Archive for July, 2009

Robert Reid to lead NDU

Written By: - Date published: 4:45 pm, July 7th, 2009 - 6 comments

As has been expected for some time, the National Distribution Union has announced that its President, Robert Reid, will be taking over as National Secretary from Laila Harre in August. Harre will leave with a stronger union than she found it, and will probably be remembered best for the epic Progressive lockout, as well as […]

Drinking Liberally Wgtn

Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, July 7th, 2009 - 1 comment

Just received this from Drinking Liberally Wellington: We hope you’ve enjoyed our unannounced winter break. We’re back this Thursday, at 5:30 at the Southern Cross on Abel Smith Street. This week our special guest speaker is Mark Eden, from the Wellington Animal Rights Network. He will be speaking on “Sow crates, battery hens and not […]

Oil’s well that ends well?

Written By: - Date published: 11:52 am, July 7th, 2009 - 46 comments

Now days everybody wanna talk, like they got something to say, but nothing comes out when they move their lips, just a bunch of gibberish, and all of you act like you forgot about oil. Yup, just when you thought it was safe to go back into the dealer’s lot, oil is back and in […]

The productivity shell-game

Written By: - Date published: 10:57 am, July 7th, 2009 - 24 comments

Is he named for the great economist John Maynard Keynes or Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan? Either way, he speaks a lot of sense: There was an attack on the ‘bureaucracy’ during the 2008 election, and the front line was held to be sacrosanct. The rest were bonfire candidates. Now we get an attack on the […]

Symbol or substance?

Written By: - Date published: 9:11 am, July 7th, 2009 - 28 comments

It seems to me that National has fundamentally misunderstood what the foreshore and seabed debate is about. Key’s statements yesterday suggest it is about a mere symbolical recognition of an iwi’s traditional ties to sections of foreshore and seabed. It’s not. He seems to think it’s about beaches. It’s not. He seems to equate mana […]

What goes up

Written By: - Date published: 5:21 am, July 7th, 2009 - 15 comments

There’s a lot of empty, over-optimistic talk around at the moment about ‘green-shoots’ in the economy. Supposedly, these are little early signs of recovery which mean that soon everything will be back to normal and we can go back to getting rich selling each other houses with money we borrowed from the Japanese. Things will get […]

Reminder

Written By: - Date published: 5:00 pm, July 6th, 2009 - 12 comments

1) Go read Editing the Herald. 2) Bookmark it. 3) Read it every day. It’s the best thing on the Internet.

40 by 2020

Written By: - Date published: 4:05 pm, July 6th, 2009 - 11 comments

Great new video from 350.org.nz calling on the Government to back a 40% reduction in emissions by 2020. Current National Party policy is 50 by 2050. Public meetings on the Government’s emissions target start today. Check out frogblog for more information about how you can have your say.

OIA confirms: No reason to cut Cullen Fund contributions

Written By: - Date published: 12:02 pm, July 6th, 2009 - 72 comments

Well, we told you so. The Nats lied for weeks that a credit rating downgrade would be imposed on us if we didn’t cut contributions to the SuperFund. We didn’t fall for that for a minute. Even before the Budget, we pointed out that, except for the extraordinary conditions of the last two years, managed […]

Climate change, passing the pain.

Written By: - Date published: 10:15 am, July 6th, 2009 - 22 comments

The US has finally managed to pass a bill through the house of representatives dealing with climate change (sort of). It is laden with pork-barrel initiatives because the congress members realised that they could treat carbon credits as a type of free-money boondoggle. It still has to pass the senate and get approval from Obama, […]

Shouting into the void

Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, July 6th, 2009 - 19 comments

Pop quiz – did you know that earlier this week the UN released a major report on the “Green Economy”? Here is a good summary: Green Economy: A Transformation to Address Multiple Crises The current financial and economic crisis is throwing millions of people into poverty, especially the most vulnerable in the developing world. This […]

Worth asking

Written By: - Date published: 3:55 pm, July 5th, 2009 - 23 comments

What a world where a supposed journalist writes this: The trouble is Key’s desire to be reasonable. Despite his intention to say no more about his reasons for losing confidence in Worth, he keeps responding to the media interrogation and seems unable to draw a line under the question. The best approach would be, simply […]

The price of fear

Written By: - Date published: 1:02 pm, July 5th, 2009 - 34 comments

It’s hardly controversial to comment that our media peddle fear. Nor uncontroversial to comment that a cowed individual is a controllable individual. Many remark on our 6 O’Clock News leading with, lingering over and sensationalising the random stabbing or shooting and also that on our fictional TV programmes are increasingly dominated by fearful scenarios such […]

A lecture on the WAIS

Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, July 5th, 2009 - 12 comments

There are a few odd times that I wish I was living in Wellington instead of Auckland (not often).This is one of them. There is a lecture by one of the leading researchers looking at the geology of the West Antarctica ice sheet (WAIS) and the critical medium-term effects of climate change. Tim Naish says […]

CycleWatch – 100 days

Written By: - Date published: 7:47 am, July 5th, 2009 - 12 comments

As CycleWatch hits 100 days, John Key’s been caught with his pants down. As No Right Turn explains a few days ago: [There has been no cost-benefit analysis] and now it seems to have abandoned its own timetable for beginning the project. Either that, or the Prime Minister is going to pull the initial selection […]

Double strength spin from Armstrong

Written By: - Date published: 5:17 pm, July 4th, 2009 - 14 comments

Former journalist John Armstrong runs National’s line on health today: The Cabinet’s loosening of rules on district health boards farming out non-urgent surgical operations to private hospitals is the logical step to take for a Government trying to get more from less…Monday’s decision is a step towards public and private providers eventually competing for the […]

Show pony

Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, July 4th, 2009 - 26 comments

Fran O’Sullivan, who championed National most ardently in Opposition, has become disillusioned with Key as PM. She savages him today, saying he has a “deep need” to be “Mr Popularity”: Prime Minister John Key’s practised inclination – crack a few jokes about daughter Steffie usurping his credit card and/or messing up her en suite and son Max telling […]

Time for Labour to listen

Written By: - Date published: 11:50 am, July 4th, 2009 - 19 comments

I have to disagree with my comrade ayb on his post calling for Labour to come up with a more detailed program. Though I understand the desire to see Labour come up some new and inspiring left-wing agenda, now is not the time. Sure, maybe Phil Goff should come out with his own version of […]

Pay equity video

Written By: - Date published: 3:30 pm, July 3rd, 2009 - 11 comments

A short video from the NZEI from Tuesday’s pay equity rally at Parliament. There are also a bunch of photos on flickr from the CTU, EPMU and TEU.

Go the Yanks!

Written By: - Date published: 2:00 pm, July 3rd, 2009 - 26 comments

So we’ve got a government of incompetents, ideologues, and sloths. At least things are going better in America. The Democrats now have a super-majority in the Senate: The Republicans are imploding. Their ineffectual anger is getting so ugly they’re turning off anyone sane:

Abandoning a winner

Written By: - Date published: 1:37 pm, July 3rd, 2009 - 12 comments

Government’s put out this press release: “Finance Minister Bill English has welcomed news that the Budget operating deficit of $7.2 billion for the 11 months to May 31 is lower than the forecast $8.4 billion… Most of the $1.2 billion variance was due to higher-than-forecast investment gains by the NZ Superannuation Fund and ACC” Yup, […]

Labour lolz

Written By: - Date published: 12:48 pm, July 3rd, 2009 - 36 comments

I reckon Red Alert, the Labour MPs’ blog, has been a huge success. It’s great to see MPs unscripted and it’s good for them to get the instant public reaction in the comments. It’s also a bit of a political risk. When you’re allowing instant, uncensored public reaction you can’t hide from criticism and you […]

Private member’s ballot

Written By: - Date published: 12:28 pm, July 3rd, 2009 - Comments Off on Private member’s ballot

The Left continues to have luck with the private member’s bill ballot, getting both of the bills drawn today just like a couple of weeks back (well, not so much luck, most of the bills in the ballot are from the Left). Metiria Turei’s Marine Animals Protection Law Reform Bill was drawn, which while worthy […]

A “Charter for Blackmail and rent-seeking by Maori interests”

Written By: - Date published: 12:21 pm, July 3rd, 2009 - 16 comments

Further to my post yesterday, a reader sent in this quote from 2004: Mr English’s view was not [National’s] official line. As expressed by strategist Murray McCully, it is that the bill is a “charter for blackmail and rent-seeking by Maori interests”. Let’s be clear. National opposed the Foreshore & Seabed Act because they thought […]

Elucidate

Written By: - Date published: 10:15 am, July 3rd, 2009 - 28 comments

The woman has dropped her criminal complaint over Worth. Says she is satisfied now the scumbag has lost his career. Police are expected to drop the investigation.  Now, can we (pretty please) know why a minister in our government lost his job? Can Key, just for a day, pretend to give a damn about transparency […]

Bill sez: ‘pay cuts for youse’

Written By: - Date published: 8:20 am, July 3rd, 2009 - 91 comments

Yesterday in Question Time, Bill English sent a message loud and clear to teachers, police, doctors, nurses, and all other public servants (‘frontline’ or not): under National, you’ll be getting pay-cuts, don’t expect cost of living adjustments, watch as your pay-packet buys less and less. Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Government has stated a number of […]

MAF investigation report released

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, July 3rd, 2009 - 16 comments

MAF has released the final report of their investigation into the pig farm owned by former Pork Board Director Colin Kay, exposed on the Sunday programme in May. As all those who knew anything about the Animal Welfare Act and subsidiary Codes of Welfare predicted, the farm in question has been found to be operating […]

100,000th comment

Written By: - Date published: 5:20 pm, July 2nd, 2009 - 31 comments

Our first comment was on our second day, August 17th 2007 “Where will it lead? ” by trythisone on our third post… who never showed up again. Number 100 was on September 15th, 31 days in, John laughing at Jacqui Dean for wanting to ban dihydrogen monoxide – also known as water. Our thousandth came […]

Tax Payer funded hypocrisy

Written By: - Date published: 4:14 pm, July 2nd, 2009 - 48 comments

Remember the hip-hop tours ‘scandal’ the National Party used over and over and over again to attack the previous Labour-led government? They went as far as to put it in their 2005 election billboards. It was a minuscule amount of money, yet National used it as one of their prime examples of wasteful spending. Now […]

So whatcha gonna to do about it then?

Written By: - Date published: 2:00 pm, July 2nd, 2009 - 40 comments

I reckon there’s a mood developing. People are getting sick and tired of what feels like a government that’s got the country in reverse. But what they’re looking for is an alternative. Increasingly people are starting to ask of the opposition “So what are you going to do differently?” They’ve asked it in relation to sow […]

Six years – for what?

Written By: - Date published: 1:10 pm, July 2nd, 2009 - 45 comments

Six years ago the Neocon Bush administration invaded Iraq, on the pretence of looking for “weapons of mass destruction” (that were never there). Steve Pierson at The Standard covered the Fifth Anniversary, and some aspects of the death and misery caused by the invasion. Now the Americans are pulling out of Iraq’s cities, they officially […]