidden relationship based on mutual interest between Murdoch-owned media and British politicians are very disturbing. While prosecutions and resignations may follow there, the lessons apply here as well.
So tobacco is a ridiculously addictive drug that offers no accompanying high for the user. It has pretty dire health consequences and was promoted for years as harmless, chic and sophisticated and the government even gave it away to combatants during WWII by the carton load.
But now the government wants it gone.
National’s got this love affair with ‘outcomes, not outputs’. Means funding teachers and community groups on the achievements of their students or clients, not the number they have. You don’t have to have seen The Wire to know the results. Schools and community groups will pick winners, only those who can achieve easily, to protect their funding.
Just as a quick update on my pre-budget Spin v reality about a Government that has the worst growth record of any since before Michael Joseph Savage, and has a 52% increase in unemployment despite more than 1,000 NZers leaving for Australia each week.
If you were a rightwinger, who believed the route to a prosperous society (for the elite, at least) was through private endeavor, wouldn’t the way to help that along be to invest heavily in education? Then, people would be equipped to work out the rest themselves, without the State. So, why is National attacking education at every level? Do they see education as a threat?
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
A couple of good BBC articles: what have the Romans done for us? and can we have a society that doesn’t depend on us becoming ill with our fatness? And Kim Hill’s excellent interviewee Steve Keen.
Bad news from Bonn. Not that you’d know it from NZ media coverage of course.
Adding to the canon of reasons and commentators on why you don’t sell your assets (particularly to pay for your maintenance) is an […]
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
Taunting the young people who are getting the shitty end of the economic stick – does it get any more arrogant than that?
National don’t have faith in Kiwis, or our skills and education, our Kiwi ingenuity. Nope, they think the only way to wealth is farming – which can’t be expanded, tourism – which provides low value jobs, and resource exploitation – of oil, gas and minerals unfound. They’re banking on us hitting the jackpot, because they can’t think of any real way of providing a future for our country.
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
This afternoon a couple of ‘hidden treasures’ have come out of the budget. In changes not announced, but discovered 1122 teachers could be losing their jobs and changes are being made to the assets old people are allowed to keep once in residential care. Sneaky, Bill, sneaky…
Budget is a sluggish student who shows no enthusiasm or energy, and must be coaxed into making even the tiniest effort. His attitude is all wrong. He is something of a braggart, repeatedly telling all of his peers how fast he is, even though when challenged to a race he always finds an excuse to back out.
The Government have been pushing a line that Christchurch is holding us back as an economy. The poor people of Christchurch are to blame for all our woes apparently, with their earthquake. We shouldn’t blame National, just Cantabrians.
But it’s not true.
Weekend social is for non political chat. What’s on for the weekend, gigs, film or book reviews, sports, or whatever. No politics, no […]
The 3 most expensive items in the Budget: 1. $10.24 billion: Superannuation, 2. $3.69 billion: Debt Servicing, 3. $3.32 billion: National Land Transport Agency (Roads of National Signficance etc) – up $334 million. National are prepared to sack teachers, raise prescription costs and pick paperboy’s pockets to defend their roads that make no economic sense.
Getting back to surplus is not the first step to growing the economy. It’s the other way round.
With enough conditioning, our psyches will adapt to believe almost anything. Like that pain is good.
In his Budget speech, David Shearer labelled John Key ‘Mr Australia’. Because that’s where he’s pushing us. The zero hope budget offers a thousand and one nasty little cuts for students, for kids, for low-income workers, for schools, for community groups, for your public services. All to barely – if rosy growth forecasts come true – achieve a micro-surplus in 2014/15 for purely political reasons.
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
As expected Bill English has served up a budget with no greater focus than reducing a government deficit that really doesn’t matter much at all.
Of course he’s doing this at the expense of a whole lot of things that do matter – our kids’ education, our families’ health, our retirements.
