I confess that I am used to thinking of China as a polluter, not much concerned with environmental standards or green technology. I am very pleased indeed to find that I am wrong. Green technology is yet another area where China is drawing ahead of America and much of the West.
We have four pairs of tickets to give away for the Garagin Way play in Auckland at 181 Hobson St on the nights of Sunday the 5th or Monday the 6th. As the competition we ran was a bit of a fizzer, we’ll just give them to the first four emails we get at thestandardnz (at) gmail dot com – give us your name to pick up the tickets at the door.
Pike River Coal has been pushing for access to investigation interviews.
This kind of interference needs to be stopped before the investigation is compromised.
Open mike is your post. It’s open for discussing topics of interest, making announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. Comment on whatever takes […]
Once again the play is performed. A minister is caught rorting, admits wrong-doing, an investigation is launched, the investigation doesn’t ask crucial questions, it finds no fault just confusion on the part of the poor old minister, the rules are changed. English, Worth, Heatley, Wong… all the same. These farces need a new script.
Steal $1,500 as a public servant, and you should never work again. Steal $500 by the same method as an MP, and you simply have to repay the money and expect to be back in Cabinet. The message is clear: its one rule for politicians, and one for everyone else.
When Chris Finlayson’s on the backfoot he starts to sound bitchy. Out comes the name-calling and the put-downs – as if his opponents are going to be scared off. If Finlayson is going to throw a tizzy at anyone it should be National for first whipping up the rednecks over the ‘beaches’ and then raising Maori expectations.
Lawmaking is serious business. It is how we as a community, through our elected representatives, set the bounds and frameworks for our behaviour, allowing our community to function. Laws shouldn’t be made, things shouldn’t be banned, for the hell of it. So why is Parliament passing a law that everyone, including the PM, thinks is pointless?
It was pretty cool that the next Finance Minister wrote a post about my post yesterday. Even if was to say I was dickishly misinterpreting him 😀 I’ve got a couple of points in reply but the biggest is why is Labour talking about (restrictive) privatisation and PPPs policies when there are much more important economic issues at hand?
Sometimes I find it hard to believe how the leaders of this world fail to comprehend what appears so obvious to me. In the Information Age, how do they think secrecy is viable? What is happening with Wikileaks, or more appropriately, what is about to happen, appears to be playing out along the same lines as the rise and fall of Napster.
Open mike is your post. It’s open for discussing topics of interest, making announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. Comment on whatever takes […]
Given the importance of this debate, I thought I’d just lift this straight from David Cunliffe’s post on Red Alert:
“I guess it’s all in a day’s work, but MartyG on The Standard misintrepeted my position on PPPs in this recent post.”
Remember how Peter Jackson and Warner Bros pulled the old Hollywood shakedown on us? By making a hollow threat to film elsewhere they got an extra $30 million and a law passed just for them. This was supposedly necessary to save a vital economy gain for the country but the Government knew that was bollocks all along.
The other week, Lynn and I made fun of John Key’s dream that New Zealand would become the Ireland of the South Seas. Does he still believe we should emulate the Irish? The answer is yes. Key wants to abandon proper process and speed up work on an international financial centre for New Zealand, just like the one that helped get Ireland where it is today.
The recommendations of the Nats’ welfare working group are, predictably, good old fashioned Tory welfare bashing. In contrast a report released last week by the Anglican Social Justice Commission shows just how misguided the ideology underlying this attack on welfare is.
PM John Key has called for two minutes of national silence today at 2pm, to remember the 29 miners who lost their lives at Pike River.
Open mike is your post. It’s open for discussing topics of interest, making announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. Comment on whatever takes […]
When they’re not polluting our rivers or fighting animal welfare laws, our farmers, the ‘guardians of the land’, are opposing having to pay for their greenhouse emissions. Now, with the Earth having just clocked up its warmest 12 months since records began, farmers are scratching their heads at the early start to the summer drought.
The Nats’ stupid slash and burn approach to early childhood education (ECE) is about to hammer families. And once again Anne Tolley is in complete denial about it.
By backing a (soft) privatisation policy, David Cunliffe is throwing away a vital point of difference with National and allowing National to move rightwards. Worse, Labour appears to be determined to give up political advantage for dumb policy: public-private partnerships and tolling have a terrible track record.
There has always been an inherent design conflict in giving widespread access to information. On one hand it allows better service for people and organisations. On the other hand it means that less material can be kept secret because giving more people access to information and more opportunity to whistleblow when people see a problem or an ethical conflict. That has always been the inherent conflict.
Amongst other angry and aggressive rhetoric, American politicians have accused the leakers of the diplomatic cables of having “blood on their hands”. Will the leaked cables put lives at risk? Perhaps, but I believe that many more lives would be made safe if the actions and attitudes of our governments, and the “intelligence” that they work with, were more open to the people.
Open mike is your post. It’s open for discussing topics of interest, making announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. Comment on whatever takes […]
To say that Key’s digital smile and wave was disappointing would be an under-statement. Key spent just 45 minutes (not the promised 2 hours) answering questions and most of them were moronic – “ford or holden”, “favourite colour” – honestly. We’re getting emails from people pissed off their serious questions weren’t sent through. I have a solution.
There used to be a webcam in the Beehive Theatrette run by R2 that broadcast the PM’s Post-Cabinet press conference. Anyone who could go to the site and watch – live and uncut. The very model of digital democracy. Now, that service is gone. R2 was being asked to pay too much and Parliament blocked maintenance. So much for transparency.
They’ve already been dubbed NZ’s David and Ed Milliband.
Brothers David and Ben Clark will both be standing for Labour in the 2011 general election. David is standing for the safe Dunedin North seat, while Ben will be taking on Wayne Mapp on the North Shore.
Both would do well as MPs.
You may have seen ads on the site recently for a comedy play called Gagarin Way, which opens in Auckland this Wednesday. As part of the Scoop ad cartel, we have four pairs of tickets to give away. Here’s the game: best – ie most funny/apt – 2011 campaign slogan for each of the Nats, Labour, the Greens, and ACT wins a pair of tickets.
Wikileaks latest coup is the release of a database of more than 250,000 diplomatic cables between American embassies, up to and including the highest security level “Top Secret”. The cables provide a full, detailed and explicit account of many of America’s diplomatic secrets and the attitudes behind them. It is a good long look through a window in to the mind of a Superpower.
The annual roll-call’ from the extremely pro-Nat Trans-Tasman says: “Key needs an agenda, not just the consensus he is building around personal trust.” In other words: ‘smile and wave is all very nice and good, John, but don’t you think you should do some actual work? Meanwhile, Key is spending two hours today digitally smiling and waving on Stuff.
Open mike is your post. It’s open for discussing topics of interest, making announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. Comment on whatever takes […]
It seems I’m not alone in feeling outrage at attempts to bury any sensible debate on the shape and extent of New Zealand’s coal operations
Don Brash has been blurting at Orewa again, in a speech which has been reported as attacking Maori, attacking Key, and opening up divisions within National. But I don’t think anyone cares, or indeed anyone should care, about anything that this fading clown says…
Matt McCarten is doing the dance of the seven veils on the issue of a new Left Party. He and the other players have been denying they have anything planned but, at the same time, have spoken of the need for such a party, as Labour paddles around in circles, and said they might join were such a party to eventuate. I say go for it.
It’s dismaying to see a few rightwing commentators using the Pike River disaster to attack restrictions on mining in national parks. The claims are baseless and crassly opportunistic. One expects the like of Matthew Hooton, Whaleoil, and Paul Holmes to try to score political points off tragedy but I thought better of Fran O’Sullivan.
“New Zealand investors are facing an accounting crisis. This is because domestic companies have rejected many of the new international financial reporting standards (IFRS) and are declaring “adjusted”, “underlying”, “operating”, “excluding non-trading” and “from continuing operations” profits that vary significantly from audited IFRS-compliant profits.”
