No - these are always 'set-up' questions. Get the "Yes" from the Minister to the broad question and follow with a supplementary question on a specific matter where the "Yes" is difficult to justify. Of course the Minister almost always knows what topic the...
Broadly agree with that. With a couple of cautions. First, that if you have no principles, you can never be a hypocrite, but if you profess to have principles, you'll be called a hypocrite all the time. Second, this aggression should stop short of ...
Thanks for your recollections Anne. I caught a bus in Vivian St not far from Trades Hall that morning - less than half an hour before the explosion. I was too young and politically naive at the time to have much inkling of what was happening and why.
And if you have the readies, you are likely to be on a higher income, which means the payment is abated and it may not be worth the effort to claim. In any case, we shall see what the uptake is. The whole thing appears to me like a parody of the idiotic ...
Smotrich is clearly a man who "gets things done".
Plus he is nearer the end of his career than the start. So if it goes to custard, the party is not burning off emerging talent before its time.
OK, but when they announce policy it had better: not be timid because it will seem weak and inadequate be redistributive, because undeservedly wealthy people are as bad for society, democracy and the economy as poor ones. not hit moderately affluent ...
Thanks Mickey. I have some first-hand experience in this area. Let me just say this. If an exhausted woman who has been looking after her disabled child gets a pedicure in order to feel better about herself for a while, I say "fill your boots". Go ...
I recall him saying somewhere that when he first arrived in NZ, he was sounded out by Roger Kerr, who clearly wanted to know if Oram was a strict adherent to the one true faith of neoliberal economics. Oram was a brave man to stick to his principles in ...
The real problem with Peter's comments is that he claimed that the rationale behind co-governance was the Nazi ideology of racial superiority. That is just factually incorrect. The rationale behind co-governance is that this is how the Crown meets its ...
What it simply requires is for Hipkins to try It does require that - as I said. But for a period after a heavy election defeat, that is usually not enough. And it's part of the broader culture which the media reflects back at us - recent losers are ...
Why at the moment? Because most of the the media don't really have any interest in ideas. They are like sports commentators. So for now it's all about how Labour got smashed in an election - will they change leaders, how do they recover, how is their ...
Not sure it works like that Ad. There is virtually nothing Hipkins could do at the moment that would get "mainstream cut-through" - unless it's something that reflects badly on him, the Labour Party or the left generally. To view the media as a neutral ...
He's not very bright or he's fibbing. Possibly both. I think he's waging a shameless class war and fibbing about it.
Indeed Michael @2.1. Passive income can give people financial freedom. However, in the case of residential rental properties, this passive income is partially extracted from someone else, and it increases property prices through the demand for this ...
There are Israeli ports where humanitarian aid could be landed. The US could tell Israel to let it through - and if they do not, then threaten the withdrawal of military aid and the sort of sanctions (rightfully) imposed on Putin's Russia. My suspicion is ...
He is right. It is irrelevant how much spending the government brings in regarding its revenue. Surely Gosman is only accidentally right here? He simply means that if the Government gives up one source of revenue, they can reprioritise how they spend ...
Cabinet collective responsibility - Marky must be hating that now. More seriously, I'm wondering how long it will be before we can fairly call Mark Mitchell a failure in reducing crime - does he need a year, two, six? In any case, if crime goes down (or up...
I suspect we already have some idea why - they are comfortable with order and hierarchy - and to some extent that's why they joined.
National definitely weren't saying a.), and they weren't openly saying b.) despite clearly believing it, because no politician can openly say that wages are too high. Instead they claimed that inflation and the ensuing cost of living crisis was caused by "...
My recollection is that they did talk about the cost of living crisis a lot before the election. What they didn't acknowledge was the flat contradiction between this faux concern and their desire to lower wages (as you note) and increase house prices.
Heh. I can recall a workplace where all the middle-aged mostly conservative dudes who enjoyed a bit of polite speeding now and again (nothing outrageous, just the habitual seeking to gain an advantage over others on the road and everywhere else) complained...
They are careful to call it a downward pressure, not a decrease. Therefore if rents don't fall, or even rise, they can easily and unproveably claim that they would have risen/risen more without this change .
Maybe it's so obvious that their behaviour may run foul of their employment contract, that it doesn't need mentioning? I'm sure the Hurricanes management have been going over that ground right from the start. The difficulty is that their calculation is a ...
Agreed. Her opponents are not "terrible people" - I'm sure they are quite pleasant most of the time in their interactions with others. That's what allowed Shaw to operate in the way he did. But although they are not terrible people, they do believe ...
Seymour seems to want only privately-owned media to exist. Because given who has the money (and who hasn't) to fund such enterprises, that means wall to wall media that is favourable to the Nat-ACT agenda. It would throw any media that attempts to be ...
If only we could compare this data to a different case where similar largesse is distributed exclusively to people at the bottom of the wealth-power pyramid. But we can't, because it never is distributed that way. It's likely that most of the money dished ...
The coalition of crackpots can cut free school lunches - but only if they end poverty first. The primary purpose of free lunches for lower decile schools is to soften the effects of our shameful poverty and inequality levels. It's a way of indirectly doing...
Right-wing advocates of "free speech" are mostly authoritarians who are determined to continue the entrenched dominance of their preferred speech by any legal means available.
The whole incident is just National Party DNA in action: getting ahead financially by using any legal means available, irrespective of the broader effects on others or on society in general. Mere legality is their only test of what is acceptable. To be ...
Scott Hamilton is consistently good and it's a plausible diagnosis: single-issue obsession plus a craving for radical excitement.
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