The Secretary for Education Karen Sewell has just had a minimum pay rise of $30,000p.a. Ironically the same 4% that teachers are after. Here is some maths for Mrs Sewell. Her 4% is 30,000 dollars. 4% of a teachers salary of around $65k is $2,600 dollars.
“They are blue – to match other uniforms in the justice sector such as police.” These words from the Police Minister are very difficult to misconstrue. The choice of colour was deliberate and in case everyone has forgotten, the uniforms were olive to make the clear distinction of Prison Officers from Police. The Government is blurring the distinction.
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After days of trying to read the media and rumour mill tea-leaves on the Hobbit it was time to do some fact checking.
It turns out this has been a hard lesson in how the international film industry works.
Fran O’Sullivan reckons the Government will offer tax-breaks to keep the Hobbit in NZ.
But it also looks like they’ll try to keep claim it’s about the (settled) dispute.
If that’s the case there’s some truly gymnastic spin to look forward to this week.
There was a time when New Zealand gave overseas aid to developing countries like Singapore. But we stopped moving forwards after the neoliberal revolution. Today New Zealand is still reliant on low value added commodity trading for its sustenance. One which is struggling to pay its bills after a lengthy period of selling off its economic sovereignty.
Labour’s new economic agenda is a welcome shift to the centre.
It’s the first time in more than 25 years that a major party has turned its back on the neo-liberal policies that have failed New Zealand so badly.
Bloody good stuff!
In a press release last week Tariana Turia claimed that Labour’s new policy directions are all Maori Party policies. That puts the Maori Party in an interesting position after the next election. Will the major party that they support be dictated by their policies, Labour’s policies, as Turia claims? Or will their support be dictated by other, non-policy factors?
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It was not until last night that we received confirmation of the retraction from SAG, NZ Equity and AFTRA through press reports.
New Line Cinema
Emails have surfaced showing the Hobbit dispute was settled early this late last week.
So why did Jackson go on the offensive on Thursday?
Is he not talking to Warners or is there more in play in this than the actors dispute?
Vernon Small had an atypically disappointing piece in the Dom yesterday concluding that everyone must be happy in NZ because the 20,000 protesters who turned out on October 20th did so peacefully and legally, whereas in France there is rioting in the streets. I/S explains why people have to take to the streets to get affect political change in France.
When Justice Bill Wilson was accused of serious misconduct, Attorney-General Chris Finlayson didn’t want to investigate telling fellow National MP Colin King “Justice Wilson is a mate of mine and there’s no way I am pursuing this any further”. Now, Wilson’s got a $885,000 golden handshake from the government to make the issue go away.
Does anyone believe that a $660 million project moves countries over the ‘threat’ of a few actors wanting better standards? Would Jackson really betray NZ when Weta is based here, the casting is underway, and Hobbiton is built? Cui bono, this talk of ‘crisis’: how much will the Government fork over to appease the threat of foreign capital flight?
Every time I think John Key can’t get any more cynical and hypocritical in his messaging, he manages to take it to a new level. Apparently spending money on the education system will create “a noose around the neck of young New Zealanders”…
If labour stability is the big issue with keeping the Hobbit here the answer is very simple.
Employ workers as employees, not contractors.
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Things are quickly turning to custard for National. The economy is going south fast and Key’s Teflon-coating is so damaged the mainstream media is openly saying we deserve better than a ‘smile and wave’ PM. The Nats’ strategy – try to convince us nothing is wrong – is really bad. It makes them look either duplicitous or out of touch.
Russell Brown’s anti-union take on the Hobbit dispute has been cited by righties all over the internet as “evidence” the union is wrong.
So let’s take a look at what he’s saying and how it matches up with employment law, industrial relations and all the rest of that good stuff.
National’s bully-boy tactics continue. Young people are trying to voice their concern to the select committee that is looking at the extension of the Fire at Will law to all workers. The Nats on the committee don’t want to listen so they’re bullying submitters and refusing to even accept submissions that don’t toe their line.
The trend is quite clear now. The Right’s support peaked and the Left’s support reached is nadir last year. The gap has been gradually closing ever since. From a 24.5% gap between National and ACT a year ago, the gap in the latest Roy Morgan has fallen to 5.5%. About quarter of a million Kiwis have switched their support to the Left in a single year.
In just two years, we’ve had three protests eclipsing anything we saw under Labour. What will the next year bring? What would a second term see as the public reacts to an agenda of privatisation and public service cuts that go well beyond the ‘back office’? Will this deaf and dumb government ever wake up and hear the concerns of New Zealanders?
It looked like Actors Equity and Peter Jackson had come to an agreement.
They’d even written a joint statement to announce the boycott was off.
So why has the whole thing blown up?
In three short years John Key and National have gone from economic bravado, to failure, to lies, excuses and whining. As the economy languishes they will have nothing to offer except more lies and excuses.
This is a time for fresh thinking, both globally and locally. But we won’t get it from National.
Gordon Campbell on central government’s reaction to the local government elections. Campbell argues that National has a vested interest in the failure of both Len Brown in Auckland and Celia Wade-Brown in Wellington, and that voters have rejected the “1980s model of political leadership”.
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I’m generally a fan of Gareth Morgan, but boy his facts are wrong in yesterday’s Herald, leading him to really bad conclusions. Basically, Morgan argues that we have to let foreigners buy our assets because we use that money to buy more imports than we export, which we won’t be able to do if we block asset sales. Why is that a bad thing?
Thousands of workers are now leaving their work places to attend one of the 27 protests taking place today from Kaiatia to the Bluff against National’s draconian anti-worker policies. This one could be big. This is the day that Kiwi workers stand up and say that they have had enough of this government attacking our wages and work conditions. Update: 5-6 thousand at Parliament.
In contrast to National’s policy vacuum on the economy, Labour has been focusing its policy work on a major change in direction. It’s obvious that the hands-off approach introduced in the 1980s has failed, leading to mal-investment in housing with an economy stripped of its manufacturing capability and geared for import-dependent consumerism.
Trying to get my head around the economic arguments going on. Hearing contradictory things. Who’s telling the truth? ls Labour’s new overseas investment policy Stalinism that will ruin the economy, as Key claimed on Monday and Tuesday? Or is the same as the existing law, as Key claimed on Monday and Tuesday?
I get Hone Harawira’s anger over National’s pandering to rednecks over the Foreshore and Seabed new legislation. That was the same anger that led to the Maori Party being formed in the first place (ironic that they’re voting for the new law). But I can’t abide by the racist language and actions he resorts to.
National have been running some fine lines of bullshit lately. Keith Ng’s recent post at Public Address calls them out on two of them. The first, National is trying to claim credit for low inflation. The Second, National is trying to claim that recent wage increases have been better than the previous 9 years. Keith takes the bullshit apart – dirty work, but someone has to do it.
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This post isn’t about National cutting education at every level, which will damage our country for decades to come. Nor is it about how they’re cutting cost-efficient preventative medicine to fund ‘sexy’ elective surgery. It’s not even about how they’re pouring billions into holiday highways in the era of peak oil. This is about the Cullen Fund.
John Key says that if we don’t let overseas buyers snap up our farmland then land prices will decrease and some over-leveraged farmers will go underwater. And that’s supposedly a bad thing. Key wants us to believe that foreigners putting our farmland out of the reach of Kiwis and making us borrow more from the Aussie banks is a good thing.
The Nats are trying to take credit for the fact that annual inflation in the year to September was the lowest since 2004. What exactly did they do? Dig into the numbers and the cause of the lower inflation is a weak global economy, not National. Already, inflation is climbing, 1.1% this quarter, and will break 5% next year thanks to the GST hike.
