Archive for September, 2009

Fed farmers frothing

Written By: - Date published: 11:30 am, September 18th, 2009 - 92 comments

A virulent attack on Greenpeace in a press release by Federated Farmers president, Don Nicholson, convinces me that Greenpeace are hitting the mark. In a hysterical rant, Nicholson as well as accusing Greenpeace of “lying”, accuses Greenpeace of “economic treason”, and even claimed that “Greenpeace is actually anti-farming”. Don Nicholson has to resort to clumsy […]

Corporate welfare

Written By: - Date published: 10:43 am, September 18th, 2009 - 15 comments

I’ve got no problem with the government helping out those who are genuinely in need but forcing the taxpayer fork out $400 million (or is it 1.6b?) to subsidise corporate polluters is a disgrace. http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/2864572/Public-to-pay-tab-for-polluters This is corporate welfare at it’s worst. These businesses are simply bludging off the taxpayer. While you’re doing your bit […]

Nick Smith’s dirty dealing

Written By: - Date published: 9:33 am, September 18th, 2009 - 8 comments

Labour’s Charles Chauvel has released the paper records of Labour’s attempts to agree a bi-partisan ETS with National. In total, Labour presented three draft MOUs detailing possible agreements, each moving towards what they believed to be National’s position. Additionally, there was a letter from Phil Goff to John Key a month ago that clearly laid […]

“What else can I do?”, asks Blinky Bill.

Written By: - Date published: 8:20 am, September 18th, 2009 - 13 comments

We told him here months ago – acknowledge what everybody knows: that he lives in Wellington with his family, and he should claim the out-of-town allowance when he visits Dipton. That would be the honest thing to do. Bill says there is a perception problem, and he’s right – but the problem is entirely his. […]

Corporate bully-boys step it up a level

Written By: - Date published: 6:14 am, September 18th, 2009 - 16 comments

The Open Country Cheese dispute is underway. Workers are striking against the bosses’ attempts to casualise their hours and reduce their conditions. They are not striking for huge pay increases, despite the lies of Open Country. Open Country Cheese, part-owned by the notorious Talleys and tied to various National MPs via the Dairy Investment Fund […]

After Edge of Darkness

Written By: - Date published: 10:47 pm, September 17th, 2009 - 11 comments

I just read that the Troy Kennedy Martin, the screenwriter responsible for Edge of Darkness died earlier this week. I wanted to mark his passing because I think Edge of Darkness is one of the best things I have ever viewed on television. I was pretty young at the time but I remember being riveted […]

Lhaws: ‘look at me! I crave your attention’

Written By: - Date published: 9:42 pm, September 17th, 2009 - 32 comments

Lhaws puts on his usual prima donna act over the H which is set to leave Whanganui an uninhabitable, post-apocalyptic wasteland: “I have a constitutional responsibility to fight this decision until there is no fight left in my body. [The Geographic Board] has deliberately put Wanganui in a position where we can only resist, and […]

Photos from the Bridgeman lockout

Written By: - Date published: 4:45 pm, September 17th, 2009 - 6 comments

Some photos from the picketline at Bridgeman Concrete in East Tamaki, where workers have been locked out indefinitely unless they submit to a two year pay freeze. Good to see them standing strong. Click the thumbnails to see the full size pics: Hat tip: NDU via Indymedia.

Breaking English

Written By: - Date published: 3:50 pm, September 17th, 2009 - 41 comments

Bill English is not holding up well to the persistent questions put to him in Parliament about shuffling around his financial appearance to rort the taxpayer by claiming $1000 a week in housing allowances. Today, Bill English was stuttering his way through questions put to him by Pete Hodgson. And English again refused to publicly […]

Apps.gov

Written By: - Date published: 3:26 pm, September 17th, 2009 - 1 comment

‘In these tough economic times, the government must buy smarter,’ said Vivek Kundra, the US federal chief information officer, as he unveiled the Obama administration’s new government storefront for cloud computing applications and services. It’s not ok for the government here to blame it’s lack of ambitious policy initiatives on the recession. What Obama is […]

It isn’t a game

Written By: - Date published: 2:30 pm, September 17th, 2009 - 25 comments

People who treat politics as a game annoy me. People who see it all in terms of power and cliques and scoring points and winning at all costs annoy me a lot. These people have lost the plot. Politics is not a game. Politics matters. It matters to society, the lives of individuals, and the […]

Wee gripes: It’s not easy being green

Written By: - Date published: 1:04 pm, September 17th, 2009 - 10 comments

Westpac has this ad campaign about how they’re doing their bit to reduce their environmental impact. The dumb thing is they make begin green appear unattractive.   You know the ads. The kid trying to get the idiot dad who works at Westpac to be more enviromentally friendly. Dad zips up his wang  after peeing […]

Whanganui

Written By: - Date published: 1:00 pm, September 17th, 2009 - 66 comments

Here’s something to look forward to New Zealand. Another round of that trumped up little egotist stirring racist populism to get himself in the news.

Why the Redundancy Protection Bill matters

Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, September 17th, 2009 - 23 comments

Over at Red Alert, Darien Fenton tells the story of just one of the thousands of workers currently being laid off without redundancy compensation. Really brings home how important it is for the Government to back the Redundancy Protection Bill: Tanya has worked for Chong Newztel for three years and some of her workmates had […]

The bigots beneath

Written By: - Date published: 9:38 am, September 17th, 2009 - 39 comments

Last night, Sandra Goudie, the big-mouth of the National Party caucus, said the words out loud that the Nats usually keep in their heads. During the debate on the Supercity, one of the Labour MPs was talking about the success of Maori seats in the Bay of Plenty and how other councillors didn’t object. Goudie […]

Foreshore nomoreshore

Written By: - Date published: 8:51 am, September 17th, 2009 - 15 comments

Two chilling articles from last week’s Guardian Weekly just finished, both about the consequences of the world’s water getting warmer faster than expected. The Greenland ice sheet is melting, “far faster than the climate models predicted and far more decisively than any political actions to combat our changing climate.” It’s worth a read – we […]

Contempt for democracy

Written By: - Date published: 5:30 am, September 17th, 2009 - 46 comments

Gerry Brownlee in Question Time yesterday. He’s asked a question, just sits there and refuses to answer. Doesn’t even open his mouth, just sits there with a smug look on his face. Lockwood, out of his depth like always, just ignores the rules to cover Brownlee’s arse. Only ten months in and this Government is abusing or […]

English’s story disintegrating

Written By: - Date published: 5:12 am, September 17th, 2009 - 29 comments

Pete Hodgson is continuing to chip away at English’s ministerial allowance story. English looks very uncomfortable as Brownlee and Key cover for him. To my mind, this is yesterday’s crucial exchange: Hon Pete Hodgson: If the Hon Bill English has no pecuniary interest in his ministerial residence, then how come the email I have here, dated […]

I don’t know if it hurts my eyes or my heart more

Written By: - Date published: 5:06 pm, September 16th, 2009 - 55 comments

WTF is this? I mean look at it. It’s got to be the worst website I have ever seen and I’ve been around since well before the web existed. More to the point, how did this get up? What kind of process could possibly have let this through? Who signed off on it? I wouldn’t […]

Short term thinkers

Written By: - Date published: 1:30 pm, September 16th, 2009 - 27 comments

It never ceases to amaze me what short term thinkers National are. The plan (with the Maori Party) to gut the ETS highlights this issue very starkly. For the sake of short term appeasement of their backers in the polluting industries National are prepared to abandon the much more important long term considerations.  Considerations like […]

Nats attack democracy on two fronts

Written By: - Date published: 11:30 am, September 16th, 2009 - 9 comments

Again, National has put the House into urgency to slam through unpopular legislation. This time, it’s the Supercity legislation. National whinges that it has to use urgency to pass legislation that could be passed anytime in the next months because they only get 17 hours a week to pass laws otherwise and that’s not enough […]

Lockout at Bridgeman Concrete

Written By: - Date published: 10:45 am, September 16th, 2009 - 14 comments

Last week I wrote: We’re seeing a new pattern in work relations emerging. The big employers, emboldened by having their party in power and using the recession as an excuse, are attacking workers’ pay and conditions. Now, on the same day Talley and National-linked Open Country Cheese begins shutting out its workers and illegally using […]

Sell state houses? Not like this

Written By: - Date published: 9:42 am, September 16th, 2009 - 25 comments

National has announced that it will begin offering to sell 3,800 state houses to tenants living in them on market rents. I don’t automatically oppose selling state houses but there needs to be four conditions: Housing NZ must use all revenue from sales to buy new houses – we don’t want the amount of housing […]

What next, Soylent Green?

Written By: - Date published: 5:31 am, September 16th, 2009 - 29 comments

The Wall Street financiers crapped out on their sub-prime gambles, inflicting economic devastation on the taxpayers who generously bailed-them out in return. Now, they need a new gamble, a new game in which they bet using other people’s money while skimming off the cream for themselves until it all collapses. The new game? Betting on […]

Taxpayer shafted again

Written By: - Date published: 3:53 pm, September 15th, 2009 - 52 comments

National seems to be making a bit of a habit of shafting the taxpayer. Before the election we were promised significant tax cuts, “North of $50” per week. We had John Key’s personal guarantee. Key said “New Zealanders will be able to believe our tax cuts, they will be able to trust our tax cuts…”. […]

Labour Grasps Nettle: Nettles Usually Sting

Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, September 15th, 2009 - 29 comments

By Rob Salmond It sounds like Phil G did a great job at Labour’s conference setting out where the party should go from here. Unfortunately, his KISS message didn’t get to all attendees. Labour apparently now wants to propose modifications to MMP, including more electorate MPs, fewer list MPs, a lower threshold, and getting rid […]

No deal

Written By: - Date published: 11:16 am, September 15th, 2009 - 22 comments

Hot Topic has obtained a copy of a draft memorandum of understanding for a meeting on the ETS that was meant to take place today. It shows that Labour was prepared to do more to help compensate polluters for the costs they would have faced while still paying a price for polluting, thereby still incentivising reductions […]

A hollow gesture

Written By: - Date published: 10:45 am, September 15th, 2009 - 7 comments

Some good comments from CTU president Helen Kelly in the Dom today on the Government’s posturing over MP pay increases. “The Government is trying to make a hero out of anybody who doesn’t get a pay increase, and I’m worried about that because there are a lot of workers out there they’re putting pressure on […]

Kaupapa for sale

Written By: - Date published: 9:08 am, September 15th, 2009 - 6 comments

A few important passages from the special select committee report on the Emissions Trading Scheme: In the long term, price caps stand in the way of market development and shield business from the real price of carbon to the economy…[National and United Future] recommend to the Government that if a short-term price cap is introduced, […]

It’s the economy, stupid

Written By: - Date published: 5:48 am, September 15th, 2009 - 36 comments

What a lot of people don’t seem to understand is that an emissions trading scheme has two points: 1) encourage reductions in emissions 2) allocate the cost of emitting. The ETS does not, ultimately, create the price on carbon for New Zealand. That is created by our international committment, along with other countries, to limit our […]

Maori Party to help Nats kill carbon emissions cap

Written By: - Date published: 5:15 pm, September 14th, 2009 - 78 comments

Nick Smith has just announced a deal with the Maori Party to replace the existing Emissions Trading Scheme with a do-nothing joke. The new ETS will allocate polluting rights (carbon credits) free to polluters for the first years and then at a low capped price thereafter. Agriculture, source of 50% of our greenhouse pollution, will not be […]