Remember Glen Beck’s “Rally to restore honour”? Depressed about America apparently spiralling out of control into political insanity? Me too! But now, at last, someone speaks up for the 70 to 80% of Americans who aren’t crazy.
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Kris Fa’afoi will be Labour’s candidate for Mana. There were four candidates – all very high quality -all spoke well and the selection […]
One way or another ACT’s troubles are going to ripple through the entire political discourse.
So what’s likely to happen with Garrett?
And what does it mean for everyone else?
The second of 6 in a series summarising the argument of The Spirit Level. This post examines how inequality affects mental and physical health.
First posted on the excellent Beyond Resistance blog: While the dust settles and Christchurch recovers from the 7.1 earthquake, people have begun to pick up the pieces and get on with their lives. But for many working class people this is not so easy. Those most affected by ‘natural disasters’ are those already on the margins of despair.
On Tuesday Anne Tolley, Minister for wrecking primary education, dropped another pearl. Has there ever been a comment made by any other minister, ever, in the history of New Zealand, that is as stupid, as arrogant, as offensive, as out of touch, as brain-fartingly idiotic a statement of the bleeding obvious as this clanger from Tolley? Anything even close?
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Thanks to all the other writers for excellent pieces on the serious issues. Time for a lighter subject. Fortunately, when you’ve got a […]
David Garrett’s theft of a dead child’s identity is a revolting offence that violated our passport system and distressed the family. He lied to the Police when arrested and lied to the Court about having no prior convictions. Why did he escape conviction when others were being jailed for the same offence? Because he’s a lawyer. The elite looks after its own.
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The Labour and Green parties’ activists are in uproar over their parliamentary wings’ decision to vote for the Gerry Brownlee Enabling Act. A lot of people are saying they won’t campaign for these parties and talking of voting for a minor party or independents. Is it time to damn them and leave them? No. We’re going to win our parties back.
The Gerry Brownlee Enabling Act is a Dictator’s Charter, and all we can do is hope Brownlee doesn’t abuse it. Even the Herald is against the unwarranted and excessive powers that have been conferred on one man with no meaningful checks or balances. This isn’t about Left or Right but too many on the Right seem happy with unfettered State power.
National will vote against a Sue Kedgley’s member’s bill, which could see factory farms phased out within 5 years. Despite support from the Greens, Labour, United Future and the Maori Party, without National or ACT’s support this bill won’t pass it’s first reading. There’s no good excuse. The government needs to be shamed on this.
Dictatorships are good.
Or at least that’s what Farrar is saying now his team has one.
Two more Supercity polls. Brown ahead 29% v 17% in a Horizon poll. Herald’s Digipoll has it closer – 29.8% v 27.8%. Brown still ahead. Naturally, the Herald calls it too close to call. Looks like the Right’s plan for an Auckland coup is coming unstuck. Guess they’re lucky Labour and the Greens supported their nation-wide coup instead.
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Rodney Hide can either ditch Garrett and likely lose his leadership.
Or he can back him and likely kill off Act.
It’s a classic individual versus collective dilemma.
So ACT’s nutcase extraordinaire, the man whose only talent is to make John Boscawen look stable, has done it yet again. Forever getting attention […]
In the Today in Politics column in the DomPost there’s a snippy little piece about the Fairness at Work submissions. The CTU reckons around […]
Not content with destroying education to get at teachers, now National are after your health to get at doctors and nurses.
The feds want the OCR frozen.
But that’s not a sustainable answer for exporters.
It’s time to look at better ways of controlling inflation.
The Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Act gives the Government the power to pass Orders in Council overriding nearly every law. That makes ministers, not Parliament, the sovereign power in this country. Scary stuff, which I haven’t seen justified by the facts of the quake recovery.
The state sector is in turmoil. Secondary teachers and medical technicians are striking for fair pay and against claw-backs in their work conditions. Junior doctors look set to join them. What’s the Nats’ reaction? They’ve appointed the Scottish ‘smiling assassin’, Dr Kevin Woods, who fired 1,500 nurses from the Scottish NHS and will apply the same formula here.
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Cameron Slater, aka Whaleoil, found guilty today in the Auckland District Court on eight breaches of suppression orders and one of identifying a […]
Continental Philosopher Slavoj Zizek talks about ethical buying and charity and the contradictions they entail. I’m not sure I agree with him (I […]
Here are the reasons for tomorrows strike from a member of the PPTA (Post Primary Teachers Association) in a guest post. The Ministry of Education has rejected them all.
You’d have to expect the spinners for the government to carefully ignore these issues in favour of their usual simplistic meaningless dogwhistling messages. That is the level they’d prefer that kids are educated to.
John Banks’ team really jumped the shark yesterday with their bizarre ‘poll tax’ attack on Len Brown. Banks claimed Brown was proposing a Thatcher-style poll tax to fund the Supercity instead of rates. Of course, Brown is proposing no such thing – he is saying we should look at replacing rates with income tax. Desperate, Banksie, desperate.
