Author Archive
Wastewatch: measuring graduate incomes
Written By: - Date published: 8:33 am, March 14th, 2012 - 22 comments
The Nats abandoned their wastewatch.co.nz site a few years back after being unable to identify significant waste. They should have just waited a few years. Now, the examples are neverending.
Today’s case: Steven Joyce’s plan to publish the average incomes of graduates of different courses. A huge administrative task to tell us nothing.
Pull the other one, John
Written By: - Date published: 8:16 am, March 13th, 2012 - 81 comments
Key to Mike Hosking: “New Zealand either needs to borrow more or earn more, and I’m in the camp that we need to earn more”
No country for old bigots
Written By: - Date published: 9:40 pm, March 11th, 2012 - 190 comments
What is it about New Zealand media? Seems if you’re an old, privileged white man, you get a podium to say whatever nonsense you want – Henry, Laws, Armstrong, George, Du Fresne. And Deaker. The old twerp’s latest is to attack Sonny Bill Williams saying “I don’t like that he’s Muslim in a so-called Christian country”.
Dunne has no mandate to vote for asset sales
Written By: - Date published: 10:25 am, March 11th, 2012 - 113 comments
“What the public of New Zealand really do not like is politicians who say one thing before an election and do something else after it. And I invite every member of this House to look at every statement United Future made prior to the election and every statement subsequently and try to draw a difference” – Peter Dunne. As they say, yeah right.
The press release Len Brown should be issuing
Written By: - Date published: 12:25 pm, March 9th, 2012 - 35 comments
A contrite Mayor Len Brown today offered his apology to Port workers for causing their redundancies by demanding higher port profits then giving them the cold shoulder. “I turned my back on the working class. That ‘we’re on a journey’ BS on RNZ was the final straw. I am donating to the workers the $2,000 they gave my election campaign, and the $270,000 3-year payrise they helped me get when I became Auckland mayor.”
Meeting a need
Written By: - Date published: 10:05 am, March 9th, 2012 - 25 comments
Can anyone tell me why the Nats are spending $300m to build and $36m pa to run a 960-bed PPP prison when there are 2000 spare beds in the system and prisoner numbers are projected to fall? Or why Joyce is cutting a dirty ‘convention centre for pokies’ deal when international convention numbers are falling? Or why they’re spending $1b a year on low BCR highways when vehicle numbers are falling?
Work needed
Written By: - Date published: 9:17 pm, March 8th, 2012 - 81 comments
Does anyone have a job for a 60 year old? Work experience: 7 years on the Alcoholic Liquor Advisory Council (maintains strong industry relations), revenue minister with 3 governments (4-time winner of least memorable minister award), & member of 4 political parties (proven flexibility). Cause, after voting for asset sales, Dunne’s going to need a new job in 2 years.
Management incompetence costs POAL millions
Written By: - Date published: 2:18 pm, March 8th, 2012 - 28 comments
Ports of Auckland wants to increase profits by slashing pay-packets by 20% – $6m. So far, the process has cost them at least $28m. Add $9m for redundancies. Add the cost of continuing interruption as the contractors are established. Add the cost of blacklisting. Add the cost of customers that have shifted ports. Len Brown should sack the POAL management for incompetence.
Dumbest journo award goes to Armstrong
Written By: - Date published: 9:00 pm, March 7th, 2012 - 55 comments
Yesterday Shearer asked Key: “Is it correct that … half a dozen foreign investors could legally purchase all the listed shares?”. Key answered “No … the limit is 10 percent, 6 times 10 is 60, and the Government is keeping 51 percent”. Armstrong thinks that Key slammed Shearer. But of course 6 can buy 49% when there’s a 10% cap. Key lied. Armstrong can’t even recognise a breach of privilege in front of him.
Every time they cut, remember the tax cuts
Written By: - Date published: 8:02 am, March 7th, 2012 - 53 comments
Police numbers are going to be slashed. Diplomats too. And nurses. All up, 2,500 jobs gone so far for $20m saved. And it turns out more than half the government’s new doctors don’t exist. Big public sector strikes may be coming. Every time you read this stuff, remember National’s tax cuts for the rich. The $1.1b for ‘fiscally neutral’ tax cuts last round alone. That’s where the money went.
If these trends continue… A-y-y-y!
Written By: - Date published: 10:16 am, March 6th, 2012 - 22 comments
Here’s the trend for the past six months of Roy Morgans projected to the next election.
Nats’ Kim Dotcom law
Written By: - Date published: 8:22 am, March 5th, 2012 - 45 comments
Labour has obtained a cabinet paper showing the Nats’ plan to introduce a ‘two-tier’ immigration system – those with money go to the front of the queue. It’s more evidence of how everything is for sale under National – our employment laws, our power plants, our farms, our gambling laws, and, now, our immigration law. I wonder if they’ll call it the Kim Dotcom Bill.
Lazy thinking
Written By: - Date published: 8:10 am, March 5th, 2012 - 70 comments
Anyone saying there are plenty of jobs, people are just to snobby (ie lazy) to take them, has to explain why 90,000 people suddenly got lazy between 2008 and 2009 as 80,000 jobs disappeared.
POAL back to bargaining table
Written By: - Date published: 11:08 am, March 2nd, 2012 - 47 comments
4 days into 4 weeks of strikes, Ports of Auckland is back at the bargaining table. From usually docking 4 ships a day, they’ve docked 2 in 4 – 88% reduction. POAL can’t provide service. Ships are going elsewhere in our over-capitalised port system and might not come back. The Council will be screaming blue murder at the loss of revenue and business disruption. How long till management folds?
Wanna stop problem gamblers? Close the casinos
Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, March 1st, 2012 - 133 comments
SkyCity is shrugging its shoulders after 2 adults left 5 children in locked in a van while they gambled in its casino. This is the 25th such incident this year. Yes, these are bad parents. SkyCity profits by problem gamblers acting impulsively and irrationally chasing rewards ignoring the costs – that’s exactly what its customers do when they leave their kids in cars to go gamble.
Celebrating success: National’s jobs record
Written By: - Date published: 1:25 pm, February 29th, 2012 - 32 comments
Looking for solutions in all the wrong places
Written By: - Date published: 8:52 am, February 28th, 2012 - 169 comments
So, naturally, the answer is to spend a whole lot of money forcing solo mums to spend their time looking for jobs that aren’t there.
Bosses move to drive wages down
Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, February 27th, 2012 - 89 comments
John Key said he “would love to see wages drop“, and his government has achieved that but they’re just getting started. This is the year when the gloves come off. Ports of Auckland is trying to slash its wage bill by 20%. Talley’s-AFFCO is locking out 750 workers indefinitely. And DHBs are trying to scare nurses ahead of their pay negotiations with the spectre of job cuts.
All in the family
Written By: - Date published: 11:52 am, February 26th, 2012 - 91 comments
A couple of months after Hekia Parata was promoted to Education Minister, her sister has been promoted to a very senior position in the Ministry of Education. It seems a lot of the Parata clan are experiencing good fortune lately – her husband got a sweet gig ‘explaining’ asset sales to iwi, and several relatives got jobs in her ministerial office.
Eat your fast-food and don’t think
Written By: - Date published: 12:34 pm, February 25th, 2012 - 36 comments
National’s man in NZ on Air, John Key’s electorate chairman Stephen McElrea, was terribly worried about New Zealanders seeing a documentary about child poverty before the election. Informative TV has no place being funded with the public purse in National’s New Zealand. But no such objection to $1.6 million for New Zealand’s Got Talent. It’s the perfect pap to distract the masses.
A question
Written By: - Date published: 10:25 am, February 25th, 2012 - 31 comments
If “you don’t wear your guns on the outside“, where do you wear your guns?
The real crims wear white collars
Written By: - Date published: 9:57 am, February 25th, 2012 - 74 comments
Directorships are the golden ticket in the world of the business elite. You attend maybe 10 meetings a year, sign whatever’s put in front of you, typically get paid $3-4K a pop, and do it over again half a dozen times or more for various companies. It’s a gravy train for managers past their use by date. But customers and shareholders have to trust what directors sign off on.
No time like the present
Written By: - Date published: 11:34 am, February 24th, 2012 - 84 comments
Google news has 1.5 pages of articles mentioning David Shearer to John Key’s 13 in the past week. The only ones directly about Shearer or Labour are saying ‘where’s Shearer? He’s wasting his honeymoon’. I wondered what his strategists are thinking. Then I saw they’re all the same people who just led Labour to 27% and I realised the scary part – they’re trying their best.
The neoliberal plague
Written By: - Date published: 9:03 am, February 23rd, 2012 - 131 comments
Since New Zealand skulled the neoliberal cool-aid, hospital admissions for infectious diseases, the diseases of poverty, increased 51% while dropping in the countries we should consider our peers. The working class life has gotten worse; our wages are lower, our jobs gone, and our families living in unhealthy houses owned by slum landlords.
Another ‘aggressive recovery’?
Written By: - Date published: 9:05 am, February 21st, 2012 - 54 comments
Key upbeat about quake recovery work – Headline
Here’s a couple of numbers that might sober Mr Smile and Wave:
- 28,200 fewer jobs in Canterbury now than a year ago. 1 in 11 jobs lost.
- Net international emigration from Canterbury, 3,634 by December.
- 5,086 building consents in Canterbury in 2011. 100,000 houses damaged or destroyed.
Sack ’em all
Written By: - Date published: 12:17 pm, February 19th, 2012 - 40 comments
Two weeks into the political year, who deserves the sack? Bill ‘it’s a guess’ English, Lockwood ‘small hands’ Smith, Paul ‘cheeky darkies’ Holmes, John ‘DJ’ Key, Maurice ‘Dumb’ Williamson, Jonathan ‘Dumber’ Coleman, Craig ‘Goebbels’ Foss, Stephen ‘Riefenstahl’ McElrea, Trevor ‘Scalper’ Mallard, Tariana ‘Slush Fund’ Turia, Murray ‘Security Risk’ McCully…
Don’t celebrate too soon
Written By: - Date published: 7:34 am, February 17th, 2012 - 63 comments
National’s in retreat on every front. Its had to break its economic promises, again. Asset sales are a disaster. Ministers are exposed over the Crafar Farms, NZ on Air, and DJ Key affairs. The media’s gone off Key ever since he declared war on them. The bad stories that were getting nowhere a year ago now keep rolling. Even Mallard’s boorishness can’t halt National’s slide. But don’t celebrate too soon.
Nats’ Crafar Farm kickback
Written By: - Date published: 12:17 pm, February 16th, 2012 - 43 comments
On November 30th, after the election, National received a $55,000 donation from Oravida, a company formerly owned by Terry Lee, director of Pengxin’s Crafar Farms vehicle, Milk New Zealand. In light of National’s illegal decision to let Pengxin buy the farms despite a lack of real benefits to New Zealand, maybe we ought to examine that donation a little more closely.
Why hasn’t Key sacked McCully?
Written By: - Date published: 11:10 am, February 16th, 2012 - 10 comments
If you or I or, say, an Mfat official were storing confidential work files or, worse, officially classified information in our personal email and those files were hacked, you or I or the Mfat official would get the sack for gross misconduct. So when’s McCully being fired? Or is Key’s flippant “if it was really sensitive it would be out by now” what passes for security standards in the government?
Disconnect in Urewera case
Written By: - Date published: 9:21 am, February 16th, 2012 - 128 comments
If the evidence against the Urewera 4 is so strong and what they were planning to do so serious, how come they’ve only been charged with a handful of minor offences? And how come the others had the charges dropped? Where are the treason and conspiracy charges? After 4 years of delays, lies, secrecy, and official fuck-ups, do we trust the cops’ evidence?
Quick MMP review thoughts
Written By: - Date published: 8:49 am, February 15th, 2012 - 18 comments
Lower the threshold and reduce wasted vote; leave it at 2-3% to make it less likely multiple one-man bands hold balance of power. Stop winning an electorate being a route to getting list seats; eliminate most dirty deals. Let List MPs run in by-elections and people stand both in seats and on lists; banning these would result in undesirable tactics from parties.
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