Written By: - Date published: 8:27 pm, May 25th, 2012 - 35 comments
This afternoon a couple of ‘hidden treasures’ have come out of the budget. In changes not announced, but discovered 1122 teachers could be losing their jobs and changes are being made to the assets old people are allowed to keep once in residential care. Sneaky, Bill, sneaky…
Written By: - Date published: 7:09 am, May 24th, 2012 - 3 comments
An excellent column from Bryan Gould, and a picture of working families in financial distress. Something to ponder, as we await the zero budget.
Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, May 23rd, 2012 - 227 comments
The media (and the braying right-wing blogs of course) have been bleeding plenty of ink over Shane Jones’ actions in the citizenship case. Jones hasn’t really put his side of the story – until last night.
Written By: - Date published: 1:21 pm, May 22nd, 2012 - 37 comments
An email from a concerned Principal about what Hekia Parata’s changes – principly class size – will do to our children’s futures. And the address Emeritus Professor Ivan Snook gave to graduating teachers last week.
Written By: - Date published: 11:18 am, May 22nd, 2012 - 12 comments
It’s an interesting fact that the one area in which National is going against its traditional approach and moving towards what the experts advocate is prisons. And I think I know why. In education, health, welfare etc National’s ideological positions correspond with cutting spending. But ‘lock em up and throw away the key’ costs. When Bill English called prisons a “moral and fiscal failure” his emphasis was on “fiscal”.
Written By: - Date published: 9:09 am, May 22nd, 2012 - 11 comments
Matt McCarten’s latest column is a must read. There is something nasty going on…
Written By: - Date published: 8:01 am, May 22nd, 2012 - 26 comments
Parata on The Nation: “what we’ve had is a five-fold increase in the number of teachers while we’ve only had a 2% increase in students”. There are 52,500 teachers. Is Parata really saying there were only 10,500 a decade ago? The minister needs remedial maths, methinks. This is the tragedy: our kids’ education being toyed with by nincompoops and dullards with a dumbarse ideological agenda.
Written By: - Date published: 10:26 pm, May 21st, 2012 - 4 comments
Wellington’s electricity network was privatised 20 years ago. The water network wasn’t. Tomorrow evening (Tuesday) researchers Peter Harris, Dick Werry and Jim Turner will present their outcome comparison to a Fabian seminar at St John’s Church Hall in Wellington at 5:30pm. Water network costs rose by 17% over the period, electricity network costs by four times that amount. The reach of both networks is similar – the lesson is that the required return on appreciating assets from privatisation drives up the costs. All welcome to come and discuss. You can register here.
Written By: - Date published: 5:13 pm, May 21st, 2012 - 2 comments
Tomorrow night in Auckland four University teams from Auckland, Victoria and Otago will present their visions and prescriptions for New Zealand’s economic future in an event which is
open to the public, and will be held from 5.30pm at the University of Auckland Business School. All are welcome to attend – it should be interesting.
Written By: - Date published: 11:16 am, May 21st, 2012 - 18 comments
National is going to cut 125 police staff. They’re not sworn officers but who’s going to pick up the work they were doing? Sworn cops, of course. Course, tying up cops with paperwork will help the crime stats drop. And with the navy so underfunded half its inshore patrol vessels are being mothballed I bet illegal fishing instances drop too. Funny that.
Written By: - Date published: 11:27 am, May 19th, 2012 - 45 comments
This week, Minister for Talking Big and Not Delivering, Steven Joyce, had his second opinion piece in the Herald of the year and, naturally, it bore no relation to the ‘vision’ in the previous one, or any of the 5 point strategies or 8 point action plans he has produced to date. Instead, it said ‘wouldn’t it be great if more international students came here?’. Problem is, his actions are driving them away.
Written By: - Date published: 7:57 am, May 18th, 2012 - 38 comments
You have to take your hat off to National’s spin doctors, coming up with the plausible-sounding nonsense line that low interest rates mean affordable housing isn’t needed. But it led to this- Phil Heatley: “we’re pleased that we’re managing the economy such that interest rates are so low”. Ten minutes earlier, Tony Alexander: “lower interest rates reflect the weakness of the economic outlook”.
Written By: - Date published: 5:27 pm, May 17th, 2012 - 41 comments
John Key is doing his best to keep poor people from coming to his electorate. Whilst it’s not like he visits there often himself, he’s still aiming to keep poor people committing the “economic vandalism” of living in a nice suburb – where apparently only the rich should reside.
Written By: - Date published: 2:18 pm, May 17th, 2012 - 22 comments
No Right Turn on the latest case of Banks failing to declare donations. Banks has broken the rules. The credibility of Parliament is at stake.
Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, May 17th, 2012 - 156 comments
If there was any doubt that National has an anti-teacher, anti-education agenda, it’s gone. Increasing class sizes will ‘save’ $43m a year by reducing the number of teachers that would otherwise be required by 500. National standards will be used for performance pay. It’s a cut to the frontline, a cut to our kids’ learning. And Parata’s comments suggest more to come.
Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, May 17th, 2012 - 101 comments
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike…
Written By: - Date published: 11:23 pm, May 16th, 2012 - 32 comments
The Jackal raised the issue of corruption in relation to John Banks in a comment here and has written more about it on his blog. It appears on the evidence of DotCom’s lieutenant that when he was a Member of Parliament Banks was offering to accept a financial consideration in respect of any act to be done by him in his capacity as a member of Parliament. This makes Philip Field look like a Good Samaritan. Banks has to go.
Written By: - Date published: 7:12 am, May 16th, 2012 - 27 comments
His policies (such that they are) aren’t working, his government is now being questioned, his economy is stuck in the doldrums, so naturally Key is looking for someone to blame. The media!
Written By: - Date published: 11:03 am, May 15th, 2012 - 21 comments
A short, poignant guest post.
Written By: - Date published: 8:22 am, May 15th, 2012 - 12 comments
Unemployment’s up, wages are flat, retail and export prices in freefall. Last budget National promised 4% this year – it’s 1%. But never fear, the brighter future is just around the corner – again. Key says growth will be strong in 2013/14 -2 years from now. Does anyone still believe him?
Written By: - Date published: 10:48 am, May 14th, 2012 - 38 comments
Gay marriage looks set to become a “key election issue” in the Obama vs Romney presidential contest. How utterly depressing.
Written By: - Date published: 6:43 am, May 14th, 2012 - 68 comments
I chuckled to read Fran O’Shillivan on Sunday: “John Key has made a strategic decision to burn some political capital and front-foot major Government decisions” – yeah, all those major decisions: $1m for contraception, ‘tackling cyber-bullying’, a petty pokies for convention centre deal, even their centrepiece policy – asset sales – won’t benefit the economy a jot.
Written By: - Date published: 2:48 pm, May 12th, 2012 - 341 comments
It is the Nats’ belief that those on a benefit have fewer human rights than the rest of us. They can simply be told what to do. So now we have a compulsory vaccination debate.
Written By: - Date published: 6:17 am, May 12th, 2012 - 58 comments
Seems as though Dicken’s Oliver character was an ungrateful little ingrate who actually had it pretty good, all things considered. Gruel has to beat left over savaloy water, no?
Written By: - Date published: 2:08 pm, May 10th, 2012 - 73 comments
Here’s a quick way to reduce your carbon footprint: don’t have kids and save 80 years worth of human greenhouse gas output per child… This is my Voluntary Human Extinction Movement post.
Written By: - Date published: 11:59 am, May 10th, 2012 - 56 comments
With the debate raging about free contraception for women and their teenage daughters, inevitably the conclusion is that irresponsible teenager girls are making poor decisions. Why do they get pregnant? That’s the easy part – teens not using contraception, of course. Why teenage pregnancy is an intractable problem is a much more complex question.
Written By: - Date published: 12:21 pm, May 9th, 2012 - 15 comments
The Government’s ‘sinking lid’ on homicides means that John Key can personally garotte 3-5 enemies and the overall number of killings will still decrease, a smiling Prime Minister told journalists today. “On current trends, the number of murders is dropping by half a dozen a year. Which means no-one should mind if I bump off a few annoying arseholes” said Mr Key
Written By: - Date published: 8:38 pm, May 8th, 2012 - 83 comments
At first glance it seems strange to have Sue Bradford, a former Green MP, against what is a very ‘green’ policy – free contraception. But she has a point when she talks about beneficiaries feeling forced into sterility they don’t want. Meanwhile, what’s with the right’s obsession with targeting women having babies while on a benefit?
Written By: - Date published: 2:45 pm, May 8th, 2012 - 21 comments
Dr Sandra Grey from the Tertiary Education Union has a look at Stephen Joyce’s proposals to changing the governance of tertiary education institutions. She suggests that he has a look at what happened in the changes to the polytechs in 2009. And also points out that his proposals don’t follow what is known about good governance for universities.
But it has been apparent to readers here that Joyce prefers to be a fiddler rather than being effective..
Written By: - Date published: 1:48 pm, May 8th, 2012 - 95 comments
The Government is planning to offer free long-term contraception for beneficiaries and their daughters. At one level its a sensible idea. But it comes with too much baggage attached. The Nats have already made such a mess of it that they can’t make this proposal with any credibility.
Written By: - Date published: 11:01 am, May 8th, 2012 - 5 comments
Despite keeping prisoners in prison too long and an escape, Serco’s private management of Auckland Remand has been judged a success by the Government because it has met all the standards set for it. Sounds reasonable. Until you look a layer deeper and discover that the standards Serco has to meet are much worse than what Corrections already achieves.
Comments