Written By: - Date published: 4:34 pm, May 23rd, 2012 - 8 comments
Bill English has introduced a number of stealth taxes over his time in office, to partly balance the loss his tax cuts for the rich has generated. The latest in this budget will be prescription costs and raising the price of Early Childhood Education (again). We’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out if …
Written By: - Date published: 10:34 am, May 23rd, 2012 - 17 comments
The Service and Food Workers Union is launching a campaign for a living wage at 12 o’clock today.
[Update: Campaign site]
Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, May 23rd, 2012 - 227 comments
The media (and the braying right-wing blogs of course) have been bleeding plenty of ink over Shane Jones’ actions in the citizenship case. Jones hasn’t really put his side of the story – until last night.
Written By: - Date published: 8:20 am, May 23rd, 2012 - 22 comments
It’s great that foreign fishing vessels in New Zealand waters will now be required to be flagged here and, in theory, will be subject to New Zealand law. But I reckon that abuses of those crews is only half the problem. The other problem is that we have Kiwi quota owners, in particular iwi, employing foreign fishers while quarter of a million of our people are jobless.
Written By: - Date published: 7:11 am, May 23rd, 2012 - 15 comments
National has undershot every one of its growth promises. I bet that doesn’t stop them promising big tomorrow.
Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, May 23rd, 2012 - 84 comments
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike…
Written By: - Date published: 6:54 pm, May 22nd, 2012 - No comments
Scott at Imperator Fish has kindly given us permission to syndicate posts from his blog – the original of this post is here.
You’ve probably heard a lot about the National government’s austerity measures, and I know you’re probably worrying whether this belt-tightening is really worth it.
Written By: - Date published: 5:05 pm, May 22nd, 2012 - 30 comments
Don’t blame Greece: if you change nothing, nothing changes. National’s problems are their own to solve, but they don’t have the guts to look at the big problems in New Zealand’s economy. 0.6% growth in total over the last 3 years – less than population. But National only tinkers and distracts, as our brightest and best head to Aussie.
Written By: - Date published: 3:40 pm, May 22nd, 2012 - 16 comments
The government has correctly bowed to pressure and banned foreign-flagged fishing boats from operating in our waters.
We don’t have too many posts praising this government, and to have 2 today may surprise some. But credit where it’s due.
Written By: - Date published: 2:57 pm, May 22nd, 2012 - 22 comments
Labour has published its budget website and a video ripping John Key’s record of broken promises. It’s pretty damning. Yet Key and English want to claim that there’s nothing wrong and growth has been in line with projections. It’s like they’re operating in a parallel universe.
Written By: - Date published: 1:21 pm, May 22nd, 2012 - 37 comments
An email from a concerned Principal about what Hekia Parata’s changes – principly class size – will do to our children’s futures. And the address Emeritus Professor Ivan Snook gave to graduating teachers last week.
Written By: - Date published: 11:18 am, May 22nd, 2012 - 12 comments
It’s an interesting fact that the one area in which National is going against its traditional approach and moving towards what the experts advocate is prisons. And I think I know why. In education, health, welfare etc National’s ideological positions correspond with cutting spending. But ‘lock em up and throw away the key’ costs. When Bill English called prisons a “moral and fiscal failure” his emphasis was on “fiscal”.
Written By: - Date published: 10:22 am, May 22nd, 2012 - 38 comments
1,376 days ago a handful of us, lead by Lynn, got together to set up The Standard. The was idea for a strong left-blog to counter the dominance of the Right in the blogosphere. I reckon we’ve succeeded. We’ve had 413,000 comments and over 13 million pageviews. We’ve had 40 authors over the 3.5 years – 3 of us are left from the start – and 528 guest posts. The community, and the readership, keeps on growing massively.
Written By: - Date published: 9:09 am, May 22nd, 2012 - 11 comments
Matt McCarten’s latest column is a must read. There is something nasty going on…
Written By: - Date published: 8:01 am, May 22nd, 2012 - 26 comments
Parata on The Nation: “what we’ve had is a five-fold increase in the number of teachers while we’ve only had a 2% increase in students”. There are 52,500 teachers. Is Parata really saying there were only 10,500 a decade ago? The minister needs remedial maths, methinks. This is the tragedy: our kids’ education being toyed with by nincompoops and dullards with a dumbarse ideological agenda.
Written By: - Date published: 7:21 am, May 22nd, 2012 - 38 comments
News in that Talley’s/AFFCO and the Meatworkers reached an agreement at 5am this morning. The workers will keep their wage and job security provisions and still be covered by a collective. The workers have displayed incredible strength with support from up and down the country. Next time, bosses will think twice before attacking their workers.
Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, May 22nd, 2012 - 116 comments
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike…
Written By: - Date published: 10:26 pm, May 21st, 2012 - 4 comments
Wellington’s electricity network was privatised 20 years ago. The water network wasn’t. Tomorrow evening (Tuesday) researchers Peter Harris, Dick Werry and Jim Turner will present their outcome comparison to a Fabian seminar at St John’s Church Hall in Wellington at 5:30pm. Water network costs rose by 17% over the period, electricity network costs by four times that amount. The reach of both networks is similar – the lesson is that the required return on appreciating assets from privatisation drives up the costs. All welcome to come and discuss. You can register here.
Written By: - Date published: 6:45 pm, May 21st, 2012 - 12 comments
National have become a very adept PR machine. While not adept at running the country, they’ve become great at running statistics. John Key was pushing things a little too far with his lines that unemployment rising to 6.7% showed an improved economy and that Europe electing anti-austerity leaders showed their austerity policies were right, but …
Written By: - Date published: 6:07 pm, May 21st, 2012 - 1 comment
Scott at Imperator Fish has kindly given us permission to syndicate posts from his blog – the original of this post is here.
A guest post from the Finance Minister.
Written By: - Date published: 5:13 pm, May 21st, 2012 - 2 comments
Tomorrow night in Auckland four University teams from Auckland, Victoria and Otago will present their visions and prescriptions for New Zealand’s economic future in an event which is
open to the public, and will be held from 5.30pm at the University of Auckland Business School. All are welcome to attend – it should be interesting.
Written By: - Date published: 1:11 pm, May 21st, 2012 - 68 comments
The Greens launched their Budget alternative this morning. Titled “Smart Green Economics” it lived up to the billing. Extra heft was provided by BERL economist Dr Ganesh Nana paper arguing that the Government’s asset sales programme leaves the government accounts permanently worse off. It was also good to hear about opportunities and their alternatives. We’ve had enough of TINA.
Written By: - Date published: 11:16 am, May 21st, 2012 - 19 comments
National is going to cut 125 police staff. They’re not sworn officers but who’s going to pick up the work they were doing? Sworn cops, of course. Course, tying up cops with paperwork will help the crime stats drop. And with the navy so underfunded half its inshore patrol vessels are being mothballed I bet illegal fishing instances drop too. Funny that.
Written By: - Date published: 9:13 am, May 21st, 2012 - 14 comments
Last Budget, National promised 36,000 jobs in the year to March 2012. We got 20,000. They promised 1.8% growth. We got 1.1%. They promised a $9.8 billion deficit. Now, it’s heading for over $12 billion. Ready for a repeat on Thursday?. English will say last year’s failures were all someone else’s fault. Key will grin and make some weak jokes, the beakbenches will hoot and holler. But will anyone outside National be smiling this time round?
Written By: - Date published: 7:01 am, May 21st, 2012 - 56 comments
Remember ‘ambitious for New Zealand’? Remember ‘brighter future’? National used to at least say they wanted to do something significant. At what point did all that get replaced with ‘surplus by 2014/15′? Key and National have $70 billion a year to play with to better this country, and the best thing they can come up with is making sure government operating revenue exceeds operating spending by about half a percent in three years time.
Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, May 21st, 2012 - 92 comments
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike…
Written By: - Date published: 11:38 am, May 20th, 2012 - 26 comments
Like a polluter making money while passing on the costs of pollution to the rest of us, a media organisation can make money out of hatred while passing on the costs to society. Case in point – Paul Henry, who didn’t take long to revert to type in Australia.
Written By: - Date published: 10:33 am, May 20th, 2012 - 37 comments
Not content with selling your assets off, National has put aside $120,000,000 of your money to tell you that you should like it.
And, just to add more salt to the wound, Bill English has described the cost as “low by market standards”.
Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, May 20th, 2012 - 92 comments
Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike…
Written By: - Date published: 11:27 am, May 19th, 2012 - 45 comments
This week, Minister for Talking Big and Not Delivering, Steven Joyce, had his second opinion piece in the Herald of the year and, naturally, it bore no relation to the ‘vision’ in the previous one, or any of the 5 point strategies or 8 point action plans he has produced to date. Instead, it said ‘wouldn’t it be great if more international students came here?’. Problem is, his actions are driving them away.
Written By: - Date published: 9:14 am, May 19th, 2012 - 21 comments
Another poll to add to current mix. Not a big shift, but in the right direction, and getting the right kinds of headline. And here’s another headline that isn’t going to help the Nats – the wage gap with Australia is growing at the rate of $1 a month.
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