While the rest of the world is moving away from the ‘hands off’ monetary policy that became fashionable in the 80s, our government insists on playing by the outmoded neoliberal ‘rules’ of a clean float. Well, what happens when everyone else ‘cheats’ by printing free money to drive their currencies lower and we sit on our hands? We lose our assets and our exporters.
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
Every time some rightwing ideologue calls 80% of New Zealanders racist or xenophobic because we don’t want to lose control of our future and sell our strategic assets to fall into the hands of a foreign dictatorship that is going around the world buying up key resources to secure their own supply chains at the cost of our sovereignty, and reminds us that National is letting this happen, I smile. Keep it up, Fran.
Almost missed among all the blacked out paragraphs of the Transport Briefing to the Incoming Minister are 2 interesting graphs. While not explicitly mentioning peak oil, the graph of the National Land Transport Fund shows a massive shortfall in revenue in a ‘high oil price, low growth’ scenario. The other shows how low-quality National’s highway spending is.
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
After the horrifying attack on a 5-year old tourist in Turangi in December, Kiwis showed their compassion, and their shame, by donating over $62,000 to the family. Now, the family has said they don’t blame the community and have used some of the donations to fund children’s play equipment in Turangi and medical equipment for the children’s wing of Waikato hospital.
Public education is the cornerstone of a good country and a buoyant economy. And New Zealanders have long enjoyed the benefits that come to them individually, to their families, their communities, their country, and the economy from having access to quality public education. But all this now seems under attack from a small group of Treasury officials.
Scott at Imperator Fish has kindly given us permission to syndicate posts from his blog – the original of this post is here
Catherine Isaac “loves education”, and spent six years on a school board of trustees; Scott is a big fan of education and spent several years in various schools – he fancies an “working” group job setting up Charter Schools too…
Weekend social is for non political chat. What’s on for the weekend, gigs, film or book reviews, sports, or whatever. No politics, no […]
No Right Turn has a look at two of the incoming minister briefings impacting on climate change. They are incoherent and it is clear that neither ministry talks to the other. If it wasn’t affecting a important long term issue, it’d be as funny as a Yes Minister episode. But since it does, it just highlights the growing incoherence of this incompetent government and their increasing politicization of the civil service.
The Briefings to Incoming Ministers, which government departments produce after each election, give the public (via the media) an insight into on coming challenges in portfolios, elaborate on how election promises will be converted into real policies, and – most importantly – reveal things the government is planning that weren’t election policies. So, it’s disturbing that the Nats are censoring them.
I’ve heard that POAL has private detectives following union officials around and taking photos.
I’d imagine that’s where “scoops” like this are coming from.
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
According to TVNZ, the Prime Minister said section nine of the SOE legislation, referring to the Treaty of Waitangi, was “largely symbolic” because it had not been enacted since it was drawn up in 1986. It wasn’t a felicitous phrase; he might well find Maoridom’s response is both symbolic and large, if not in the sense he meant.
Treasury has blown the dust off its 1980s economics textbooks and offered the same old failed prescription. Their moronic suggestion to cut education spending to finance tax cuts can be dismissed out of hand. But their suggestion of core Crown spending cuts has some merit; I know where we can get $75m that’s being spent on useless advice and incompetent forecasting.
Scott at Imperator Fish has kindly given us permission to syndicate posts from his blog – the original of this post is here
Labour Party MPs are said to be red-faced, after discovering that prominent blogger David Farrar is not the Prime Minister of New Zealand.
A remarkably nice worker/boss story from across the ditch: Australian Ken Grenda may have sold his bus company, but his staff of almost 2,000 […]
Spot the difference: Mega-corporation with close ties to foreign dictatorship that has a policy of securing strategic resources buys swathes of New Zealand farmland after a bid by a company directly owned by the dictatorship was rejected. New Zealand public company to become the foreign company’s tenant. vs New resident in New Zealand buys farm.
It’s tough getting a job in the Key economy. There’s 80,000 more people wanting work since Key came to office and 43,000 fewer jobs. Fortunately, there’s always a do-nothing government job going … if you know the right people. Eh, Catherine Isaac? Sure she’s got no qualifications but the ACT leader-in-waiting needs an income.
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
Embattled Christchurch City Council CEO Tony Marryatt was asked on Campbell Live last night if he is worth his $500K salary. He said it is the market rate (in fact, its 100K over the median) and he would do the job whether the pay “was 200K or a million”. Now, doesn’t that mean the market clearing price for his labour is $200K? The Council could do a lot with an extra $300K. When’s the pay cut coming?
There was some maintenance done on the main NZ server last night. All looked ok when I went to sleep at about 6am, […]
The Maori Party is threatening to leave the government over the asset sales legislation removing the companies’ Treaty obligations. Key knows their threat is hollow. He just got away for 3 years of insulting Maori and worsening Maori statistics. Why would Sharples and Turia take a pay cut and lose their limos for their last few months working before retirement?
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
Donations over $30,000 from the same source must be declared to the Electoral Commission within 10 working days. National overstepped the mark in declaring a total donation of $86,005 from Gallagher Industries outside the limit. These days the Electoral Commission doesn’t get involved – the penalty is a fine of up to $40,000 on summary conviction.
Scott at Imperator Fish has kindly given us permission to syndicate posts from his blog – the original of this post is here
We need better answers than just “stricter enforcement” to solve the copyright debate – we need some fresh ideas.
…or is National’s “Ethnic Team” so tokinist it’s kinda racist in it’s own right?
I mean it’s not like there’s a facebook group for National’s Old White Men Team.
Oh wait, there is.
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.
Scott at Imperator Fish has kindly given us permission to syndicate posts from his blog – the original of this post is here
The stock market dipped sharply in trading today, after no stories appeared in any of the major newspapers about Sonny Bill Williams for almost two hours.
News in on the Herald says the Maori party are talking the talk over National’s latest insult to Maori.
Will they quit the Government? Or will the smell of those limo seats mean another backdown in a couple of weeks?
We’ve been told about how bad poverty is here, and how bad it is for our future by the excellent Inside New Zealand documentary – but will it take an outside view to wake us from our slumber?
If so then Christians Against Poverty‘s John Kirkby is willing to provide it for us.
I/S at NoRightTurn says we should hold Key to his latest pathetic excuse making for his inaction on the sale of our farmland overseas: “John Key’s excuse for the Crafar farms sale? His hands were tied. But he’s promising to change the law if we make enough noise about it” Unfortunately, Key doesn’t mean it. He has no intention of listening.
Most Kiwis have had no payrise, if they’re lucky enough to have kept their jobs, in the past few years. Yet Christchurch City Council CEO Tony Marryatt has kept on getting pay rises on his obscene salary, even as his job performance has declined. Now the arrogant bastard is saying he’ll keep $34,000 he doesn’t deserve unless the elected council ‘behaves’. There is no justification for this madness. Sack him.
