Wee gripes: the Steven Joyce cult
People like to talk about how great Steven Joyce is. But he’s not got a single run on the board.
Am I missing something or is just talking about how good you are all that’s needed nowadays?
Money for photo ops, cuts to health
Just a quick question: Why is John Key giving $300,000 to the All Whites’ World Cup campaign when they’re already making a $6 million profit from the $10 million they get for qualifying? Why is there money for that while elder care and other value for money programmes are getting cuts? Looks like we’re paying for some more John Key photo ops.
Nats to pay miners to dig up national parks
During Question Time yesterday, Metiria Turei exposed National’s plan to subsidise mineral exploration by foreign companies in the most important parts of our national parks.
John Key refused to confirm Turei’s information but couldn’t deny it. Clearly, the Nats had been planning to slip it through in the Budget unnoticed.
More lies from English, Key in lala-land
Bill English can’t defend his economic record, 2.2% fall in GDP, still rising unemployment, falling wages, GDP per capita still falling and not expected to return to pre-recession levels until 2012, so he’s telling more lies about Labour’s record instead. Meanwhile, the Do Nothing Prime Minister is still daydreaming about his cycleway, which he now says will create “a lot more” than 4,000 jobs.
Open mike 17/03/2010
Open mike is your post. It’s open for discussing topics of interest, making announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. Comment on whatever takes […]
Minister flees from journos
We’re used to Key and his ministers hiding from their duties. Now one of them has taken it to a new level. Journos wanted to ask Pacific Affairs Minister Georgina Te Heuheu about the rumours her ministry is getting the chop. At the sight of them, Te Heuheu ran away. Fran Mold reportedly said she’d never seen anything like it.
Financial regulation in USA?
The recent recession represented a spectacular failure of unfettered capitalism. One of the main causes in America was a picking apart of financial regulations. This allowed the “innovative” products and practices that brought the system down. Perhaps America has learned the lesson. A new Democratic proposal outlines “the biggest overhaul of regulations since the New Deal”.
On the Chauvel beatup
Stuff.co.nz’s decision to turn an anonymous, politically motivated smear from an ACT Party activist into a front page tabloid screamer is gutter journalism for sure, but it’s only the latest example of a worrying trend.
It’s what happens when the right-wing smear machine meets an increasingly tabloid news media.
Tolley losing the plot?
Anne Tolley put out an odd media statement on Friday. She reckons Trevor Mallard, opposition spokesperson for Education, dominated two public meetings in Auckland on her Government’s unpopular national standards policy. Which begs the question, was she actually all there at either meeting?
50 dollars and northwards
Felix can hardly contain himself at the prospect of National’s tax changes: Woohoo!! Told you my mate Mr Key would be able to deliver a “north of $50 a week†tax cut. And you all said he wouldn’t. So who’s looking stupid now eh? I mean sure, you need to bring in $180,000 a year to get it but just get off your arse and be a bit more ambitious whydontcha?
Newspapers/govt seed scientific ignorance
My mouth dropped yesterday when I read in the Dompost an editorial lamenting the “scientifically ignorant public, suspicious of the work many scientists do”. What shocked me was the chutzpah of the lament coming from a newspaper that fuels scientific illiteracy. Today, the Dompost has yet another anti-science, illiterate climate change denier column. Meanwhile, for all its talk, Key’s Government is cutting science jobs.
Don Brash, Rogernomics, and Huljich
The New Zealand economic reforms of the 1980s and 1990s were largely a failure. This can be seen from the large negative divergence […]
Open mike 16/03/2010
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The scars of Tui Mine
My Granddad grew up in Te Aroha near Tui Mine. The mining ruined a large swathe of the land and toxic tailings were left behind which polluted the river and turned a large patch of bush into a desert – it is a scar on the face of my Granddad’s mountain which looks over his grave. As I write this I can hear him reciting this poem:
Andrew Little eyes New Plymouth
I didn’t actually realise that the fact that Andrew Little is considering standing for Labour in New Plymouth in 2011 was news to anyone. I would think that New Plymouth is a natural seat for him.
Farrar’s analysis makes the old mistake of looking at the party votes instead of the candidate votes.
Prenderghastly
First it was the Wellywood sign, now it’s a statue of a guy standing in a giant pile of manure while holding aloft a golden testicle.
And you thought the only Mayor who delighted it making their constituency look stupid was Tim Shadbolt.
Lorraine Kerr, National Standards & Schools Money
Lorraine Kerr, head of the NZ School Trustees Association is one of National’s few supporters on National Standards. She says a survey of boards of trustees gives her a mandate for this position, with only four boards opposing the Standards. Now, she has been forced to admit that only 14 schools were included in the survey result.
Child offending up with higher unemployment
The Herald has a little shock piece on child offending: “5-year-old sex offender on crime list“. Of course, what the offence was isn’t […]
National Parks, not National’s parks
Forest and Bird has obtained information that Prime Minister John Key is looking to mine Paparoa National Park [pictured right], Great Barrier Island, and areas surrounding the Thames township. The final details of the discussion doc will be decided at Cabinet today. Mr Key, you’re in for a fight on this one.
Open mike 15/03/2010
Open mike is your post. It’s open for discussing topics of interest, making announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. Comment on whatever takes […]
Search upgraded (yet again)
My absence this weekend from moderation and posts has partially been because of going to the excellent Fabian seminar today. However it has largely been due to trying to get a workable search system running. One that didn’t bring the whole server crashing around my ears every few months and cut the issue of everyone having to stop receiving data for up to a minute when someone used search. One that allowed comments to be accessed as easily as posts.
It looks like it is finally working correctly, but I’d like feedback on any errors that show up.
Updated: Several different server and site updates.
GST hike = tax cut for rich only
The numbers of National’s tax money go round leaked to the SST. I have worked out who wins and who loses. Key claimed that no-one will be worse off and the bulk will be much better off but 10% are worse off and 80% get next to nothing (without even counting the rent hikes). The elite get $100 in net tax cuts for every $1 the typical Kiwi gets.
Tax cut bizzaro world
Under National’s proposed tax cuts and GST increases someone on the average wage of $48,000 comes out about $5 to $10 per week ahead. But 70% of Kiwis have incomes under $40,000. Their tax cuts will barely compensate them for the GST increase. How can National go on claiming that “the vast bulk of New Zealanders will be better offâ€?
Reminder: Fabians Auckland seminar today
As previously posted, there is a Auckland seminar running this afternoon on options for the future direction of the New Zealand economy. Bold Choices for a Better Future is the provocative first seminar in the Resilient Economy Series, entailing a pragmatic 360Ëš view of the economy, its problems and their possible solutions.
Go along and argue in real life about some of the same issues that are argued over here.
Open mike 14/03/2010
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Herald’s “democracy lockout” campaign – pick it up!
On Monday this week the front page of the Auckland Herald’s print edition announced that the paper was going to run a campaign […]
Wage gap is the John Key credibility gap
There’s a nickname for John Key that’s picking up currency from both Left and Right around the blogosphere: ‘smile and wave’. The one thing Key can be depended on is to turn up grinning in some cheesy photo op. All his promises fall by the wayside. Meanwhile, 276,000 Kiwis are jobless, the wage gap with Australia keeps widening, and so does Key’s credibility gap.
Stupid competition
We keep hearing, from the Key government, statements about education that make no logical or factual sense at all. Here are two examples. Help me choose — which is the stupider statement, and why?
Open mike 13/03/2010
Open mike is your post. It’s open for discussing topics of interest, making announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. Comment on whatever takes […]
Glenn Beck’s theatre of the absurd
Check out this video of Fox News talk host Glenn Beck. It’s a compilation of his week-long series on how “America is burning to the ground”.
I think he’s trying to argue that Barack Obama is plotting some sort of communist-inspired coup, but it’s hard to know what he’s on about between his confused rants about “THE MACHINE” and the paranoid blackboard scrawlings.
Dying newspaper’s last gasp
You’ll have seen the government’s furious response to the Sunday Star Times “commission[ing] people masquerading as terrorists to attend Super 14 Games”.
It’s irresponsible as hell, but more than that it’s desperate and sad. It’s the last gasp of a dying newspaper.
Make that man a minister
British American Tabacco’s Graeme Amey has the brazen lie down pat. The guy quit smoking himself but wants Kiwis to keep smoking and […]
Bill Ralston: fringe rightie
We all knew Bill Ralston had become a nutty fringe right-winger despite how much he likes to play the slighted liberal.
But his decision to start a Facebook group attacking public broadcasting, and to do so with two nutty Objectivists (one of whom did National’s 2008 billboard campaign) is quite refreshing.
Radicals are a pain
Looking at the leaders for the Fabians seminar on Sunday, it looks to me like it is going to be quite interesting because it is likely to focus more on incremental rather than radical methods. One of the major issues to me with the existing ‘debate’ on economic matters has been the level at which it is ideologically driven rather than based on the actual economy. The main problem with the ‘debate’ are impatient radicals from all sides.