Crime and punishment
White collar crime is on the increase in NZ. The government talks tough and postures about crime in its other forms, how will it respond to white collar crime?
Work on privatisation under way
For the last few months, the Standard has been politely asking Treasury for their papers on the sale of Crown assets. To say they weren’t keen to share would be an understatement. We’ve managed to get a few papers of the papers, more are being withheld. These papers show what we’ve long suspected: the Government plans to force SOEs to issue bonds as a method of privatisation by stealth.
Open mike 23/08/2010
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 the science doesn’t suit, Right tries to shout it down
The other day, National Party pollster David Farrar had a rant against alcohol experts that boiled down to ‘who cares what the science says! We’re in charge now and booze barons are on our side. Go back to your books, dorks!’.
Big Dog responds:
The secret of my success….
John Black cartoons John Keys success from childhood to Prime Minister. It has been good for him. It is not so good for anyone else.
An interesting result
Australia is about to enter a new era in politics. They appear to have a hung parliament this morning according to the Sydney Morning Herald. There are a number of marginal seats in the balance. The single Green MP in the lower house and a number of independents will determine which major party forms a government.
Open mike 22/08/2010
Open mike is your post. It’s open for discussing topics of interest, making announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. Comment on whatever takes […]
Thousands protest Nats’ attack on our work rights
Thousands of Kiwis turned out to protest National’s new labour legislation, a unjustified, spiteful attack on our work rights, which is simply designed to lower labour costs. The CTU has announced a campaign leading to national day of action on Oct 20th. Kiwi workers won’t take this lying down. We are fighting back.
Australian election
Our cousins on the West Island are winding up their election day soon, culminating a dramatic couple of months for Australian politics. It may be that Kevin Rudd gets the last laugh…
Pressured plonkers pull the plug on PEDA pingers
Quite suddenly, the government has pulled the plug on the contraversial $4.8 million in uncontested funding it awarded to the previously unknown Pacific Economic Development Agency in this year’s Budget.
It all stinks to high heaven.
Quick bites
There are a bunch of interesting little stories floating around this week that we didn’t get round to writing full posts on or that we wrote drafts for but never finished. So here’s a new, possibly weekly feature – Quick Bites:
NZ Institute: ‘Nats have no plan’
Suicide funding cut
Nats’ interesting donors
Workers’ rights under attack
One foot out of Iraq
Vultures
Party on Garth
Open mike 21/08/2010
Open mike is your post. It’s open for discussing topics of interest, making announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. Comment on whatever takes […]
Fairness at Work rallies 21 & 22 August
Workers are getting together to oppose the government’s changes to employment law with rallies in the four main centres this weekend. Join your rally.
The Saturday rallies against National’s anti-work rights bill assemble at:
Auckland, QE2 Square, bottom of Queen St – 1pm
Wellington, Civic Square – 1pm
Christchurch, Catherdal Square – 1pm
and on Sunday:
Dunedin, Dental School, Great King St – 11am
Can we trust MPs while they have secret trusts?
Registrar of Pecuniary Interests Margaret Bazley, the country’s busiest pensioner, has presented recommendations for improving the transparency of MPs’ financial interests. It seems like good stuff, but it ignores the elephant in the room – the ability of MPs to use trusts to hide their shareholdings, and their conflicts of interest, from the public.
English still busy fudging the numbers
Bill English thinks he has proven that wages grew just 3% under Labour and grew 15.5% under National in the 1990s. How’s he done it? By taking a ridiculous definition of wages and a very convenient timeframe. Bill, this is getting old. Your distortions are transparent and exposing you is too easy. How about, rather than fudging historic numbers, you get on with your job of building a better future?
Teacher-bashing morons
This government is attacking education at every level. In particular it is attacking teachers over national standards. National blogger DPF’s post yesterday was a particularly disgraceful example. Arrogant, ignorant, and full of lies.
Sir Peter and his DonKey
Sir Peter Gluckman wants more investment in early childhood. $1 invested in young children now gives $13 in adulthood, but his day-trader DonKey’s short-termism sees only cuts and short-change for our greatest resource.
ACT’s demise bad news for neo-liberals
No wonder Winston Peters is smiling. His personal vendetta with Hide must be at on the forefront of his mind as he watches his nemesis sink.
But what does ACT’s impending demise actually mean for other parties? It’s not good news for National.
Open mike 20/08/2010
Open mike is your post. It’s open for discussing topics of interest, making announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. Comment on whatever takes […]
Douglas adds to Key’s ACT headache
ACT’s meltdown continues, with comments from ACT founder and current MP Sir Roger Douglas illustrating that all is not well in the caucus. […]
Government NACTered
Kingmaker Winston Peters today dashed the second term chances of the troubled National-ACT coalition government. Political commentator Q Werty describes this as a risky but gutsy move by the principled Peters.
Massive series of blasts to close gap with Australia
Prime Minister John Key today outlined a plan to close the gap with Australia using his skills as a money trader and a stockpile of ex-Soviet nukes.
Take him up on the offer, Phil
John Key said yesterday: “the gap with Australia is definitely closing … If [Phil Goff] wants to pop up for a coffee I will take him through the numbers, and I can take him through a few others.” I say go for it, Phil. I’m dying to see what numbers Key is talking about. Because the reality is that we are falling behind Australia on every measure, while Key just smiles and waves.
Open mike 19/08/2010
Open mike is your post. It’s open for discussing topics of interest, making announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. Comment on whatever takes […]
Peters vs Key
TV3 is reporting Winston Peters will standing at the next election… against John Key in Helensville. Those are candidate meetings I for one wouldn’t want to miss!
One of these things is not like the other XI
One of these things is not like the other, One of these things is not quite the same Can you guess which one […]
Karma on the beach
A new lobby group, the “Costal Coalition”, crawled out from under a rock today. Above is their first billboard, one of several planned for Wellington and Auckland. It’s a distasteful, damaging campaign, but National and their associated hacks have no grounds for complaint.
The Irrationality of the Free-Market
There really isn’t any doubt about this any more, the free-market ideology put forward by the Chicago School of Economics (and the Austrian school) and slavishly followed by National, Act and Labour is predicted on fully informed individuals making rational choices. But individuals just don’t have enough knowledge to know what is best and the market as a whole is irrational as a result.
Key voters waking up, pity about the hangover they’ve given us
National is governing like National governs. Anyone could have foreseen this, there were plenty of clues, but its only now are people who switched to Key waking up to the fact that he’s just the grinning face on the same old beast. I wonder: if someone is smart enough to see that Key’s government is a failure now, how were they dumb enough to ever believe things would be different?
Bill English: making it up as he goes along
Parliament erupted in laughter yesterday as Bill English made up more ‘facts’ to attack Labour’s economic performance. Even if his accusations against Labour’s record were true, he doesn’t have any solutions himself. Indeed, the reason he is spending so much time trying to smear Labour’s record is he is desperate to make is own record look less appalling by comparison.