Author Archive

Causes and effects

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 pm, August 30th, 2008 - 47 comments

A series of graphs from the Social Report. First off, the unemployment rate When the unemployment goes up or down, the practical effect is a decrease or increase in household incomes as the country got poorer under National, unemployment rose, incomes fell, and and the poverty rate rose, compounded by National’s cut benefits and its choice […]

Peters stands down

Written By: - Date published: 5:49 pm, August 29th, 2008 - 145 comments

Peters has stood down. Clark has taken over his portfolios. It’s good that Peters appears to have accepted that this is a necessity and hasn’t turned on the Government. Clever of Clark to take the portfolios herself too. [we nearly had the scoop on this too but it took too long for me to get […]

The Standard Week: August 22-29

Written By: - Date published: 1:06 pm, August 29th, 2008 - Comments Off on The Standard Week: August 22-29

It’s all been on this week. Maurice Williamson promising $50 tolls and more before being forced to retract, a poll showing more Kiwis believe National has a secret agenda than don’t, a report showing incomes continue to rise and living conditions are improving, especially for the poor, the ETS upgraded by the Greens set to […]

Nats, Farrar fail again in attempt to muzzle Kiwis

Written By: - Date published: 11:05 am, August 29th, 2008 - 26 comments

For the third time, National’s attempt to get a legal decision to block the EPMU and its sister unions from participating in the election campaign as registered third parties as failed. So pathetic were National’s arguments that they lost their last case even though the EMPU submitted no arguments of its own to the Court. […]

But why?

Written By: - Date published: 10:42 am, August 29th, 2008 - 62 comments

I’m not going to spend a lot of time on Peters because its not the kind of issue that affects Kiwis lives (its messy but its not like secretly planning to sell public assets). I’d rather use my post-writing time taking a deeper look at the findings of the Social Report. But… It seems likely, one […]

Clark cuts the thread

Written By: - Date published: 1:43 pm, August 28th, 2008 - 192 comments

Winston Peters’ stories around the Owen Glenn donation to his legal fund are dangerously convoluted and have stretched everyone’s credulity but without real evidence either way it has been impossible to fairly condemn him. Glenn’s letter yesterday provided strong evidence and left Peters ‘hanging by a thread’, as every hack in the country wrote. Now, Helen Clark […]

Social Report shows Kiwis better off

Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, August 28th, 2008 - 31 comments

MSD released its Social Report today, an annual publication that collates a wide variety of standard of living measures, and produces this awesome graph. The circle represents the status quo in 1995-97 each spoke represents a different measure (income, crimes per capita etc). If the spoke is longer than the circle than the measure has improved between 1995-97 […]

Herald poll shows Nats’ lead collapsing

Written By: - Date published: 10:50 am, August 28th, 2008 - 36 comments

Today’s Herald-Digi poll is the first to be released that was taken after the secret agenda tape scandal had fully emerged and had some time to sit in voters’ minds. Which makes it worrying reading for National. They have lost 5.4% support (54.4% to 50%) and Labour has benefited from that loss picking up 5.5% (30.8% […]

Workers demand decent work rights policies

Written By: - Date published: 9:54 am, August 28th, 2008 - 24 comments

6000 workers turned out in Manukau yesterday for the EPMU’s Wages Drive rally. With 25 events nation-wide over this month, which have attracted crowds from several hundred in little old Blenhiem to thousands in each of the cities, this is the largest series of political rallies in New Zealand this parliamentary term. The EPMU reports […]

The more things change…

Written By: - Date published: 6:18 am, August 28th, 2008 - 18 comments

70 years ago (more or less) and The Standard was correctly predicting a Labour victory as the ‘Nationalists’ ramped up a hollow election campaign. In true Standard-style, there’s even some stats. Click on the image for the full article.

Whom to believe? (2)

Written By: - Date published: 12:26 pm, August 27th, 2008 - 63 comments

Owen Glenn’s letter to the Privileges Committee contradicts Winston Peters’ previous statements to the media, the Privileges Committee, and, presumably, the PM. Glenn says that Peters did personally approach him for a donation, contrary to what Peters has said. It’s important to remember that there’s nothing illegal or even unusual about what Glenn claims Peters did. […]

Greens win better ETS

Written By: - Date published: 11:23 am, August 27th, 2008 - 21 comments

The Greens have won some very good improvements to the ETS in exchange for their support. The most important is $1 billion over 15 years to insulate low-income homes and subsidise upgrades to insulation of higher income homes. That’s a really positive development; all New Zealand homes will finally have decent insulation (Labour has done well […]

What else did Williamson say?

Written By: - Date published: 10:10 am, August 27th, 2008 - 13 comments

I notice that, while the Nats have attempted to play down Maurice Williamson’s promise of $50 a week in tolls, they haven’t retracted Williamson’s over statements from the same interview, specifically: RAWDON Okay let’s look beyond roading, where else do you see PPPs being the answer? MAUCRICE …I mean I would have thought we could […]

Metaphor

Written By: - Date published: 8:36 am, August 27th, 2008 - 59 comments

So, I was walking along in Kelburn yesterday, and I saw Stephen Franks’ faded yellow mini. He was driving along in the centre of the lane when, without warning, he made a sharp right turn. And I was all like ‘metaphor’.

Kiwis waking up to Nats’ secret agenda

Written By: - Date published: 10:29 am, August 26th, 2008 - 96 comments

According to the TV3 poll last night, 46% of voters believe National has a secret agenda. And why wouldn’t they? We’ve had Bill English talking about a secret agenda to ‘sort out’ Working for Families and sell Kiwibank while being recorded, on the same recordings, we’ve had Lockwood Smith talking about the need to adopt popular […]

Whom to believe?

Written By: - Date published: 1:20 pm, August 25th, 2008 - 17 comments

On Agenda on Sunday, National’s Transport spokesperson, Maurice Williamson, said National would impose tolls on major new road projects – Transmission Gully, Waterview etc – and on the Harbour Bridge if a tolled second crossing of the harbour is built. Williamson said a typical person using those toll roads for commuting would spend about $50 a week […]

Nat: our ‘diversity’ is just a gimmick

Written By: - Date published: 11:39 am, August 25th, 2008 - 35 comments

Unless a party has a systematic bias towards one sector of the population, it would be normal to expect that their candidates would represent a cross-section of the community – after all, talented, qualified people can be found in all groups; political aptitude is not just a Pakeha male trait. So, it was kind of […]

Beastly

Written By: - Date published: 9:37 am, August 25th, 2008 - 57 comments

[I do love the idea that someone would go to the zoo merely to hurl insults at the apes]

Adapting to the end of cheap oil

Written By: - Date published: 11:01 pm, August 24th, 2008 - 30 comments

On August 1, Transit NZ and Land Transport NZ were merged into the NZ Transport Authority. The new organisation’s first major publication shows a welcome shift in thinking and an acknowledgment that the age of cheap oil is over. Managing Transport Challenges When Oil Prices Rise contains a model built on the consensus of a number of international […]

Reflections on Shawn Tan

Written By: - Date published: 7:46 pm, August 23rd, 2008 - 57 comments

There’s a lot of heat but not much light in the debate about the EPMU’s suspension of Shawn Tan. What we know from the media is that Tan was told he had to seek approval from the union’s national executive in line with his collective agreement and the rules of the union and then failed […]

The Standard Week: August 15-22

Written By: - Date published: 12:39 pm, August 22nd, 2008 - 56 comments

As expected, the polls out last weekend did not show National being hit by the secret agenda tapes scandal because they were conducted before the story had fully emerged. We will have to wait for the next round of polls to see what effect there has been – although sources say both National and Labour’s […]

Greens call for public input on ETS

Written By: - Date published: 11:10 am, August 22nd, 2008 - 22 comments

One thing you can always say for the Greens, they’re democratic to their core. Currently, they find themselves facing a tough choice – whether or not to support Labour’s Emissions Trading Scheme – and, true to their democratic principles, they’re asking for advice from the public on their decision. Jeanette Fitzsimmons outlines the following pros […]

Mythbusting: Half of new generation is thermal

Written By: - Date published: 9:54 am, August 22nd, 2008 - 16 comments

Reading National’s energy policy last week I was surprised to learn that of 1942MW of new generation that has come online since 2000 1073MW of that has been thermal*. Sure enough, John Key is going around using that as a ground for National’s policy of building more gas power plants and giving up on the […]

Tasteless

Written By: - Date published: 11:32 am, August 21st, 2008 - 75 comments

Thank God for those individuals of high morals who are at this moment whipping themselves into a frenzy over Pharmac’s decision to fund different varieties of condom as well as the plain ones it has funded for years. Where would be without you? Here’s the facts: – people have sex, young people have sex, people […]

Briefly

Written By: - Date published: 9:52 am, August 21st, 2008 - 27 comments

The coverage of the Australian Dfat* briefing paper on Helen Clark is as unsurprising as it is depressing. Depressing in that this appears to be Martin Kay’s biggest scoop of the year (he’s dragged it out to a second article today) and no-one covering the issue seems to be aware of what these briefing papers […]

Key demands we publish full quote

Written By: - Date published: 11:43 am, August 20th, 2008 - 53 comments

John Key called us to task in his interview with Wammo today: “every leftwing blogger out there has a field-day going on and on about the fact that Labour say I said climate change is a hoax…they should just get their facts right down at The Standard because the facts are I said ‘Kyoto is […]

Speaking of competence

Written By: - Date published: 9:24 am, August 20th, 2008 - 7 comments

Kiwis don’t trust Nats

Written By: - Date published: 6:13 am, August 20th, 2008 - 38 comments

According to the Colmar/Brunton poll, 50% of Kiwis don’t believe National is being open about its plans vs 37% who believe the Nats are being upfront (presumably, the other 13% offered no opinion). That’s got to be worrying for National. As I’ve said time and again, the three grounds that politicians are ultimately judged on […]

Ambitious for transport

Written By: - Date published: 12:32 pm, August 19th, 2008 - 40 comments

Why are we spending $1 billion on Transmission Gully when by the time it is finished the price of petrol will be up to $10 a litre according to a study by the Australian CSIRO? Look, we can’t expect better from National, they only just discovering climate change and that NZ isn’t only made up […]

Reflections on the war in Georgia

Written By: - Date published: 10:21 am, August 19th, 2008 - 79 comments

What can we learn from the war in Georgia? Without going into the rights and wrongs of the combatants, what I’m interested in is the geo-strategic implications, specifically the future of the democratisation project. And it’s not a pretty picture. See, for a while everything seemed to be going well with democratisation. The two great counter-ideologies […]

The Sensible Centrist

Written By: - Date published: 11:43 am, August 18th, 2008 - 120 comments

Tracey Watkins is said by some of her colleagues to be spending an ‘unseemly’ about of time hanging out in John Key’s office, she’s certainly spent enough time at National HQ recently to get similar with the wall hangings. So, it’s fairly safe to say we know where her loyalties lie, and it’s not with […]

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