Key’s vicious cycle
If anything has marked John Key’s tenure as PM it’s his use of his personal brand to run his cabinet.
But what happens to his control as that brand runs out of steam?
Pokies: the crack cocaine of gambling
A sad story in the Herald today of a man who got hooked on pokies. It has destroyed his family and relationships. He’s started ripping off clients at work. All to put money in the machines that SkyCity profits from. SkyCity has so many addicts customers it says it needs more machines. SkyCity is a cancer. We shouldn’t just stop its expansion. We should excise it.
Creeping elitism
There was a time when you expected higher standards from the senior ranks of the public service. Now, more and more, they are just like private sector CEOs. Elitists. The standards are slipping. This slap on the wrist for the Building and Housing CEO who manhandled a staffer just shows how pervasive the elitist private sector ‘one law for us, another for them’ mentality has become.
Open mike 21/04/2012
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
ImperatorFish: Key Explains Sky City Deal
Weekend social 20/04/2012
Weekend social is for non political chat. What’s on for the weekend, gigs, film or book reviews, sports, or whatever. No politics, no […]
Daughter, my generation is squandering your birthright
Will our children think of the welfare state, the tiger and the rhino as part of a mythologised Arcadia?
The other wage gap
In his speech yesterday, David Shearer talked about how wages have lagged productivity gains since the neoliberal revolution. Here’s what he was talking about:
Sold out
As expected, the Nats kept on pushing until they got the answer that they wanted on the Crafar farms. A bit more of NZ has been sold out…
New political blog
Welcome to the twistedhive. A new political blog in the NZ ‘sphere.
Some interesting posts including some insightful commentary on the choices for Labour’s chief of staff and one about getting around the government’s plan to veto paid parental leave.
Key should resign over ‘faith-based’ government
Key’s reasoning for not calling a halt to the business case study for an international convention centre was that he had already decided it was a good idea. Therefore, there was no need for a business case to determine whether it was a good idea. What is this? Faith-based government? The truth is Key’ intervention was all about doing favours for mates.
Key’s Waterloo
It’s a bit rich for Key to claim that there were no credible alternatives to the back-room deal with SkyCity when he shut down one alternative proposal and ignored four others. But now the facts are coming out. Key has “advised himself” into his worst public relations fiasco yet.
Open mike 20/04/2012
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
Reading the tea-leaves
Alistair Cameron is heavily tipped to become Labour’s Chief of Staff. That’s a change that would signal even bigger change to come.
Let’s hope that bigger change is done openly and with party members’ input.
Vision part 2: a more equal NZ
David Shearer’s delivered his second “Vision” speech. It’s good to hear he wants to lead a government that tackles inequality, wants proper jobs rather than casualised ones and our kids earning or learning.
Choices, choices: Hillside & National’s priorities
When it comes to doing dirty deals with a casino, selling our law so that it gets a convention centre and more profits from gambling addicts, National’s willing to die in a ditch. But when there was an opportunity to save and expand our high-tech, high-skill manufacturing at Hillside simply by requiring government bodies to consider the costs and benefits of their actions on the whole country, not their narrow corporate interests, National did nothing.
ImperatorFish: Smoking Studies For Schools?
Scott at Imperator Fish has kindly given us permission to syndicate posts from his blog – the original of this post is here.
National leads the way when it comes to generating ideas that will grow corporate profits at the expense of the community and, ultimately, the taxpayer. So here’s some more ideas…
Join the Hikoi!
Join the Hikoi against Asset Sales, 24 April – 4 May. If you’re anywhere near Auckland on Saturday 28 April, be at Britomart 3pm to send a message against this Government’s Asset Sales.
400,000 comments (almost)
By one standard we have now passed 400 thousand comments. But I’m not a bullshitter with numbers like Bill English or Whaleoil. By my standards, we haven’t quite hit it yet. We will in a couple of weeks. I’m starting to get a bit worried about how we’re going to handle the rapidly increasing rate that people are arguing with each other here…
Winning the race to the bottom
You don’t get fat off the crumbs from someone else’s table and you don’t get rich by being someone else’s butler. So, why the Nats are so happy that Australia is sending a few call centre and cigarette jobs here, where wages are lower, I don’t know. We’ll be wealthier if we produce more wealth, more stuff of real value. Not if our competitive advantage is low wages and insecure jobs.
Who blew the Budget?
As part of the Nats’ pre-Budget framing, English’s mate Farrar is running graphs meant to show a blow-out in spending under Labour. Problem is, he hasn’t adjusted for GDP growth, or even inflation. How dumb does he think we are?
Murdo RIP
Long time Labour Party stalwart Murdo MacMillan’s funeral will be at St Peter’s Church on Friday 20th at 10am. Son of a seaman and ex-wharfie, rock-solid in his values, Murdo made a huge contribution behind the scenes to Labour’s successes over the best part of forty years.
Key ups the ante on an empty hand
Back before John Key’s political nous deserted him (circa mid-November 2011), he would have run a mile from the dirty pokies deal with SkyCity. Instead, he’s claiming the dirty deal as his own and SkyCity’s chairman bragging about his access to Nat ministers. All to build a useless convention centre that will demand ongoing subsidies. Not worth the political capital.
It’s turtles all the way down
Anyone else see the irony in the ‘bureaucracy-slashing National Government‘TM reacting to delays in the Christchurch rebuilding – partly caused by lack of coordination between the local bureaucracy, the existing central government bureaucracy, and the bureaucracy National created especially to deal with the rebuild – by adding another layer of back-room bureaucracy?
Open mike 19/04/2012
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
Christchurch rental crisis
According to Gerry Brownlee it isn’t happening.
Show us you cards, John
David Shearer’s created an easy way to send John Key a message about selling the law to SkyCity. Here’s your chance to tell John his plan to inflict harm on the community to increase the profit of SkyCity is stupid.
The counter-revolution will be networked
Don’t know if you saw Ruth Richardson’s wee rant in the Herald yesterday. Never realised she was such a bad writer. That was awful. Just a bunch of catchphrases and insensitive mention of Christchurch so she could use earthquake metaphors. Her thrust seems to be that the social media age will make us all free-market libertarians. Couldn’t be more wrong.
Europe to reject ACTA?
Despite 22 member states signing the Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement, the EU’s parliament is looking like it might reject the treaty on the grounds of it curtailing civil liberties. The EU’s first rapporteur MP on the treaty resigned in protest at the plans. The second has now reported back: “The intended benefits of this international agreement are far outweighed by the potential threats to civil liberties.”
Ideological blindness on education
The Nats are determined to ignore the evidence on the harm caused by charter schools, just as they are ignoring evidence on the damage done by national standards. This willingness to harm kids, as incidental pawns in their ideological games, really pisses me off.
SkyCity’s incoherent excuses
Yesterday we were treated to a bizarrely incoherent media blurt from SkyCity. I guess trying to defend the indefensible is taking its toll.
Open mike 18/04/2012
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
Pulitzer Prize winning…
Joyce’s dirty deals: money laundering at SkyCity
The Greens have revealed that criminals are laundering millions of dollars through SkyCity, taking their gambling losses as the price of coming out with clean, untraceable money. The Government’s sleazy ‘law for sale’ deal with SkyCity would only make it worse by allowing more anonymous, higher stake gambling on the pokies. Instead, we should be clamping down.
Shine some sunlight on lobbying
A Green Party bill proposes bringing some transparency to political lobbying. National is expressing support to the select committee stage – will they support it all the way?
Choices, choices: pointless boot camps
The government has splurged $20m putting 3,300 unemployed people through 6 week-long military ‘boot camps’ ($6K each). Result: up to 3 years later, only 19% have jobs. Compares to the typical stint of unemployment of 12 weeks. Looks a lot like the Nats are pouring money into a programme that makes unemployment worse. out of sheer ideological idiocy.