While the economy burns, Key is fiddling with spiders. He is the good times PM. He’s all about getting himself in front of a camera and having a grin, as if he’s on a 3 year project in collecting pictures for his photo album, rather than Prime Minister. Key’s inability to handle Paul Henry like a real leader put a deep scratch in his Teflon. The brand is fading.
Different voice, same message: instead of Stephen Joyce or John Key, we now have Bill English saying that they don’t have any money for Public Transport. Just money for roads. They’ve been forced to commit to $1.5 billion of ongoing Auckland rail projects, and that’s all it’s going to get, thank-you.
For some reason, the Nats hate public education. Even an elitist fool should be able to see that a well-educated workforce is valuable and public education is the cheapest way to achieve it. Yet National is attacking education at every level. The latest ‘offer’ to the secondary teachers would see them take 2 years of after-inflation pay cuts.
Does anyone have a spare Earth? Or two — or three? If so, could you please speak up, because humanity is going two need two Earth’s worth of resources by 2030.
Unemployment is up, wages are down. But the Nats want to put the boot into workers to keep costs down for their rich mates. They’re trying to take away workers’ rights, remove protections, cut pay, reduce holidays and diminish access to sick leave. Tomorrow is the national day of action when we fight back.
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Phil Goff made an excellent speech yesterday. One that showed far more direction, and a lot of promise for going forward. Hopefully Labour […]
The Sunday Star Times had an interesting piece quoting a National MP on growing discontent within the party. Discontent at the public perception of National as a “one man band”, and the way that the party has been reduced to “The John Key Show”. With National’s failure on the economy growing ever more evident, is the power of brand Key enough to carry the Nats to a win in 2011?
Yesterday, former National media trainer Paul Holmes and former National Party President Michelle Boag attempted an extraordinary hatchet job on Phil Goff on Q+A. No analysis of the real policy divide that Goff and Labour with National carved out at the national conference, just attack – why? The economy, policy, Key’s fading brand, and the polls.
Labour’s conference in the weekend seems to have gone well, and been well received by the media. Here’s a roundup of headlines and comment.
It’s great to hear Phil Goff announce that a Labour government won’t let overseas interests to own more than 25% of monopolistic companies, like ports and airports, and farmland. In the new world economy we’re moving into, a global scramble for vital natural resources like farmland, we need to keep the foundations of our economy in Kiwi hands.
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In his last column Garth George laments how foods he regularly enjoyed in his childhood (1870s?) are now priced beyond the reach of most New Zealanders. It’s easy to dismiss the complaints of an old man about prices these days but there’s a deeper story: with population growth and resource depletion, there increasingly isn’t enough to go around.
Here’s John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett in the classic “An Understanding of Class”, a lovely commentary on one of the pillars […]
The Labour conference this weekend is expected to release new “policy directions”. One of them is out already — and it’s good. What could make more sense than putting children first?
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Simon Power is ‘consulting’ on regulating the on-line communities to prevent violations of normal societal and legal standards. Clare Curran asks ‘hopefully’ that this isn’t simply a reaction to the idiocy of ex-National party member Whaleoil in how he chases readership. But I suspect that is why this foolishness has come back on the agenda again. Plus National would prefer that there wasn’t so much criticism of their wimpy leader.
An article in The Economist looks at the failing basis of polling techniques in the USA. It isn’t that much different to the circumstances here.
“The proportion of those called who end up taking part in a survey has fallen steadily, from 35% or so in the 1990s to 15% or less now, according to Mr Keeter. Reaching young people is especially difficult. Only old ladies answer the phone…”
John Armstrong is at his insightful best today. He’s hit on the emerging change in the political discourse – the economy is going to crap and that’s what really matters, not the meltdowns of minor MPs and racist TV monkeys. And this do nothing government doesn’t care and has no solutions. This is Labour’s chance to offer a real alternative:
Labour have pushed “the republic debate” firmly into the spotlight. This is smart thinking. It’s a clear, logical policy with broad popular appeal. It positions Labour as leaders, nation builders, on an issue where Key and the Nats have painted themselves into a conservative corner.
National is developing an agenda for privatisation. It’s crazy. State owned assets are generating some rare bright spots in an otherwise dismal sea of poor economic news. So why would any rational government sell ACC (or other state owned assets)? Why would any rational government be cutting back on the Cullen Fund? Why are the Nats determined to kill the golden geese?
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This might just be Danyl’s best satire piece ever:
National to stand Spider God in Epsom
‘All hail the Spider God,’ said a press release issued by the National Party. ‘The new National candidate for Epsom in 2011.’
Last year, Icelandic comedian Jon Gnarr set up the Best Party to parody the parties that brought Iceland to ruin. The party contested the Reykjavik local elections with Gnarr promising a drug-free Parliament by 2020, a polar bear for Reykjavik zoo, a Disneyland, an end to debt, and to break all his promises. They won and Gnarr is now mayor.
Russel Norman asked Bill English about the economic impacts of coming oil shocks and how transport infrastructure planning takes them into account. I’m not sure which was more surprising: English’s matter-of-fact acknowledgment that peak oil is coming, or his attitude that the government doesn’t need to act because the market will sort things out.
So John Key was unusually forthcoming to a question this morning – he was very keen to give poor Kerry Prendergast a job.
Key knows how hard his government has made it to get a job, so he’s eager to help her out.
The government is refusing to step up to save IHC providers that are insolvent due to a recent court case that resulted in IHC carers being awarded hundreds of millions in back wages. The government is washing its hands, even though it is the primary funder of the services. Will the Nats let IHC collapse or will they use this to bring in their corporate mates?
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In the US banks that turned mortgages into “complex financial instruments” that were so complex nobody knows who owns what are foreclosing on homeowners.
That’s despite the banks having failed to prove they have a right to. And the justice system is backing the big money. It’s gangster capitalism at its finest.
Congressman Alan Grayson explains…
What should Labour do? One of our regular commenters steps up and answers the question. What more can we add? And, my challenge to the right wingers, can you come up with a similarly broad, coherent and principled summary of what you think National stands for? What should National do?
When you boil it down, John Key’s much-vaunted political nous is about keeping his personal brand clean. He farms out anything controversial to ministers and leaving them to it. The problem with that approach is muppets are left to run things with no oversight resulting in political cock-ups. Case in point: the Supercity.
The Sunday show last week featured the Prescription for Change campaign of Dr Albert Makary. Dr Makary has set out on a mission to drive social change surrounding the culture of binge drinking within our country. He hits his audience with hard facts, some disturbing trends, and presents everything in a way worth listening to.
20 years too late, Spud has announced that the neoliberal privatisation agenda has been a failure. He says we sold the wrong things, sold them the wrong way, got too little money, and created private monopolies. Of course, what we should have done is hold on to our assets, rather than turning them into cash cows for foreign owners.
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