National is under extraordinary pressure on its ETS, and it seems to be starting to panic. While I can commend them for sticking to their guns (better a gutted ETS than none at all), I don’t have any sympathy over the backlash they are facing. They bought it on themselves.
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TV3 has reported tonight that John Key admitted on video to owning an Otago vineyard, and providing free wine to “people that help me”. This, despite Key telling the public all his assets were in a blind trust. Key, painted with his Tranz Rail eyes, has responded by still insisting he doesn’t know about his assets – but that’s a hard excuse to swallow in wake of solid contradictory evidence. [UPDATE: video added]
Tracy Watkins recently observed of Key’s reluctance to front the media post-budget that:
“Mr Key has refused all but three requests to be interviewed by National Radio’s Morning Report so far this year. That must be unheard of among modern-day prime ministers…”
She puts his avoidance of the tough questions down to a desire to protect his brand.
While it rains, thousands of homes are rotting, a legacy of the stupid deregulation of the building industry by National in the 1990s. The current government is proposing that huge costs be passed on to ratepayers, and tonight Wellington City Council votes on the plan. There are no good solutions to this mess.
So Blinglish’s new and improved less-bitter poison is part-privatisation. In much the same way as marketing a filling as more fun than a full root-canal, he thinks that if he sells each of his mates one piece of the family silver (and keeps the spoons) instead of flogging off the whole set to one of his mates, we’ll be much happier.
We pay for the need to reduce greenhouse emissions one way or the other. There’s no point complaining about the cost of the ETS on power and fuel. What we should be more pissed off about is that we are being expected to bear half the cost as taxpayers. We have to pay, the question is whether we put the cost on pollution to discourage pollution or we just lump it on taxpayers.
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Here’s a graph of tax week’s tax swindle. I can’t do the property tax/rent increase part but here’s the net weekly effect of the income tax changes and the GST hike. These numbers match up with those provided by Treasury. The first 1.2 million taxpayers get less than a dollar a week. The first 3 million (of 3.4 million) get an average of $4.24 a week. The top 100,000 average $105 a week.
According to Newsroom [currently offline]: No money has been budgeted to pay for New Zealand’s contribution to a $44 billion component of the Copenhagen Accord on climate change or to withstand losses from the emissions trading scheme beyond Kyoto’s lifetime.
“Three strikes” is likely to become law today. This video shows that three strikes legislation hasn’t worked overseas. It’s unlikely to work here. It’s a crime bill that is not expected to deter or reduce crime and may increase murders.
Trevor Mallard reports being asked by a press gallery member if he knows which nat is about to resign. Trev doesn’t know, but there’s a few choice candidates
Seeing as the theme of the day has been inequality and class war, this video from the Daily Show is very appropriate. Interesting […]
One thing National does very well is spend a lot of time softening the public up for unpopular moves so that the public attention has moved on by the time anything actually happens. Look at GST. The ‘rabbit from a hat’ trick of borrowing for larger income tax cuts served to divert attention from the well-signaled GST hike. They’re running the same strategy on privatisation.
Last month Colin King revealed that his National Party colleague Chris Finlayson had said he would block an investigation into the behaviour of his old mate Supreme Court Judge Bill Wilson. Finlayson should have recognised his conflict of interest and stood aside months ago but only did so once the media got the story. It says something about National’s standards.
Last year ACE, this year ECE. What has this government got against education? Once again it’s the big loser in a National budget. […]
Pointing out that a “rich get richer” budget is going to increase inequality in NZ seems to be making the Nats uncomfortable. Bill English tries to simply deny the facts. DPF tries to divert attention to “social mobility”. Lame efforts in both cases. The truth is that inequality isn’t on the Nats radar. They simply don’t care.
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The Right claims that people who aren’t on high incomes are just lazy and need to work harder, and, so, are undeserving of a fair deal. It’s insulting, it’s false, it’s just another excuse for maintaining the wealthy’s privileged position. Most people who work long hours are on low and middle incomes. And there are hundreds of thousands of low income Kiwis wanting more work.
The Campaign for MMP has been established to mobilise public support for the MMP electoral system leading up to the government’s planned 2011 […]
We don’t expect the state highway network to turn a profit but we know it contributes enormous value to our economy.Airports, seaports, and telecommunications network add more to the economy than just the profits of the companies. Same with rail. But what will come as a surprise, given the Right’s constant attacks, is that Kiwirail will also be making a $4 billion profit in the next decade.
More bad news for the Government’s mining plans. The submission from the Committee of New Zealand Members of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and a Shape NZ survey both indicate the need for them to back off. How long until they admit it?
In a move that can only be described as the fox guarding the hen house, the fishing industry has released plans for self-regulation entitled ‘Managing Our Own Ship’. National would be making a huge mistake to hand over more power to the fishing industry and in the end it would be the people who would have to deal with the consequences.
I love that John Key is so desperate to show some progress on his memorial cycleway that he’s even going along to the opening of cycleways that aren’t funded with its money. On Sunday he showed up at the opening of a cycleway in Oamaru. The cycleway was funded by the council and NZTA. The recession has been over for a year – not a single job has been created, no cycleway built.
Tories claim that tax cuts “cause growth” in the economy – they “grow the pie”. But it’s rubbish. No honest review of the long term historical picture can sustain the claim. Tax cuts don’t cause growth.
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There’s some mean little barbs hidden in the Budget. National has abolished a tax rebate for redundant workers that helps you out if you are made redundant and your payout pushes you into a higher tax bracket. It’s a petty mean-hearted attack from an increasingly rightwing government. In fact, this insult to hard working Kiwis is an exact repetition of what they did in 1992.
“The Bechdel test†requires a movie to pass three questions:
1) Does it have two or more women in it (who have names)?
2) Do they talk to one another?
3) Do they talk to one another about something other than a man?
This two minute video explains…
The frustration was palpable today as Guyon Espiner struggled in vain to get a single straight answer from Bill English, who was only prepared to twist, evade, and repeat lines: “GUYON Do you accept that for very high income earners, people on the sort of salary like your own of $276,000 a year,you gave those people money they simply did not need?
The other day, we had a satire guest post about ‘thank the rich day’. Michael Laws appears determined to out do us: “On Thursday, this Key/English administration decided to abandon the pretence that we are an egalitarian society, or that we should ever attempt to be so. The wealthy are the wealthy because they merit that status, was the prime minister’s underlying message.”
We are so used to hearing that climate change is the most important environmental issue of our time, that to hear that biodiversity may require more urgent attention made me sit up and pay attention. As reported in the Guardian…
It occurs to me that I’m always writing about bad news. Bloody Tories. Climate change. Oil spills. Financial collapses. Countries torn apart. It’s a depressing diet. Time for a change! How about a post about good news? Let’s give it a try.
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Colin James makes a good point in his latest column which talks about the rightward shift this budget has created: Longer term, the […]
John Armstrong looks at the typical John Key-style punt that lies behind the budget.
Meanwhile Tracey Watkins has calmed down after the excitement of seeing the size of her tax cut and is questioning why Key is so afraid of anything but tightly managed media appearances.
My wife and I are retired. We worked hard, we lived frugally, and we have a nest egg to get us through. Now John’s mob have come along and taken part of that nest egg away from us. 5.9% inflation will eat up our savings. The same will happen to the nest eggs of retired people or young people saving to buy a house up and down this country. How does that reward saving?
