Author Archive
Helen
Written By: - Date published: 11:08 pm, May 24th, 2014 - 14 comments
Just been watching the documentary “Helen” about Helen Clark past and present. Pretty damn good. For me it was a bit of a blast from the past. I started volunteering for her in Mt Albert in 1989. But I suspect that the same will be true for most people who have been aware of politics in NZ over the last 3 decades. Those images of Muldoon and Douglas were kind of creepy.
Governments need to do some work.
Written By: - Date published: 1:30 pm, May 23rd, 2014 - 37 comments
I nearly snorted my coffee down the wrong way when the Economist arrived on my pad this morning. “In need of new oomph” opened with the obvious, that world wide growth was stalling. But then it moved past the usual central bank mantras to the need for governments to start doing something more useful than just cutting deficits. Translated to NZ, we need investment in useful economic infrastructure.
The Human Cost of Inequality
Written By: - Date published: 2:10 pm, May 18th, 2014 - 131 comments
The Sir Douglas Robb Lectures for 2014 start tomorrow evening in Auckland. These three free lectures are being given by the authors of “The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better”, a book much hated by those amongst us who would prefer that societies either didn’t exist or were more unequal and tilted in their favour. Based on many of the trolls here on this topic, it’d appear that most Act supporters and many National supporters appear fall into this category.
The desperation of the National’s sockpuppets
Written By: - Date published: 6:51 pm, May 14th, 2014 - 77 comments
National Party pollster David Farrar must be seeing some numbers he really doesn’t like because he is claiming that David Cunliffe photoshopped himself into a rally that he was really at! Yeah right – a doyen of the local net governing body failed to use google before making a complete dick of himself on the net. I expect we will see a lot more of National’s paid for bloggers acting like fools heading into this election because National only being good at putting us heavily into debt (again!) rather limits the good news they can write.
Cunliffe interacts on Tuesday evening (rescheduled)
Written By: - Date published: 4:24 pm, May 12th, 2014 - 45 comments
Update: Rescheduled for Tuesday 5:30.
David Cunliffe will taking some time to write a post and engage on comments about it tomorrow evening. The topic will be about David’s “vision for New Zealand and how we get there”. The post may be up earlier, but the earliest that David will be able to respond will be about 5:30pm and then only for a limited period of time. The post’s comments will be fully moderated, so read the rules in this post about what is acceptable.
Dairy prices still going down
Written By: - Date published: 8:51 am, May 8th, 2014 - 51 comments
Yesterday the global dairy trade auction was held. Prices are still going down as they have since Feburary. The rate of decrease was less than previous drops. Only 1.1% rather than the colossal drop on April 1st. Also yesterday Graeme Wheeler, the governor of the Reserve Bank did a speech about dairy which has provided some useful reading this morning.
Handouts to make them go away
Written By: - Date published: 12:25 pm, May 7th, 2014 - 9 comments
The announcement from National that they’d bribe unemployed beneficiaries to go to Christchurch was “An empty grab for headlines”. Perhaps they should have used their strategy for party renewal? Pay more from party funds awash from selling the time of Ministers time seems to work well.
Collins resigns: Twitter becomes safer
Written By: - Date published: 7:44 am, May 7th, 2014 - 8 comments
Yesterday Judith Collins announced that she was quitting Twitter. Some mischief makers may mourn the passing of this well-known troll from Twitter, including an awful lot of journalists and their bottom feeder golem wannabes. But there will be many in NZ who currently tend to avoid Twitter may begin to cautiously test the platform again now that at least one blowhard has retired from it.
Williamson now. How corrupt is the National cabinet?
Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, May 1st, 2014 - 199 comments
It never seems to end does it? A National Party Minister contacted a top ranking police officer after a wealthy businessman with close ties to him was arrested on domestic violence charges. The Prime Minister’s office is understood to be considering Maurice Williamson’s future as a Minister, following Herald inquiries into the phone call that he made and over his involvement with Donghua Liu’s criminal case.
Bunji: And he’s gone – resigned as a Minister
National’s exports – how to lose value and jobs
Written By: - Date published: 10:54 am, April 30th, 2014 - 77 comments
Manufacturing exports dropped by 3.3% over the last year. Manufacturing businesses and their jobs disappeared with them. Meanwhile the National MP’s with dairy farms and interests will today be proclaiming a buoyant economy based on them selling barely processed milk-powder to China. It is good for them but as they gut the manufacturing jobs few other kiwis will reap any benefits.
Fixing the reserve bank
Written By: - Date published: 1:14 pm, April 29th, 2014 - 32 comments
The head of the reanimated corpse of Brash should now be spinning furiously along with those fools from ACT who are into simplicity (because they can’t handle the real world). However having the Reserve Bank looking the balance of payments is pretty good. It includes the exchange rate and the export economy. They’re effectively now concerned with the exterior economy with a enforced savings tool as well as the interest rates. The government becomes largely responsible for the structural rigidities we have built up in the internal economy. That is a pretty good mix. Might have to train the MPs a bit though.
Highs, legal or otherwise
Written By: - Date published: 5:43 pm, April 28th, 2014 - 68 comments
I don’t use too many drugs because they interfere with my dominant programming addiction/work. But after decades of seeing people using pot, I can’t see any real problems with it if people use it in moderation. I have seen people with problems with excessive indulgence. But I’ve helped neighbours who have subsequently died from alcoholism as well. There is simply no way to definitively and fully protect everyone from themselves. We need to tax and regulate it. And if there is a substance that is fully tested on humans, then I’d have say it’d be pot… I can’t say the same about chemical manufacture of synthetic drugs.
14,000 posts
Written By: - Date published: 12:46 pm, April 25th, 2014 - 32 comments
We hit 14 thousand posts since the site started this morning. As is usual I’ve been digging through the stats on the site to look for things we need to change. So there are a few graphs looking at what has been going on numerically. It isn’t too bad. We do need some more people posting is about the only thing. They’d needed to replace the usual pre-election year issue of those who looked at the upcoming election year and said that they really don’t have the time….
How this site’s webservers now work
Written By: - Date published: 4:52 pm, April 18th, 2014 - 8 comments
This site gets rather a lot of comments. Every time a comment is made the page it is on has to be regenerated, which limits the amount of static caching that can be done. So on a dynamic site like this one we require rather a lot of raw processing power to generate dynamically pages that keep changing all of the day. These days we do it in the cloud, buying hours on servers as we require then. It saves us money and allows us to handle the story breaking peaks. Looks like we’re ready for election year.
Billy Bragg
Written By: - Date published: 11:42 am, March 26th, 2014 - 10 comments
I can’t think when the last time I’d been along to a gig or a concert was. Years probably. But Lyn dragged me (kicking and screaming) to the concert by Billy Bragg last night at the Powerstation in Auckland that was pretty damn good. These days I’m pretty portably connected so I don’t feel like I’ve left half of my brain behind when I head off on holiday or to a social event. So I was watching for trolls while Billy was singing about them…
What use is oil extraction here?
Written By: - Date published: 9:10 am, March 20th, 2014 - 26 comments
One of the more irritating traits of National politicians is their bone-headed and short-term obsession about being rentiers selling raw and lightly processed raw materials offshore. Sure it is great in the short-term for the seller of the rights to those raw materials, but it does little to nothing for the other 4+ million people […]
National – pissing debt against a wall.
Written By: - Date published: 3:41 pm, March 11th, 2014 - 77 comments
The deficit was $637 million dollars bigger than expected. In fact it was more than double the expected size. Why? Well mostly because of much smaller tax revenues than previously estimated. So much for the mythic recovery that National’s spinners have been pushing over xmas. We just finished paying off the mountain of debt that National gave me back in the 1970’s and early 80s. Now the shifty party of crony business morons are trying to do it to another generation.
Union communicators and RSS – please join the 21st century
Written By: - Date published: 2:23 pm, March 11th, 2014 - 27 comments
Just at present I’m particularly interested in adding union sites with RSS feeds to our feeds. But it is somewhat irritating. Many of the sites don’t have a RSS feed. They should have one. Unions are an inherent part of the labour movement that we like to think that we’re helping and a part of. It’d be nice if they did their bit to help us help them.
So smart. Green senator Ludlam ‘welcomes’ Abbott to WA
Written By: - Date published: 10:27 pm, March 6th, 2014 - 30 comments
One of the most effective political videos that I have seen from a country that is coming to specialise in them. I’m unsurprised that it went completely viral. It was a great description of all of the ways that Tony Abbott is beholden to the interests of those made insane by idiotic greed – and welcoming him to Western Australia. All expressed in a polite quiet voice enumerating exactly how much of a arsehole Abbott is. He even makes John Key look sort of rational – in a traditional junior partner kind of way
700,000 comments
Written By: - Date published: 5:13 pm, March 6th, 2014 - 31 comments
We passed 700 thousand comments sometime today. Not bad over our last 6 and a half years. I was going to have a whole pile of statistics ready for the occasion. However a dose of flu caught me. But we’re tracking towards our long predicted million comments in 2015. Congratulations to the commenters who make this a raucous and entertaining blog to write for and to moderate
National’s ICT failures.
Written By: - Date published: 10:55 pm, March 4th, 2014 - 23 comments
After having the past five and bit years with National’s negative policies about anything to do with new technologies, it is really nice to see some partially formed red-tinged morning ideas about how to encourage local usage of the net appearing on the sky’s horizon. National’s ICT strategy seems to see how uselessly slow they can do everything and how much they can slow down the development of ICT in NZ.
Nat techhead needs 3D brain transplant
Written By: - Date published: 8:16 am, February 28th, 2014 - 55 comments
In my experience, left politicians are a interesting mix of being either pretty damn technophobic or having an inept over-enthusiasm for it. But I get the impression that they’ve done some study and thinking on most tech areas I raise with them. However it’d be pretty clear to everyone who has followed 3D printing over the last decade that Maurice Williamson, National’s version of a techhead, appears to be clueless.
Hyping doesn’t help the economy, work does
Written By: - Date published: 8:45 am, February 26th, 2014 - 67 comments
Looking at all of the hype that sometimes goes around about the economy, you have to wonder if anyone ever reads actual economic indicators later on. We have a government now that operates as if claiming a target is all the work that they have to do. For instance look at the tax take. It is “unexpectedly” low and the “expected” government surplus is in jeopardy. That is because this government has been ignoring growing the actual economy for 5 years. Taxes and jobs come from growing businesses.
StopPress and comments
Written By: - Date published: 5:13 pm, February 25th, 2014 - 12 comments
I did a email interview with Damien Venuto of StopPress (an online advertising industry mag) a few weeks back. It has now been put up online if anyone outside of that industry is interested. I’m in my usual pleasant, widely expansive and egotistical best with my beautific face beaming out at you
National’s Herald shows its true colours
Written By: - Date published: 8:04 am, February 17th, 2014 - 113 comments
The NZ Herald starts cuddling up even closer to the National party. I guess they have definitely dropped that shallow facade of being the “Newspaper of Record”. Mind you, it isn’t a good look when Paula Bennett, the minister meant to take care of children, cuddles up with the heartless hypocrite who laughs at dead children. National really must be worried about this election.
Jordan Williams: running the shell game
Written By: - Date published: 6:28 pm, February 12th, 2014 - 40 comments
You have to look at the “taxpayers union” and ask how even the idiots who were behind ACT think that they can play the same trick to a new generation. But Jordan Williams seems to think that despite the law, Len Brown should pay for a Auckland council ordered audit of the mayoral office. Perhaps he should actually read the law about the supershitty that ACT foisted on Auckland ratepayers. Reading the law may prevent another legal failure from the lawyer who lost for Cameron Slater.
A glorious waste of money for the titillation of perverts
Written By: - Date published: 9:28 am, February 8th, 2014 - 70 comments
The fiasco of the wet dick and the perverts shuddered to a conclusion yesterday with the direct bill of around $250,000. Len Brown was strong-armed into paying $40,000 for the audit which turned up nothing much except that his wife brought a lot of hotel nights. Questions remain about who was responsible for the waste caused by the lack of scoping of the external audit. Looks like dirty politics at the ratepayers expense.
Send gummy bears to your representatives
Written By: - Date published: 3:43 pm, February 4th, 2014 - 25 comments
Last night Lyn was regaling me with an advertisement on amazon for a 5 pound bag of “Haribo Classic Sugar Free Gummy Bears” with its 643 product evaluations. In this fine example of online consumerism, all appeared to agree that these really were some of the tastiest snacks around. In fact they were so good that many were suggesting that they got sent to all members of congress. Should we do the same for MPs? Then they might get the concept behind food labelling
National – a party for wastrels
Written By: - Date published: 1:08 pm, January 24th, 2014 - 13 comments
The Crown Financial Statements to the end of November 2013 show that the sale of Meridian and Air New Zealand added hundreds of millions of dollars to the cost of the asset sales programme. Combined with the cost of the Mighty River Power sale and ancillary costs such as the Rio Tinto payout, the total cost of the asset sales now stands at $440m. National just likes burning the money of the taxpayers for no productive purpose.
There is science, and then there are dickheads
Written By: - Date published: 9:19 am, January 17th, 2014 - 153 comments
Over the last three centuries science has established a pretty robust technique for overturning consensus and examining the weirder areas of science. You have to publish. Waving an untestable vague idea of cause and effect around based on wordplay is something that is better left to politicians, con artists, and religionists. Waving his dick around like Rodney Hide did on Sunday merely proves that he doesn’t think with his brain.
not a Party Party treat, Internet Party instead?
Written By: - Date published: 4:35 pm, January 16th, 2014 - 57 comments
It looks like the ever expanding party party treat (aka KDC birthday) may be an electoral “treat” – it has been cancelled. Instead we are being promised a political party.
Confused? I’m not.
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