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.
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.
Who would have thought that a Facebook group advocating to keep Radio NZ funded and commercial-free would overtake Prime Minister John Key’s fan […]
Cuts to prisoner rehabilitation, night classes, and the Super Gold Card aren’t about saving money. The government is only too happy to sign blank cheques for stupid projects like Transmission Gully and the Holiday Highway on the vaguest cost estimates. No, these successful policies are having the financial life bled out of them because they contradict National’s ideology.
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Let’s face facts. Anne Tolley is a dangerous minister. She is undermining the education system at every turn and the damage will last lifetime. But is National doing the responsible thing and removing her from the portfolio? No. In fact, a guest poster reports they’re so desperate to help her out that they’ve got plants in her audiences to ask patsy questions.
Have a listen to Education Minister Anne Tolley on Morning Report today trying to explain the $25 million cut to the education budget.
It really was a shocker, even for her.
The Local Government Commission released its final ward boundaries for Auckland today and the result is a city gerrymandered by ACT to favour the interests of the rich.
That’s the verdict from No Right Turn, who’s crunched the numbers and discovered a systematic bias for the Right.
The light sentences handed down to most of the group that killed Navtej Singh have caused consternation within the NZ Indian community. With the Human Rights Commission today releasing a statement on worrying trends of racism in NZ, now is a terrible time for the legal system to be sending all the wrong messages.
When a guy who was imprisoned and tortured by Idi Amin calls the conditions in which prisoners are kept in New Zealand “a source of shame and disgrace” you know we have problems. Unfortunately, it has become acceptable in this modern political environment to view prisoners as less than human
Solid Energy has been caught out commissioning future leaders to pen fantasy stories in school hours. The company is inviting high school students in key coal-mining areas to submit an essay on: “The role of coal in sustainable energy solutions for New Zealandâ€.
Sometimes you get a really pleasant surprise and I got one today from Garth George. Despite being a pretty old school conservative he gives a stunning rebuke of the knee-jerk authoritarianism/fascism/randianism that so often characterises the thinking of the Right these days and was recently highlighted by David Garrett’s call for sterilisation of the poor.
While other countries have used their strong public sectors to steady the private sector and keep unemployment down during the economic downturn, our government is compounding unemployment by cutting the public sector, throwing people out of jobs and feeding worker insecurity.
The more I think about the ‘Wellywood’ sign the angrier I get. Who does Wellington Airport think they are imposing this monstrosity on the people of Wellington without any consultation? It’s just another example of the corporate mentality in this country – a subtle blend of arrogance and idiocy.
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The latest Roy Morgan poll is out and Labour isn’t moving. And while only a political noob would expect them to be making major gains this early in the first term of a new government they’re still not laying the groundwork they should be. So what should they be doing?
Good on Chris Carter. He’s the only politician on Left taking some leadership in opposing the National Government’s abandonment of New Zealand’s anti-whaling […]
The first Drinking Liberally – Wellington of the year is being held in conjunction with the annual Roger Award. The Roger Award is […]
“Tolley finds ally in school mum” screams the headline of Audrey Young’s piece today.
When National runs a bus tour the Herald is desperate in its attempts to drum up support, when it’s Labour all they want to talk about is how much the bus is costing the taxpayer.
The world’s economy has not truly recovered from the recession, it has just been artificially reanimated by vast injections of Government bailout money.
What happens when taxpayers get the bill? The people of Iceland just voted not to pay. This may be the first in a cascading series of failures of “sovereign debt”. If so, the next crash will make the recent recession look like child’s play.
John Armstrong has chucked John Key’s promise to end whaling down the memory hole and, instead, comes out swinging against those who don’t […]
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So Steven Joyce’s big bright idea for tertiary education (which he recently inherited from the hopeless Anne Tolley) is to punish institutions with low pass rates by cutting their funding. It’s basically the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.It reflects the typical short-term thinking of the capitalist class and its political party.
Michael is dead right. The most important thing about the Hollow Men is not how Nicky Hager got the information but what the information is. It reveals National’s modern politics in all its unprincipled ugliness. Nonetheless, which Nats gave Hager the information is a subject of legitimate interest. I have some theories.
John Key doesn’t need evidence. He just knows stuff. John Key just knows that Don Brash’s emails were stolen by a mysterious hacker, despite having no evidence at all. The same “reasoning” underpins most of National’s flagship policies. Key just knows they’ll work, even when the evidence says otherwise…
Remember how a couple of months back National set up NationalMPs? It was meant to be their answer to Red Alert, Labour’s frequently raucous, unstagemanaged blog where Labour’s MPs write what they want. But the Nats’ attempt is deadly dull. Either the leadership is gagging them or the Nat MPs are dreadful bores.
Wellingtonians like to think of themselves as more sophisticated than their rural brethren.
But sometimes they come out with something that shows just what a bunch of hicks they are.
There are 276,000 jobless Kiwis. The seasonally-adjusted trend on dole numbers is still on the rise. Many other people fall through the gaps and are unable to get public assistance in their time of need.
What better time for the Minister for Social Development to bugger off for five weeks?
When things got too hot Cameron Slater called on Daddy to save him. John Slater rushes in to say to cops shouldn’t be charging his son who has been getting his 15 minutes of fame exploiting sex abuse victims. The Nats think the rules don’t apply to them (cf. Heatley, English, Bennett, Jim McClay…). The law’s for keeping the poor in line, not the rich, they reckon.
In NZ, the average FTE wage rose 2.86% after inflation – $891 to $934 – over the past year. In Aussie, it was 3.6% above inflation – $1159 to $1226. When will John Key admit that he sold us a lie? When will the media call on him to resign if no progress is made on the one substantial promise of a ‘brighter future’ at he made?
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The leaked emails which helped bring about the downfall of former Nat leader Don Brash hit the headlines again today, for all the wrong reasons. The story of who “stole” the emails was nothing more than a successful Tory decoy. Journalists have already forgotten the insidious tricks used by the top echelons of the National Party.
Happy International Women’s Day. If only there was something to celebrate.
“We are deeply concerned about the current attacks on workers’ rights that will badly impact on women,†said CTU President Helen Kelly…
You’ve really got to hand it to the Greens and Labour. They have completely defied expectations on the whaling issue. See the simple option that most political parties would go for would be to be seen to stand by their principles – loud and proud. But the Greens and Labour are too clever for that. Instead, they’ve cunningly said next to nothing!
This month there are a series of showings of The End of the Line around New Zealand. This acclaimed documentary looks at how overfishing is destroying fish populations and ultimately endangering the industries and cultures that depend on them. This is a problem we can solve relatively simply.
The Key Government has, without public consultation or mandate, thrown decades of political consensus in the trash. They are proposing the reintroduction commercial whaling. The Nats say this will reduce the number of whales killed but no-one is buying that. When did the commercialisation of a resource ever lead to a reduction in its use?
