Archive for May, 2009

Will your house get bulldozed?

Written By: - Date published: 10:49 am, May 14th, 2009 - 15 comments

Labour’s just launched an interactive Google map showing National’s plans for the Waterview connection. Click the map below to check it out.

Lee down, under; about to be reborn

Written By: - Date published: 9:10 am, May 14th, 2009 - 34 comments

Melissa Lee’s recent interviews on Q+A, TV1, TV3 and RNZ proved once and for all that being able to read an autocue doesn’t mean you’re any good at handling the media. When Lee put her hand up to rob the hapless Ravi Musuku of any chance of ever being rewarded for standing in Mt Albert, I […]

Lee implodes

Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, May 14th, 2009 - 73 comments

And the ticking timebomb goes off. From Not PC on last night’s Mt Albert candidates’ debate: Most of what every mainstream candidate had to say on the night was both instantly forgettable and intended only for short-term political advantage.  But there was one thing one candidate said that is now going to dog her through the […]

Boring into the numbers 2

Written By: - Date published: 6:32 am, May 14th, 2009 - 15 comments

National has released its Waterview plan. Basically a trench rather than a tunnel, and a few hundred more homes knocked down. They reckon it will cost $1.4 billion. What’s missing from the costing? Financing costs were included in the cost of the tunnel to inflate it to $2.77 billion but are excluded from the trench option. […]

Why so afraid?

Written By: - Date published: 11:21 pm, May 13th, 2009 - 30 comments

Labour asked for an urgent debate in the House today on the Waterview announcement. Smith denied it because the announcement hadn’t then taken place. A minute later Joyce made the announcement. Labour then asked leave of the House for an urgent question to Joyce, Brownlee denied leave. What are they so afraid of? When did […]

Melissa keeps on digging

Written By: - Date published: 8:31 pm, May 13th, 2009 - 15 comments

Here’s Melissa Lee explaining on Checkpoint how her staff volunteered their time to produce a video for National Party list candidates: LEE: Well we were doing a launch, you know, for the Asian campaign and I thought it might be a good, fun thing to actually have a video to put onto Youtube or Facebook, […]

TVNZ stuggling to accept the election result

Written By: - Date published: 5:46 pm, May 13th, 2009 - 10 comments

I must say, TVNZ’s belt tightening is certainly having an impact on their journalism, at least in the online presence. It was one thing for them to still think Richard Prebble is a Member of Parliament in a piece on Saturday (for the record, Richard Prebble hasn’t been an MP since 2005). But noting today […]

Going Backwards II

Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, May 13th, 2009 - 8 comments

A recent piece in the New York Times highlights the absurdity of going backwards with the apparent reorganisation of the Families Commission around nuclear families. Gender involves a lot of gray area. And efforts to legislate a binary truth upon the wide spectrum of gender have proven only how elusive sexual identity can be. The […]

The Nats’ campaign vid that you and I paid for

Written By: - Date published: 2:14 pm, May 13th, 2009 - 54 comments

I figure the very least the Nats could do after spending our money on their asian-voter campaign video is to share it with us. Strangely, I couldn’t find it on the National Party website as referenced by last night’s Campbell Live piece. Fortunately the YouTube user “NationalAsianTeam” still has their copy up – it’s embedded […]

Big numbers, Crazy ideas

Written By: - Date published: 1:11 pm, May 13th, 2009 - 6 comments

Most of us work for a living, and worry about money measured in tens, hundreds, or thousands of dollars. For myself, I find the numbers involved in the economic crash and the bailouts to be so insanely huge as to be meaningless. This article summarises some of the numbers involved in America, and actually manages […]

For the kids

Written By: - Date published: 10:51 am, May 13th, 2009 - 8 comments

A mate put me onto the “story of stuff” the other day. It’s an excellent Green-Left critique of our economic system pitched toward kids. After all, they’re the ones who are going to have to deal with the mess. The youtube version is below or you can view the high res version here (recommended). The […]

Melissa’s election expenses returned?

Written By: - Date published: 10:28 am, May 13th, 2009 - 50 comments

An interesting story on TV3 last night about potential for conflict of interest relating to Asia Down Under, a broadcasting company owned by Melissa Lee which produced a political documentary during the last election. Even more interesting was what was revealed about a video about Asian candidates made for the National Party and published on […]

Fyfe’s model for the future

Written By: - Date published: 10:23 am, May 13th, 2009 - 9 comments

Despite four days of strike action and growing public outrage over Air New Zealand’s treatment of its Zeal320 flight attendants, CEO Rob Fyfe is still refusing to even start closing the glaring pay gap between these workers and those employed directly by AirNZ. Why is Fyfe willing to force these workers into even more strike […]

Joyce Trashes Mt Albert

Written By: - Date published: 9:31 am, May 13th, 2009 - 41 comments

Yesterday the long wait for a decision on the Waterview Connection somewhat ended. The full picture will become more obvious today, once NZTA release their prefered alignment for the route, and how much of it – if any – will be trenched or tunneled. For now, we know that the full tunnel option is off […]

Boring into the numbers

Written By: - Date published: 8:15 am, May 13th, 2009 - 32 comments

Here’s a trick you can all play at home. You’ll need several different plans for a major motorway project produced by NZTA and a compliant Treasury ready and willing to alter figures to make your preferred option look better than it is. Now, you want to save a little money by going for the cheapest […]

Going backwards

Written By: - Date published: 8:49 pm, May 12th, 2009 - 46 comments

I don’t know about you guys but when Family First says something is great I get worried. So when those reactionaries say NACT has strengthened the Families Commission with its new appointments it’s worth having a second look at what’s going on. The Families Commission is Peter Dunne’s baby he wanted it to protect the ‘family’ by […]

New rules

Written By: - Date published: 1:16 pm, May 12th, 2009 - 5 comments

Makes you wish we had some good political satire here.

Worth the while?

Written By: - Date published: 12:26 pm, May 12th, 2009 - 17 comments

We got a guest post a fortnight ago that we keep meaning to put up with the title “Worth fails to cock-up for a week, apologises to PM”. Lucky we didn’t speak too soon. The background is this. Chris Hipkins, like any good MP does, has been asking written questions to the minister for his […]

Calling it a day

Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, May 12th, 2009 - 48 comments

When I first started writing for The Standard way back in August 2007 I never envisaged it would become what it is today, nor that it would take up anywhere near as much of my time as it does. A year and half later, I’ve decided I want my life back. Contrary to the conspiracy […]

“We have got a problem with Maori”

Written By: - Date published: 8:29 am, May 12th, 2009 - 86 comments

Now before you start thinking the Standard has started spruiking for the National Front I should make it clear that the title quote of this post comes from Christine Rankin in 2007. She was talking about child abuse and claiming that Maori are the problem. Now, in a move akin to putting Garth McVicar in […]

Have your say, make them listen

Written By: - Date published: 5:03 am, May 12th, 2009 - 14 comments

The government has announced its legislative plan for the supercity in a press release from John Carter, rather than Rodney Hide whose arrogant mishandling of the issue is privately blamed by National for the growing unrest in Auckland. The press release says: Now that the Government has announced our position on the Royal Commission’s Report into […]

CCD Myths – East Antarctica

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 pm, May 11th, 2009 - 20 comments

In east Antarctica, the sea ice sheets have been larger recently. Predictably this has been seized on by the scientifically simple-minded climate change deniers (CCD’s) as evidence that climate change models are incorrect. This is despite it being predicted very closely by the same climate models well before it happened. I remember it being pointed […]

Clean Start rally – Thursday

Written By: - Date published: 3:53 pm, May 11th, 2009 - 8 comments

If you’re in Auckland on Thursday pop along to this in your lunch hour and help support low-paid cleaners: Hat tip: The Hand Mirror.

Hopeless

Written By: - Date published: 2:31 pm, May 11th, 2009 - 25 comments

Anyone remember Helen Clark’s announcement during Labour’s election campaign that there would be no new significant spending promises: “We have judged it not prudent at this present time to make those sort of commitments.” We’ve now got Key justifying his inevitable-looking betrayal of his campaign tax cut promises: “There’s no getting away from the fact that […]

What would Key the Investor do?

Written By: - Date published: 10:27 am, May 11th, 2009 - 15 comments

Here’s a question for Mr Key but you can play along too. What if you could buy into an asset that performs well usually but had a very bad year last year? Because of that bad year, the price is now at historically low levels but the outlook over the short and long term is […]

Bosses ‘using recession’ to squeeze staff

Written By: - Date published: 9:12 am, May 11th, 2009 - 10 comments

Well that didn’t take long. Bosses ‘using recession’ to squeeze staff: Bosses being accused of using the recession to exploit workers by driving down wages, forcing unrealistic productivity targets on staff and creating an environment where stressed staff will leave without waiting to collect redundancy pay. As evidence mounts of increasing employer pressure on staff, […]

Disconnect

Written By: - Date published: 10:43 pm, May 10th, 2009 - 47 comments

As Labour learned to its cost last year you can’t keep on insisting that something is true if the public’s opinion has hardened against it. Once the disconnect is in place, not only do you fail to bring people to your point of view, your efforts make you look aloof or unlistening, hurting your popularity. […]

Thinking about a referendum on MMP

Written By: - Date published: 5:54 pm, May 10th, 2009 - 21 comments

There is an interesting paper by Mai Chen in NZ Lawyer Online about the pros and cons of the referendum on MMP that National has promised by 2011 – “Is the MMP referendum likely to result in electoral reform?” The current position is that MMP has managed to operate effectively in the NZ environment. Both […]

Blerta

Written By: - Date published: 12:29 pm, May 10th, 2009 - 2 comments

Di Mackey of Woman Wandering had this video in a post. Looks like someone had a lot of fun making the video to Blerta‘s Dance All Around the World. Hat-tip: indirectly from the hand-mirror

Garrote them for shagging sheep

Written By: - Date published: 9:41 am, May 10th, 2009 - 39 comments

The strange Sensible Sentencing Trust three-strikes bill put up by ACT’s David Garrett aka ‘Garrote‘ has some strange implications. Scott at Imperator Fish points out this one. Even if lawmakers could accept the principle that after three serious offences you’re a goner, getting them to agree on what those offences should be would be next […]

Another nail in the neo-liberal coffin

Written By: - Date published: 10:10 am, May 9th, 2009 - 32 comments

Neoliberal economic policy has taken a bit of a beating lately. Unregulated financial markets have exploded spectacularly and the wreckage is dragging the real economy down with it. The whole edifice is being propped up with trillions of dollars worth of taxpayer bailouts – as ever big business likes to privatise the profits and socialise […]