The landlords’ lobby group is making a lot of noise over Labour’s, still unannounced, capital gains policy. They say rents will go up, the supply of housing will fall, and it won’t stop house prices bubbles. Examining those claims shows that there would be little impact on rents while housing bubbles would be reduced and home ownership would be more affordable.
An alert reader sent us this video of Wayne Mapp swaying, slurring and rambling his way through Question Time.
No Right Turn now has a post with some information saying that Mapp is not in the state what he appears to be in. Instead he is just being inept. We don’t know. Check it out yourself and make up your own mind.
The right’s leadership resembles a merry go round of disgraced old white failures. Brash, English, Shirtcliffe, Douglas had their time at the front, were disgraced. Now they’re back. Thompson was fired for his appalling behaviour but got a payout. He’ll be back in due course. While Brash says he’d welcome baby ID stealer Garrett back to Parliament.
Labour have started setting out a bold, fair and plausible policy framework for the election. Rumours of their tax policy have generated more interest and excitement than anything the National government has done in the last three wasted years.
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There can’t be many Kiwis who don’t know about the severity of the leaky homes crisis. Or can there? Oh don’t worry, he’s only the PM after all…
lprent: pushed this up the page again now that the program has aired.
Karl du Fresne attacked the general reaction to Alasdair Thompson’s views on women in the workforce in Tuesday’s DomPost. Those outraged were compared to Hitler, female journalists got a spray, as did the”spineless” EMA Board of Directors and “a former Prime Minister who apparently suffers from the delusion that she’s still the Queen Bee”. I don’t know why the DomPost keep him on. I think it’s time whoever’s in charge also got some spine.
A conservative council in the UK sacked it’s entire workforce and offered them their jobs again the next day if they accepted a […]
The Nats are all in favour of pay equity for women. Or so they say. But their actions speak louder than their words.
The 1,916 special votes got pared to 769. Of which Hone Harawira got 454 and Kelvin Davis got 204. There really isn’t anything in it with a by-election majority of 1117. It will make this a tight contest at election time because Labour will now view this electorate as being quite winnable. IMHO as an long time electorate campaigner, some of the Mana supporters have been over-blowing their result.
What keeps John Key & Bill English too busy to comment on their own government’s dismal performance, but not so busy that they can’t comment on absolutely anything to do with Labour?
There’s an odd contradiction in right-wing ‘thought’. On the one hand, they’re Randian heroes, the wealth creators, modern day Atlases who support the world while ‘parasites’ try to take their wealth and bring them down. On the other hand, they’re victims who need subsidies and special treatment. Fed Farmers CEO Conor English embodies the contradiction.
Retiring National MP John Carter has revealed that he has consumed $77K of public assets for no reason. But it’s all such a funny lark! Carter permanently housed two cars at Parliament for 16 years. Hardly drove them. When he got in trouble for using parking spaces at the expense of others, he just switched them into colleagues’ names.
The buzz around the traps is that Labour will be announcing a capital gains tax next week. The journos are already calling it a bold move and John Key is ranting hysterically. That Labour’s winning the media battle is great but, more importantly, this is a much needed policy: it is fair, it is good for the economy, and it will pay for good policies.
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New revelations out today that hacker Glenn Mulcaire who bugged celebrity phones for Murdoch’s News of the World also hacked into the phone of murdered teenager Milly Dowler after she went missing. NoW journalists deleted messages which gave Milly’s parents false hope that Milly might be alive. This happened when Rebekah Brooks, friend of David Cameron was the paper’s editor, and Andy Coulson, later Cameron’s communications director was deputy editor. This won’t stay under the carpet.
First, Key denies the SAS were in the Kabul hotel gunfight. Then, media reveals they were there and were injured. Key admits that but denies it was friendly fire. Now, media says SAS got an apology. Key ‘can’t rule out’ friendly fire and is launching an investigation. Goff says its time for the SAS to leave Afghanistan. He’s right.
There’s a march in Auckland on Saturday, to protest the government’s massive cuts to the Early Childhood Education sector, and proposal to end 20 hours free for 3-4 year-olds.
Peter Shirtcliffe’s Vote for Change is reeling. On Sunday, they had to boot out Alex Fogerty after the Young Nat’s neo-Nazi affiliations were made public. Yesterday, they lost their token Leftie, Bob Harvey, when he realised that being used by a collection of capitalist elitists and white supremacists wasn’t the legacy he wanted.
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Well, our hard working authors have pumped more than 8000 posts into The Standard since August 2007. A thousand of those have been […]
Peter Shirtcliffe’s Anti-MMP Vote For Change group has just 16 members and one of them has turned out to be a neo-Nazi. Is it a case of being so short of mates they’ll accept anyone who turns up, or does this give us a truer picture of who really wants to get rid of MMP? The latter, I think.
Lockwood Smith has ruled the word ‘privatisation’ is “political” and not “objective”. National doesn’t want to engage in an honest debate on asset sales because it can’t win on the facts. But trying to stop the Opposition using the word privatisation and insisting they use the govt’s spin term ‘Mixed Ownership Model’ is a step too far.
A good piece of detective work at TUMEKE! has revealed that a founding member of the anti-MMP group “Vote for Change”, one Alex Fogerty, is a white supremacist. Labour Party candidate for Dunedin North, David Clark, notes an interesting entry on Fogerty’s friend list…
John Key’s government celebrated KiwiSaver’s 4th birthday on July 1 with cuts to your entitlements. (Zet mentioned this here, but this is my take…)
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“Goodness” said the shocked TV3 news presenter tonight at protests against Prince William and Kate’s visit to Canada. What’s really shocking? That ordinary people protest these ‘special’ people living, literally, the life of royalty on the public purse and providing nothing in return, or members of the media still reflexively reinforcing this parasitic system?
Bravo France, the first country in the world to ban fracking. But for every step forward in this world, we seem to take two steps backwards…
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In the Herald today, Mark Lister says the lack of investment in the productive economy is due to the favourable tax treatment of housing. On Thursday, Brian Fallow wrote how Kiwis are being shut out of home ownership by investors who see capital gain from housing as an easy win, and workers’ taxes effectively subsidise property investors who pay none.
Yesterday was crunch day for schools who oppose the governments national standards, and a surprising number have made a very bold stand. But according to Tolley: “Look, it’s election year, so anything goes”…
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Weekend social is for non political chat. What’s on for the weekend, gigs, film or book reviews, sports, or whatever. No politics, no […]
From today, the government’s contribution to your Kiwisaver has been cut in half. ‘What?’, you say, ‘Didn’t they say that would only come in if they got re-elected?’ Yeah, nah. They were lying to you. From today on, the government contribution is a maximum of $10 a week. Remember, this was the central plank of National’s savings budget.
The latest Herald poll shows Labour + Greens at 42.7%, with National + ACT at 53.1% – the gap is down to 10.4% from 16.9% in May. That confirms the trend we’re seeing in the Roy Morgans as well. Interesting to note that the gap is 17% this point before the last election. Continued progress and focus on the big issues will see victory for the Left.
