Crisis? What Crisis?
Cuts are good for you.
Try hard Key’s audition tape
January 2009. Jobs are being lost at 4,000 per week. Key and his government have just come back from a month long holiday. First thing he does: makes an audition tape for Letterman. Notice how all the jokes are taking the mickey out of our country. Makes you real proud.
Ready for round two?
The global financial system, which has never properly recovered from the recession, is poised on the brink of a second crash. The headlines are a parade of bad news…
Update: US credit rating downgraded from AAA to AA+ with negative outlook (same as NZ). Announcement was made after close of markets. It’s gonna hit the fan on Monday.
Open mike 06/08/2011
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
Keynes vs Hayek debate at the London School of Economics
BBC Radio 4 in the UK has a very interesting debate pitting followers of Keynes vs those of Hayek
Holidays in Europe likely to be cut short
VSM protest at Otago
About 600 Otago students turned out this morning to meet John Key in protest to the VSM bill. Good to see a strong show of support for student unions!
Weekend social 05/08/2011
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 to foreign boats harvesting our fish
Fisheries workers bearing a 12,000 signature told a select committee yesterday the horror stories of abuse of foreign workers on fishing vessels, whose low wages displace Kiwi workers, how the focus on low-cost, low-quality that is wasting our fish stocks, and how this is caused by Kiwi corporates putting a quick buck ahead of their people and their environment.
NZRU to blame for rugby rip-off
Adidas was founded by a Nazi who lied that his own brother was SS to get him in deeper trouble when the brother was captured by the US. That cut-throat attitude persists. I don’t know why people want to wear All Blacks shirts. Adult equivalent of a 5 year old wearing a superman costume. But the NZRU shouldn’t let them be ripped off like this.
No debate for Hampden
National pollster David Farrar wants scientists to debate a fake Lord climate change denier saying “Why should anyone listen to people unwilling to debate?”. Well, David, next time you’re giving your polling report to the Kitchen Cabinet, tell them that. Because National is refusing to participate in coming debate on their asset sales policy.
George on tax
It isn’t often that I find myself in agreement with Garth George. But he’s written a scorching indictment of right-wing greed that feels right at home here on The Standard…
Open mike 05/08/2011
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
It’s who you know
Who cares whether or not the SIS briefed Phil Goff over whether or not some Israelis were Mossad? What does interest me it this: Secretive SIS denied Fairfax a copy of the briefing paper on the non-agents. Days later it magics up a copy of this classified paper for Nat muckraker Cameron Slater. Who’s the SIS’s minister again? Oh yeah, John Key. Updated
Economist on US debt politics
KAL (the cartoonist for The Economist) expresses my feelings about the political process over the last couple of months in the US. Their […]
Let he who is without sin….
It’s gotcha season in Parliament. First Labour was pulled up for a couple of election ads not having authorisation statements or not having big enough ones. Then Labour responded with unauthorised ads from National. Now, The Jackel has been told an unauthorised letter sent by Key to every pensioner is an electoral ad.
Clusterf*ck in Epsom
It looks like the race for Epsom is about to get a whole lot more exciting. Former ACT funder Colin Craig seems set to throw his hat into the ring against ACT’s John Banks, National’s Paul Goldsmith, and Labour’s David Parker. It only needs Winnie to join in to make a real party of it. Can Parker slip through the middle and win?
Greens tackle child poverty
The Greens have launched their policy to get 100,000 kids out of poverty. It’ll cost just 0.3% of GDP. We have a moral duty to do what we can to eliminate child poverty. Labour made a start. WFF basically ended working poverty. But there’s the kids of beneficiaries. 270,000 kids below the poverty line while the elite live in mansions. Not good enough.
Compulsory Kiwisaver?
Good to see the government considering a move that would significantly boost KiwiSaver uptake – even if it does highlight their ideological inconsistency!
Open mike 04/08/2011
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
It’s getting crowded on the right
What does Colin Craig’s new Conservative Party expect to accomplish, other than to siphon off and waste a tiny percentage of right wing vote?
Hickey’s prescription for the currency
The neoliberal myth is that government economic policy doesn’t really matter, it can’t affect the economy – apart from being an anchor on growth. The truth is, government is the biggest actor in our economy. What it does matters. Bernard Hickey has listed 10 ways that the government could act to get the exchange rate down.
Graph of the day: 1 in 20 jobs gone in Chch
120 jobs per weekday lost but nothing to worry about. The market will right itself.
Free market quake
The “free market” exists to make profit. It does have some advantages when everything is running smoothly. But the free market is hopeless in tough times. It never wants to pay out or clean up the mess.
Key’s own goal on poverty
A bad mistake by John Key in the House yesterday. Phil Goff asked him about the gap between rich and poor. Key cited a new report on falling inequality. But he should have read the report properly. It credits Labour policies for driving down poverty and inequality.
Open mike 03/08/2011
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
Open debate
Key has refused to include the leaders of minor parties in TV3 debates, and Goff has agreed to debate one on one. Another step towards “presidential” style politics that does not serve our country well.
NoRightTurn on the ETS
I/S reviews the ETS so far. It has worked, as Labour promised, to bring down emissions – helped by the recession. But don’t forget there are still massive subsidies for the emissions that are happening thanks to National’s changes. It’s nuts that you and I are forking out so that foreign-owned factories can spew out carbon dioxide on a more profitable basis.
PSA launches myth busting campaign
The PSA is launching its election campaign this evening. Our big challenge is to break through the government’s narrative (now reaching mythic proportions) […]
Chart o’ the day: the real world
The Peters principle
There’s been a lot of coverage of Winston Peters lately. Most of his announcements have been perfectly predictable, but for me there have been two real surprises.
Open mike 02/08/2011
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to […]
You paid to get Try-hard John on the telly
Remember John Key’s awful Letterman appearance? Supposedly worth a fortune in tourism. We know that was complete crap. It was a stunt meant to impress us saps. Now we learn that we paid for it. PM’s office pleaded for months to get on Letterman. Try-hard even sent a demo tape. When that didn’t work, they paid a US PR agency $10K to seal the deal.
Generation Zero
It is one of the failures of our society that far too many young people are politically disengaged or apathetic. Many – but not all! Meet Generation Zero. Please go visit their website, join up, or spread the word…
All hail our vampire overlords
How did the wealth of the 151 richest people grow by 10% of GDP when the economy grew only 1.5%? Mostly by revaluing existing assets. Not a lot of ‘wealth creation’ from our self-appointed Randian Heroes, just book changes. But, apparently, we owe everything to the elite and need to let them suck up more of our wealth for themselves.
Breeding for a business?
A typical shock horror headline on Stuff in the weekend – “Pre-teens dream of kids and dole”. So what’s going on here, and is it an argument for “welfare reform”?