Britain could be heading for a hung Parliament, according to the latest Guardian poll.
With no more than three months to go until polling day, the Conservatives have fallen to 37%, down three, while Labour’s support, at 30%, is up one. The Lib Dems are unchanged on 20%.
The National / ACT “three strikes” policy on violent crime sentencing is the worst kind of law.
It has been thoroughly condemned by the Justice Ministry, who were blocked from giving advice to select committee.
Recent polls highlight how important turnout will be at this year’s local body election.
Sam Cash takes a look at recent history and how attitudes to the supercity and the themes of this election could increase participation.
Crime is not, as Judith Collins seems to think, evil people doing evil things that can be repressed by ever greater state violence. Deterrence doesn’t work because crime, especially violent crime, is not a rational outcome of weighing costs and benefits. A crime policy that doesn’t reduce crime isn’t really a crime policy, it’s a con.
Linley Boniface: “To suggest that the world’s last few remaining areas of wilderness have no intrinsic worth, and should be judged only in terms of their ability to generate business opportunities, is a notion that is both repellent and outdated.â€
This morning the DomPost ran an article by Tracy Watkins about several ministers misusing their ministerial credit cards for personal entertainment. They obtained the information by doing OIAs (Official Information Act requests). Now I’ve come to expect that NACT ministers will do (in John Keys words) “stupid” things in office. But what I found significant was that John Key appears to have discovered the use of a new word “disappointment”. This is a major advance for the NACT political vocabulary.
Duncan Garner: “Key must get the compensation [for GST] right or there will be a backlash from voters” Problem is, you can’t get everyone to put some money in a bucket, give a large chunk of it to the rich and then compensate everyone else for what they put in with what is left. It can’t add up.
The Post Primary Teachers’ Association have just launched a YouTube video protesting National’s hugely unpopular cuts to night classes.
Click through to check it out.
BLiP puts his distinctive view on why the police have been losing “the respect of the community” with one of his locally famous lists. He attributes it to ‘Crusher’ Collins and wonders why John Key is cluessly fronting PR wanting stronger sentences for disrespecting police.
The Government is driving ahead with its plans to open up our National Parks and other protected environments to mining. The Standard can now reveal that Murray McCully has shares in a company that stands to benefit directly from National’s mining policy.
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Bill English’s argument that cutting taxes for the few at the top can cause an economic step change has always been nonsense.
His appearance on Q&A yesterday simply confirmed it.
No chance some gang f#ckwits would be deterred by longer sentences.
What happened to that plan of Key’s to end whaling?
How do we get a high wage economy when National opposes each and every wage rise?
A group called PublicZone have just released an iPhone app aimed at staying in contact with (UK) MPs a little easier. The app […]
Over 2,000 people a day are joining the Facebook group to save Radio New Zealand from National’s cuts, which would turn it into another crap commercial outlet. There are a lot of outraged people who voted for a ‘brighter future’ among those 10,000. The backlash is growing.
Labour is a pretty risk-adverse organisation. Making those two unorthodox attacks on those two ministers, and pulling it off both times, shows that Labour has got the measure of Key’s drop-kick ministers and is feeling more confident in itself.
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An excellent piece by Rod Oram in the SST. More sophisticated governments are focusing on smart and sustainable growth but National thinks wealth comes from more milk and selling off our irreplaceable natural resources as quickly as possible.
The new Aussie Liberal leader, Tony Abbott, has been widely derided for saying Australia should ape National’s economic policies. “Abbott’s remark came the day that Australia’s unemployment rate fell from 5.5 to 5.3 per cent. The NZ rate? It’s 7.3 per cent.” We should copy their stimulus policy, not the other way round.
Briar March and Lyn Collie have gained another award yesterday for their documentary There Once Was an Island:Te Henua e Noho at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Montana USA.
I’m personally rapt at the recognition it has been getting and I can’t wait to see it on the big-screen in New Zealand myself. Should be better than showing on our TV.
At TED2010, Bill Gates unveils his vision for the world’s energy future, describing the need for “miracles†to avoid planetary catastrophe and explaining why he’s backing a dramatically different type of nuclear reactor. The necessary goal? Zero carbon emissions globally by 2050.
Prime Minister John Key is the worst enemy New Zealand’s conservation estate has had in decades. Not content with the destruction caused by mining our most precious conservation areas, Key is pushing to sell off access to the conservation estate to the highest bidders.
Climate change deniers spend a lot of time picking at motes – occasional errors in climate change science. Why is there so little attention to the beams – incorrect and dishonest denier claims and tactics?
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There will be some maintenance going on this evening starting about 7pm and hopefully not lasting long.
The new site seems to be stable, so I’ll be removing the old site at www2. That will allow the new site to start using widgets and to move from the temporary ads to the final advertisement systems.
Tracey Watkins writes that National is pissing off important constituencies and Labour’s messages are resonating. Key promised the world to everyone, he has failed to do anything for anyone except the wealthy elite. And public opinion is turning.
So Key’s “party central” plan for Queen’s Wharf seems to be dead in the water, after Auckland Mayors labeled it a “monstrosity” and refused to fund it.
Are these the prudent decisions of leaders who don’t want the city saddled with expensive white elephants, or the timid decisions of leaders who are without vision and averse to risk?
If you’re not familiar with the manifold reasons why the news you get from corporate media is crap, here’s Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe. It’s funny, incisive and merciless.
It’s also a very damning indictment of the modern Fourth Estate that explodes the myths around corporations acting as watchdogs on behalf of citizens against powerful anti-democratic interests.
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It is not often that I compliment the authors that write for No Minister. However I have to compliment SageNZ for his prescient […]
In Fear the Boom and Bust, John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek, two of the great economists of the 20th century go […]
The letter warning school boards not to speak out over national standards is an outrage, but John Key and his National Party have a long and dishonourable record of trying to shut down those who speak out to oppose them.
There’s no better illustration of why we need a properly funded Radio NZ than the way the debate over National’s funding cuts have played out on Radio NZ compared to its commercial counterparts.
Guess what? Editing the Herald is back for the new year and it’s as sharp as ever.
The Herald is still full of casual idiocy, incredible stuff ups (like the headline that went to print on page 3 as “HeadXXX”), and the bizarreness of Garth George.
EtH skewers it all brilliantly.
