Written By: - Date published: 8:30 pm, August 13th, 2009 - 54 comments
You may have noticed the article on Stuff about a ‘senior political figure’ in court today. A woman is seeking a protection order against him. [Deleted] Whichever party they belong to, if it is established in the court proceedings that he has behaving violently or threateningly towards this woman, he will have to go. Domestic […]
Written By: - Date published: 4:01 pm, August 13th, 2009 - 67 comments
Well, there goes our clean, green image. After Key announced the pathetic 10-20% emissions reduction target, we were declared ‘fossil of the day’ by environmental groups attending the Copenhagen climate change conference. Here’s Eco, talking about the failure of New Zealand and other developed countries:”The New Zealand target completes a rather dismal Annex I picture. The […]
Written By: - Date published: 2:27 pm, August 13th, 2009 - 40 comments
Breaking up the old Electricity Corporation into a bunch of artificially competing companies has been a 15-year failure. They’ve poured heaps of money into competing with each other (despite mostly being owned by the same people, us), they’ve under invested, and prices have gone up fast. What’s National’s solution to this failed National experiment (which […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:56 pm, August 13th, 2009 - 19 comments
It’s a rare day that I agree with Bill English but he’s right about the danger of another housing boom. The last bubble has not deflated yet we are already seeing prices start to grow again. There are now projections of 24% growth housing prices over the next three years, in a period when GDP […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, August 13th, 2009 - 37 comments
Remember the petition to state your opposition to Paula Bennett’s attack on our privacy rights. The idea is it will be tabled in Parliament next week. It’s a chance to take a symbolic stand against this bullying Key Government. You can download the pdf here or by clicking on the image and mail it freepost by […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:48 am, August 13th, 2009 - 56 comments
Unemployment has shot up to 133,500, nearly doubling in 18 months. But that’s not the whole story. The official ‘unemployed’ are only the people without work who looking for work and able to start now. Add to that the ‘jobless’, people who want work but are not actively looking (because they’re discouraged or there’s none […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:15 pm, August 12th, 2009 - 8 comments
Service & Food Workers Union national secretary John Ryall has a new blog. His first post takes aim at the claim by Ngai Tahu Runanga Chair Mark Solomon that the National Government should be considering Iwi for public-private partnerships because they have a greater commitment to New Zealand. Ryall argues that the recent behaviour of […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, August 12th, 2009 - 22 comments
The Minister of Labour, Kate Wilkinson, is holding a meeting today with 25 top CEOs on the number of New Zealanders who are killed every year at work. The fact it’s being billed as an example of ‘partnership’ shows a lot about this Government’s worldview, because she’s specifically excluded any representation from the workers who’re […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, August 12th, 2009 - 45 comments
Farrar has come back with a defence of his icky and outragous ‘satire’ post that proports to be a Green press statement announcing a policy of complusory mass abortions to fight climate change. If people are seriously going to propose policies such as reducing the national dairy herd by 20%, then they should expect a […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:59 am, August 12th, 2009 - 5 comments
Two cool fundraisers coming up for the Greens and Labour. The Greens are holding a screening of Kiwi ‘s The Age of Stupid, a movie set in 2055 looking back at today and asking the painful, obvious question – ‘if we could see all these problems of resource exhaustion, pollution, cliamte change, and over-population coming, […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:53 pm, August 11th, 2009 - 65 comments
It was a bit strange listening to Key’s interview on RNZ yesterday morning about deploying the SAS to Afghanistan. He kept on awkwardly saying ‘the people of Afghanistan’ rather than just ‘the Afghans’ or ‘the Afghanis’*. The reason soon became clear: “[if they take any prisoners] they’ll be handed over to the Afghanistanian government…. I […]
Written By: - Date published: 4:45 pm, August 11th, 2009 - 32 comments
It’s great to see all the lines engineers standing up to Telecom’s attempt to strip away their employment rights and turn them into dependent contractors. I was lucky enough to catch the protest above yesterday (not my photo though), and there was a lot of passion from the guys. There’s a good reason for that […]
Written By: - Date published: 4:20 pm, August 11th, 2009 - 15 comments
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. National has learned nothing from the failure of the neoliberal policies of the late 80s / early 90s (when gaps in growth and income opened up with Australia). So they are gearing up to repeat them: [English] and other ministers’ utter single-mindedness of […]
Written By: - Date published: 2:18 pm, August 11th, 2009 - 59 comments
NZPA reports: Privacy Commissioner Marie Shroff has confirmed she will investigate Social Development Minister Paula Bennett after the release of details of two mothers’ income. Good. John Key has made it clear he won’t hold his ministers to account for abusing their power, now it’s up to the Privacy Commisioner to do his job for […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:45 pm, August 11th, 2009 - 45 comments
Just a month into the Government’s housing insulation programme and John Key has had to launch an inquiry into rorting by contractors who are taking the subsidy but also increasing their prices, and so pocketing a good part of the subsidy themselves rather than passing it on to the consumer as intended. That’s a bad […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:58 am, August 11th, 2009 - 14 comments
As a recent article in the Guardian newspaper asked: “Can art succeed where science is proving insufficient to generate the will to act effectively on climate change? Scientists sound increasingly desperate as the evidence they are carefully accumulating stacks up but fails to prompt the urgency they insist it requires. Science seems only to create […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:59 am, August 11th, 2009 - 20 comments
No, not another post about Bludger Bill, this one’s about that thing that he and Key are meant to be taking care of. What’s it called again? No, not the cycle-way. No, not solving disputes over wills. Um, bear with me, it’ll come back to me. Oh, right, it’s the economy. That thing? But everything’s […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:17 pm, August 10th, 2009 - 47 comments
It’s interesting to see how National’s spin doctors are trying to frame the Government’s pathetic and shameful emissions reduction target of 10-20% by 2020. Stuff has ‘Ambitious’ emissions target announced The NZ Herald has New emissions target ‘big ask for NZ’ – Key And 3 News has Sia Aston quoting long-discredited figures supplied to her by […]
Written By: - Date published: 6:52 pm, August 10th, 2009 - 45 comments
If ever there were a sentence that summed up our collective folly it’s “Scientific opinion is that a reduction of 40 per cent is needed to prevent serious global warming but few countries are expected set that as a target.” That’s from the NZPA article on the Key Government’s newly announced climate change target. 10-20% below […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:27 pm, August 10th, 2009 - 81 comments
Farrar’s attacks on climate change campaigners and the Greens recently have been pretty hysterical (‘they’re going to shoot the cows!’) but now he’s gone too far. In what purports to be satire, Farrar posts a ‘Green press release’ that says they want to have two out of three pregnancies aborted to tackle climate change. I’m not […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:06 am, August 10th, 2009 - 18 comments
Dark material gets warmer in sunlight than light-coloured or white material. Heat energy enters our atmosphere after light strikes the surface of the Earth, is partially converted into heat, which then radiates into the air. White stuff reflects the sun’s energy straight back into space without converting as much of it into heat. Because of this, […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:46 am, August 10th, 2009 - 37 comments
Rodney Hide is increasingly becoming an embarrassment to the government. The perception that he has created is that he will back to the hilt any cranky right wing idea if he believes that there is political support. And MMP means that minor parties do not need significant support, an incensed small group of extremists will […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:41 am, August 10th, 2009 - 22 comments
Following the success of TV3’s ‘Big Night In’ Telethon which raised over $2 million for KidsCan, I was thinking there are others that could benefit from some charity. You know, the recession is biting and even people who have been used to living well are now having to couple with dramatic cuts to their incomes. […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:20 am, August 9th, 2009 - 77 comments
Yesterday, John Armstrong talked about the Auditor-General’s 2001 report into eligibility for a Wellington accommodation allowance: the then Auditor-General David MacDonald scrutinised allowances after two ministers – Labour’s Marian Hobbs and the Alliance’s Phillida Bunkle – got into serious strife for claiming out-of-Wellington expenses when they had made Wellington their place of residence by virtue […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:42 am, August 8th, 2009 - 62 comments
Frank Macskasy The recent witch-hunt against solo-mums would have done the old Salem village-elders proud. The fires, though, could have been stoked just a bit harder and higher. But as a first attempt at demonising a minority in our community, it wasn’t a bad effort for Minister of Social Services, Paula Bennett. When Bennett ordered […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:29 am, August 8th, 2009 - 3 comments
If you’re interested in the software that runs this site and many others, there is a wordcamp in Wellington this weekend about the open-source wonder WordPress. WordCamp is a conference that focuses on everything WordPress. WordCamps are informal, community-organized events that are put together by WordPress users like you. Everyone from casual users to core […]
Written By: - Date published: 3:47 pm, August 7th, 2009 - 20 comments
John explains how what he said was taken out of context, and he outlines his views on climate change.
Written By: - Date published: 2:30 pm, August 7th, 2009 - 7 comments
In my opinion Pundit is one of the treasures of the NZ news/blog space. The posts are frequently excellent, in a world where quality journalism is increasingly rare. A recent piece by one of the founders, Tim Watkin, is a case in point. After a brief topical hook: It’s been fascinating to find out that […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:35 pm, August 7th, 2009 - 35 comments
There is $4 billion in overdue tax owing. Every dollar of that means someone is pocketing cash that should be paying for schools, hospitals, superannuation etc, leaving those of us who pay our tax to pick up the tab. Tax cheats are criminals free-riding on the rest of us. Fortunately, it’s very cost effective to […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:32 am, August 7th, 2009 - 21 comments
As you know, when Natasha Fuller and Jennifer Johnston spoke up against the Key government’s cancelling of the Training Incentive Allowance, Paula Bennett tried to silence them by releasing their private information to the media. That was a flagrant breach of her fiduciary duties as minister and the Privacy Act, and a threat to free […]
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