I still can’t fathom how forcing teacher to do lots of paper work will assist students except as a means of wealthy schools (who do not have to fill in the forms or have paid help to do it) to leap ahead of the state sector.
So first burden the bottom schools with national standards, then send in the shock managers who will primarily have to enforce the education ministries policy guidance. Now looking back at the thrust of Keys reforms, less teachers, messing teacher pay and jobs around. Yeah, I get it, its just more of the same, just with extra spittle and a hard rub. Expecting a genie to jump out, that the woes of the tail will magically disappear now Key’s on the job, that takes gullibility of an astonishing degree. And its not like the right hasn’t played this bait and switch before, they said trust them they will produce growth, and they did, but it wasn’t them, its was just a huge rush gush of cheap high density fuel and the switch was not managing the transition rather claiming the transition was a chance to do nothing about society (though step in when the bankers had needs). And where has the wealth of the last thirty years ended up? In the hands of the 0.01%. Its the media damn it, that makes us believe we can have egalitarianism and fewer and fewer massively overwhelmed by wealth, its actually an oxymoron to saying an unequal society will maintain the egalitarianism. Our fathers,grandfathers, fought a war against those who would destroy egalitarianism. And here we are Key policies of support first for the richest, and poor people are responsible for their poverty, nothing to do with the choices the wealthy are making. What happen to discovering the choices poor people make and making sure they have real choices like the wealthy. Climate Change, no nothing to do with wealthy making choices, its poor people who have little influence, little wealth, little time…
Attacks on the messenger, and then distracting the thread, based solely on your own inability to fathom text that you must of understood to be so annoyed. You really need to read what I said, yet, you couldn’t, and I’m supposed to care. See another error on your part, assumption that I care.
It hurts Key that his whitewash of sending in managers, after introducing onerous bureaucracy, and whose previous policies have messed around the education sector.
Always supporting the private education and dumbing down the state system.
What’s the matter with you aerobubble. People are interested in what you say if you aren’t too high and mighty to make it decipherable. I guess you aren’t talking to yourself.
Had this debate before. No I don’t care. Its my loss not yours. Oh and since you are still having problems with comprehending this, I suggest social and english classes, social since you seem to believe people owe you comprehensible statements in a political arena (like Key would ever do such a thing when asked, to clarify himself). As for the notion that I must be talking to myself because no one could possible decrypt (or read between the lines) is just so pathetic an argument, like you know everything about everyone, are you still three?
I use a laptop, time poor, or just lazy, but clearly no english mayor, but its all good. Since speach is better said, than silence. People can read something else if it bugs them. An dif they do need to read it, then surely they should respect the writer already. Unless of course its some dull person who can’t specify what they aren’t understanding. Sure they could go back to school.
Thank you, some go defensive, others like you do the right thing and observe some of the problem, i.e. I don’t space out enough, and add to the debate rather than just plugging the debate with how they are not understand and being unreasonable in not having the clarity of mind to express their problem better.
So? One has a far greater rate of mortality than the other – so great is the disparity between death by heroin and cocaine and death by caffeine and sugar that to make any connection is vapid and stupid
If all the people in the world who currently ingest meat, sugar and caffeine were to switch to coke and heroin I think you’d find the world would became a far more unhealthy and terrible place.
I am starting to see a new meme appearing.Yesterday Michelle Boag said NZ was an egalitarian society on the Mora’s dreadful Panel ( which blew me away).
Then today on Radio NZ a story at about 6.40 mentioned Key talking about changes to education proposed by the Nats) in which Key. Have the Nat spin machine decided to play a game which blames the education system for us not being as egalitarian as we can be? As if Key’s kids, brought up in Parnell, Omaha and Hawaii are equal with a kid brought up in Porirua. Is this the way they plan to blunt the levels of poverty and inequality in the country? By saying we are an egalitarian society. If Mora’s and Robertson’s silence to such comments is anything to go by, the media will not challenge such ideas and simply repeat them.
So that’s two times the Nats have used this meme.
“Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: ‘Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action’.”
― Ian Fleming, Goldfinger
The egalitarian meme is there to assuage the conscience of the top 20%. Means that they’ve picked up that the inequality meme is brought too much traction.
..yeah..spin-merchants edwards and boag on that panel –
– had me both face-palming and eye-clawing at the same time..
..truly hideous people…truly hideous ‘views’..
..(boag poo-poohing the idea of giving aid to third world countries..
(cos the money ‘isn’t accountable’..see..!..beyond hideous..!..
..q.e.d..!..)
..with edwards providing one laugh-out-loud-moment..
..with his threats t sue anyone who calls him a ‘spin-merchant’..
..even fellow spin-merchant boag laughed him out the door on that one…
..i tired of it..
..so left the room..and did something far more important/relevant..
..(like laundry?..)
(oh..and edwards has a problem that is fretting him somewhat..
..he is looking for another house..preferably on a beach..
.’cos he likes having two houses to move between..
..so if anyone out there could help..?..)
..brian edwards..both the socialist/left-winger and spin-merchant..
..you are having when you don’t have a ‘socialist/left-winger and spin-merchant’
..eh..?
..and as with breakfast television..if there is no improvements..(and it ain’t looking good so far..)
..i don’t think i will be able to endure that ‘highest-rating hour of radio’..
..for that much longer..
..these same people..all just saying the same things they have been saying..since forever..
..over and fucken over again…
..(it’s like being trapped in a gif..)
..(that is my one-line review of afternoons on nat-rad..it is tired/boring/cliched..
..’trip-to-mars..?..(hey..!..heads-up..!..way past time to retire that wheeze..eh..?..if mora has to dig any deeper to find a way to ‘work’ it that he hasn’t done a hundred times before..he will need a drilling-permit..
..just fucken talk/interview..drop the stoopid construct..)
..and mora is increasingly sounding like he is just going thru the motions..
The Panel so far.
Measure for yourself how representative this group is.
Monday
Andrew Clay
NZ comedian
Elleen Read
Business editor at Stuff, a neoliberal news source.
Tuesday
Graham Bell
Ex policeman and television presenter on Police Ten 7.
Overtly right wing views…
Bernard Hickey
Economist.
Jim gets Bernard on to ask for personal advice about mortgages.
Wednesday
Michelle Boag. Leader of one of one of National’s factions.
Brian Edwards.
A Herne Bay socialist. Friends with Michelle Boag. Always on the Panel with Boag.
On 23 September 2009 Edwards claimed that “Public Libraries are just a Form of Theft” [arguing for “user pays” library books as a compensation to authors.
So if Labour is not completely adverse to deep sea oil drilling then what is their position on getting money out of it?
National’s deal with the oil companies is that NZ gets 5% of any profits, right?
Is Labour happy to go along with that?
Edit: OK, answered my own question… Labour is considering a model similar to Norway, where the government receives royalties from the proceeds of drilling operations, he says, but no decisions have been made.
Personally, I’d retool Solid Energy and turn them into a state owned exploration/drilling company. That way, we’d get both royalties and the profits. Some of those profits could in turn be used to investigate how we can phase carbon based energy out of the NZ environment.
Yep, vto, but it’s also partly a distillation of the opinions of others in Labour. I think most LP activists are of the opinion that this kind of energy is both not sustainable and bad for us. The question is timeframe and replacement.
For those concerned about climate change and sustainablility, socio-economic inequality, democracy and poverty, the way Labour appears to be moving is worrying.
Policy announced on Monday will have to be radical. With the troubling recent pronouncements, it’s looking increasingly likely that Cunliffe is not and was not sincere and is preparing to make soothing noises and to chuck a few pathetic crumbs, while hinting with a big wink at the left that if we just keep schtum, he’ll wow us after the election is safely in the bag.
If he does so, he will prove himself to be just another self-interested fraud as far as I’m concerned.
“For those concerned about climate change and sustainablility, socio-economic inequality, democracy and poverty, the way Labour appears to be moving is worrying.”
No not at all, they should just not bother voting for Labour/National and should deliver their vote to the Greens.
In case you’re not being completely facetious, he could make a committment to some things that give a clear indication of a shift away from neoliberalism. The standard is littered with suggestions, the most frequent one being a clear out of caucus. Concrete policy moves would be good too.
DC said yesterday that they were scrapping 2 social policies to use the money better elsewhere for kiwis. On Monday I’d like to see something substantial on what the replacements are, not just generalised rhetoric about what NZ needs.
Let’s be realistic with the timeline so far. Cunliffe didn’t get the leadership till near the end of the year, nothing happens in politics over the summer holiday period and we’re only just coming out of that. So that’s largely why we haven’t heard much to this point in time.
The clear out of caucus just isn’t something you can do quickly.
If he does turn out to be all piss and wind I definitely won’t be voting for Labour.
At least we haven’t had any bene on the roof anecdotes yet….
imo….unless New Zealanders take control of oil exploration ( as in Norway) and receive 80% of the profits of the oil , the risks of exploration to NZ coasts and the problems of adding to global warming by fossil fuels …..make it not worth while
In other words a few piffly jobs for NZers…. in exchange for oil drilling ( and all the dirty environmental risks and social downside are ours ) …..while all the PROFITS go OUT of the country into the hands of multi national oil companies… ( plus the probability of a few backhanders and shares for the compliant )….as is likely under National …… is theft from NZers!
….Key’s National oil deals and proposals are pathetic and should not be countenanced
….Labour has a lot of work to do to get an acceptable Norwegian model deal on oil… for ALL NZers ….anything else is unacceptable!
Maybe the Labour Party should get Farouk al-Kasam out to advise them on how to go about it. He is an oil expert and has seen the downside of oil drilling in many countries both environmentally and socially. He helped Norway take control of their own oil rather than being a passive ‘victim’ of the oil multi nationals
Farouk al-Kasim, the Iraqi geologist who has been more responsible than anyone else for Norway’s success as an oil power.
Chooky-Norway has 67% of the oil/gas industry through Statoil (and so gets 67% of revenue as well as some jobs from the other 33%).
Labour made noises about looking at this model when it announced the drilling policy-looks good to me.
geoff-Labour needs to set this up. Kiwioil perhaps?
Will cost some money as the state would then be up for 67% of the cost of any exploration, but this is no bad thing as this may slow exploration and Labour really shouldn’t be seen to be promoting drilling.
I’m not convinced that digging up deep sea oil off our coast isn’t a very bad idea. I would need to see a very convincing case before I would support it.
3 points…
1. If a spill occurred it would cause significant damage to our ecology and existing economic enterprises.
2. There is a risk that it financially might not pay off, a risk with any very large project.
3. It definitely would contribute negatively to climate change.
If it is a very bad idea then there’s no point setting up a kiwioil.
We should be requiring that all of the equipment and personnel necessary to contain an oil well blow out is in place before any wells are drilled. That should be an absolute minimum. Anything less than that is just being cheap and hoping that nothing will go wrong.
@ Bearded Git…..great…the more every NZer gets the better…(eg for free tertiary education, health , retirement, living allowance, start up companies, public transport , railway upgrade, cleaning up rivers, full employment, safeguarding DOC estate … etc etc )
@ geoff….well imo that is why the Labour Party need to work and get advice on how to get a get a Statoil
Socialism for cola and sugar industry.
Subsidizing giant corporations and denying those who could do with elective surgery.
Just dumb plain dumb we might as well take seat belts brakes airbags out of cars according to Rich bitches ideology.
An ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure.
Yes, freedon, but read the comments, using the Most Liked sort option. You have to go along way down before you find the couple of Key supporter comments, with the overwhelming majority of the 52 comments very anti-Key.
Not just hers; same is true of a number of other opinion writers for the Herald. I find I get a better insight by reading the comments using the Most Liked function. IMO there has been a considerable seachange in the comments on Opinion articles over the last year; and not to Key’s liking.
Some overseas boffin talking on Radionz about how we can do education better, I nearly said batter. Freudian slip eh! It must be great to have a job like that touring round countries peddling yourself as a master or mistress of your subject. Funny how governments listen to some but not others.
Key says that NZ education is doing well but NACT is going to bring in better systems and they are sure people will welcome them. Why don’t governments do what The People want? Not whatever great idea that can advance them personally or Partyily?
What a fuc..en arrogant lot they are. Educated holediggers. They know what they know and keep on doing it over and over like an autistic child repetitively and stuck in one place. And are they doing what is needed? Something may be needed but they are unlikely to come up with a workable or elegant solution because they only know about their hole.
Labour needs to follow that old WW1 quip ‘If you know a better ‘ole go to it’. We can guide them to that hole! (Source – Bruce Bairnsfather artist.)
Maybe not so accurate as taken when most hard working Kiwis are on holiday away from their phones. Lets face it they are the core National vote:
“This latest New Zealand Roy Morgan Poll on voting intention was conducted by telephone – both landline and mobile telephone, with a NZ wide cross-section of 1,509 electors from January 6 – 19, 2014. Of all electors surveyed 4% (unchanged) didn’t name a party”.
Just food for thought but feel free to ‘vent’ at will.
Funny that – when I read ‘hard working kiwis’ or ‘taxpayers’ I feel a blinkered automatic message is coming through from what passes for someone’s brain.
When trainers don’t want racehorses distracted by surrounding and discombobulating activities and people they put blinkers on them. Seems like RWNJs do the same. It facilitates focus and gives them a better chance of winning. Something to learn from that?
Do you really think they don’t take their mobile phones on holiday with them?
Using mobile phone ringing is one of the reasons Roy Morgan polls tend to lean more to the left – they catch people with a life as well as those who don’t have land-lines
Keys education policy is an admission has failed Pisa results for which shcieher is a member has shown has been a failure .
So Now we are Now seeing the coverup before the election.
Hekia Parata failure
Anne Tolley complete failure.
Stephen Joyce complete failure
Ladder pullers
Yup. I’ve noticed Key’s talking about NZ being an “egalitarian society”. It bloody well is not. Not any more. Far from it. So that’s going to be one of the new right wing propaganda themes for this year. Expect to hear it over and over again. At the same time stuff.co is carrying an article about graduating nurses not being able to get jobs http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/9639314/Nurses-terrifying-time-job-hunting. No money in the health system is the reason for that.
My girlfriend’s job-hunting. Had to quit her last job because of work stress – exacerbating a heart condition. Hasn’t had a break for the last 3 years because all her jobs have been temporary for only six months so she never qualifies for annual leave and hasn’t been able to get any time off.
A different nobody in a high pressure call centre somewhere in the bowels of WINZ rings her every week. She has to be ready to answer their calls at any time. Feels like being harassed by uncaring robots mindlessly running a programme. How many job interviews has she had this week? Not their fault. They probably hate it but that’s what they have to do to earn a living – otherwise they’d be on the receiving end of the very thing they’re doing every day themselves.
There are fuck all jobs around, the conditions are shit, and she and hundreds of unemployed are being forced to apply for jobs they’re not qualified for and know they won’t get, and all they’re doing is stressing her out, making it harder to find a job, and making her feel like absolute shit. Her health is suffering as well. She can’t afford doctor’s visits. Nobody but me cares. All the media reports is waffle about the economy picking up. Sick of this bullshit. We have to get rid of these arseholes in government.
They are wrecking our society while they are creaming it themselves and they don’t give a shit.
Arfamo
Kia kaha. You are doing good. We are all working for Labour to introduce better conditions for people, reasonable expectations, and acknowledgement of people’s qualities, not having policy based according to sick, derisive, negative ideas thought up by vicious, hateful people.
Can you copy this over to David Cunliffe’s thread as an example of what we feel in our hearts must be alleviated straight away when he achieves government power. It is very straight, informative and something to carry in mind as an example of a large group who are in urgent need of a change in policy not now, but yesterday.
Arfamo, does she have a supportive GP? See if she can get on sickness benefit for a while (or whatever the call the second tier (health issues) of the job seeker benefit now). If she can get that, then the requirements should change and not be so arduous and insane. Fortunately a letter from a GP still carries some weight with WINZ.
John Key’s “big announcement’s” – he’s saying they’ll be based on models from overseas – I’m picking more of the user-chargers/Charter Schools, with funding going to the private sector.
If there are changes being made, let’s see the “big picture”, not just the rhetoric. But remember this marks yet another “change” in 6 years in power – is this how we want our children taught? Constant experimentation?
I have a relative in WA It has been 44C degrees there. We are fortunate not to have such temperatures here. It seems, from reports on the radio this morning, that many of our rivers and swimming holes are polluted with faeces and dangerous to health.
We know how to poop in our own backyard. Even dogs and cats know to go into someone else’s to do their business. We aren’t as clever as them or even dung beetles or ants.
What a shame – all that difficulty for women giving birth because of the large size of the baby’s heads to presumably accommodate brains, when all we need is the head the size of a fly to go about our business of fouling our surroundings.
Any articles remotely critical of the Dairy Industry in Canterbury are pulled from the Press site within hours of first appearing.
The latest today ,regarding Ecan elections.
Yeah it’s a fucking disgrace. The decrease in quality of drinking water in Canterbury is appalling. Why aren’t Cantabrians more fucked off that they’ve gone from drinking pristine water to watered down cowshit?
You might be surprised at the depth of the anger over that whole issue – removing democracy, stealing water, shitting up the rivers. The fact that people are not shouting in the streets does not reflect the depth of feeling. Methinks the farmers have got themselves offside with all others for a very long time to come over this theft.
Every person is aware of it. Most every person is disgusted at the actions taken by this government on behalf of the farmers.
Enough to vote the tories out of Canterbury districts though?
I had a chat with a person from Kaikoura the other day about whether people there were pissed off enough about the oil drilling enough to vote out National. She seemed to think that it still wasn’t enough to stop the traditional voters from voting National, even though they were extremely fucked off about it.
Imo yes, in various enclaves when combined with earthquake issues, certain quarters will give the Nats the biggest dumping of their lives methinks.
As for traditional Nat voters – yes, they will likely stick their heads in the sand and ignore, while at the same time working up some poor weak excuses for this horrid lot. Nothing changes.
Yep. Conservative types can simmer quietly and unobtrusively for a long time on issues of anti-democracy and bad governance, but when they boil over it’s quite something to behold.
I’m not inventing false stories, Manu. Maybe where you are the water is fine, Manu (or maybe you’ve got the taste buds of a bulldozer), but the water where I am, (Canterbury, not Christchurch) has changed significantly for the worse (on par with Dunedin water) and I now have to filter it.
I am regularly in Dunedin. I did my tertiary education in Dunedin. I know exactly what Dunedin water tastes like and it is nasty.
I grew up in Canterbury where the water quality used to be superb. People who grew up in Dunedin often don’t know any better. Then again I know plenty of born and bred Dunedinites who filter their water because of the disgusting taste.
Puckish Rogue
That is a great article, Shearer is a very smart and honest man.
Not surprising then that those with the entitlement mentality white anted him
Nope, that sounds like shear bloody stupidity. Humans are social creatures and the exist within a community. None of them can be self-sufficient – only the community can be and it does that through each individual working with others to provide everything that a community, and the individuals within it, needs.
MEMO Populuxe1:
Time to train your guns on this snitch “Caesar”.
In 2012 you took a few minutes off from your boots-and-all participation in the Soviet-style character assassination campaign against Julian Assange to have a snide dig at John Pilger for his “personal obsession” with seeking justice for whistle-blower Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning. [1] Last year you sneeringly dismissed Edward Snowden as “a bored IT drone with a narcissistic personality disorder wanting to play 007”. [2] It is clear that dissenters, whistle-blowers, journalists and truth-tellers in general are an insult, a scourge and a vexation to responsible government supporters like you and your friends.
Now it’s time for you to come out against another whistle-blower. The recent release of photos of atrocities in Syria were taken by a defector (or in Populuxe-speak, a “snitch”) calling himself “Caesar”. [3] For argument’s sake, let us assume these are not fabrications like the U.S. claims that Iran used nerve gas in 1988 [4], or the Timisoara massacre photos [5] or the Hill and Knowlton con job about Iraqi soldiers torturing Kuwaiti civilians. [6] Let us assume that the “Caesar” revelations are genuine. If they are, surely the likes of you and your ideological soul-mates that haunt this mostly excellent forum need to be employing every rhetorical trick in the book to undermine and demean and ridicule him (or her).
And if you and your friends do NOT denounce this latest whistleblower, you need to answer this simple question: why the hell not?
One of those aforementioned comrades of Populuxe1 has chosen rather unwisely to wade into waters where he’s perhaps not too confident….
Because even if all your assumptions were correct,
Which assumptions are you talking about?
…some of us don’t have your exquisite cocktail
Uh-oh! Use of an elegant metaphor signals trouble….
…of delusion and obsession.
Sadly, it’s a fizzer, however. Let’s skip over the indolent and vacuous “obsession” jibe and get to the only substantial point of your post: what part of my post constitutes a “delusion”?
“Obsession” seems a pretty reasonable description for someone resurrecting an 18 month old blog argument.
As for delusion, the easiest example is the last sentence in your first paragraph: “It is clear that dissenters, whistle-blowers, journalists and truth-tellers in general are an insult, a scourge and a vexation to responsible government supporters like you and your friends.” If you believe that comment to be true, then your perception lacks accuracy, therefore you are delusional. But really your inflated sense of importance counts, too.
Every assumption you made in comment 16.
Such as? You really need to be specific, my friend.
“Obsession” seems a pretty reasonable description for someone resurrecting an 18 month old blog argument.
So our friend no longer goes after journalists and political dissenters, taking the lead of such moral giants as Bashar Obama and William Hague? That’s a welcome development—assuming I have assumed correctly.
As for delusion, the easiest example is the last sentence in your first paragraph: “It is clear that dissenters, whistle-blowers, journalists and truth-tellers in general are an insult, a scourge and a vexation to responsible government supporters like you and your friends.” If you believe that comment to be true, then your perception lacks accuracy, therefore you are delusional.
Populuxe1, and several others who probably have the sense to regret it, did indeed go after dissenters, whistle-blowers, journalists and truth-tellers—as I showed in my footnotes. Maybe the others, including your good self, were more benign, but Populuxe1 certainly exhibited all those attitudes toward the targeted individuals.
But really your inflated sense of importance counts, too.
Could you back that up? It looks, unfortunately, like another lazy and groundless accusation.
So our friend no longer goes after journalists and political dissenters, taking the lead of such moral giants as Bashar Obama and William Hague? That’s a welcome development—assuming I have assumed correctly.
Again, assuming that your characterization of pop’s arguments is correct, your question is weird. If pop’s arguments had indeed continued to this day in that light, then you wouldn’t need to use 18 month old examples. So either you’re obsessed with that particular comment and correct in your assumption, or you’re obsessed with that particular comment even though it’s no longer relevant (and indeed makes your demands for criticism of “Caesar” even more odd).
Populuxe1, and several others who probably have the sense to regret it, did indeed go after dissenters, whistle-blowers, journalists and truth-tellers—as I showed in my footnotes.
Nope – you showed two comments a year apart, one questioning pilger’s position (unmitigated gall! That’s persecution, right there!) and one questioning snowden’s motives (calling him a “bored IT drone” – egad, such cruel character assassination!). Hardly “going after” dissenters.
But really your inflated sense of importance counts, too.
Could you back that up? It looks, unfortunately, like another lazy and groundless accusation
Okay, my friend, we’ll take your word for it. I accept Populuxe1 is a genuinely nice guy and would never join in officially sanctioned head-stompings. Nor would he, were he to have found himself living in Rwanda twenty years ago, have heeded the exhortations of Interahamwes radio and got hold of a machete and gone looking for Tutsis. He’s a reformed character, which is good to know.
But what could I expect from a delusional fuck who escalates someone using the phrase “IT drone” to the level of actively participating in genocide.
Except he didn’t just use that phrase, did he? It was part of his ongoing program of parroting everything he could to disparage those officially sanctioned targets.
You say he would have behaved differently in different circumstances; I doubt it. The guys wielding the machetes in 1994 were not monsters, they were simply doing what the regime encouraged them to do. Just like our friend.
The guys wielding the machetes in 1994 were not monsters, they were simply doing what the regime encouraged them to do. Just like our friend.
There are light years between taking a machete to someone and simply saying that they’re probably walter mitties. If you can’t see that yawning chasm, you have yet again astonished me with the extent of your delusion and conceit.
I am an ESL teacher by profession but have just been made redundant yet again in an industry that appears to be on its last legs in NZ at the moment.
For some time I have been pondering a career change to something politically related as I have built considerable experience over the years with political campaigns and as a union delegate so I am treating this situation as a catalyst. Thus, I am seeking any opportunities that you may be aware of in the Auckland area, including low paid positions in the right field, to get formal experience. More details of my political background can be found on my LinkedIn profile. http://www.linkedin.com/pub/alex-pirie/23/85b/98a
In the short term I am also interested in relevant voluntary work as I have about two weeks left to run on my Auckland AT Hop card so transport is not an issue until that runs out. I am thinking my skill set would be helpful in an LEC or MPs office or similar but all suggestions will be considered. Thank you in advance for any assistance provided.
Good on ya and good luck to you, Outrider. Can I suggest you email the NZCTU? They may know of work going in Ak unions. Also Unite might be keen on a pair of helping hands.
Executive principals, leading groups of up to 10 schools.
1. nice size for awarding out property and cleaning contracts etc.
2. and of course diminishing the importance of the connection between school principals and their teaching teams within each school.
3. a conduit for the Government and ministry in a top down regime.
4. leading to easier school mergers, first step being united boards where schools remain on two sites initially etc.
Also muddies responsibilities – who has final say, boards of trustees or executive principal?
“lead teacher” vs head of department and principal?
“change principal” vs board of trustees?
The merger/contracting out is a nice theory – they definitely have ulterior motives for this management merry-go-round
I think we need to consider that all this tinkering is part of a smokescreen.
The Ministry realises that education is entering a totally new phase.
The traditional single cell classroom is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.
Technology, whether we like it or not, is going to change schooling as we know it.
The government knows it and does not want to be left with a lot of redundant school grounds/buildings, issues of falling rolls etc.
They want to be in a position to begin to dispose of these “assets” sooner than later.
Another story to compliment 100% pure NZ.
What is happening in Wellington and why was the story downplayed so much by the council, glad to live in Auckland where we can utilise our harbour for fishing and swimming 🙂
Anything over 280cfu is considered an unacceptable risk to health but Greater Wellington Regional Council recorded 69,000cfu on January 26 last year. Just a tad beyond The Acceptable level ! Mmmm
However, when The Dominion Post reported the closure on February 5, water quality was not the primary reason given.
Yesterday, Pike said the safety of rugby fans had contributed to the decision to close the platform but “that was somewhat coincidental because the issue was about the water quality”.
He could not say why he had pointed to the sevens as the reason at the time but said there were security concerns and the two events “overlapped each other”. on February 5, water quality was not the primary reason given. http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/9639357/Pollution-at-dive-platform-off-the-scale
Great photo op. Swim and catch a meal within Wellington harbour and live to tell of the tale. Especially as we read that Wellington is the 7th cleanest city in the world. Either : the world is a bad filthy place, wellington has gone backwards or don’t believe what you read. http://listtoptens.com/top-10-cleanest-cities-in-the-world/
Very telling only two people cared enough to comment on this if it was cow shit in there they would be all over it.Look the other way towns and cities are not polluting, hell we wont even test down stream from them.
well, no – some farmer would have stimulated a debate by claming that it was all fine and that people pissed off by it were anti-industry.
As it is I know that Dunedin, for example, has spent hundreds of thousands if not millions trying to address the discharge problem, and actively monitors water quality.
Finally someone admits that towns and cities have contributed majorly to the degradation of rivers and streams, good on dunners maybe some day we will get a full picture of how much damage cities and towns have done and are still doing to the waterways
Because he is a dry little legal man who wants to cut down on unnecessary sentiment as not helpful to drawing up tightly scripted legal documents well salted with economic hard-line beliefs about the baseness of human society.
He has managed to handle Maori concepts re the Treatry of Waitangi probably with a tight smile. And NACTs can do anything – humouring Alamein Kopu every day when necessary. But community must be a bridge too far.
I was looking for information about the monopoly purchase of ice cream concession by Fontana – freezing out small businesses – for 10 years. But couldn’t find anything not even when I put NZ Herald first. But I did see about really big payout for overseas trips in business class for ACC officials (Auckland City Council, not to be confused with that other juggernaut).
Note the acronym Ateed – we will be hearing more of this cruisy concession.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11168869
8/12/2013
…spending details come after revelations this week that the council’s events organisation, known as Ateed, also spent $220,000 to send 18 people – including TV3 news anchor Hilary Barry – to the America’s Cup in San Francisco.
That bill, and a further $57,369 for the two Ateed staff to attend a meeting in Dubai and the 2013 Monaco Yacht Show, is under attack from former Auckland City mayor Dick Hubbard and sitting councillor Cameron Brewer.
Ateed should not be doing what NZ Trade & Enterprise already did well, and their targets were “weak” for the money spent, Hubbard said. “It’s a classic case of a pot of money looking for something to do.”
Amounts noted – $57,000+$220,000.
Here’s Radionz item on the ice cream business. The concern by small business was pooh-poohed by Michael Bassett (surprise) who said it was just the market working. Sort of like that bulldozer that’s unstoppable. Can’t stop progress! Progress and the market is righteous! Progress good, concern for others bad! Concern for healthy economy and the livelihoods of small owner traders bad!
The taxi drivers have resorted in Auckland to picketing the monopoly lords of the airport there. Business likes a level playing field by tilting it so its flat but the liquid gold runs down to the pot at the lowest corner.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/regional/234016/ice-cream-deal-criticised
Ice cream deal criticised Updated at 10:35 am today
A small business group says Auckland Council’s move to give a 10-year exclusive ice cream deal to Fonterra is anti-competitive.
The council and Fonterra are negotiating a contract allowing the dairy co-operative to be the sole ice-cream supplier at council venues and events.
The chief executive of Small Business Voice, a group of small- to medium-sized companies, says the potential exclusive contract with one of New Zealand’s biggest businesses is not fair.
Max Whitehead says competition is healthy, but such deals stunt the growth of small companies.
The Auckland Chamber of Commerce says the deal is just business in action, and is no different from a company buying shelf space in a supermarket.
This is where Labour could stand up and say that it is here for workers- workers who are employees and workers who are self employed and workers who are employers, The people who do the work of New Zealand. Why not stand with them. If Labour did this then they would know that,
1. paying the local supermarket duopoly for self space should be outlawed, having a local supermarket duopoly should be outlawed. Anti competitive arrangements between council and fonterra should be outlawed and competition should be allowed to actually happen. Because the funny thing about competition in a capitalist system is that it is not actually efficient at all , it employs a lot of people both directly and indirectly which is a very good thing – if you are a worker. Monopolies on the other hand tend to employ many less people both directly and indirectly.
Plan B
One of the things tht hurts me about supermarkets is that of the big three I can think of, two are Oz. We need a transfusion of NZness, it’s all flowing Ozward and getting diluted in the Tasman, no money staying here.
Well, I have just read one of the best education policies ever. I’m all for backing good teachers and paying them more. Just brilliant.
Supporting it would show some class.
Take the money if you can get it, my friend. Just don’t let them alienate you from the rest of your colleagues. That’s the sole intent of these “reforms”.
That is the plan I intend to follow, NZ education gets along just fine without the intrusion of the blue and red teams of morons, unfortunately they can’t help meddling whenever they get control of the Treasury.
Unfortunately, National has not just been meddling and tinkering. It’s moves against the teaching profession have been aggressive and sustained. Until now the attacks have been obvious: the imposition of spurious National Standards, virtually destroying Night School education, attempting (unsuccessfully) to slash Intermediate Schools’ technology programs, forcing Charter Schools onto devastated communities in Canterbury.
Today’s announcement is more of the same, even if this time it is disguised not as an attack but as a “reward for good teachers”—as if all teachers didn’t have to meet standards in the first place. (Well, in Charter Schools they won’t have to of course.)
The blue team want to spread the money amongst a small team of winners and the rest of the teaching profession are meant to worship them and accept their innate superiority.
The money would be better spent on professional development for all teachers and for improving teachers pay scales so that they would attract the best of students.
There is no way I would even remotely consider putting the wishes of over paid unionists ahead of my children. And besides if teachers are paid more don’t the unions get more out of them?
This is an excellent policy if you are a good teacher, a child, a parent or any body interested in improving the wellbeing of all New Zealanders. Frankly bad teachers (not that there’s that many of them) and greedy unionists are not that important.
Note to David Cunliff – Back this policy and perhaps offer some improvements (keep some votes)
I’d be very careful of playing partisan politics on this one CV most of my colleagues think this is the best initiative out of the MoE in a very long time.
There are definitely more younger teachers coming through who are ignorant of the historical wins that their union has achieved for them. If they allow themselves to be divided then they will all suffer the consequences.
Sounds like you’ve drunk the kool-aid, sockpuppet.
No not at all, if you take the National out of the announcement and replace it with Labour would it be seen as a positive or negative announcement at this site do you think ?
Well considering that National has decades of history of undermining the teachers union then yes I would initially be much more suspicious of a National policy than a Labour policy. But regardless of whether Labour or National implement it, this idea of performance pay is a disaster waiting to happen.
Having a system where some teachers are deemed to be ‘rockstars’ and paid more is going to make the whole thing open for corruption and resentment. In a word, divisive.
And it’s not like they can have an objective criteria to decide who the best teachers are, such as level of qualification, because we all know of the people with amazing quals who are completely shit at teaching.
The criteria will have to be subjective and it is that subjectivity that will leave it open for abuse.
I think there are a couple of documentaries about NZ education that might be worthwhile watching starting with A Civilised Society
There is another good one that was a series … but can’t remember the name at present.
To me, the announcement would be just as reprehensible if it were Labour. But I’m pretty clear that my politics are aligned with my own values – not party branding.
I’d be very careful of playing partisan politics on this one CV most of my colleagues think this is the best initiative out of the MoE in a very long time.
After National Standards, the bar was set very low.
In the middle of the school holidays and within hours of the announcement, you have not only made contact with many of your colleagues (some of whom would also be out on holidays I think) you have managed to get a majority consensus
The majority of my colleagues are back at work and yes there is a consensus amongst us that the announcement is a good thing.
I don’t believe I have any problem with either reading or comprehension, I do note however that you do appear to have some challenges in that direction, along with some other issues.
yes I do sockpuppet
like most humans on this planet.
but I still know the incremental progression of corporatizing education will only damage your profession and eventually cripple the individualism and creativity that children deserve and thrive on.
Manu
If your children have a parent with a closed-down mind then they are already being short-changed for their education. There is a lot to know out there, but when parents are biased and prejudiced, the information comes through in a warped way shaped by that prejudice.
Attitudes like yours hold your children back from learning all they need to know about how the world is.
And 3 News had an education specialist from a US university saying paying teachers was not the way to go – resulting in all sorts of unintended consequences like damaging cooperation among teachers.
He reckons it’s better to give the money to schools, rather than individual teachers.
Manu
Showing off your education and how useful it has been to you and the country, you could direct us to some research on where it has been failing in NZ, or succeeding, and how our teachers measure up to their task, written by an experienced NZ or Australian academic.
And give us the link of the one that strikes you as particularly informative would you please.
As her husband tears apart Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and Yemen,
Michelle Obama is having her “Marie Antoinette moment”
What are we to make of Michelle Obama, the first lady of the USA, who grew up in Chicago and was educated at Princeton and Harvard?
by Cathy Newman, Presenter, Channel 4 Daily Telegraph, 20 January 2014
It’s Michelle Obama’s Marie Antoinette moment. As world leaders tussle over how to respond to her husband’s horrifying record of drone killings, kidnappings, torture, harassment and imprisonment of political dissidents, political assassination, his continued support for blood-stained regimes from Indonesia to Saudi Arabia to Israel, and his vast program of illegal surveillance recently revealed by Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers, the first lady of the United States posts cheery pictures of herself on social media cavorting with pop stars and of her murderous husband dancing the “Dougie” on the dance floor at her 50th birthday bash. [1]
If this was an attempt to show her caring, sharing, mother of the people side, it’s badly backfired, with one user commenting that she made Marie Antoinette look like an angel. On Instagram, one Laura Gazzard warned the First Lady: “I’m ashamed to be American if you still have a fucking American citizenship, and Michelle if you ever fucking return to Chicago you will be leaving it in a fucking box, burn in hell you cunt.” In a similar tone, Nadia Eram snarls: “Dirty bitch burn alongside your murdering cunt of a husband.” [2]
Michelle Obama was everything the West used to love about the American presidency. European political leaders thought she was one of them – modern, stylish and approachable. She grew up on the South Side of Chicago, then went to Princeton and Harvard, after which she landed a job at the law firm Sidley Austin, where she met Bashar Obama, and married him in 1992.
It’s hard to have any inkling what’s going through the mind of this Western-educated woman as her husband stands accused of war crimes which have claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands.
She’s said little in public. More than a year ago, an email from an intermediary, declared: “The president is the president of the United States, not a faction of Americans, and the first lady supports him in that role.”
Elizabeth Lightfoot, author of a book called Michelle Obama: First Lady of Hope, has said she’s now “hunkered down in Washington” and that she’s “standing by her man”.
So is she, then, complicit in mass murder, a Lady Macbeth figure? Or is she at the mercy of events which have spiralled out of control? Does the girl from Chicago’s South Side, like the rest of us, recoil in horror at the killing of perhaps more than half a million innocent civilians, including children?
In the past, she’s spoken of how seeing children caught in the crossfire would break her heart.
As it would any human being. But it seems Michelle left her humanity behind a while ago. A year ago, with Bashar Obama’s violence showing no sign of abating, leaked documents showed Michelle indulging on obscene spending sprees, splashing more than $500,000 on a luxury shopping tour of Spain, including a chauffeur-driven tour of the Costa del Sol which cost a cool $26,670.61. [3]
As the political and diplomatic ructions reverberate across the globe, perhaps Michelle still has time and leisure to go home-shopping, emerging only to pose for photos – the sunny smiles belying the horrors of her husband’s role in the plight of so many countries.
Hey, Moz. This article isn’t actually by Cathy Newman and doesn’t appear to be a genuine Torygraph column (bad as they often are). It reads like the slurred mutterings of a drunken misogynist. Where did you find it?
Click on the first link under the article my friend. Actually the article was by Cathy Newman, and you’re right: she does write like a drunken misogynist. Except the target of her loathing was not the wife of the bloodstained ruler of the United States, it was the wife of an official enemy of the state for which she (Cathy Newman) is a propagandist.
All I did was change the name from Asma al Assad to Michelle Obama, and change some of the place names to fit in with that. The shrieking denunciation, written as you so brilliantly pointed out, “like the slurred mutterings of a drunken misogynist”, is not mine, it’s all Cathy Newman’s.
Oh. Sadly, the bits you’ve inserted (and attributed to Newman) are the sections that I thought were written by the drunken misogynist.
What bits are those? I think you mean the two foul-mouthed rants from Instagram. Apart from the names and the substitution of “Chicago” for “Britain”, those were identical with the original ones, cited approvingly in another right wing rag, the Daily Mail—only the target was Bashar Assad’s wife, not Bashar Obama’s.
So now I guess you’re going to tell me that I shouldn’t have messed with the words of Cathy Newman, that outstanding, dedicated, honest parrot, errrr… journalist.
I think you misunderstand Lord Gnome, Moz. And I get that the quotes were from Instagram. But you claimed that Cathy Newman included them in her piece. She didn’t. I guess the problem is that you read satire, but can’t write it.
Cathy Newman is a fine journalist, btw. Ask Lord Rennard.
I think you misunderstand Lord Gnome, Moz. And I get that the quotes were from Instagram. But you claimed that Cathy Newman included them in her piece. She didn’t.
We all know she didn’t. Anybody with an IQ above the average at an ACT meeting could see that, and I provided the link to her original piece. You are quibbling again, and trying to belittle my post, which was actually very serious. I expect you send off pompous letters to the editor of Private Eye scolding him for pretending the New Coalition Academy is a real school?
I guess the problem is that you read satire, but can’t write it.
Really? Then I advise you to have a browse of the following….
Make up your mind, moz! Was it serious or satire? We already know you mis-attributed the authorship (yet again). Slagging off Newman for your failings is poor form. And Newman got her part-time job at the DT on the back of 20 years of excellent reporting. Ask Rennard how good she is, FFS. Quibble all you like, but she is the journo of the year (so far) in GB.
Now, I wouldn’t work for the Telegraph in the unlikely event I was asked to, and you’re not a good enough writer to be employed by any title anywhere, but Newman was offered a significant role on one of Britain’s most influential papers. You do know that their website is the most popular of all the Brit papers web offerings, right?
It would be a rare journo who wouldn’t consider taking the role, and even rarer one who would turn it down.
Make up your mind, moz! Was it serious or satire?
Satire is serious. There was no one more serious than Jonathan Swift. Or George Orwell.
I’ll skip the unpleasant little quips about my writing ability and deal with a more substantial point….
It would be a rare journo who wouldn’t consider taking the role, and even rarer one who would turn it down.
Yes, of course. Glenn Greenwald, John Pilger, Amy Goodman, Gordon Campbell—any one of them would take the Torygraph‘s money and churn out vile black propaganda like Cathy Newman.
Your claim about her being “journo of the year” is beyond satire.
This “Te Reo Putake” tick seems to me to be a prime example of the type of chap we referred to at prep school as an “ass.”
His familiarity with satire seems to be non-existent, and his critical facilities, as evidenced by his tawdry attack on Mr Breen’s writing ability and his endorsement of that third rate Telegraph hackette, are, to put it mildly, deficient.
Morrissey
You have been taken to task with playing at satire before. Personally I find it a very bad trend to muck up what appear to be facts when there are so many factual liars about. We have to be able to hold onto something definite for our information. Please don’t give me a dose of rudeness back or call my ‘my friend’ in a patronising manner.
Morrissey, You have been taken to task with playing at satire before.
Yes, Warbler, well done. It was satirical, and I didn’t really try to hide it, as evidenced by my link to the original item straight after my little masterpiece.
Personally I find it a very bad trend to muck up what appear to be facts when there are so many factual liars about.
I understand your point and I agree with you, mostly. However, I was making a point about the partiality and hypocrisy of the Daily Torygraph in particular, but also of newspapers in general.
We have to be able to hold onto something definite for our information.
I agree. I think in this case, however, the satirical intention was quite clear. It’s a habit, unfortunate or not, that I picked up from years of reading Private Eye.
Please don’t give me a dose of rudeness back or call my ‘my friend’ in a patronising manner.
Okay, Warbler, I won’t. Let’s keep it civil.
– Ok Cunliffe its a good start with the drilling but now you’ve got a couple of days to come up with something better…good luck, this policy is a winner (election changer maybe…)
That’s the thing isn’t it? After telling us for last two years that the third term was a shoo-in everything Key has done since he got home from Hawaii, every word and every gesture tells us that the Nats aren’t actually that confident about this year.
”This policy is a winner”, really Puckish Rogue??? what this grand announcement from Slippery the Prime Minister looks like from here is after attempts to smash up the teacher’s union’s including the big fizzer policy of ‘charter schools’ have failed miserably in desperation to appease it’s shrinking core vote National have decided to throw 300 million dollars into the middle of the mass and divide them by having them all run over the top of each other to get a slice of it,
Sadly, from listening to news reports many in the profession are happy to do just that…
Just reading some of the attacks on people who happen to disagree with some of you makes me wonder what your motivation is. This “tow the party line or else” attitude bears no fruit especially when on some issues there is yet to be a “party line” stated. Case in point, Labour has yet to counter Nationals latest education policy.
You guys need to chill out and actually take in opposing opinions; you might learn something. I expect insults will come my way now but I don’t care because insulting people through this type of medium is just cowardly so go for it.
Puckish Roague, sockpuppet and one or two others. Well done for standing your ground.
sockpuppet, I hope you get one of the new education rolls, I suspect you will do well, good luck.
[lprent: Actually, the actual problem appears to be that you are incapable of handling people disagree with you. It shows a certain shallowness and weakness of personality that is commonly known as being a pompous and stupid fool.
Incidentally could you please stop changing your handle. You have used three today – one to defend yourself as another “person” – which is a sockpuppet offense. I’d start to suspect a nefarious purpose except you appear to be more of a silly dipstick with an self-assessed ego (that overburdens your actual abilities) playing foolish games.
So I’m going to insist that you only use one. Otherwise you won’t be able to comment here at all. Read the about and the policy. It will help with not attracting my attention. I tend to notice whining idiots as they usually find it difficult to listen to others and so have a problem with the art of being able to argue coherently. ]
Quit stealing our oxygen and bugger off if you can’t hack it bro. This is a left wing blog and if we all want to have a left wing love-in then that’s our business. There’s always kiwiblog if you don’t like it.
Roving the comments and it is apparent some recent visitors to The Standard are very upset about a few basic challenges to their statements. Bodes well. I mean if they are already this defensive after only a couple of policy announcements, what will they be like come the budget? Because, let’s face it, those figures are gonna be fantastic.
fantastic
fanˈtastɪk/
adjective
1. imaginative or fanciful; remote from reality.
NASA has released a new visualization showing how global temperatures have risen since 1950. It’s pretty much what you’d expect given that the level of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is currently higher than at any time in the last 800,000 years.
probably using the exact same sciencey stuff that was used to explain every other local or regional cold snap that you guys felt were related to global average temperature changes.
The same basic answer as I have given you every other time you have asked
It is called Climate Change for a reason.
Warming is a causation, but warming causes climates to change. They don’t all steadily get hotter uniformly in that way that your simple stupidity appears to feel that it should.
So warming in the northern polar regions means that movements of cold air move further south. Air and ocean currents start getting more active and range further than they have in the historic past.. etc etc Expect more exceptional events of warm, cold, dry and wet for the next thousand years as the liquid and gaseous components at the surface of the planet move towards an equilibrium with the extra greenhouse gases that have been pumped into them.
I guess that you really should name your self “unthinking” rather than “grumpy”. In fact it is probably the causation of why you are grumpy anyway.. Just like greenhouse gases cause warming and ocean acidification. Warming in turn causes climates to change….
By “you guys”, you mean the world scientific community. The scientists have been telling us things that clashed with common sense for a long time now. A few centuries back, people like you looked around them, used their common sense, and scorned this fanciful notion that the world was not flat.
Your grimly stupid anti-science stance toward global warming is just more of the same iron-plated stupidity. You really need to start reading. I mean SERIOUS reading, my friend. But if you’re going to keep listening to Leighton Smith, from whom you obviously draw your opinions, reading doesn’t seem to be a likely option for you.
Why are you on this forum exactly? To be our punching-bag? It’s not much fun for us, frankly. Stupidity like you display in such posts is not interesting, it’s just a bore.
Go back to Kiwiblog, my friend: that’s your natural milieu.
Has anyone covered or discussed this story yet?
It is a great story, it has everything. How it was reported was very amusing, I assume that this was intentional.
It starts off with,
A Chinese man’s holiday to New Zealand took an expensive turn when he crashed into a light pole and wrote off the $200,000 Aston Martin Rapide he had bought for his wife.
It ends with this,
He was in New Zealand on a tourist visa, which had to be extended because of the prosecution.
Away from court, Miss Harding said the drink-driving charge was withdrawn because police did not follow correct procedures. Chen was not offered the chance to have a blood test, nor was he given access to a Mandarin interpreter.
This is a story about the new Auckland, where 26-year-old property managers come on holiday and buy $200,000 cars for their wives, to drive while they are on holiday no doubt.
We seek a 50% reduction in New Zealand’s carbon-equivalent net emissions, as compared to 1990 levels, by 2050. 50 by 50. We will write the target into law.
the price of goods and services has risen by 6 percent since the last election, while the after-tax average wage has actually gone up by 16 percent
no, although its a week ago and here I am being interviewed on television about them, I havn’t seen Gerry Brownlee’s comments regarding demolitions in Christchurch and which caused such outrage, but I can talk all about them
oh, maybe our SAS soldiers were in the Kabul hotel gun fight but they weren’t wounded by friendly fire
New Zealand has lost $12 billion from GDP due to the Christchurch earthquake . . . oh, it might actually be around $15 billion from GDP due to the Christchurch earthquake . . . Blinglish said what?
the GCSB needs to spy on New Zealanders because of the terrorist threat, even though official reports released over my signature say there is no risk and the SIS has the matter in hand
National Ltd™ has been working on a number of things with New Zealand First on a number of things one of which has a financial component but I can’t talk about it
the money from the sale of state assets will not be used to prop up Solid Energy
I don’t see a place for a Winston Peters-led New Zealand First in a government that I lead. It’s not a matter of political convenience, it’s a matter of political principle.
This summer is the most active season ever for oil and gas exploration, with the industry spending up to $750 million. At the same time, the Government is strengthening the regulations that govern drilling, particularly in deep water.
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Last week Transport Minster Simeon Brown and Mayor Wayne Brown opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre. The new train control centre will see teams from KiwiRail, Auckland Transport and Auckland One Rail working more closely together to improve train services across the city. The Auckland Rail Operations Centre in ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson said in an exit interview with Q+A yesterday the Government can and should sustain more debt to invest in infrastructure for future generations. Elsewhere in the news in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 6:36am: Read more ...
Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. It is more than just a happy ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to March 18 include:China’s Foreign Minister visiting Wellington today;A post-cabinet news conference this afternoon; the resumption of Parliament on Tuesday for two weeks before Easter;retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson gives his valedictory speech in Parliament; ...
New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters’s state-of-the-nation speech on Sunday was really a state-of-Winston-First speech. He barely mentioned any of the Government’s key policies and could not even wholly endorse its signature income tax cuts. Instead, he rehearsed all of his complaints about the Ardern Government, including an extraordinary claim ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
“I’ve been internalising a really complicated situation in my head.”When they kept telling us we should wait until we get to know him, were they taking the piss? Was it a case of, if you think this is bad, wait till you get to know the real Christopher, after the ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
.“$10 and a target that bleeds” - Bleeding Targets for Under $10!.Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.This government appears hell-bent on either scrapping life-saving legislation or reintroducing things that - frustrated critics insist - will be dangerous and likely ...
“It hardly strikes me as fair to criticise a government for doing exactly what it said it was going to do. For actually keeping its promises.”THUNDER WAS PLAYING TAG with lightning flashes amongst the distant peaks. Its rolling cadences interrupted by the here-I-come-here-I-go Doppler effect of the occasional passing car. ...
Subversive & Disruptive Technologies: Just as happened with that other great regulator of the masses, the Medieval Church, the advent of a new and hard-to-control technology – the Internet – is weakening the ties that bind. Then, and now, those who enjoy a monopoly on the dissemination of lies, cannot and will ...
Been Here Before: To find the precedents for what this Coalition Government is proposing, it is necessary to return to the “glory days” of Muldoonism.THE COALITION GOVERNMENT has celebrated its first 100 days in office by checking-off the last of its listed commitments. It remains, however, an angry government. It ...
Bob Edlin writes – And what is the world watching today…? The email newsletter from Associated Press which landed in our mailbox early this morning advised: In the news today: The father of a school shooter has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter; prosecutors in Trump’s hush-money case ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is another Green MP on their way out? And are the Greens severely tarnished by another integrity scandal? For the second time in three months, the Green Party has secretly suspended an MP over integrity issues. Mystery is surrounding the party’s decision to ...
For the last few years, the Green Party has been the party that has managed to avoid the plague of multiple scandals that have beleaguered other political parties. It appears that their luck has run out with a second scandal which, unfortunately for them, coincided with Golraz Ghahraman, the focus ...
TL;DR: The six newsey things that stood out to me as of 6:46am on Saturday, March 16.Andy Foster has accidentally allowed a Labour/Green amendment to cut road user chargers for plug-in hybrid vehicles, which the Government might accept; NZ HeraldThomas CoughlanSimeon Brown has rejected a plea from Westport ...
What seemed a booming success a couple of years ago has collapsed into fraud convictions.I looked at the crash of FTX (short for ‘Futures Exchange’) in November 2022 to see whether it would impact on the financial system as a whole. Fortunately there was barely a ripple, probably because it ...
Anybody following the situation in Ukraine and Russia would probably have been amused by a recent Tweet on X NATO seems to be putting in an awful lot of effort to influence what is, at least according to them, a sham election in an autocracy.When do the Ukrainians go to ...
TL;DR:Shaun Baker on Wynyard Quarter's transformation. Magdalene Taylor on the problem with smart phones. How private equity are now all over reinsurance. Dylan Cleaver on rugby and CTE. Emily Atkin on ‘Big Meat’ looking like ‘Big Oil’.Bernard’s six-stack of substacks at 6pm on March 15Photo by Jeppe Hove Jensen ...
Buzz from the Beehive Finance Minister Nicola Willis had plenty to say when addressing the Auckland Business Chamber on the economic growth that (she tells us) is flagging more than we thought. But the government intends to put new life into it: We want our country to be a ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee has reported back on the Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill, basicly rubberstamping it. While there was widespread support among submitters for the principle that EV and PHEV drivers should pay their fair share for the roads, they also overwhelmingly disagreed with ...
Peter Dunne writes – This week’s government bailout – the fifth in the last eighteen months – of the financially troubled Ruapehu Alpine Lifts company would have pleased many in the central North Island ski industry. The government’s stated rationale for the $7 million funding was that it ...
See if you can spot the difference. An Iranian born female MP from a progressive party is accused of serial shoplifting. Her name is leaked to the media, which goes into a pack frenzy even before the Police launch an … Continue reading → ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The government is omitting general Treaty references from legislation : The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last Government in a bid to get greater coherence in the public service on Treaty ...
What was that judge thinking?Peter Williams writes – That Golriz Ghahraman and District Court Judge Maria Pecotic were once lawyer colleagues is incontrovertible. There is published evidence that they took at least one case to the Court of Appeal together. There was a report on ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Climate Scorpion – the sting is in the tail. Introducing planetary solvency. A paper via the University of Exeter’s Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.Local scoop:Kāinga Ora starts pulling out of its Auckland projects and selling land RNZ ...
Wellington’s massively upzoned District Plan adds the opportunity for tens of thousands of new homes not just in the central city (such as these Webb St new builds) but also close to the CBD and public transport links. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Wellington gave itself the chance of ...
It’s Friday and we’re halfway through March Madness. Here’s some of the things that caught our attention this week. This Week in Greater Auckland On Monday Matt asked how we can get better event trains and an option for grade separating Morningside Dr. On Tuesday Matt looked into ...
Something you might not know about me is that I’m quite a stubborn person. No, really. I don’t much care for criticism I think’s unfair or that I disagree with. Few of us do I suppose.Back when I was a drinker I’d sometimes respond defensively, even angrily. There are things ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:PM Christopher Luxon said the reversal of interest deductibility for landlords was done to help renters, who ...
It was not so much the Labour Party but really the Chris Hipkins party yesterday at Labour’s caucus retreat in Martinborough. The former Prime Minister was more or less consistent on wealth tax, which he was at best equivocal about, and social insurance, which he was not willing to revisit. ...
Buzz from the BeehiveThe text reproduced above appears on a page which records all the media statements and speeches posted on the government’s official website by Melissa Lee as Minister of Media and Communications and/or by Jenny Marcroft, her Parliamentary Under-secretary. It can be quickly analysed ...
For forty years, Robert Muldoon has been a dirty word in our politics. His style of government was so repulsive and authoritarian that the backlash to it helped set and entrench our constitutional norms. His pig-headedness over forcing through Think Big eventually gave us the RMA, with its participation and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is the new government reducing tax on rental properties to benefit landlords or to cut the cost of rents? That’s the big question this week, after Associate Finance Minister David Seymour announced on Sunday that the Government would be reversing the Labour Government’s removal ...
Saudi Arabia is rarely far from the international spotlight. The war in Gaza has brought new scrutiny to Saudi plans to normalise relations with Israel, while the fifth anniversary of the controversial killing of Jamal Khashoggi was marked shortly before the war began on October 7. And as the home ...
Questions need to be asked on both sides of the worldPeter Williams writes – The NRL Judiciary hands down an eight week suspension to Sydney Roosters forward Spencer Leniu , an Auckland-born Samoan, after he calls Ezra Mam, Sydney-orn but of Aboriginal and Torres Strait ...
Ele Ludemann writes – Contrary to what many headlines and news stories are saying, residential landlords are not getting a tax break. The government is simply restoring to them the tax deductibility of interest they had until the previous government removed it. There is no logical reason ...
I can't remember when it was goodMoments of happiness in bloomMaybe I just misunderstoodAll of the love we left behindWatching our flashbacks intertwineMemories I will never findIn spite of whatever you becomeForget that reckless thing turned onI think our lives have just begunI think our lives have just begunDoes anyone ...
Michael Bassett writes – At first reading, a front-page story in the New Zealand Herald on 13 March was bizarre. A group of severely intellectually limited teenagers, with little understanding of the law, have been pleading to the Justice Select Committee not to pass a bill dealing with ram ...
How much political capital is Christopher Luxon willing to burn through in order to deliver his $2.9 billion gift to landlords? Evidently, Luxon is: (a) unable to cost the policy accurately. As Anna Burns-Francis pointed out to him on Breakfast TV, the original ”rock solid” $2.1 billion cost he was ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Jonathon Porritt calling bullshit in his own blog post on mainstream climate science as ‘The New Denialism’.Local scoop:The Wellington City Council’s list of proposed changes to the IHP recommendations to be debated later today was leaked this ...
TL;DR:Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said yesterday tenants should be grateful for the reinstatement of interest deductibility because landlords would pass on their lower tax costs in the form of lower rents. That would be true if landlords were regulated monopolies such as Transpower or Auckland Airport1, but they’re not, ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Tom Toro Tom Toro is a cartoonist and author. He has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010. His cartoons appear in Playboy, the Paris Review, the New York Times, American Bystander, and elsewhere. Related: What 10 EV lovers ...
The business section of the NZ Herald is full of opinion. Among the more opinionated of all is the ex-Minister of Transport, ex-Minister of Railways, ex MP for Auckland Central (1975-93, Labour), Wellington Central (1996-99, ACT, then list-2005), ex-leader of the ACT Party, uncle to actor Antonia, the veritable granddaddy ...
Hi,Just quickly — I’m blown away by the stories you’ve shared with me over the last week since I put out the ‘Gary’ podcast, where I told you about the time my friend’s flatmate killed the neighbour.And you keep telling me stories — in the comments section, and in my ...
The first season of Rings of Power was not awful. It was thoroughly underwhelming, yes, and left a lingering sense of disappointment, but it was more expensive mediocrity than catastrophe. I wrote at length about the series as it came out (see the Review section of the blog, and go ...
Buzz from the Beehive Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden told Auckland Business Chamber members they were the first audience to hear her priorities as a minister in a government committed to cutting red tape and regulations. She brandished her liberalising credentials, saying Flexible labour markets are the ...
Chris Trotter writes – TO UNDERSTAND WHY NEWSHUB FAILED, it is necessary to understand how TVNZ changed. Up until 1989, the state broadcaster had been funded by a broadcasting licence fee, collected from every citizen in possession of a television set, supplemented by a relatively modest (compared ...
Bob Edlin writes – The Māori Party has been busy issuing a mix of warnings and threats as its expresses its opposition to interest deductibility for landlords and the plans of seabed miners. It remains to be seen whether they follow the example of indigenous litigants in Australia, ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
The New Zealand public voted for a change in direction at the 2023 general election and that is exactly what this coalition government has been delivering in its first 100 days. There was an immediate focus on the economy, easing the cost of living, cracking down on law and order ...
The Government has left the health system as an afterthought, announcing half-baked targets at the last minute of their 100-day plan, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
Kiwis are still waiting for their promised cost of living support after 100 days of a National Government that is taking us backwards, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
100 days of National taking NZ backwardsThe National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
The Government must commit to funding free and healthy school lunches, as thousands of people sign the petition to keep them, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti says. ...
If the Government was serious about moving families into public housing, they would build more houses so there is actually somewhere for people to go. ...
The free and healthy school lunches programme feeds our kids, helps them to learn, and saves families money – but it is at risk under this Government, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
The Government’s proposed changes to Firearms Prohibition Orders (FPO) add almost nothing new and are merely an attempt to distract from its plans to loosen gun laws, police spokesperson Ginny Andersen and justice spokesperson Dr Duncan Webb said. ...
The great Victorian era English politician Lord Macauley stood in the British House of Parliament and said, "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm".He understood and outlined even way back then, the significant role and influence media have in a democracy. ...
"The Government is moving quickly to realise an additional $46 million in tariff savings in the EU market this season for Kiwi exporters,” Minister for Trade and Agriculture, Todd McClay says. Parliament is set, this week, to complete the final legislative processes required to bring the New Zealand – European ...
New Zealand’s social workers are qualified, experienced, and more representative of the communities they serve, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “I want to acknowledge and applaud New Zealand’s social workers for the hard work they do, providing invaluable support for our most vulnerable. “To coincide with World ...
Cabinet has agreed to a reduced road user charge (RUC) rate for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. Owners of PHEVs will be eligible for a reduced rate of $38 per 1,000km once all light electric vehicles (EVs) move into the RUC system from 1 April. ...
Minister of Agriculture and Trade, Todd McClay, says that today’s opening of Riverland Foods manufacturing plant in Christchurch is a great example of how trade access to overseas markets creates jobs in New Zealand. Speaking at the official opening of this state-of-the-art pet food factory the Minister noted that exports ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Wellington today. “It was a pleasure to host Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his first official visit to New Zealand since 2017. Our discussions were wide-ranging and enabled engagement on many facets of New Zealand’s relationship with China, including trade, ...
Kāinga Ora – Homes & Communities has been instructed to end the Sustaining Tenancies Framework and take stronger measures against persistent antisocial behaviour by tenants, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Earlier today Finance Minister Nicola Willis and I sent an interim Letter of Expectations to the Board of Kāinga Ora. ...
Tēna koutou katoa. Greetings everyone. Thank you to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and the Honourable Simon Bridges for hosting this address today. I acknowledge the business leaders in this room, the leaders and governors, the employers, the entrepreneurs, the investors, and the wealth creators. The coalition Government shares your ...
Minister Winston Peters completed the final leg of his visit to South and South East Asia in Singapore today, where he focused on enhancing one of New Zealand’s indispensable strategic partnerships. “Singapore is our most important defence partner in South East Asia, our fourth-largest trading partner and a ...
Minister of Internal Affairs and Workplace Relations and Safety, Hon. Brooke van Velden, will travel to the Republic of Korea to represent New Zealand at the Third Summit for Democracy on 18 March. The summit, hosted by the Republic of Korea, was first convened by the United States in 2021, ...
ICNZ Speech 7 March 2024, Auckland Acknowledgements and opening Mōrena, ngā mihi nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Good morning, it’s a privilege to be here to open the ICNZ annual conference, thank you to Mark for the Mihi Whakatau My thanks to Tim Grafton for inviting me ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Lead Coordination Minister Judith Collins have expressed their deepest sympathy on the five-year anniversary of the Christchurch terror attacks. “March 15, 2019, was a day when families, communities and the country came together both in sorrow and solidarity,” Mr Luxon says. “Today we pay our respects to the 51 shuhada ...
Speech for Financial Advice NZ Conference 5 March 2024 Acknowledgements and opening Morena, Nga Mihi Nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Thanks Nate for your Mihi Whakatau Good morning. It’s a pleasure to formally open your conference this morning. What a lovely day in Wellington, What a great ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters held discussions in Jakarta today about the future of relations between New Zealand and South East Asia’s most populous country. “We are in Jakarta so early in our new government’s term to reflect the huge importance we place on our relationship with Indonesia and South ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters has announced that the Foreign Minister of China, Wang Yi, will visit New Zealand next week. “We look forward to re-engaging with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and discussing the full breadth of the bilateral relationship, which is one of New Zealand’s ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has today opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre, which will bring together KiwiRail, Auckland Transport, and Auckland One Rail to improve service reliability for Aucklanders. “The recent train disruptions in Auckland have highlighted how important it is KiwiRail and Auckland’s rail agencies work together to ...
The Government is proud to support the 10th edition of Crankworx Rotorua as the Crankworx World Tour returns to Rotorua from 16-24 March 2024, says Minister for Economic Development Melissa Lee. “Over the past 10 years as Crankworx Rotorua has grown, so too have the economic and social benefits that ...
Legislation implementing coalition Government tax commitments and addressing long-standing tax anomalies will be progressed in Parliament next week, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The legislation is contained in an Amendment Paper to the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill issued today. “The Amendment Paper represents ...
Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard has today announced that the Government has agreed to suspend the requirement for councils to comply with the Significant Natural Areas (SNA) provisions of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity for three years, while it replaces the Resource Management Act (RMA).“As it stands, SNAs ...
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay has classified the drought conditions in the Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts as a medium-scale adverse event, acknowledging the challenging conditions facing farmers and growers in the district. “Parts of Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts are in the grip of an intense dry spell. I know ...
The Government is helping farmers eradicate the significant impact of facial eczema (FE) in pastoral animals, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “A $20 million partnership jointly funded by Beef + Lamb NZ, the Government, and the primary sector will save farmers an estimated NZD$332 million per year, and aims to ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has completed a successful visit to India, saying it was an important step in taking the relationship between the two countries to the next level. “We have laid a strong foundation for the Coalition Government’s priority of enhancing New Zealand-India relations to generate significant future benefit for both countries,” says Mr Peters, ...
Cabinet has agreed to provide $7 million to ensure the 2024 ski season can go ahead on the Whakapapa ski field in the central North Island but has told the operator Ruapehu Alpine Lifts it is the last financial support it will receive from taxpayers. Cabinet also agreed to provide ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Lower fruit and vegetable prices are welcome news for New Zealanders who have been doing it tough at the supermarket, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. Stats NZ reported today the price of fruit and vegetables has dropped 9.3 percent in the 12 months to February 2024. “Lower fruit and vege ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the sixty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
The coalition Government is supporting farmers to enhance land management practices by investing $3.3 million in locally led catchment groups, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “Farmers and growers deliver significant prosperity for New Zealand and it’s vital their ongoing efforts to improve land management practices and water quality are supported,” ...
Good evening everyone and thank you for that lovely introduction. Thank you also to the Honourable Simon Bridges for the invitation to address your members. Since being sworn in, this coalition Government has hit the ground running with our 100-day plan, delivering the changes that New Zealanders expect of us. ...
Recommendations from the Climate Change Commission for New Zealand on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) auction and unit limit settings for the next five years have been tabled in Parliament, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “The Commission provides advice on the ETS annually. This is the third time the ...
The coalition Government is beginning its fight to lower building costs and reduce red tape by exempting minor building work from paying the building levy, says Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk. “Currently, any building project worth $20,444 including GST or more is subject to the building levy which is ...
Proposed changes to tax legislation to prevent the over-taxation of low-earning trusts are welcome, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The changes have been recommended by Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee following consideration of submissions on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill. “One of the ...
Assalaamu alaikum. السَّلَام عليكم In light of the holy month of Ramadan, I want to extend my warmest wishes to our Muslim community in New Zealand. Ramadan is a time for spiritual reflection, renewed devotion, perseverance, generosity, and forgiveness. It’s a time to strengthen our bonds and appreciate the diversity ...
Former Transport Minister and CEO of the Auckland Business Chamber Hon Simon Bridges has been appointed as the new Board Chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) for a three-year term, Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced today. “Simon brings extensive experience and knowledge in transport policy and governance to the role. He will ...
Good morning all, it is a pleasure to be here as Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology. It is fantastic to see how connected and collaborative the life science and biotechnology industry is here in New Zealand. I would like to thank BioTechNZ and NZTech for the invitation to address ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says he is looking forward to the day when three key water projects in Northland are up and running, unlocking the full potential of land in the region. Mr Jones attended a community event at the site of the Otawere reservoir near Kerikeri on Friday. ...
Associate Finance Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government has agreed to restore deductibility for mortgage interest on residential investment properties. “Help is on the way for landlords and renters alike. The Government’s restoration of interest deductibility will ease pressure on rents and simplify the tax code,” says ...
Sport and Recreation Minister Chris Bishop will travel to Switzerland today to attend an Executive Committee meeting and Symposium of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Mr Bishop will then travel on to London where he will attend a series of meetings in his capacity as Infrastructure Minister. “New Zealanders believe ...
Pacific Media Watch Earthwise hosts Lois and Martin Griffiths. Earthwise presenters Lois and Martin Griffiths on Plains FM 96.9 community radio talk to Dr David Robie, a New Zealand author, independent journalist and media educator with a passion for the Asia-Pacific region. David talks about the struggle to raise awareness ...
Pacific Media Watch Ismail al-Ghoul, an Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent who was held for 12 hours at Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital, says Israeli forces rounded up Palestinian journalists at the facility and made them kneel on the ground for hours, while naked and blindfolded. “The occupation forces handcuffed and blindfolded us ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Wood, Program Director, Energy, Grattan Institute chinasong, Shutterstock Electricity customers in four Australian states can breathe a sigh of relief. After two years in a row of 20% price increases, power prices have finally stabilised. In many places they’re ...
Chumbawamba have reportedly issued the deputy PM a cease-and-desist notice after he used their song 'Tubthumping' before his state of the nation speech. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deborah Lupton, SHARP Professor, Vitalities Lab, Centre for Social Research in Health and Social Policy Centre, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, UNSW Sydney kitzcorner/Shutterstock The assertion from Queensland’s chief health officer John Gerrard that ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Shutterstock Why are musicians so keen to get played on the radio? It can’t be because of the money. In Australia they are paid at rates so low they ...
"Farmers make a point not to tell our urban cousins how to live, yet Chlöe from central Auckland is hell-bent on having her say about farmers," says ACT Rural Communities spokesman Mark Cameron. “On her first day in the House as Green ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards – Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Curran, Associate Professor of Ecology, Lincoln University, New Zealand Getty Images/Gerald Corsi In the latest move to reform environmental laws in New Zealand, the coalition government has introduced a bill to fast-track consenting processes for projects deemed to ...
Uber has argued it does not have as much control over drivers as the unions suggest, and wants a judgment ruling that drivers are employees and not contractors set aside and sent back to the Employment Court. The 2022 ruling followed a three-week hearing in which four drivers sought to ...
What can and can’t be purchased by disabled people or their carers has been slashed in an effort by the Ministry of Disabled People Whaikaha to save money. The purchasing guidelines, a set of rules that sets out what can be purchased using the various streams of Government disability funding, ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Tod Wright and Hien Nguyen, Fiscal incidence in New Zealand: The effects of taxes and benefits on household incomes in tax year 2018/19 . Analyses of the distributional impact of taxation and government ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Cory Davis, Boston Hart and Benjamin Stubbing, Household cost-of-living impacts from the Emissions Trading Scheme and using transfers to mitigate regressive outcomes . This Analytical Note ...
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here is the promised musical-treat..to start yr day..
..it is someone most will not have either heard of..or heard..
..and this is my personal song to david cunnliffe…
..and as for the singer..?
..be amazed at both her killer voice..
..and how beautiful she was..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgnXZopKTqI
(and tomorrow..i will serve up the perfect coalition-song…
..for the green party..
..any guesses..?)
phillip ure..
Hee hee -liked it. What about Nina Simone’s “Put a little sugar in my bowl” as well?
For the greens – how about “You’ll never walk alone”?
Interesting question, Phil. Given Cunliffe’s drilling stance, I’m picking it’ll be The Kinks’ Stop your Sobbing.
jan is warmest..
..as it involves the consequences/outcomes from movement…
..and nina simone..?..
..whoar..!
..i found this last night…
..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfJRX-8SXOs
(it has great audio..)
phillip ure…
Love it!
The PM is going to announce far reaching systemic changes that are evidence based on best practise latter on this morning.
That will be interesting.
I have just read the dim post posting about the hiring of principals to sort out the schools.
“But those initiatives have been overshadowed by controversy, including Education Minister Hekia Parata’s failed budget move to reduce teacher numbers, the bungled reorganisation of Christchurch schools and the abrupt resignation of Education Secretary Lesley Longstone. ”
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/9640616/Nats-plan-financial-lures-to-turn-around-struggling-schools
Notice how there was no mention of the ongoing Novapay debacle, what a shock.
Evidence based.
I still can’t fathom how forcing teacher to do lots of paper work will assist students except as a means of wealthy schools (who do not have to fill in the forms or have paid help to do it) to leap ahead of the state sector.
So first burden the bottom schools with national standards, then send in the shock managers who will primarily have to enforce the education ministries policy guidance. Now looking back at the thrust of Keys reforms, less teachers, messing teacher pay and jobs around. Yeah, I get it, its just more of the same, just with extra spittle and a hard rub. Expecting a genie to jump out, that the woes of the tail will magically disappear now Key’s on the job, that takes gullibility of an astonishing degree. And its not like the right hasn’t played this bait and switch before, they said trust them they will produce growth, and they did, but it wasn’t them, its was just a huge rush gush of cheap high density fuel and the switch was not managing the transition rather claiming the transition was a chance to do nothing about society (though step in when the bankers had needs). And where has the wealth of the last thirty years ended up? In the hands of the 0.01%. Its the media damn it, that makes us believe we can have egalitarianism and fewer and fewer massively overwhelmed by wealth, its actually an oxymoron to saying an unequal society will maintain the egalitarianism. Our fathers,grandfathers, fought a war against those who would destroy egalitarianism. And here we are Key policies of support first for the richest, and poor people are responsible for their poverty, nothing to do with the choices the wealthy are making. What happen to discovering the choices poor people make and making sure they have real choices like the wealthy. Climate Change, no nothing to do with wealthy making choices, its poor people who have little influence, little wealth, little time…
ooh.!..aero..!
..let the return-button be your friend..eh..?
..it’s like trying to read the runes on a brick..
..the white-stuff/space is free..eh..?
..and no trees are chopped down for it..
..so fill yer boots..!..
..eh..?
phillip ure..
wow
phillip ure is giving people advice on how to lay out their comments so as to aid understanding?
I guess that’s an auto-win for aerobubble.
Attacks on the messenger, and then distracting the thread, based solely on your own inability to fathom text that you must of understood to be so annoyed. You really need to read what I said, yet, you couldn’t, and I’m supposed to care. See another error on your part, assumption that I care.
It hurts Key that his whitewash of sending in managers, after introducing onerous bureaucracy, and whose previous policies have messed around the education sector.
Always supporting the private education and dumbing down the state system.
What’s the matter with you aerobubble. People are interested in what you say if you aren’t too high and mighty to make it decipherable. I guess you aren’t talking to yourself.
Had this debate before. No I don’t care. Its my loss not yours. Oh and since you are still having problems with comprehending this, I suggest social and english classes, social since you seem to believe people owe you comprehensible statements in a political arena (like Key would ever do such a thing when asked, to clarify himself). As for the notion that I must be talking to myself because no one could possible decrypt (or read between the lines) is just so pathetic an argument, like you know everything about everyone, are you still three?
Hi just put a break every couple of sentences. Phil u is pretty ‘spaced out’ but the solidity of the wall of words makes it hard to sort out meaning.
I use a laptop, time poor, or just lazy, but clearly no english mayor, but its all good. Since speach is better said, than silence. People can read something else if it bugs them. An dif they do need to read it, then surely they should respect the writer already. Unless of course its some dull person who can’t specify what they aren’t understanding. Sure they could go back to school.
Thank you, some go defensive, others like you do the right thing and observe some of the problem, i.e. I don’t space out enough, and add to the debate rather than just plugging the debate with how they are not understand and being unreasonable in not having the clarity of mind to express their problem better.
does anyone know where/when key is speaking in west ak..?
..i thought i’d go and see him..and then cunnliffe..
..and then work it up into some sorta tale of two speeches..
..that’s the plan..anyway..
..phillip ure..
some cloistered dungeon full of businessmen
look for the sulphur plumes and you’ll find it for sure
@ freedom..heh..!
..and for anyone interested in expressing a point of view to the prime minister…
..john keys’ office told me those ‘sulphur-fumes’ will be emanating from deep in working class territory..(that rightwing/up-yours! s.o.h.again..?..)
..at the trust stadium in west ak..
..at 11.45 am..
..phillip ure..
Business Forum at Trusts Stadium.
$90.00 – Probably invitation only – got an expensive suit?
Yay! Already Cunliffe’s is free and just a speech.
And where does the $90.00 go??? Not to the poor sods who have to serve food to this bunch of self interested fools. Hope they spit in the soup!
Fight Club
phillip u A tale of two ditties!
tory-trout kathryn rich on tv one-breakfast..
..defending/pimping for..the energy-drink-pushers..
..ew..!
..just fucken ‘ew!’..
..every word out of her mouth just spin/lies..
..(must not interfere with ‘markets’..eh..?..under any circumstances..)
big big proveable ‘rich’-lies..
1)..there is only the caffeine from one coffee in them..
2)..the pushers ‘only market to over 18 yr olds’..
..kathryn rich
..diabetes-pusher..
phillip ure..
So that’s where Tories work after they leave parliament?
Helping out the multinational corporates in another way.
with the now clear/proven health-outcomes from consuming this addictive ‘product’..
..this (low-rent ‘speedball’) of sugar and caffeine..
(diabetes/obesity..?..anyone..?..)
..rich has all the ‘qualities’/’standards’ (pun-intentional) of a p-pusher…
..how could she not..
..and you could argue..that the original ‘speedball’..ie heroin/cocaine mixed together..
..is only marginally worse than this crap..
..as a lifetime of caffeine/sugar will end ‘bad’…
..(and we have an obesity-problem…?..anyone still wondering why..?..
..i’d regulate these fuckers..and all the other pushers of salt/sugar/fat-laden crap disguised/marketed as ‘food’..
..right out the fucken door..
..’cos they sure as hell won’t clean up their act any other way..
..and a new benchmark are-you-fucken-kidding-me?..
..(from the mouth of (that’s!)-rich..)
..’industry-standards’..
..and their policy/practice of:
..’get them addicted to our product..when they are still young..and we will have them for life’..
..peddlers of misery/death..
..all of them…)
phillip ure..
and fuck tvone..!
..they have repackaged richs’-lies..
.and are presenting it as fucken ‘news’..
..(crates of product for the crew..?..)
..craven slaves to their sugar-pushing advertisers…
phillip ure..
“..and you could argue..that the original ‘speedball’..ie heroin/cocaine mixed together…is only marginally worse than this crap.”
Like to see you argue how injecting heroin and cocaine is somehow nearly equivalent to chopping back a few cans of V
same way he thinks that dairy farming equates to full-on antebellum slavery.
@ max fletcher..
..1)..both are addictive..
..2)..long term use of both has serious health-implication..
3)..continued use of both will lead to premature-death..
..(and in fact..if you were using unadulterated heroin/cocaine…
..you will become addicted..as with the sugar/caffeine..
..but it could be argued that heroin/cocaine dosen’t give you diabetes etc..)
..the comparisons are obvious..
phillip ure..
So? One has a far greater rate of mortality than the other – so great is the disparity between death by heroin and cocaine and death by caffeine and sugar that to make any connection is vapid and stupid
@ max..
..given the relative numbers using both different groups of drugs..
..and the proven causing of diabetes etc..from sugar-addiction..
..many many more would be dying prematurely from the consequences of a heavy sugar-addiction..
..mix in caffeine..
..mix in meat..
..mix in animal fats
..mix in dairy-fats etc..
..and you have a cocktail recipie for preventable-disease..
..and a premature/nasty death..
..how could you not..?
..so that ‘disparity’ of which you speak..
..is the exact opposite of what you claim..
..phillip ure..
If all the people in the world who currently ingest meat, sugar and caffeine were to switch to coke and heroin I think you’d find the world would became a far more unhealthy and terrible place.
I am starting to see a new meme appearing.Yesterday Michelle Boag said NZ was an egalitarian society on the Mora’s dreadful Panel ( which blew me away).
Then today on Radio NZ a story at about 6.40 mentioned Key talking about changes to education proposed by the Nats) in which Key. Have the Nat spin machine decided to play a game which blames the education system for us not being as egalitarian as we can be? As if Key’s kids, brought up in Parnell, Omaha and Hawaii are equal with a kid brought up in Porirua. Is this the way they plan to blunt the levels of poverty and inequality in the country? By saying we are an egalitarian society. If Mora’s and Robertson’s silence to such comments is anything to go by, the media will not challenge such ideas and simply repeat them.
So that’s two times the Nats have used this meme.
“Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: ‘Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action’.”
― Ian Fleming, Goldfinger
The egalitarian meme is there to assuage the conscience of the top 20%. Means that they’ve picked up that the inequality meme is brought too much traction.
and to try to con the other 80%. My guess is that a number of the tory activists here are being hit with the same stick as every other average NZer.
@ paul..
..yeah..spin-merchants edwards and boag on that panel –
– had me both face-palming and eye-clawing at the same time..
..truly hideous people…truly hideous ‘views’..
..(boag poo-poohing the idea of giving aid to third world countries..
(cos the money ‘isn’t accountable’..see..!..beyond hideous..!..
..q.e.d..!..)
..with edwards providing one laugh-out-loud-moment..
..with his threats t sue anyone who calls him a ‘spin-merchant’..
..even fellow spin-merchant boag laughed him out the door on that one…
..i tired of it..
..so left the room..and did something far more important/relevant..
..(like laundry?..)
(oh..and edwards has a problem that is fretting him somewhat..
..he is looking for another house..preferably on a beach..
.’cos he likes having two houses to move between..
..so if anyone out there could help..?..)
..brian edwards..both the socialist/left-winger and spin-merchant..
..you are having when you don’t have a ‘socialist/left-winger and spin-merchant’
..eh..?
..and as with breakfast television..if there is no improvements..(and it ain’t looking good so far..)
..i don’t think i will be able to endure that ‘highest-rating hour of radio’..
..for that much longer..
..these same people..all just saying the same things they have been saying..since forever..
..over and fucken over again…
..(it’s like being trapped in a gif..)
..(that is my one-line review of afternoons on nat-rad..it is tired/boring/cliched..
..’trip-to-mars..?..(hey..!..heads-up..!..way past time to retire that wheeze..eh..?..if mora has to dig any deeper to find a way to ‘work’ it that he hasn’t done a hundred times before..he will need a drilling-permit..
..just fucken talk/interview..drop the stoopid construct..)
..and mora is increasingly sounding like he is just going thru the motions..
..and i am fast losing interest..
..phillip ure..
RNZ should be better than Breakfast TVG.
It isn’t when Mora’s show is on.
@ paul..
..with hindsight..
..the summer crew on both morning and afternoon – were far more interesting to listen to..
..than the incumbants..
..and boy..does that panel-guest-list need a good clear/clean-out..
..are there any of them that you think will have anything ‘fresh’ to say..
..the only real reason to listen to them is to get choleric at the unthinking rightwing-bullshit from most of them..
..then..speaking for ‘the left’..we have pagani..?
..beyond fucken irony..eh..?
..phillip ure..
The Panel so far.
Measure for yourself how representative this group is.
Monday
Andrew Clay
NZ comedian
Elleen Read
Business editor at Stuff, a neoliberal news source.
Tuesday
Graham Bell
Ex policeman and television presenter on Police Ten 7.
Overtly right wing views…
Bernard Hickey
Economist.
Jim gets Bernard on to ask for personal advice about mortgages.
Wednesday
Michelle Boag. Leader of one of one of National’s factions.
Brian Edwards.
A Herne Bay socialist. Friends with Michelle Boag. Always on the Panel with Boag.
On 23 September 2009 Edwards claimed that “Public Libraries are just a Form of Theft” [arguing for “user pays” library books as a compensation to authors.
So if Labour is not completely adverse to deep sea oil drilling then what is their position on getting money out of it?
National’s deal with the oil companies is that NZ gets 5% of any profits, right?
Is Labour happy to go along with that?
Edit: OK, answered my own question…
Labour is considering a model similar to Norway, where the government receives royalties from the proceeds of drilling operations, he says, but no decisions have been made.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/233961/labour-stance-on-deep-sea-drilling
Personally, I’d retool Solid Energy and turn them into a state owned exploration/drilling company. That way, we’d get both royalties and the profits. Some of those profits could in turn be used to investigate how we can phase carbon based energy out of the NZ environment.
Good thinking. Did you come up with that yourself?
Yep, vto, but it’s also partly a distillation of the opinions of others in Labour. I think most LP activists are of the opinion that this kind of energy is both not sustainable and bad for us. The question is timeframe and replacement.
Great idea but make it a govt department. Had quite enough of this “state-owned company” bullshit.
+1
Too right, felix. Nationalise the lot, and refocus on job creation and delivering wealth to the nation.
For those concerned about climate change and sustainablility, socio-economic inequality, democracy and poverty, the way Labour appears to be moving is worrying.
Policy announced on Monday will have to be radical. With the troubling recent pronouncements, it’s looking increasingly likely that Cunliffe is not and was not sincere and is preparing to make soothing noises and to chuck a few pathetic crumbs, while hinting with a big wink at the left that if we just keep schtum, he’ll wow us after the election is safely in the bag.
If he does so, he will prove himself to be just another self-interested fraud as far as I’m concerned.
“For those concerned about climate change and sustainablility, socio-economic inequality, democracy and poverty, the way Labour appears to be moving is worrying.”
No not at all, they should just not bother voting for Labour/National and should deliver their vote to the Greens.
How much policy will actually be announced on Monday? I thought it was just going to be a speech giving broad outlines.
I’m willing to give Cunliffe a decent chance. Lord knows that Shearer got plenty of chances.
True. But I’m starting to want to say something like, give him another 6 months, he’ll come right…
How long do we have to wait?
Time is ticking away, yes. But he has had far less than 6m in the job.
What do you think the hold up is?
So what do you want him to do, Weka? Just so we’re clear where your disappointments lie.
lol
In case you’re not being completely facetious, he could make a committment to some things that give a clear indication of a shift away from neoliberalism. The standard is littered with suggestions, the most frequent one being a clear out of caucus. Concrete policy moves would be good too.
DC said yesterday that they were scrapping 2 social policies to use the money better elsewhere for kiwis. On Monday I’d like to see something substantial on what the replacements are, not just generalised rhetoric about what NZ needs.
I’m not being facetious.
Let’s be realistic with the timeline so far. Cunliffe didn’t get the leadership till near the end of the year, nothing happens in politics over the summer holiday period and we’re only just coming out of that. So that’s largely why we haven’t heard much to this point in time.
The clear out of caucus just isn’t something you can do quickly.
If he does turn out to be all piss and wind I definitely won’t be voting for Labour.
At least we haven’t had any bene on the roof anecdotes yet….
imo….unless New Zealanders take control of oil exploration ( as in Norway) and receive 80% of the profits of the oil , the risks of exploration to NZ coasts and the problems of adding to global warming by fossil fuels …..make it not worth while
In other words a few piffly jobs for NZers…. in exchange for oil drilling ( and all the dirty environmental risks and social downside are ours ) …..while all the PROFITS go OUT of the country into the hands of multi national oil companies… ( plus the probability of a few backhanders and shares for the compliant )….as is likely under National …… is theft from NZers!
….Key’s National oil deals and proposals are pathetic and should not be countenanced
….Labour has a lot of work to do to get an acceptable Norwegian model deal on oil… for ALL NZers ….anything else is unacceptable!
Maybe the Labour Party should get Farouk al-Kasam out to advise them on how to go about it. He is an oil expert and has seen the downside of oil drilling in many countries both environmentally and socially. He helped Norway take control of their own oil rather than being a passive ‘victim’ of the oil multi nationals
Farouk al-Kasim, the Iraqi geologist who has been more responsible than anyone else for Norway’s success as an oil power.
Farouk al-Kasim, the man behind Norway’s oil success | TIME.com http://business.time.com/2009/08/31/how-socialized-health-care-made-norway-an-oil-power/#ixzz2rA0UIIyy
Chooky-Norway has 67% of the oil/gas industry through Statoil (and so gets 67% of revenue as well as some jobs from the other 33%).
Labour made noises about looking at this model when it announced the drilling policy-looks good to me.
Yeah but NZ doesn’t have a statoil, right?
geoff-Labour needs to set this up. Kiwioil perhaps?
Will cost some money as the state would then be up for 67% of the cost of any exploration, but this is no bad thing as this may slow exploration and Labour really shouldn’t be seen to be promoting drilling.
I’m not convinced that digging up deep sea oil off our coast isn’t a very bad idea. I would need to see a very convincing case before I would support it.
3 points…
1. If a spill occurred it would cause significant damage to our ecology and existing economic enterprises.
2. There is a risk that it financially might not pay off, a risk with any very large project.
3. It definitely would contribute negatively to climate change.
If it is a very bad idea then there’s no point setting up a kiwioil.
We should be requiring that all of the equipment and personnel necessary to contain an oil well blow out is in place before any wells are drilled. That should be an absolute minimum. Anything less than that is just being cheap and hoping that nothing will go wrong.
We do all of the initial exploration anyway and then we give that information, free, to the multinationals.
@ Bearded Git…..great…the more every NZer gets the better…(eg for free tertiary education, health , retirement, living allowance, start up companies, public transport , railway upgrade, cleaning up rivers, full employment, safeguarding DOC estate … etc etc )
@ geoff….well imo that is why the Labour Party need to work and get advice on how to get a get a Statoil
Socialism for cola and sugar industry.
Subsidizing giant corporations and denying those who could do with elective surgery.
Just dumb plain dumb we might as well take seat belts brakes airbags out of cars according to Rich bitches ideology.
An ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure.
Seat Belts and Airbags merely give a sense of security to encourage people to drive badly.
jcuknz
Might be right for you. But if I had them I’d feel safer in my car when you’re around.
Looking over Audrey Young’s recent articles, I am having serious trouble differentiating them from a run of the mill National Party press release.
Yes, freedon, but read the comments, using the Most Liked sort option. You have to go along way down before you find the couple of Key supporter comments, with the overwhelming majority of the 52 comments very anti-Key.
the honesty in the comments is the only benefit from her contributions to journalism 🙂
Not just hers; same is true of a number of other opinion writers for the Herald. I find I get a better insight by reading the comments using the Most Liked function. IMO there has been a considerable seachange in the comments on Opinion articles over the last year; and not to Key’s liking.
Some overseas boffin talking on Radionz about how we can do education better, I nearly said batter. Freudian slip eh! It must be great to have a job like that touring round countries peddling yourself as a master or mistress of your subject. Funny how governments listen to some but not others.
Key says that NZ education is doing well but NACT is going to bring in better systems and they are sure people will welcome them. Why don’t governments do what The People want? Not whatever great idea that can advance them personally or Partyily?
What a fuc..en arrogant lot they are. Educated holediggers. They know what they know and keep on doing it over and over like an autistic child repetitively and stuck in one place. And are they doing what is needed? Something may be needed but they are unlikely to come up with a workable or elegant solution because they only know about their hole.
Labour needs to follow that old WW1 quip ‘If you know a better ‘ole go to it’. We can guide them to that hole! (Source – Bruce Bairnsfather artist.)
Roy Morgan Poll
Maybe not so accurate as taken when most hard working Kiwis are on holiday away from their phones. Lets face it they are the core National vote:
“This latest New Zealand Roy Morgan Poll on voting intention was conducted by telephone – both landline and mobile telephone, with a NZ wide cross-section of 1,509 electors from January 6 – 19, 2014. Of all electors surveyed 4% (unchanged) didn’t name a party”.
Just food for thought but feel free to ‘vent’ at will.
Funny that – when I read ‘hard working kiwis’ or ‘taxpayers’ I feel a blinkered automatic message is coming through from what passes for someone’s brain.
When trainers don’t want racehorses distracted by surrounding and discombobulating activities and people they put blinkers on them. Seems like RWNJs do the same. It facilitates focus and gives them a better chance of winning. Something to learn from that?
Who is really away from their phones these days? And RM randomly call both landlines and mobiles.
Nice try though…
“hard working Kiwis are … the core National vote:”
thats really what you wanted to say isnt it?
Do you really think they don’t take their mobile phones on holiday with them?
Using mobile phone ringing is one of the reasons Roy Morgan polls tend to lean more to the left – they catch people with a life as well as those who don’t have land-lines
very many hard working kiwis don’t get a break during that period – they have to be back at work.
Keys education policy is an admission has failed Pisa results for which shcieher is a member has shown has been a failure .
So Now we are Now seeing the coverup before the election.
Hekia Parata failure
Anne Tolley complete failure.
Stephen Joyce complete failure
Ladder pullers
Yup. I’ve noticed Key’s talking about NZ being an “egalitarian society”. It bloody well is not. Not any more. Far from it. So that’s going to be one of the new right wing propaganda themes for this year. Expect to hear it over and over again. At the same time stuff.co is carrying an article about graduating nurses not being able to get jobs http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/9639314/Nurses-terrifying-time-job-hunting. No money in the health system is the reason for that.
My girlfriend’s job-hunting. Had to quit her last job because of work stress – exacerbating a heart condition. Hasn’t had a break for the last 3 years because all her jobs have been temporary for only six months so she never qualifies for annual leave and hasn’t been able to get any time off.
A different nobody in a high pressure call centre somewhere in the bowels of WINZ rings her every week. She has to be ready to answer their calls at any time. Feels like being harassed by uncaring robots mindlessly running a programme. How many job interviews has she had this week? Not their fault. They probably hate it but that’s what they have to do to earn a living – otherwise they’d be on the receiving end of the very thing they’re doing every day themselves.
There are fuck all jobs around, the conditions are shit, and she and hundreds of unemployed are being forced to apply for jobs they’re not qualified for and know they won’t get, and all they’re doing is stressing her out, making it harder to find a job, and making her feel like absolute shit. Her health is suffering as well. She can’t afford doctor’s visits. Nobody but me cares. All the media reports is waffle about the economy picking up. Sick of this bullshit. We have to get rid of these arseholes in government.
They are wrecking our society while they are creaming it themselves and they don’t give a shit.
Arfamo
Kia kaha. You are doing good. We are all working for Labour to introduce better conditions for people, reasonable expectations, and acknowledgement of people’s qualities, not having policy based according to sick, derisive, negative ideas thought up by vicious, hateful people.
Can you copy this over to David Cunliffe’s thread as an example of what we feel in our hearts must be alleviated straight away when he achieves government power. It is very straight, informative and something to carry in mind as an example of a large group who are in urgent need of a change in policy not now, but yesterday.
WINZ are getting worse and worse 🙁
Arfamo, does she have a supportive GP? See if she can get on sickness benefit for a while (or whatever the call the second tier (health issues) of the job seeker benefit now). If she can get that, then the requirements should change and not be so arduous and insane. Fortunately a letter from a GP still carries some weight with WINZ.
John Key’s “big announcement’s” – he’s saying they’ll be based on models from overseas – I’m picking more of the user-chargers/Charter Schools, with funding going to the private sector.
If there are changes being made, let’s see the “big picture”, not just the rhetoric. But remember this marks yet another “change” in 6 years in power – is this how we want our children taught? Constant experimentation?
I have a relative in WA It has been 44C degrees there. We are fortunate not to have such temperatures here. It seems, from reports on the radio this morning, that many of our rivers and swimming holes are polluted with faeces and dangerous to health.
We know how to poop in our own backyard. Even dogs and cats know to go into someone else’s to do their business. We aren’t as clever as them or even dung beetles or ants.
What a shame – all that difficulty for women giving birth because of the large size of the baby’s heads to presumably accommodate brains, when all we need is the head the size of a fly to go about our business of fouling our surroundings.
Something smells at The Press in ChCh.
Any articles remotely critical of the Dairy Industry in Canterbury are pulled from the Press site within hours of first appearing.
The latest today ,regarding Ecan elections.
WTF is going on?
Yeah it’s a fucking disgrace. The decrease in quality of drinking water in Canterbury is appalling. Why aren’t Cantabrians more fucked off that they’ve gone from drinking pristine water to watered down cowshit?
You might be surprised at the depth of the anger over that whole issue – removing democracy, stealing water, shitting up the rivers. The fact that people are not shouting in the streets does not reflect the depth of feeling. Methinks the farmers have got themselves offside with all others for a very long time to come over this theft.
Every person is aware of it. Most every person is disgusted at the actions taken by this government on behalf of the farmers.
Enough to vote the tories out of Canterbury districts though?
I had a chat with a person from Kaikoura the other day about whether people there were pissed off enough about the oil drilling enough to vote out National. She seemed to think that it still wasn’t enough to stop the traditional voters from voting National, even though they were extremely fucked off about it.
Imo yes, in various enclaves when combined with earthquake issues, certain quarters will give the Nats the biggest dumping of their lives methinks.
As for traditional Nat voters – yes, they will likely stick their heads in the sand and ignore, while at the same time working up some poor weak excuses for this horrid lot. Nothing changes.
I hope you’re correct.
Yep. Conservative types can simmer quietly and unobtrusively for a long time on issues of anti-democracy and bad governance, but when they boil over it’s quite something to behold.
At least Christchurch will go back to Labour, along with the new Council.
So should be easier to get things done.
Water is great in Canterbury. We all drink straight from the tap and love it. Inventing false stories helps nobody.
Wrong
I’m not inventing false stories, Manu. Maybe where you are the water is fine, Manu (or maybe you’ve got the taste buds of a bulldozer), but the water where I am, (Canterbury, not Christchurch) has changed significantly for the worse (on par with Dunedin water) and I now have to filter it.
Manu writes such tiresome comments far too often.
i would also put $$ on him not living in cantebury in the first place
When you get a job and have some money, I’ll take that bet.
Paul, you are so manly attacking people through the net. I thought better of you.
You should know that Dunedin has top grade water …. I used to only drink bottled water but now I drink nothing but tap water … it tastes fine.
Dunedin has top grade water ….it tastes fine.
HAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!
best laugh I’ve had all day!
thanks.
Funny when ideology gets in the way of facts.
I am regularly in Dunedin. I did my tertiary education in Dunedin. I know exactly what Dunedin water tastes like and it is nasty.
I grew up in Canterbury where the water quality used to be superb. People who grew up in Dunedin often don’t know any better. Then again I know plenty of born and bred Dunedinites who filter their water because of the disgusting taste.
Still is in CHCH.
Dull and duller.
Woops! Manu was wrong. We have a team working 20K’s north of Rangiora and the home owner served them bottled water. So my bad.
This film explains a lot…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SAUborWbPw
It’s a coo!
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11188949
– Shearers a smart guy
Sadly you aren’t.
Well thats the union-dominated education system for you I guess
Puckish Rogue
That is a great article, Shearer is a very smart and honest man.
Not surprising then that those with the entitlement mentality white anted him
Nope, that sounds like shear bloody stupidity. Humans are social creatures and the exist within a community. None of them can be self-sufficient – only the community can be and it does that through each individual working with others to provide everything that a community, and the individuals within it, needs.
MEMO Populuxe1:
Time to train your guns on this snitch “Caesar”.
In 2012 you took a few minutes off from your boots-and-all participation in the Soviet-style character assassination campaign against Julian Assange to have a snide dig at John Pilger for his “personal obsession” with seeking justice for whistle-blower Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning. [1] Last year you sneeringly dismissed Edward Snowden as “a bored IT drone with a narcissistic personality disorder wanting to play 007”. [2] It is clear that dissenters, whistle-blowers, journalists and truth-tellers in general are an insult, a scourge and a vexation to responsible government supporters like you and your friends.
Now it’s time for you to come out against another whistle-blower. The recent release of photos of atrocities in Syria were taken by a defector (or in Populuxe-speak, a “snitch”) calling himself “Caesar”. [3] For argument’s sake, let us assume these are not fabrications like the U.S. claims that Iran used nerve gas in 1988 [4], or the Timisoara massacre photos [5] or the Hill and Knowlton con job about Iraqi soldiers torturing Kuwaiti civilians. [6] Let us assume that the “Caesar” revelations are genuine. If they are, surely the likes of you and your ideological soul-mates that haunt this mostly excellent forum need to be employing every rhetorical trick in the book to undermine and demean and ridicule him (or her).
And if you and your friends do NOT denounce this latest whistleblower, you need to answer this simple question: why the hell not?
[1] http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-04062012/#comment-478939
[2] http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-10062013/#comment-646568
[3] http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/caesars-revenge-assad-photographer-exposes-syrian-regimes-mass-torture-1433131
[4] http://www.matrixmasters.com/wtc/chomsky/prospects/prospects.html
[5] http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1990-03-13/news/9001210292_1_grave-nicolae-ceausescu-bodies
[6] http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/LIE/HK/HK2.html
Because even if all your assumptions were correct, some of us don’t have your exquisite cocktail of delusion and obsession.
One of those aforementioned comrades of Populuxe1 has chosen rather unwisely to wade into waters where he’s perhaps not too confident….
Because even if all your assumptions were correct,
Which assumptions are you talking about?
…some of us don’t have your exquisite cocktail
Uh-oh! Use of an elegant metaphor signals trouble….
…of delusion and obsession.
Sadly, it’s a fizzer, however. Let’s skip over the indolent and vacuous “obsession” jibe and get to the only substantial point of your post: what part of my post constitutes a “delusion”?
Every assumption you made in comment 16.
“Obsession” seems a pretty reasonable description for someone resurrecting an 18 month old blog argument.
As for delusion, the easiest example is the last sentence in your first paragraph: “It is clear that dissenters, whistle-blowers, journalists and truth-tellers in general are an insult, a scourge and a vexation to responsible government supporters like you and your friends.” If you believe that comment to be true, then your perception lacks accuracy, therefore you are delusional. But really your inflated sense of importance counts, too.
Every assumption you made in comment 16.
Such as? You really need to be specific, my friend.
“Obsession” seems a pretty reasonable description for someone resurrecting an 18 month old blog argument.
So our friend no longer goes after journalists and political dissenters, taking the lead of such moral giants as Bashar Obama and William Hague? That’s a welcome development—assuming I have assumed correctly.
As for delusion, the easiest example is the last sentence in your first paragraph: “It is clear that dissenters, whistle-blowers, journalists and truth-tellers in general are an insult, a scourge and a vexation to responsible government supporters like you and your friends.” If you believe that comment to be true, then your perception lacks accuracy, therefore you are delusional.
Populuxe1, and several others who probably have the sense to regret it, did indeed go after dissenters, whistle-blowers, journalists and truth-tellers—as I showed in my footnotes. Maybe the others, including your good self, were more benign, but Populuxe1 certainly exhibited all those attitudes toward the targeted individuals.
But really your inflated sense of importance counts, too.
Could you back that up? It looks, unfortunately, like another lazy and groundless accusation.
I am being specific.
Again, assuming that your characterization of pop’s arguments is correct, your question is weird. If pop’s arguments had indeed continued to this day in that light, then you wouldn’t need to use 18 month old examples. So either you’re obsessed with that particular comment and correct in your assumption, or you’re obsessed with that particular comment even though it’s no longer relevant (and indeed makes your demands for criticism of “Caesar” even more odd).
Nope – you showed two comments a year apart, one questioning pilger’s position (unmitigated gall! That’s persecution, right there!) and one questioning snowden’s motives (calling him a “bored IT drone” – egad, such cruel character assassination!). Hardly “going after” dissenters.
sure.
By the way: you’re not my friend, buddy.
Okay, my friend, we’ll take your word for it. I accept Populuxe1 is a genuinely nice guy and would never join in officially sanctioned head-stompings. Nor would he, were he to have found himself living in Rwanda twenty years ago, have heeded the exhortations of Interahamwes radio and got hold of a machete and gone looking for Tutsis. He’s a reformed character, which is good to know.
I take my hat off to Populuxe1….
http://pad2.whstatic.com/images/thumb/2/23/Show-Respect-Step-2.jpg/670px-Show-Respect-Step-2.jpg
By the way: you’re not my friend, buddy.
Doh!
Correct response is I’m not your buddy, guy!.
But what could I expect from a delusional fuck who escalates someone using the phrase “IT drone” to the level of actively participating in genocide. 🙄
But what could I expect from a delusional fuck who escalates someone using the phrase “IT drone” to the level of actively participating in genocide.
Except he didn’t just use that phrase, did he? It was part of his ongoing program of parroting everything he could to disparage those officially sanctioned targets.
You say he would have behaved differently in different circumstances; I doubt it. The guys wielding the machetes in 1994 were not monsters, they were simply doing what the regime encouraged them to do. Just like our friend.
There are light years between taking a machete to someone and simply saying that they’re probably walter mitties. If you can’t see that yawning chasm, you have yet again astonished me with the extent of your delusion and conceit.
Hello all,
I am an ESL teacher by profession but have just been made redundant yet again in an industry that appears to be on its last legs in NZ at the moment.
For some time I have been pondering a career change to something politically related as I have built considerable experience over the years with political campaigns and as a union delegate so I am treating this situation as a catalyst. Thus, I am seeking any opportunities that you may be aware of in the Auckland area, including low paid positions in the right field, to get formal experience. More details of my political background can be found on my LinkedIn profile. http://www.linkedin.com/pub/alex-pirie/23/85b/98a
In the short term I am also interested in relevant voluntary work as I have about two weeks left to run on my Auckland AT Hop card so transport is not an issue until that runs out. I am thinking my skill set would be helpful in an LEC or MPs office or similar but all suggestions will be considered. Thank you in advance for any assistance provided.
Good on ya and good luck to you, Outrider. Can I suggest you email the NZCTU? They may know of work going in Ak unions. Also Unite might be keen on a pair of helping hands.
Thanks for that. I will email the NZCTU and see if Unite need any help at the moment but know they are always on a tight budget.
Executive principals, leading groups of up to 10 schools.
1. nice size for awarding out property and cleaning contracts etc.
2. and of course diminishing the importance of the connection between school principals and their teaching teams within each school.
3. a conduit for the Government and ministry in a top down regime.
4. leading to easier school mergers, first step being united boards where schools remain on two sites initially etc.
Also muddies responsibilities – who has final say, boards of trustees or executive principal?
“lead teacher” vs head of department and principal?
“change principal” vs board of trustees?
The merger/contracting out is a nice theory – they definitely have ulterior motives for this management merry-go-round
I think we need to consider that all this tinkering is part of a smokescreen.
The Ministry realises that education is entering a totally new phase.
The traditional single cell classroom is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.
Technology, whether we like it or not, is going to change schooling as we know it.
The government knows it and does not want to be left with a lot of redundant school grounds/buildings, issues of falling rolls etc.
They want to be in a position to begin to dispose of these “assets” sooner than later.
Another story to compliment 100% pure NZ.
What is happening in Wellington and why was the story downplayed so much by the council, glad to live in Auckland where we can utilise our harbour for fishing and swimming 🙂
Anything over 280cfu is considered an unacceptable risk to health but Greater Wellington Regional Council recorded 69,000cfu on January 26 last year. Just a tad beyond The Acceptable level ! Mmmm
However, when The Dominion Post reported the closure on February 5, water quality was not the primary reason given.
Yesterday, Pike said the safety of rugby fans had contributed to the decision to close the platform but “that was somewhat coincidental because the issue was about the water quality”.
He could not say why he had pointed to the sevens as the reason at the time but said there were security concerns and the two events “overlapped each other”. on February 5, water quality was not the primary reason given.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/9639357/Pollution-at-dive-platform-off-the-scale
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/9641370/Beach-bacteria-levels-pose-risk
I’m sure key can find a scientist who will say it’s safe for him to swim in.
In fact, key should go take a dip this afternoon.
Great photo op. Swim and catch a meal within Wellington harbour and live to tell of the tale. Especially as we read that Wellington is the 7th cleanest city in the world. Either : the world is a bad filthy place, wellington has gone backwards or don’t believe what you read.
http://listtoptens.com/top-10-cleanest-cities-in-the-world/
Very telling only two people cared enough to comment on this if it was cow shit in there they would be all over it.Look the other way towns and cities are not polluting, hell we wont even test down stream from them.
well, no – some farmer would have stimulated a debate by claming that it was all fine and that people pissed off by it were anti-industry.
As it is I know that Dunedin, for example, has spent hundreds of thousands if not millions trying to address the discharge problem, and actively monitors water quality.
Finally someone admits that towns and cities have contributed majorly to the degradation of rivers and streams, good on dunners maybe some day we will get a full picture of how much damage cities and towns have done and are still doing to the waterways
nobody’s ever denied it.
I seem to recall that every regional authority is responsible for monitoring its water quality – hence the dive platform being closed.
But 5 million cattle shitting onto the ground next to a waterway is different to a binary sewage treatment and disposal system for 4 million people.
National will FIX education by getting Coloin Crag to enrol a gang of bible bashers with degrees from mail order universities to run evryfing.
Chris Finlayson wants to ban the word ‘community’ – why?
http://readingthemaps.blogspot.co.nz/2014/01/chris-finlaysons-battle-with-language.html
Chanelling Thatcher: “there is no such thing as community, only individuals and families.”
Because he is a dry little legal man who wants to cut down on unnecessary sentiment as not helpful to drawing up tightly scripted legal documents well salted with economic hard-line beliefs about the baseness of human society.
He has managed to handle Maori concepts re the Treatry of Waitangi probably with a tight smile. And NACTs can do anything – humouring Alamein Kopu every day when necessary. But community must be a bridge too far.
I was looking for information about the monopoly purchase of ice cream concession by Fontana – freezing out small businesses – for 10 years. But couldn’t find anything not even when I put NZ Herald first. But I did see about really big payout for overseas trips in business class for ACC officials (Auckland City Council, not to be confused with that other juggernaut).
Note the acronym Ateed – we will be hearing more of this cruisy concession.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11168869
8/12/2013
…spending details come after revelations this week that the council’s events organisation, known as Ateed, also spent $220,000 to send 18 people – including TV3 news anchor Hilary Barry – to the America’s Cup in San Francisco.
That bill, and a further $57,369 for the two Ateed staff to attend a meeting in Dubai and the 2013 Monaco Yacht Show, is under attack from former Auckland City mayor Dick Hubbard and sitting councillor Cameron Brewer.
Ateed should not be doing what NZ Trade & Enterprise already did well, and their targets were “weak” for the money spent, Hubbard said. “It’s a classic case of a pot of money looking for something to do.”
Amounts noted – $57,000+$220,000.
Here’s Radionz item on the ice cream business. The concern by small business was pooh-poohed by Michael Bassett (surprise) who said it was just the market working. Sort of like that bulldozer that’s unstoppable. Can’t stop progress! Progress and the market is righteous! Progress good, concern for others bad! Concern for healthy economy and the livelihoods of small owner traders bad!
The taxi drivers have resorted in Auckland to picketing the monopoly lords of the airport there. Business likes a level playing field by tilting it so its flat but the liquid gold runs down to the pot at the lowest corner.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/regional/234016/ice-cream-deal-criticised
Ice cream deal criticised Updated at 10:35 am today
A small business group says Auckland Council’s move to give a 10-year exclusive ice cream deal to Fonterra is anti-competitive.
The council and Fonterra are negotiating a contract allowing the dairy co-operative to be the sole ice-cream supplier at council venues and events.
The chief executive of Small Business Voice, a group of small- to medium-sized companies, says the potential exclusive contract with one of New Zealand’s biggest businesses is not fair.
Max Whitehead says competition is healthy, but such deals stunt the growth of small companies.
The Auckland Chamber of Commerce says the deal is just business in action, and is no different from a company buying shelf space in a supermarket.
This is where Labour could stand up and say that it is here for workers- workers who are employees and workers who are self employed and workers who are employers, The people who do the work of New Zealand. Why not stand with them. If Labour did this then they would know that,
1. paying the local supermarket duopoly for self space should be outlawed, having a local supermarket duopoly should be outlawed. Anti competitive arrangements between council and fonterra should be outlawed and competition should be allowed to actually happen. Because the funny thing about competition in a capitalist system is that it is not actually efficient at all , it employs a lot of people both directly and indirectly which is a very good thing – if you are a worker. Monopolies on the other hand tend to employ many less people both directly and indirectly.
Plan B
One of the things tht hurts me about supermarkets is that of the big three I can think of, two are Oz. We need a transfusion of NZness, it’s all flowing Ozward and getting diluted in the Tasman, no money staying here.
Well, I have just read one of the best education policies ever. I’m all for backing good teachers and paying them more. Just brilliant.
Supporting it would show some class.
I’m all for backing good teachers…
The teachers want nothing to do with this blatant attempt to break their professional association. You obviously are not involved in education.
This is one teacher who is very interested in the proposals that came out today.
Take the money if you can get it, my friend. Just don’t let them alienate you from the rest of your colleagues. That’s the sole intent of these “reforms”.
That is the plan I intend to follow, NZ education gets along just fine without the intrusion of the blue and red teams of morons, unfortunately they can’t help meddling whenever they get control of the Treasury.
Unfortunately, National has not just been meddling and tinkering. It’s moves against the teaching profession have been aggressive and sustained. Until now the attacks have been obvious: the imposition of spurious National Standards, virtually destroying Night School education, attempting (unsuccessfully) to slash Intermediate Schools’ technology programs, forcing Charter Schools onto devastated communities in Canterbury.
Today’s announcement is more of the same, even if this time it is disguised not as an attack but as a “reward for good teachers”—as if all teachers didn’t have to meet standards in the first place. (Well, in Charter Schools they won’t have to of course.)
The blue team want to spread the money amongst a small team of winners and the rest of the teaching profession are meant to worship them and accept their innate superiority.
The money would be better spent on professional development for all teachers and for improving teachers pay scales so that they would attract the best of students.
Morrissey
There is no way I would even remotely consider putting the wishes of over paid unionists ahead of my children. And besides if teachers are paid more don’t the unions get more out of them?
This is an excellent policy if you are a good teacher, a child, a parent or any body interested in improving the wellbeing of all New Zealanders. Frankly bad teachers (not that there’s that many of them) and greedy unionists are not that important.
Note to David Cunliff – Back this policy and perhaps offer some improvements (keep some votes)
Of course, the teacher unions have been the only thing stopping National from fully privatising and wrecking our education system.
Your moaning belies the ugliness and underhandedness of your politics.
I’m sure DC will address National’s education Trojan Horse soon enough, hopefully by burning it to the ground.
I’d be very careful of playing partisan politics on this one CV most of my colleagues think this is the best initiative out of the MoE in a very long time.
There are definitely more younger teachers coming through who are ignorant of the historical wins that their union has achieved for them. If they allow themselves to be divided then they will all suffer the consequences.
Sounds like you’ve drunk the kool-aid, sockpuppet.
Born after 1970 poor thing.
Only knows the neoliberal nightmare.
Oh you are a dear thing, unfortunately no.
No not at all, if you take the National out of the announcement and replace it with Labour would it be seen as a positive or negative announcement at this site do you think ?
Well considering that National has decades of history of undermining the teachers union then yes I would initially be much more suspicious of a National policy than a Labour policy. But regardless of whether Labour or National implement it, this idea of performance pay is a disaster waiting to happen.
Having a system where some teachers are deemed to be ‘rockstars’ and paid more is going to make the whole thing open for corruption and resentment. In a word, divisive.
And it’s not like they can have an objective criteria to decide who the best teachers are, such as level of qualification, because we all know of the people with amazing quals who are completely shit at teaching.
The criteria will have to be subjective and it is that subjectivity that will leave it open for abuse.
I think there are a couple of documentaries about NZ education that might be worthwhile watching starting with A Civilised Society
There is another good one that was a series … but can’t remember the name at present.
To me, the announcement would be just as reprehensible if it were Labour. But I’m pretty clear that my politics are aligned with my own values – not party branding.
After National Standards, the bar was set very low.
That’s true.
Wow sockpuppet
In the middle of the school holidays and within hours of the announcement, you have not only made contact with many of your colleagues (some of whom would also be out on holidays I think) you have managed to get a majority consensus
you are awesome
and I suspect spinning like top
School holidays are for the students not the teachers. I’m back at work my friend preparing for the influx in the middle of next week.
kind of figured you might be, hence the “some of whom would also be out on holidays I think”
reading and comprehension not really your thing then eh?
The majority of my colleagues are back at work and yes there is a consensus amongst us that the announcement is a good thing.
I don’t believe I have any problem with either reading or comprehension, I do note however that you do appear to have some challenges in that direction, along with some other issues.
newsflash ! freedom has issues !
yes I do sockpuppet
like most humans on this planet.
but I still know the incremental progression of corporatizing education will only damage your profession and eventually cripple the individualism and creativity that children deserve and thrive on.
“the wishes of over paid unionists”
As I suspected, you don’t have a clue what you are talking about.
Sadly for you Morrissey, the PPTA, the Principals Union and the Labour leadership all agree with me. It must be lonely down there.
Manu
If your children have a parent with a closed-down mind then they are already being short-changed for their education. There is a lot to know out there, but when parents are biased and prejudiced, the information comes through in a warped way shaped by that prejudice.
Attitudes like yours hold your children back from learning all they need to know about how the world is.
+101110
manu..
yr real name is roger..
..and you live in remuera..
phillip ure..
Home of the 1%.
And 3 News had an education specialist from a US university saying paying teachers was not the way to go – resulting in all sorts of unintended consequences like damaging cooperation among teachers.
He reckons it’s better to give the money to schools, rather than individual teachers.
Can you explain your reasoning and evidence from overseas that this is best practice?
Or are you just trying to provoke?
Paul, he’s quite clearly utterly clueless. Probably an ACT lout.
Manu
Showing off your education and how useful it has been to you and the country, you could direct us to some research on where it has been failing in NZ, or succeeding, and how our teachers measure up to their task, written by an experienced NZ or Australian academic.
And give us the link of the one that strikes you as particularly informative would you please.
He won’t and he can’t.
RSA Replay: The End of Power – Moisés Naím
Hour long talk about political/economic power in the world.
Bad things happening.
http://www.rferl.org/contentlive/kyiv-unrest-euromaidan-ukraine-liveblog/25238126.html
Overtly fascist, racist groups are also taking advantage of the unrest. Not a good situation for anyone.
Old habits.
In only two days, 42 journalists attacked and beaten.
https://twitter.com/TarasKuzio/status/426115047941619712
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/22/ominous-text-message-sent-to-protesters-in-kiev-sends-chills-around-the-internet/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=1
Also, EuroMaidan.
http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine-abroad/associated-press-ukraines-euromaidan-whats-in-a-name-332812.html
https://twitter.com/euromaidan
Going full medieval.
http://www.youtube.com/embed/APGnKRx67kI
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2014/01/renewed-protest-in-ukraine/100665/
http://www.rightnow.io/breaking-news/grushevsky-st_bn_1390390963061.html
As her husband tears apart Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and Yemen,
Michelle Obama is having her “Marie Antoinette moment”
What are we to make of Michelle Obama, the first lady of the USA, who grew up in Chicago and was educated at Princeton and Harvard?
by Cathy Newman, Presenter, Channel 4
Daily Telegraph, 20 January 2014
It’s Michelle Obama’s Marie Antoinette moment. As world leaders tussle over how to respond to her husband’s horrifying record of drone killings, kidnappings, torture, harassment and imprisonment of political dissidents, political assassination, his continued support for blood-stained regimes from Indonesia to Saudi Arabia to Israel, and his vast program of illegal surveillance recently revealed by Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers, the first lady of the United States posts cheery pictures of herself on social media cavorting with pop stars and of her murderous husband dancing the “Dougie” on the dance floor at her 50th birthday bash. [1]
If this was an attempt to show her caring, sharing, mother of the people side, it’s badly backfired, with one user commenting that she made Marie Antoinette look like an angel. On Instagram, one Laura Gazzard warned the First Lady: “I’m ashamed to be American if you still have a fucking American citizenship, and Michelle if you ever fucking return to Chicago you will be leaving it in a fucking box, burn in hell you cunt.” In a similar tone, Nadia Eram snarls: “Dirty bitch burn alongside your murdering cunt of a husband.” [2]
Michelle Obama was everything the West used to love about the American presidency. European political leaders thought she was one of them – modern, stylish and approachable. She grew up on the South Side of Chicago, then went to Princeton and Harvard, after which she landed a job at the law firm Sidley Austin, where she met Bashar Obama, and married him in 1992.
It’s hard to have any inkling what’s going through the mind of this Western-educated woman as her husband stands accused of war crimes which have claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands.
She’s said little in public. More than a year ago, an email from an intermediary, declared: “The president is the president of the United States, not a faction of Americans, and the first lady supports him in that role.”
Elizabeth Lightfoot, author of a book called Michelle Obama: First Lady of Hope, has said she’s now “hunkered down in Washington” and that she’s “standing by her man”.
So is she, then, complicit in mass murder, a Lady Macbeth figure? Or is she at the mercy of events which have spiralled out of control? Does the girl from Chicago’s South Side, like the rest of us, recoil in horror at the killing of perhaps more than half a million innocent civilians, including children?
In the past, she’s spoken of how seeing children caught in the crossfire would break her heart.
As it would any human being. But it seems Michelle left her humanity behind a while ago. A year ago, with Bashar Obama’s violence showing no sign of abating, leaked documents showed Michelle indulging on obscene spending sprees, splashing more than $500,000 on a luxury shopping tour of Spain, including a chauffeur-driven tour of the Costa del Sol which cost a cool $26,670.61. [3]
As the political and diplomatic ructions reverberate across the globe, perhaps Michelle still has time and leisure to go home-shopping, emerging only to pose for photos – the sunny smiles belying the horrors of her husband’s role in the plight of so many countries.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/10273495/Syria-conflict-Asma-al-Assad-is-having-her-Marie-Antoinette-moment.html
[1] http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/beyonce-attends-michelle-obama-50th-birthday-bash-gallery-1.1584807
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/01/19/emotional-speech-and-the-dougie-mark-michelle-obamas-50th/
[2] http://instagram.com/p/cmZDhaIzZV/
[3] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2135914/Michelle-Obamas-Spanish-vacation-cost-taxpayers-500-000.html
Hey, Moz. This article isn’t actually by Cathy Newman and doesn’t appear to be a genuine Torygraph column (bad as they often are). It reads like the slurred mutterings of a drunken misogynist. Where did you find it?
Click on the first link under the article my friend. Actually the article was by Cathy Newman, and you’re right: she does write like a drunken misogynist. Except the target of her loathing was not the wife of the bloodstained ruler of the United States, it was the wife of an official enemy of the state for which she (Cathy Newman) is a propagandist.
All I did was change the name from Asma al Assad to Michelle Obama, and change some of the place names to fit in with that. The shrieking denunciation, written as you so brilliantly pointed out, “like the slurred mutterings of a drunken misogynist”, is not mine, it’s all Cathy Newman’s.
Oh. Sadly, the bits you’ve inserted (and attributed to Newman) are the sections that I thought were written by the drunken misogynist.
Oh. Sadly, the bits you’ve inserted (and attributed to Newman) are the sections that I thought were written by the drunken misogynist.
What bits are those? I think you mean the two foul-mouthed rants from Instagram. Apart from the names and the substitution of “Chicago” for “Britain”, those were identical with the original ones, cited approvingly in another right wing rag, the Daily Mail—only the target was Bashar Assad’s wife, not Bashar Obama’s.
So now I guess you’re going to tell me that I shouldn’t have messed with the words of Cathy Newman, that outstanding, dedicated, honest parrot, errrr… journalist.
And to think you’re an aficionado of Lord Gnome.
I think you misunderstand Lord Gnome, Moz. And I get that the quotes were from Instagram. But you claimed that Cathy Newman included them in her piece. She didn’t. I guess the problem is that you read satire, but can’t write it.
Cathy Newman is a fine journalist, btw. Ask Lord Rennard.
http://www.theweek.co.uk/uk-news/56950/rennard-clegg-and-me-cathy-newman-upset-being-booed
I think you misunderstand Lord Gnome, Moz. And I get that the quotes were from Instagram. But you claimed that Cathy Newman included them in her piece. She didn’t.
We all know she didn’t. Anybody with an IQ above the average at an ACT meeting could see that, and I provided the link to her original piece. You are quibbling again, and trying to belittle my post, which was actually very serious. I expect you send off pompous letters to the editor of Private Eye scolding him for pretending the New Coalition Academy is a real school?
I guess the problem is that you read satire, but can’t write it.
Really? Then I advise you to have a browse of the following….
BERNADINE, or “Hell Hath No Fury”
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/nz.general/Ern1_QrFIw8
Incident at Perth Bayswater, Friday 4 June
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.sport.rugby.union/DvySI1Zo-Sw
BOOK PAUL HOLMES FOR YOUR CHRISTMAS FUNCTION!!!!!
http://nz.general.narkive.com/860AbFRI/book-paul-holmes-for-your-function-advertisement
Cathy Newman is a fine journalist, btw.
Oh really? Then how come she wrote that specious piece of crude propaganda for the Torygraph?
Make up your mind, moz! Was it serious or satire? We already know you mis-attributed the authorship (yet again). Slagging off Newman for your failings is poor form. And Newman got her part-time job at the DT on the back of 20 years of excellent reporting. Ask Rennard how good she is, FFS. Quibble all you like, but she is the journo of the year (so far) in GB.
Now, I wouldn’t work for the Telegraph in the unlikely event I was asked to, and you’re not a good enough writer to be employed by any title anywhere, but Newman was offered a significant role on one of Britain’s most influential papers. You do know that their website is the most popular of all the Brit papers web offerings, right?
It would be a rare journo who wouldn’t consider taking the role, and even rarer one who would turn it down.
Make up your mind, moz! Was it serious or satire?
Satire is serious. There was no one more serious than Jonathan Swift. Or George Orwell.
I’ll skip the unpleasant little quips about my writing ability and deal with a more substantial point….
It would be a rare journo who wouldn’t consider taking the role, and even rarer one who would turn it down.
Yes, of course. Glenn Greenwald, John Pilger, Amy Goodman, Gordon Campbell—any one of them would take the Torygraph‘s money and churn out vile black propaganda like Cathy Newman.
Your claim about her being “journo of the year” is beyond satire.
This “Te Reo Putake” tick seems to me to be a prime example of the type of chap we referred to at prep school as an “ass.”
His familiarity with satire seems to be non-existent, and his critical facilities, as evidenced by his tawdry attack on Mr Breen’s writing ability and his endorsement of that third rate Telegraph hackette, are, to put it mildly, deficient.
Morrissey
You have been taken to task with playing at satire before. Personally I find it a very bad trend to muck up what appear to be facts when there are so many factual liars about. We have to be able to hold onto something definite for our information. Please don’t give me a dose of rudeness back or call my ‘my friend’ in a patronising manner.
Morrissey, You have been taken to task with playing at satire before.
Yes, Warbler, well done. It was satirical, and I didn’t really try to hide it, as evidenced by my link to the original item straight after my little masterpiece.
Personally I find it a very bad trend to muck up what appear to be facts when there are so many factual liars about.
I understand your point and I agree with you, mostly. However, I was making a point about the partiality and hypocrisy of the Daily Torygraph in particular, but also of newspapers in general.
We have to be able to hold onto something definite for our information.
I agree. I think in this case, however, the satirical intention was quite clear. It’s a habit, unfortunate or not, that I picked up from years of reading Private Eye.
Please don’t give me a dose of rudeness back or call my ‘my friend’ in a patronising manner.
Okay, Warbler, I won’t. Let’s keep it civil.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/9640616/Nationals-financial-lures-for-struggling-schools
– Ok Cunliffe its a good start with the drilling but now you’ve got a couple of days to come up with something better…good luck, this policy is a winner (election changer maybe…)
Is it an election game changer you’re after PR? That suggests to me that you don’t think the game is going as well as you’d like?
they must hate it when they accidentally reveal their true beliefs 🙂
That’s the thing isn’t it? After telling us for last two years that the third term was a shoo-in everything Key has done since he got home from Hawaii, every word and every gesture tells us that the Nats aren’t actually that confident about this year.
”This policy is a winner”, really Puckish Rogue??? what this grand announcement from Slippery the Prime Minister looks like from here is after attempts to smash up the teacher’s union’s including the big fizzer policy of ‘charter schools’ have failed miserably in desperation to appease it’s shrinking core vote National have decided to throw 300 million dollars into the middle of the mass and divide them by having them all run over the top of each other to get a slice of it,
Sadly, from listening to news reports many in the profession are happy to do just that…
(..heh..!..)
http://whoar.co.nz/2014/album-review-kim-dotcom-good-times-ed-oh-dear-brace-yrslves-its-not-good/
phillip ure..
Just reading some of the attacks on people who happen to disagree with some of you makes me wonder what your motivation is. This “tow the party line or else” attitude bears no fruit especially when on some issues there is yet to be a “party line” stated. Case in point, Labour has yet to counter Nationals latest education policy.
You guys need to chill out and actually take in opposing opinions; you might learn something. I expect insults will come my way now but I don’t care because insulting people through this type of medium is just cowardly so go for it.
Puckish Roague, sockpuppet and one or two others. Well done for standing your ground.
sockpuppet, I hope you get one of the new education rolls, I suspect you will do well, good luck.
[lprent: Actually, the actual problem appears to be that you are incapable of handling people disagree with you. It shows a certain shallowness and weakness of personality that is commonly known as being a pompous and stupid fool.
Incidentally could you please stop changing your handle. You have used three today – one to defend yourself as another “person” – which is a sockpuppet offense. I’d start to suspect a nefarious purpose except you appear to be more of a silly dipstick with an self-assessed ego (that overburdens your actual abilities) playing foolish games.
So I’m going to insist that you only use one. Otherwise you won’t be able to comment here at all. Read the about and the policy. It will help with not attracting my attention. I tend to notice whining idiots as they usually find it difficult to listen to others and so have a problem with the art of being able to argue coherently. ]
Quit stealing our oxygen and bugger off if you can’t hack it bro. This is a left wing blog and if we all want to have a left wing love-in then that’s our business. There’s always kiwiblog if you don’t like it.
You just proved the guys point Scott you idiot
Miracle of miracles! Hekia Parata is actually on Checkoint! And she’s already started droning on in gobbledygook.
Yup just repeating her mantra over and over again.
Not pulled up for it.
RNZ going downhill fast.
Just watching Prime news. It seems now that school principals are now principles. They need to go to school.
They are fresh out of the NZ education system …..
Roving the comments and it is apparent some recent visitors to The Standard are very upset about a few basic challenges to their statements. Bodes well. I mean if they are already this defensive after only a couple of policy announcements, what will they be like come the budget? Because, let’s face it, those figures are gonna be fantastic.
fantastic
fanˈtastɪk/
adjective
1. imaginative or fanciful; remote from reality.
Very similar to Kiwiblog in similar situations
Conspiracy!.
NASA has released a new visualization showing how global temperatures have risen since 1950. It’s pretty much what you’d expect given that the level of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is currently higher than at any time in the last 800,000 years.
http://io9.com/watch-60-years-of-global-warming-in-15-seconds-1505924322
Why can’t we have broadcasting like this in NZ?
http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/TV+Shows/The+National/ID/2431677875/
How do you guys explain this away?
http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/391073/unusual-3-month-cold-spell-in-thailand-claims-63-lives
probably using the exact same sciencey stuff that was used to explain every other local or regional cold snap that you guys felt were related to global average temperature changes.
The same basic answer as I have given you every other time you have asked
It is called Climate Change for a reason.
Warming is a causation, but warming causes climates to change. They don’t all steadily get hotter uniformly in that way that your simple stupidity appears to feel that it should.
So warming in the northern polar regions means that movements of cold air move further south. Air and ocean currents start getting more active and range further than they have in the historic past.. etc etc Expect more exceptional events of warm, cold, dry and wet for the next thousand years as the liquid and gaseous components at the surface of the planet move towards an equilibrium with the extra greenhouse gases that have been pumped into them.
I guess that you really should name your self “unthinking” rather than “grumpy”. In fact it is probably the causation of why you are grumpy anyway.. Just like greenhouse gases cause warming and ocean acidification. Warming in turn causes climates to change….
By “you guys”, you mean the world scientific community. The scientists have been telling us things that clashed with common sense for a long time now. A few centuries back, people like you looked around them, used their common sense, and scorned this fanciful notion that the world was not flat.
Your grimly stupid anti-science stance toward global warming is just more of the same iron-plated stupidity. You really need to start reading. I mean SERIOUS reading, my friend. But if you’re going to keep listening to Leighton Smith, from whom you obviously draw your opinions, reading doesn’t seem to be a likely option for you.
Why are you on this forum exactly? To be our punching-bag? It’s not much fun for us, frankly. Stupidity like you display in such posts is not interesting, it’s just a bore.
Go back to Kiwiblog, my friend: that’s your natural milieu.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11190969
Hefty bill for Aston Martin crash
Has anyone covered or discussed this story yet?
It is a great story, it has everything. How it was reported was very amusing, I assume that this was intentional.
It starts off with,
A Chinese man’s holiday to New Zealand took an expensive turn when he crashed into a light pole and wrote off the $200,000 Aston Martin Rapide he had bought for his wife.
It ends with this,
He was in New Zealand on a tourist visa, which had to be extended because of the prosecution.
Away from court, Miss Harding said the drink-driving charge was withdrawn because police did not follow correct procedures. Chen was not offered the chance to have a blood test, nor was he given access to a Mandarin interpreter.
This is a story about the new Auckland, where 26-year-old property managers come on holiday and buy $200,000 cars for their wives, to drive while they are on holiday no doubt.
I loved it, but I wonder what it is telling us?
John Key’s Big List of Lies
I promise to always be honest
we are not going to sack public servants, the attrition rate will reduce costs
there’s no way one in five New Zealanders will lose their jobs
we are not going to cut working for families
I firmly believe in climate change and always have
We seek a 50% reduction in New Zealand’s carbon-equivalent net emissions, as compared to 1990 levels, by 2050. 50 by 50. We will write the target into law.
National Ltd™ will provide a consistent incentive for both biofuel and biodiesel by exempting them from excise tax or road user charges
I didn’t know about The Bretheren election tactics
If they came to us now with that proposal [re trans-Tasman Therapeutic Goods regime], we will sign it
I can’t remember my position on the 1981 Springbok Tour
Tranzrail shares
I did not mislead the House (1)
Lord Ashcroft
National Ltd™ would not have sent troops into Iraq
Standard & Poors credit downgrade
the double-down grade doesn’t really matter and its only about private sector debt
I did not mislead the House (2)
I didn’t say I want wages to drop
I can’t remember why I voted against increasing the minimum wage
lifting the minimum wage to $15 an hour will increase unemployment
the real rate of inflation is 3.3 percent.
the tourism sector has not lost 7,000 jobs
no I have never heard of Whitechapel
I won’t raise GST
people who are on the average wage and have a child are $48 a week better off after the rise in GST
the purchase of farmland, by overseas buyers will be limited to ten farms per purchase
the Pike River Mine was consented to under a Labour Government
no promises were made to get the remains of the miners out of the Pike River mine
I did not provide a view on the safety of the Pike River coalmine
I did not mislead the House (3)
capping, not cutting the public service
raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour will cost 6000 jobs
north of $50 a week
privatisation won’t significantly help the economy
wave goodbye to higher taxes, not your loved ones
I never offered Brash a diplomatic job in London
Tariana Turia is “totally fine” with the Tuhoe Treaty Claim deal
Kiwisaver
National Ltd™ is not going to radically reorganise the structure of the public sector
tax cuts won’t require additional borrowing
New Zealand does not have a debt problem
New Zealand troops in Afghanistan will only be involved in training, not fighting
the wage gap between New Zealand and Australia has closed under my National Ltd™ government
It took 9 years for Labour to make a complete and utter mess of the economy
National Ltd™ has changed the Overseas Investment Act to include 19 different criteria
the price of goods and services has risen by 6 percent since the last election, while the after-tax average wage has actually gone up by 16 percent
no, although its a week ago and here I am being interviewed on television about them, I havn’t seen Gerry Brownlee’s comments regarding demolitions in Christchurch and which caused such outrage, but I can talk all about them
our SAS soldiers were not involved in the Kabul Hotel gunfight
the use of the Vela brother’s helicopter was required so I could attend meetings relating to national/international security concerns
the DPS makes the decision about accompanying the Prime Minister or not, I had no choice but to take them on holiday to Hawaii
I did not mislead the House (4)
oh, maybe our SAS soldiers were in the Kabul hotel gun fight but they weren’t wounded by friendly fire
New Zealand has lost $12 billion from GDP due to the Christchurch earthquake . . . oh, it might actually be around $15 billion from GDP due to the Christchurch earthquake . . . Blinglish said what?
10,000 houses will have to be demolished in Christchurch due to the earthquake
14,000 new apprentices will start training over the next five years, over and above the number previously forecast
our amendments to the ETS ensure we will continue to do our fair share internationally
we are committed to honouring our Kyoto Protocol obligations
any changes to the ETS will be fiscally neutral
New Zealand has grown for eight of the last nine quarters”
National Ltd™ will tender out the government banking contract
we will be back in surplus by 2014-15
Nicky Hager’s book “Other People’s Wars” is a work of fiction
unemployment is starting to fall
we have created 60,000 jobs
we have created 45,000 jobs
the 2011 Budget will create in the order of 170,000 jobs
I don’t know if I own a vineyard
no, I did not mislead the House (5)
the Isreali spy killed in the Christchurch quake had “only one” passport
the Police will not need to make savings by losing jobs
I voted to keep the drinking age at 20
New Zealand is 100% Pure
I’ve been prime minister for four years, and it’s really 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year
baseball in New Zealand is attracting more government support
the decision to buy brand new BMWs was made by the Department of Internal Affairs without reference either to their minister or to me
I didn’t have a clue that Ministerial Services, which I am in charge of, was going to buy brand new BMWs
even though four of my ministers knew all about it, I didn’t have a clue that brand new BMWs were being bought.
even though my Chief of Staff met with officials to discuss purchase of the the brand new BMWs, I didn’t have a clue
even though I personally signed papers discussing the matter, I still didn’t have a clue
Labour forced us into buying the brand new BMWs, its their fault
ummm, look, sorry about that BMW thing , it was because I was so upset
I did not describe David Beckam as thick as batshit
I did not mislead the House (6)
the public demanded that we change the labour laws for The Hobbit
“The Hobbit” created 3000 new jobs
we have delivered 800 extra doctors in the public service
I did not mislead the House (7)
I wasn’t working at Elders when the sham foreign exchange deals took place
I was starting School Certificate exams in 1978
I don’t know who arrived on the CIA jet to visit the spies I am responsible for
reducing barriers to property developers will increase the availability of affordable housing
Labour left the economy in poor shape
forecasts show unemployment will fall
we have closed the wage gap with Australia by $27
Ngati Porou and Whanau Apanui are not opposed to mining
I have not had any meetings with Media Works
our [NZ’s] terms of trade remain high
the TPPA is an example of democracy
the TPPA will still have to be ratified by Parliament
National Ltd™ will use the proceeds of state asset sales to invest in other public assets, like schools and hospitals
New Zealand troops will be out of Afghanistan by April 2013
overseas investment in New Zealand adds to what New Zealanders can invest on their own
overseas investment in New Zealand creates jobs, boosts incomes, and helps the economy grow
National Ltd™ will build 2000 houses over the next two years
there are only 4 New Zealand SAS soldiers in Bamiyan and all working in the area of logistics and planning only
selling state assets will give cash equity to those companies
the Sky City deal will provide 1000 construction jobs and 800 casino jobs
all five bidders for the convention centre were treated equally
my office has had no correspondence, no discussions, no involvement with the Sky City deal
I did not mislead the House (8)
I can’t remember what was discussed at my meeting with the SkyCity Chief Executive on 14 May 2009
I have no record of the 12 November 2009 email from Treasury advising that the SkyCity deal was dodgy and needed to be referred to the Auditor General
there was nothing improper about the Sky City deal
SkyCity will only get “a few more” pokie machines at the margins
any changes to gambling regulations will be subject to a full public submission process
Sky City has approached TVNZ about the purchase/use of government-owned land
I did not mislead the House (9)
this government has been very transparent about all its dealings with SkyCity
I did not mislead the House (10)
the Auditor General has fully vindicated National over the Sky City deal
I did not mislead the House (11)
the Deputy Auditor General supports the view that there was nothing inappropriate about the Sky City deal
I did not mislead the House (12)
I did not breach the confidentiality of the Auditor General’s Report into the Sky City deal
the Labour Government did exactly the same sort of deal back in 2001
Labour has promised to not revoke the Sky City legislation
there’s a 50/50 chance the Hobbit is going off shore unless we do something
David Shearer has signed up for the purchase of shares in Mighty River
Solid Energy asked the government for a $1 billion capital investment
fracking has been going safely on in Taranaki for the past 30 years without any issues
no frontline positions will be lost at DOC
Iain Rennie came to me and recommended Fletcher for the GCSB job
I told Cabinet that I knew Ian Fletcher
I forgot that after I scrapped the shortlist for GCSB job I phoned a life-long friend to tell him to apply for the position
I told Iain Rennie I would contact Fletcher
I haven’t seen Ian Fletcher in a long time.
I did not mislead the House (13)
I have no reason to doubt at this stage that Peter Dunne did not leak the GCSB report
I called directory service to get Ian Fletcher’s number
the new legislation narrows the scope of the GCSB
the GCSB has been prevented from carrying out its functions because of the law governing its functions
because the opposition is opposed the GCSB law ammendments, parliamentary urgency is required
the increasing number of cyber intrusions which I can’t detail or discuss prove that the GCSB laws need to be extended to protect prive enterprise
it was always the intent of the GCSB Act to be able to spy on New Zealanders on behalf of the SIS and police
National Ltd™ is not explanding the activities of the GCSB with this new law
cyber terrorists have attempted to gain access to information about weapons of mass destruction held on New Zealand computers
the law which says the GCSB cannot spy on New Zealanders is not clear
it totally incorrect that the Government effectively through GCSB will be able to wholesale spy on New Zealanders
we self identified that there was a problem with the GCSB spying on Kim Dotcom
the illegal spying on Kim Dotcom was an isolated incident
The advice I have had in 4 years as a Minister is that in no way ever has there been an indication of unlawful spying
the Ministerial Warrant signed by Bill English did not cover anything up
first I heard I heard about Kim Dotcom was on 19 January 2012
first I heard about the illegal spying on Kim Dotcom was in 17 September
I did not mislead the House (14)
I won’t be discussing Kim Dotcom during my Hollywood visit.
The Human Rights Commission couldn’t get its submission on the GCSB legislation in on time.
it would cost too much to for the police and SIS to carry out the spying on New Zealanders that this new legislation will permit
critics of the GCSB legislation, including the Law Society, the Human Rights Commission, and the Privacy Commission, are all uninformed
no, I did not mislead the House (15)
I do not know how Mr Henry is conducting the Enquiry
no, I did not mislead the House (16)
the Henry Enquiry had permission to view Ministers’ emails
no, I did not mislead the House (??)
we do not spy on journalists
the passing of phone records to the Henry Enquiry was an error on the part of a contractor
I wasn’t aware that my own Chief of Staff was instructing Parliamentary Services to hand over information concerning journalist Andrea Vance
National Ltd™ has never tried to impinge on the role of the media
I had nothing to do with information on a journalist being handed over to the inquiry into the leaking of the GCSB report
the terms of the enquiry made it clear to everyone that it was only the phone records of parliamentary staff and ministers that were to be provided
I have the utmost respect for the media and the role it plays in New Zealand’s democracy
the Henry Enquiry did not access a journalist’s building-access records
the Henry Enquiry did not ask for phone and email records
no, I did not mislead the House (17)
the Greens are opposed to the GCSB and the SIS even existing
the GCSB needs to spy on New Zealanders because there are al-Qaeda terrorists in New Zealand
John Minto is in the Green Party
the GCSB needs to spy on New Zealanders because of the terrorist threat, even though official reports released over my signature say there is no risk and the SIS has the matter in hand
the GCSB Bill does not give the GCSB the power to look at the content of communications as part of its cyber-security functions
no, I did not mislead the House (18)
there will be no mining on Conservation land in the Corromendel
no, I did not say we would follow the US and Australia into a war against North Korea
New Zealand has an arrangement to have asylum seekers processed in Australian detention camps
I did not mislead the house (19)
I paid for that lunch and I’ve got the credit card bill to prove it
I am honest and upfront
the only way net new jobs can be created is by private investors putting their money into businesses in New Zealand
you can’t hide if yuu’re Prime Minister
an increase in the number of people looking for work indicates that confidence is returning to the economy
the 10 percent of taxpayers in New Zealand who are the top earners pay 76 percent of all net personal tax.
I did not mislead the House (20)
the substantial wage growth under Labour was eroded by inflation
National Ltd™’s 2010 tax changes were fiscally neutral
I did not mislead the House (21)
the bulk of New Zealanders earn between $45,000 and $75,000 a year
Pike River Coal did not put profits and its production ahead of the safety and lives of those 29 workers.
Radio Live had sought advice from the Electoral Commission about my show just before the election
it is because of National Ltd™’s policies that the price of fresh fruit and vegetables has dropped.
the length-of-the-country cycleway will create 4000 jobs.
police training for next year has not been cancelled
National Ltd™ has only cut back-office jobs in the health service
The Crown’s dividend stream from the Meridians, the Mighty Rivers of the world is large and there is no motivation to sell assets; actually we’re about creating assets not selling assets.”
National believes employment law should treat all parties fairly. It should . . . Protect employees and employers.
I am not trying to tackle such issues in a “fearful” way ahead of the next election
Wellington City is dying.
National Ltd™ has been working on a number of things with New Zealand First on a number of things one of which has a financial component but I can’t talk about it
the best way to get growth in the economy is to reduce public debt
New Zealand mum and dad investors will be our number one priority in the allocation of Mighty River shares
we won’t let “cowboy” oil exploration companies operate here in New Zealand
the Green Party is racist by not allowing Chinese residents in New Zealand to buy a house
the Labour Party is promising a four-bedroom house in Auckland for $300,000
the food in schools programme is in the 2013 budget
the meat exports are being held up in China because of issues in relation to the Chinese looking to trace counterfeit meat
its notoriously difficult to win three elections in a row
I am deeply concerned about every child in New Zealand who is in poverty
there is no manufacturing crisis in New Zealand
the government’s exposure to MediaWorks’ going into receivership is reasonably limited
the money from the sale of state assets will not be used to prop up Solid Energy
I don’t see a place for a Winston Peters-led New Zealand First in a government that I lead. It’s not a matter of political convenience, it’s a matter of political principle.
The vast majority of the buildings in Christchurch came through the earthquakes in good shape
the commemoration of New Zealand’s involvement in the Korean War will not be used to bolster trade talks
third generation Chinese New Zealanders will be required to present their passport before buying a house under the Labour government
the Labour housing policy is an attempt by David Shearer to save his leadership
the Labour housing policy is in breach of free trade agreements
only 2% of the proceeds of the sale of Mighty River will be spent on the sales process
David Cunliffe is lying to you
Labour wants to nationalise the super market industry
The government will engage in no further negotiations with Rio Tinto
Without a government subsidy of hundreds of millions of dollars Chorus will go broke
No, I did not mislead the House (??)
the justice system is already adequate for handling situations involving new evidence
my Minister Nick Smith was not aware of the content of the leaked draft submission on the Ruataniwha situation until 17 September
New Zealand First will nationalise a host of industries and businesses
I have no responsibility for the statements I make
Mark Mitchell was just gossiping at a cocktail party when he tipped Webster off about Len Brown’s affair
it was a lack of external analysis and accountability which put Solid Energy into its debt crisis
the Commerce Commission misinterpreted the law when deciding the price for access to the Chorus copper infrastructure
no analyist predicted that the cost of access to the copper infrastructure would go down
there has been only one problem with oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico
If it was my vote, it would be no pay increases for Mps
Greenpeace are just scare mongering about any oil leaks off the New Zealand coast
For every election for the last five elections , we have had royal visitors to New Zealand.
No decision has been made on the timing of the sale of Air New Zealand shares
its not true that in New Zealand the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer
This summer is the most active season ever for oil and gas exploration, with the industry spending up to $750 million. At the same time, the Government is strengthening the regulations that govern drilling, particularly in deep water.
big ups to ya blip..
..you have built a valuable resource..
and..
..all those lies the mainstream/corporate/access-media never ever call him on..
..do they all have stockholm-syndrome..?
..phillip ure..