Open mike 05/04/2011
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A goal is not a strategy
Last year, the New Zealand Institute lambasted the Nats’ ‘aspiration’ to catch Australia by 2025 with a report entitled ‘A goal is not a strategy‘. Did the Nats change? Of course not. Yesterday, their energy strategy was released. It offers some goals but is mute on how to get there. It’s not really a strategy at all, but it serves the Nats’ purpose nonetheless.
Kiwis want buses, not holiday highways
Kiwis are voting with their feet, or rather their arses. Patronage of public transport is skyrocketing to the point of overcrowding while state highway use is falling among except for freight. You have to wonder why the government keeps building expensive highways that will be underused when public transport is full to the brim.
Caption Contest
Plurality support quake levy
A UMR poll shows that 40% of Kiwis support paying an earthquake levy to help pay for the Christchurch rebuild. 22% prefer more borrowing, and 29% want spending cuts. Asked just whether they supported or opposed a levy – 57% supported it. Yet the Nats are choosing cuts instead.
Elitism and disaster
Watching Simon Barnett mouthing some cliched pap in front of photogenic rubble in an ad the other night, I got to thinking about how the earthquake has been hijacked for celebrity. At every turn, the government has used the earthquake as a stage, while the people are pushed into the background and their needs ignored.
Chose a brighter future?
With news now that a starving boy was found eating cockroaches, and that impoverished elderly are eating catfood, the plight of the underclass is getting nothing but worse. Is this the “brighter future” that National promised?…
Open mike 04/04/2011
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From the pen of Fran O’Sullivan
Jenny reacts to Fran O’Sullivan’s latest article: “It seems the stench of the decision to remove the right to a jury trial from those arrested in the ‘Terror Raids’ has even risen into the nostrils of usually conservative members of the intelligentsia.” [conservative intelligentsia – there’s a shallow pool. Ed]
A class massacre
The number of New Zealanders desperate for food is increasing.
But the government’s priority is to look after its wealthy mates.
What a joke.
Tizard not coming back
Judith Tizard won’t take Labour’s vacant seat in Parliament. It’s the right thing to do. It’s only a quirk that we should be looking back to a list written in 2008 to fill a seat for 6 months now. Tizard and the next four on the 2008 list aren’t on the 2011 list. Their lives have moved on. Better for the seat to go to someone with a Parliamentary future – Louisa Wall.
Economy
The economy, shall we say politely, is facing some difficulties. With a National government there was no plan as to how to weather the economic storm, we just got tax cuts for the rich and an economy that just can’t get growing.
Open mike 03/04/2011
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Pita’s poll: Maori Party death-rattle?
A new Horizon poll suggests that Pita Sharples’ majority in Tamaki Makaurau has been slashed by 80% and he could be overtaken by Labour’s Shane Jones. There’s a bit of scuttlebutt that Willie Jackson might run for Hone’s new Left/Maori Party (if it gets off the ground). In that case, expect a real three-way race, which Sharples would almost certainly lose.
A fraction liquefaction
More Christchurch black humour (or maybe “brown” humour?)…
The New American Dream
Truthout is one of my favourite sources of political commentary in America. Here’s editor William Rivers Pitt on “The New American Dream”…
Open mike 02/04/2011
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Weekend social
Weekend social is for non political chat. What’s on for the weekend, gigs, film or book reviews, sports, or whatever. No politics, no […]
Recovery up – living standards down
“Workers lose in two-speed recovery” is the headline of an interesting article in today’s Business Herald print edition, sourced from “The Economist.” Living […]
Things Just Got Tougher
The CTU is launching a new campaign today as part of their ongoing Fairness At Work. Things Just Got Tougher is about the new employment laws that start today, April 1.
Choices, choices
In the last Budget, National cut the corporate tax rate to 28%, which costs $400 million a year and comes into effect today. […]
Routing issues
We have had some routing problems this morning with several networks used by our provider in San Diego. The problem have been ongoing […]
Business confidence and Christchurch
At this time in our history we need government leadership like we have never needed it before. But the signs aren’t good. Christchurch is a city on the edge, and round the country business confidence is plummeting.
Sick April Fool’s Joke
Today National has a terrible April Fools for workers around Aotearoa: 90 day fire-at-will, reduced union access, sick notes after 1 day and minimum wage up a pittance. Workers are doing it tough already, and now National’s turning the screw.
Open mike 01/04/2011
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Key: we were told SCF would fail
In a raucous public meeting in Timaru last night, John Key said “The entire time I’ve been Prime Minister I’ve had Treasury in my office week after week, month after month telling me South Canterbury Finance was going bankrupt”. So, why did National sign SCF into the scheme and renew its deed three times?
NRT: Canterbury Enabling Act II
Over at No Right Turn, I/S has written a useful summary of the government’s plan for new emergency legislation for Christchurch. It gives the minister largely unfettered powers with only limited rights of appeal for affected citizens. The mindset behind this legislation is that Gerry Brownlee and his developer mates know best.
A dirty deal requires dirty lies
You know your opponent’s stand is dishonourable when they resort to spreading lies and promoting falsehoods about your position. The government’s Acting Energy and Resources Minister, Hekia Parata, has been caught out lying and spreading slurs that misrepresented her opponents’ position on deep sea oil drilling.
Meltdown at Fukushima
Efforts to cool the nuclear fuel rods in Fukushima’s No 2 reactor have failed. The rods have become molten and it appears some have melted through the steel reactor core into a concrete layer. Two dangers now arise: radioactive chemicals created by the concrete reacting with the nuclear fuel and the nuclear fuel pooling enough to go critical.
Nice to have
Bill English wants to cut things that are “nice to have”, like the adult education classes (that he used to praise in opposition), and keep “necessities”, like tax cuts for the already wealthy. This is the kind of economic “wisdom” that has Bill leading us into an all time record budget deficit.
Open mike 31/03/2011
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Cuts don’t make costs disappear
Key and English are trying to soften us up for big public service cuts this budget. They tell us it’ll just be ‘nice to haves’ and that the private sector will step in to fill the gap when they cut too close to the bone. The important thing to realise is that every time the public service doesn’t provide us with something either we have to buy it out of our own pockets (usually at greater cost) or we don’t get it at all.
No jury of their peers
Given the controversy surrounding the 2007 Urewera raids, the legal system should be bending over backwards to conduct a process that is above reproach. Instead, they are doing the exact opposite.
Heroic cynicism
The government is backing a call for “heroic” student loan holders to pay their loans back asap to help fund the earthquake recovery.
But there doesn’t seem to be a similar call for “heroic” high earners to return their unaffordable tax cuts.
Open mike 30/03/2011
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Small talk on party activists and blogs.
Vernon Small says “Its activists on websites and blogs are openly questioning the party’s direction and Mr Goff’s judgment.” He seems to be looking at our non-Labour activists of the left and the astroturfers and seeing a movement against Goff.
Mostly it isn’t from Labour activists. It isn’t real. It is just designed for him and other journos to read.