Archive for February, 2010

Open mike 02/02/2010

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, February 2nd, 2010 - 18 comments

Topics of interest, announcements, general discussion. The usual rules apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike…

XT Outages

Written By: - Date published: 1:30 pm, February 1st, 2010 - 58 comments

Last week thousands of Telecom XT network customers were without service, some for three days. This comes just weeks after a similar outage last December. It makes a mockery of Telecom’s claim of “five nines” (99.999% reliability). A recent post at by Peter Griffin at Sciblogs (a site for NZ science bloggers) tears Telecom a […]

Anonymous Dom editor has a cry

Written By: - Date published: 1:10 pm, February 1st, 2010 - 86 comments

I see the DomPost is running a sniveling editorial claiming Labour’s commitment to raising the minimum wage can’t be done. It then breaks out the dodgy unadjusted maths to claim Labour would never have lifted the minimum wage to $15 if it was in power because it “only” lifted it by $5 last time and […]

Tim Watkin slams tax cuts for tax cheats

Written By: - Date published: 12:18 pm, February 1st, 2010 - 16 comments

On the Q+A blog, Tim Watkin rips into the proposed tax changes. Part of the post: …You might think that such a new source of tax income would open the door for tax cuts for the poorest New Zealanders; after all, they struggle the most in tough economic times and spend a higher proportion of […]

Colin James on Labour’s election record

Written By: - Date published: 11:05 am, February 1st, 2010 - 3 comments

Dancr linked to Colin James’ piece in the Press the other day, in which he writes: Here’s Labour’s record for the five decades years since the end of 1959: in government 19 years, out of government 31 years. Its best five decades were 1929-79, when it had 20 years in government, its worst just 12 […]

Police recruitment campaign steps up a gear

Written By: - Date published: 10:15 am, February 1st, 2010 - 18 comments

It was probably well intentioned – and to be fair we don’t know the full facts yet – but on the face of it putting kids in police cars at a school fair then doing donuts and figure eights around the field looks like pretty poor judgement. On the other hand, I’m just a little […]

That made my Auckland anniversary day

Written By: - Date published: 9:45 am, February 1st, 2010 - 21 comments

Peter Dunne on his record against Jeanette Fitzsimmons is really an exercise in ego instead of substance

Penny-wise, pound foolish in Afghanistan

Written By: - Date published: 9:07 am, February 1st, 2010 - 7 comments

Foreign Minister Murray McCully is refusing to contribute any New Zealand money to a fund that will buy-off the Taliban’s foot soldiers. The so-called ‘ten dollar Taliban’ are often not ideological but motivated by Taliban cash. By giving them more lucrative and less dangerous options, the Karzi government and its international supporters hope to deprive […]

Goff on Q+A

Written By: - Date published: 7:49 am, February 1st, 2010 - 38 comments

A good appearance from Phil Goff on the first Q+A of the year. I liked this part especially: Guyon Espiner: You spoke in your speech a lot about tax as well, and again you returned to that equity and fairness argument, and I want to quote from that, you said “too many people on good incomes […]

Open mike 01/02/2010

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, February 1st, 2010 - 13 comments

Topics of interest, announcements, general discussion. The usual rules apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike…