Guyon Espiner is apparently a close friend of Nick Leggett's hence the puff piece in the Listener. I don't think Guyon Espiner really understands Wellington. Leggett has been badly advised in his run against the first official Labour Party mayoral campaign...
Rowling is vastly underrated. Widely liked and respected, especially by the powerless. Ditto Nash. Auckland's traffic problems go back to Sid Holland's overthrow of extensive public transport (mainly rail) plans in favour of motorways. Universally disliked...
$500 a day is a lot more than the SSC's standard day rate for government work which is about $350.
There are a lot of people in the council paid huge salaries and they go up every year. It wouldn't cost much to cut the top salaries a bit to redistribute a few dollars more to the lowest paid. It also saves money in that it helps with staff retention and ...
I have been to several meetings and read all the literature. I like Justin Lester and will make a positive vote for him. He's far more left than the others. He remembers where he has come from (poor single mother in Invercargill). Most of the mayoral ...
He says Transmission Gully is his biggest achievement. It is a monster road still a long way off completion. It will dump a whole lot more cars in Wellington city. As for delivering for Porirua, I don't know. It is an area with huge wealth inequity - lots ...
Nick Leggett is not a candidate of the left. He appears to have big backing from business including the roads and property development lobby. Also some fluffy pieces from media including the DomPost and Listener.
Easy to electrify the whole main trunk and get new rail stock (could even be built here), then could even have more commuter rail eg Wellington - Palmerston North, Hamilton- Auckland etc. Would be a lot cheaper than all the current monster road building (...
Winston's former MP now runs the Green's office. They all get on much better now.
Why did the Maori Party support urgency and the legislation?
Celia was a very effective and largely consensus and mildly green mayor. The cycleway was a visionary attempt at making a wide street cycle friendly. Having the cycleway next to the footpath is the way it is done in cycle friendly cities. No reason why ...
Now that Celia's not standing she can be frank (and mostly astutely accurate) about the Wellington mayoral contenders. Not surprisingly, nice Justin Lester comes out top. http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/83803202/celias-choice-wadebrown-delivers-...
A UBI could be under a whole new UBI Ministry. Perhaps a Ministry of autonomy and wellbeing!
'Special' education is a well networked sector in NZ, especially through social media. Hekia should know that when claiming that a group supports her new policy (which discriminates against one group at the expense of another) that the veracity of that ...
I don't think McCully is doing any good for Helen Clark's campaign . He seems to be universally disliked.
The right wing of the Labour Party became the basis of the ACT Party in the 1980s. Roger Douglas was and remains their ideological leader. Nick Leggett seems to be following that progression in his ambition to run the Wellington region. He was one of the ...
Glad you noticed this. I have been wondering where Nick Leggatt's money is coming from as he has numerous huge billboards and lots of expensive advertising. Seems he has got the backing of the remnants of the ACT Party in Wellington. What is their ...
We need a Universal Basic Income
It is so easy to be kicked off a benefit. They ask you to provide some obscure piece of information that is hard to find or very expensive to access and if it is not provided within a short time your benefit is cut. It is then very, very hard and time ...
Meanwhile the road transport lobby is a major donor to the National Party and several large roading projects are under way, with more promised. What will it take for people to get out of their cars and actually change their ways?
It's a bizarre world at the moment. Nothing is as it seems.
Some retail workers never get a weekend. This will mean they get a rare weekend day off work.
He's just a gentle autistic man locked up by an uncaring system. He's certainly not a 'client'. Why on earth would he kill anyone? You believe psychiatrists over the parents who know him best? It is the conditions that are making him sick. So he needs to ...
There was a by-election somewhere in England last week and the Corban-supporting Labour candidate got over 50% of the vote and increased the party vote several percentage points. while the UKIP vote went down. So hardly unelectable.
This has echoes of the 1980s Labour Party here. Some of the MPs led by Douglas and Prebble took the party way off to the right against the wishes of the membership and many of the MPs. But they were too powerful to be effectively challenged. It has taken ...
John Shewan describes why NZ is a tax haven but says NZ is not actually a tax haven. But his remedy proves we are, and therefore need to have disclosure rules.
Deliberate. Many Cabinet ministers and Nat MPs have a vested interest in access to water for their corporate and farming interests, so see it as their right. They would probably be very surprised that some people see it as theft. That is what poor people ...
Guyon Espiner actually asked Bill English if he believed in democracy - tonight on Checkpoint. Bill was a bit taken aback but dismissing democracy is what he has done to paid parental leave which was passed by a majority of MPs. Babies are just seen as an ...
Ruth Richardson and the National Government got rid of the Family Benefit that would have given the family another several hundred dollars a week (just as John Key's mother got the equivalent of a third of the pension for each child). What a different that...
How we treat vulnerable people in NZ. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11650165
A good start. That's about a quarter voting in favour in a conservative country. Only needs a little more than double that next time to come in. Give it maybe 10 years.
Recent Comments