Archive for March, 2008

A modest proposal

Written By: - Date published: 3:35 pm, March 16th, 2008 - 28 comments

Every year the Remuneration Authority, an independent body, reviews the pay of MPs. It sets the salaries without needing approval by Parliament or Cabinet, to keep the process from being politicised. Every year, our ever mature media gleefully portrays this process as politicians giving themselves a huge pay rise. What if, instead, MPs pay increases were automatic and […]

The Key Problem

Written By: - Date published: 1:23 pm, March 16th, 2008 - 8 comments

The somewhat irregular and frequently misguided Chris Trotter occasionally hits it on-the-head. Today’s Sunday Star Times has Trotter running over John Key’s inability to take the heat when it comes to hard questioning. And he further notes that National will be concerned that their man will not stand up to the debates later in the […]

Fairtrade: More than just branding

Written By: - Date published: 9:37 pm, March 15th, 2008 - 16 comments

Do you buy Fairtrade products? Or do you think of it as just another marketing ploy? This recent article “Teach us how to fish – do not just give us the fish” from the Guardian puts a personal perspective on consumer purchasing power. Three producers talk about how their lives and those of their communities […]

New talent at the Herald

Written By: - Date published: 4:34 pm, March 15th, 2008 - 8 comments

I imagine this by-line is an error, but given the way the Herald’s been evangelising for the Right lately you do have to wonder… (Hat-tip: gobsmacked)

Good for the ears

Written By: - Date published: 3:23 pm, March 15th, 2008 - 3 comments

For those of you who haven’t already found it, Left Business Observer editor Doug Henwood has a bloody good economics-based radio show that goes up on the web. I’ve rediscovered it after being an avid listener some years ago and can throughly recommend it. His latest interview is with Nobel laureate Joesph Stiglitz (who incidentally […]

Sabotaged truck under labour

Written By: - Date published: 5:49 pm, March 14th, 2008 - 26 comments

Earlier this week a reader drew our attention to Michael Hansen, a candidate in the recent local elections who drew 423 votes in Christchurch’s Spreydon/Heathcote community board on the Sabotaged truck under labour ticket. Intrigued, I did a bit of digging, and it just gets better. It turns out Hansen also stood for city council, […]

Dream of sliding to work?

Written By: - Date published: 5:17 pm, March 14th, 2008 - 4 comments

Google have just opened a new European engineering headquarters in Switzerland, according to a report from the BBC: “Dotcom companies were defined by beanbags and pizza but Google, a company that came to prominence after the bubble had burst, has taken that image to a whole new level. Meeting ‘pods’ in the style of Swiss […]

Birds of a feather…

Written By: - Date published: 3:45 pm, March 14th, 2008 - 28 comments

Frogblog covers Muriel Newman’s column in the Dom yesterday: “Climate change, we didn’t do it” [whew! back to my environmentally pollutive and destructive ways then]. Muriel’s source for this assertion is the recent (and delightfully innocuously named) International Conference on Climate Change. The purpose of the conference is to promote doubt over the increasing scientific […]

National’s bad fortnight

Written By: - Date published: 2:03 pm, March 14th, 2008 - 33 comments

A bad week last week from John Key got worse this week as other National MPs joined Key in a game of drop the ball. Last week, Key didn’t know his party’s Waitangi and Maori seats policies, and was slippery on the Auckland Airport issue before finally coming down on the unpopular side of the […]

Adapting to the oil endgame

Written By: - Date published: 10:53 am, March 14th, 2008 - 52 comments

Today oil broke US$111 a barrel. Two weeks ago the record price was $101. Just six months ago the price broke $80 for the first time. Oil prices are rising at an accelerating pace. That flows into New Zealand fuel prices, predicted to top $2 a litre this year. What can the Government do to […]

Journalists react to attack on media freedom

Written By: - Date published: 3:33 pm, March 13th, 2008 - 58 comments

Yesterday in Parliament, Winston Peters tabled a letter of protest from the Herald journalists’ chapel to APN chief executive Martin Simons. The letter related to Simons’ meeting with John Key to draft a ‘clarification’ for the Bay Report’s quote of Key saying he “would love to see wages drop.” The Bay Report was then forced […]

Tax cuts = no rise in the minimum wage?

Written By: - Date published: 3:04 pm, March 13th, 2008 - 26 comments

From the ABC site: “A peak business group says the Federal Government’s promised tax cuts should be taken into account when deciding on an increase to the minimum wage. The Chamber of Commerce and Industry is proposing a rise of $10 to $11 – in line with last year’s increase. The ACTU is lobbying for […]

Viva Obama

Written By: - Date published: 2:14 pm, March 13th, 2008 - 6 comments

Following a_y_b’s post about the deliciously punny Yes, Pecan! ice cream, we’ve found some more Obama-flavoured silliness which is also, incidentally, the best campaign song ever. Here’s ‘Viva Obama’, by some random mariachi band: And if that’s not enough Viva Obama goodness you can also download the ringtone and get the MP3 for your iPod […]

Yes, Pecan!

Written By: - Date published: 12:08 pm, March 13th, 2008 - 2 comments

Ben and Jerry’s icecream endorsed Obama when Edwards pulled out. To celebrate Obama’s win in Vermont, Slate recently ran a competition to name an icecream in his honour. The winner? “Yes, Pecan!”.

PSA on core public service

Written By: - Date published: 10:31 am, March 13th, 2008 - 19 comments

Richard Wagstaff from the PSA was interviewed by Sunrise on John Key’s plan to undermine the public service this morning. He notes Key’s tactical use of emotive language, questions his distinction between “front-line” and “bureaucratic” staff, suggests that the numbers used by National are possibly a little misleading and points out that our public service […]

Connell evasive over trip

Written By: - Date published: 9:24 am, March 13th, 2008 - 24 comments

Brian Connell won’t say whether he’s planning on taking his wife on the taxpayer-funded Speaker’s tour. In the clip below Faafoi asks Connell 18 times and still can’t get a straight answer as Connell gets increasingly abusive. — Leftie Infighting Alert!!— Steve Pierson: I back Connell on this, eccentric old bigot though he is. There […]

Key to scrap research fund

Written By: - Date published: 5:17 pm, March 12th, 2008 - 23 comments

From Radio NZ: National says it will scrap a major new research and development fund for the pastoral and food industries if it becomes the Government at this year’s election. Party leader John Key has criticised the fund as a “gimmick” and insists only the interest earned on the fund will be spent on research. […]

National confirms Landcorp would be sold (?)

Written By: - Date published: 4:46 pm, March 12th, 2008 - 22 comments

We have an interesting mixed message (once again) from National on asset sales. David Carter is quoted in the NZ Farmers Weekly as saying: David Carter: “As Minister of Agriculture I would sell Landcorp. I don’t see taxpayer money best invested in farms” (10 March, 2008). However after the example was raised in Parliament today […]

Slippery John in search of a hot-button

Written By: - Date published: 2:46 pm, March 12th, 2008 - 15 comments

To follow on from Steve’s post earlier today, it looks like National’s focus groups have thrown them up another hot-button issue – Key has alliteratively labeled this the “ballooning bureaucracy”. Back in December we posted on him effectively saying he was all for sacking prison and parole staff as well as the people who administer […]

Canadian Pension Fund’s asset-strip plan

Written By: - Date published: 1:15 pm, March 12th, 2008 - 36 comments

The Canadian Pension Fund is planning to asset-strip Auckland Airport. Once they have control they would demand ‘hyper-dividends’ three times the size of the Airports’ normal dividends. Where would the money have come from? From funds the airport would otherwise have spent on maintaining and upgrading its assets. The Fund would walk away with a […]

Supply Side Jesus

Written By: - Date published: 12:06 pm, March 12th, 2008 - 11 comments

Now to be perfectly honest I’ve never really thought that seven sins was enough. I was delighted to see that the Vatican has added some extras. They are: environmental pollution, genetic manipulation, accumulating excessive wealth, inflicting poverty, drug trafficking and consumption, morally debatable experiments and violation of fundamental rights of human nature. I’m not for […]

Which jobs would Key cut?

Written By: - Date published: 11:55 am, March 12th, 2008 - 15 comments

It’s hard to get a straight answer out of John Key, so this is probably an exercise in futility, but Key’s announcement that National would not increase the size of the core public service raises some questions that need asking. So, Mr Key: Saying you would ‘get more value’ from the core public service isn’t a policy, […]

Reactions to New Zealand Fast Forward

Written By: - Date published: 10:32 am, March 12th, 2008 - 1 comment

Groups that issued press releases welcoming the Government announcement of the $700 million research and development fund for argiculture (press releases on Scoop): NZ Veterinary Association – Science funding just in the nick of time Science New Zealand – Science New Zealand welcomes science fund announcement Export New Zealand – Export NZ welcomes innovative funding […]

Clinton’s 3am ad

Written By: - Date published: 9:55 am, March 12th, 2008 - 4 comments

Hillary Clinton’s ad warning of a national emergency at 3am and featuring sleeping children has been considered highly politically effective. It’s spawned hundred of YouTube parodies and was considered potentially damaging enough that the Obama campaign responded publicly. It’s now been discovered that one of the children featured in the nine-year-old stock video footage – […]

Dolla Dolla Bill, Y’all

Written By: - Date published: 5:17 pm, March 11th, 2008 - 14 comments

Days after saying ‘we’ve always said, we aren’t that worried about, um, whether the Crown needs to borrow a bit of money [for a] programme of tax cuts’ Bill English has accused Michael Cullen of ‘um, ah, borrowing for tax cuts’. What English’s researchers have discovered is that the amount of Government Bonds on issue […]

Yawn

Written By: - Date published: 4:47 pm, March 11th, 2008 - 11 comments

Well National’s finally got their line straight on the research fund and, despite me old mate Dancer’s prediction, they are not supporting it. It seems this one goes to AYB who picked their line perfectly. He said they’d claim the idea’s good but the model is flawed and then have cry about how it should […]

Flying the Standard in Spain

Written By: - Date published: 2:46 pm, March 11th, 2008 - 10 comments

Congratulations to the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party for winning their second four-year term under Prime Minister José Zapatero. Zapatero’s surprise victory in 2004 followed a fear-mongering attempt by the then governing centre-right People’s Party to blame the Madrid train bombings on Basque separatists, ETA (as the People’s Party knew, Islamic radicals were really to blame). […]

$700m for R&D

Written By: - Date published: 1:48 pm, March 11th, 2008 - 11 comments

The Dom reports that “Prime Minister Helen Clark unveiled the $700 million funding boost for research, development and innovation projects today and said the fund would grow to around $1 billion as it earned interest over the next 10 to 15 years. Industries would be expected to match the government’s commitment, causing the fund to […]

Stepping in

Written By: - Date published: 1:45 pm, March 11th, 2008 - 8 comments

No Right Turn makes a good point about the government’s $700 million innovation fund for the agricultural and food sector: I’m a little surprised that its the government doing this. We have a number of large companies involved in these sectors, and under competent managers, they’d already be making these investments themselves. Unfortunately, corporate management […]

Most Aussies support Kyoto protocol

Written By: - Date published: 12:13 pm, March 11th, 2008 - 26 comments

The ABC reports: “Today Australia becomes an official member of the Kyoto club after the initial ratification documents were lodged with the United Nations 90 days ago. And a new poll has found that 64 per cent of Australians support Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s act to ratify the Kyoto protocol to cut greenhouse gas emissions. […]

Some free publicity for the NBR

Written By: - Date published: 11:02 am, March 11th, 2008 - 54 comments

Speaking of humour, that joke of a newspaper the NBR has had a crack at us again. According to them The Standard is “a blog which tests Labour lines in advance”. So much for the NBR’s self-lauded connections: we don’t test Labour’s lines, we write them with Mike and Helen in a secret bunker under […]