Clueless forgot to pay the bill?
I regret to inform the world that John Keys domain has run out of money and is in the process of expiring (much […]
One for the road
Colin Espiner is hanging up his umm, journalist tools?, and leaving the press gallery to be an assistant editor for The Press down in Christchurch.
I wish him the best of luck but I can’t help but leave him with one more correction of a basic mistake for the road.
Nat kneejerk over Waihopai 3
Key is talking ‘toughening’ the law in the wake of the Waihopai 3 acquittals. He clearly doesn’t understand that a jury decision, let alone one in a district court, has no precedent effect. Others Nats are muttering about canning jury trials. It’s scary the way the Nats resort to heavyhanded tactics so quickly. They never work either, just ask the boyracers in their uncrushed cars.
Banks’ brand is buggered
How much is the Huljich Kiwisaver figure-fudging scandal hurting John “the dodgy-director†Banks’ mayoral chances? Answer: a lot.O’Sullivan then explicitly writes off Banks – saying he’ll lose to Len Brown – and joins the long list of commentators criticizing the Huljich rip-off and noting it has damaged Banks’ chances. Think this story is only getting play in the business pages? It’s not.
One in five children
Anne Tolley has promised that national standards have been introduced so that “every single child could read, write, and do maths when they left school”.
The depths of arrogance and ignorance in that claim leave me at a loss for words…
Open mike 22/03/2010
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I got it wrong: tax cuts for rich even bigger
I made a mistake in my calculations of the effects of the leaked tax reforms. In the corrected numbers, the poor get less, the rich get more. The wealthiest 13,000 taxpayers get a quarter of a billion in tax cuts between them – nearly $20,000 a year each. The poorest half $1.25 a week and higher rents to pay. This ‘tax reform’ package is really a mask for a wealth grab from the many to the few.
Strange beauty
A building with built in wind turbines that can generate a portion of it’s own power needs as well as feeding into the main grid? Well there’s a new building called the ‘Razor’, in south London, which can do just that, and looks like something out of science fiction. View the photo display featured in the Guardian.
Crossbreed a dumb mistake with wingnuts
An amusing tale of how Rush Limbaugh screws up, and a pile of wingnuts immediately jump to the wrong conclusions.
American wingnuts at their most ridiculous. But we have the angry and irrational breed here as well.
Sex & the Supercity
What a cynical and politically-driven process this whole Supercity process has been. It is undemocratic to its core. It is not about ‘growth’ or creating a better city. It is about securing power (and, thereby, wealth) for the city’s right-wing elite. Now their plans are falling apart around them. A female candidate to replace Banks is their last gasp attempt to stop Len Brown winning.
Open mike 21/03/2010
Open mike is your post. It’s open for discussing topics of interest, making announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. Comment on whatever takes […]
Carmel Sepuloni takes Waitakere selection
Two list MPs and a popular local favourit son. It was always going to be a hard one to pick and it took […]
Gullible media
Last year a new TV show HungryBeast ran a check on how gullible the news media were. They generated a bogus institute, website, and a rather dodgy press release about a survey on how gullible different cities in aussie are. At least our media wouldn’t be taken in like the aussies.. right… please tell me that they aren’t that gullible?
Fabians seminars on the budget.
There are a second set of seminars in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch over the next week on Choices and Consequences of the 2010 budget. Based on the Bold Choices seminar that I attended last weekend in Auckland (there are later ones in Wellington and Christchurch), they will be well worth attending. There are some materials on-line from that seminar.
Oh and David Farrar was shocked to find that Kiwiblog had been advertising the seminars 
Arguing with a rightie about youth minimum wages
With one eye firmly on the polls and an awareness that cutting wages by stealth is one thing but actually lowering wages is another, National has decided to oppose Roger Douglas’s youth minimum wage reduction bill. That hasn’t stopped the right activists from promoting it though, so I thought it would be worthwhile having a wee post summarising the arguments on both sides
Hysteria in the government over mining
The Herald has a editorial lambasting John Key about claiming this week that they were ‘hysterical’ writing about the plans to mine the conservation lands, and that there were no such plans. Later in the week, the government launched a probe to find out who leaked cabinet documents about mining the conservation lands. The irony of the two actions appears to have escaped John Key who appears more clueless than ever.
Another big empty promise
Education Minister Anne Tolley has made an extraordinary promise: “New Zealand elected a Government that promised to introduce national standards so that every single child could read, write, and do maths when they left school. That is what the country voted for.” We would all love to see National deliver, but they can’t, and they know that they can’t. It’s an empty promise.
Open mike 20/03/2010
Open mike is your post. It’s open for discussing topics of interest, making announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. Comment on whatever takes […]
Sadistics office backs National Standards
New instalment from John Key impersonater “Plumedekiwi”, in which the PM gets his linguistic knickers in a twist over national standards….
If you haven’t seen the other vids by Plumedekiwi, check him out here
Nats favour Turia, screw Sharples
Seats on the supercity, 3 strikes, tertiary cuts, national standards, RWC TV, ETS, foreshore and seabed (soon enough). The list of issues that the Maori Party has been shafted by National on keeps growing. Yet Tariana Turia’s ill-defined ‘Whanua Ora’ policy, which looks like nothing so much as privisation by stealth, gets carte blanche. What’s going on here?
Voting ban for prisoners irrational
Paul Quinn’s Electoral (Disqualification of Convicted Prisoners) Amendment Bill appears to be unjustifiably inconsistent with the electoral rights affirmed by s 12 of the Bill of Rights Act.
That’s the view of Attorney General Chris Finlayson, whose National Party is supporting the bill to select committee regardless.
‘Front-line’ needs ‘back-office’
The head of the nurses’ union, Geoff Annals, has given a vivid analogy for why his ‘front-line’ nurses oppose ‘back-office’ staff cuts: “I’ve flown very often but I’ve never seen many staff essential to the safety of my flights. I’ve never seen an air traffic controller for example. Does that mean that air traffic controllers should be dispensed with?”
Open mike 19/03/2010
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Nats all at sea on whaling
In Kaikoura, John Key said commercial whaling “might be acceptable if it was acceptable to others”. You gotta love the leadership there. But you’ve also got to question what kind of two-faced game the Nats are playing because in the House, Murray McCully said precisely the opposite – that the Government opposes commercial whaling.
Fabian seminar gets big tick
The first Fabian Society seminar in Auckland last weekend attracted a good crowd watch an participate as some of New Zealand’s top economic thinkers debated how to get the economy working for us. It has been judged a huge success. The next seminars will be in Wellington on Sunday 28 March and in Christchurch on 18 April.
Tenants already taking the hit
I got a call from a friend today, thanks to National his rent is going up. I’ll call him Ned. He’s retired and […]
Classic Key clanger
In this article, in which a Kaikoura Whale Watch spokesman states the bloody obvious (that if New Zealand turns pro-whaling his industry will […]
Waihopai victory
The not guilty verdicts in the Waihopai spy base case is a victory for the peace movement and proof of the value of the jury system. A jury of the activists peers were able to decide that it would not be just to convict them. Strict legalism could not beat society’s innate sense of justice. Unfortunately, National is moving to restrict our right to trial by jury.
Rumblings in Nats’ base
There’s a danger in being a government that does nothing except pay of its rich mates, and that’s losing faith with the conservative base. Garth George is the slightly mad, always irritable voice of this demographic, so it’s worth watching as his initial love for John Key wears off to be replaced by despair (and rising anger) at Key’s failure to deliver the brighter future he promised.
Why English lies
As you’ll be aware, I’ve been pretty flabbergasted by the way day after day Bill English is getting up in the House and telling out and out lies about Labour’s record on the economy only for Labour to sit there and take it. Well, I’ve been thinking about this a little more and I think I get it now. He can’t talk up his own performance – there’s nothing to skite about and it’s against his political strategy even if there were some successes to point to
‘Oh, oh’: sound of a minister floundering
Which minister will be next to go? Rodney Hide or Anne Tolley? If competence was a condition of keeping their job, both would […]
Open mike 18/03/2010
Open mike is your post. It’s open for discussing topics of interest, making announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. Comment on whatever takes […]
Cynical denialism will cost us all
David Farrar is not stupid. Like everyone with a brain, he knows that climate change is a real and dangerous threat caused by human greenhouse gases emissions. Yet he persists in making denialist dog-whistles to his readers, always being careful never to outright deny climate change himself. He and all the leaders of denialism are telling what they know to be lies to people they know to be idiots.
Lee, Joyce and Hide’s Super City “pig’s arse”
In a letter to the Herald today, responding to Mike Lee’s op-ed of yesterday, Steven Joyce says:
“Contrary to what Mike Lee says, the Auckland Council will be able to appoint or dismiss any member of the Auckland Transport Board at any time.”
Problem is, Mike Lee didn’t actually say what Joyce says he did.
Hysterical media coverage
A love that will not die
I tried to write a satire of John Armstrong’s column today along the lines of the ‘Beloved Key‘ one I did the other day. But I’ve had to give it away. It’s beyond parody.
So, I guess I’ll do some serious analysis instead.