Written By: - Date published: 7:16 am, December 18th, 2010 - 30 comments
Brownlee ignored warnings that his reforms would increase power prices, not lower them as intended. Wholesale power prices have spiked from $50 to $300 per MWH. Exporters have cut production. Residential users are next. With power up and petrol breaking $2 a litre, energy is a handbrake on this supposed economic recovery.
Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, December 18th, 2010 - 66 comments
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Written By: - Date published: 1:00 pm, December 17th, 2010 - 50 comments
Several studies have now shown that those who watch Fox News are significantly more misinformed than those who don’t. Well there’s a surprise! Not. Serious question though, can we have both a free media and a requirement for minimum levels of accuracy and balance, or are those options mutually exclusive?
Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, December 17th, 2010 - 63 comments
We don’t have to care so much about beneficiaries any more. Or those single parents. Or the trials and tribulations of anyone else at all really. We have to be grown up. And we are more mean and lean than we used to be. Hell, even those pesky parliamentary lefties have abandoned the beneficiaries and the single parents. Yup. Nothing to see there. Life is good. We’re getting ahead. And we sure know what’s what. Don’t we?
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, December 17th, 2010 - 42 comments
Three government investment decisions in the last couple of weeks have shown the deficiencies in the neoliberal way of doing things. SOE Solid Energy’s lignite-to-liquids obsession, Kiwirail buying trains in China rather than making them itself and Steven Joyce decision to re-create Telecom’s monopoly by giving it 70-84% of the broadband contracts.
Written By: - Date published: 8:18 am, December 17th, 2010 - 15 comments
Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, December 17th, 2010 - 75 comments
Open mike is your post. It’s open for discussing topics of interest, making announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. Comment on whatever takes your fancy. The usual good behaviour rules apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike…
Written By: - Date published: 11:47 pm, December 16th, 2010 - 33 comments
It’s a tough Christmas for far too many Kiwis. Poverty is up, wages are down. 350,000 Kiwis are jobless or underemployed. The job losses are still coming. The rich got tax cuts, 70% got nothing. Drought is spreading. Thousands of Cantabrians face an uncertain future. Meanwhile, the Nats cynically exploit disaster to advance their agenda.
Written By: - Date published: 9:07 pm, December 16th, 2010 - 152 comments
Jason Ede, Whaleoil’s main source for smut in the National Research Unit, has done a clever little play on Phil Goff. Like 40-odd other MPs, Goff owns an investment property. That it’s in Wellington doesn’t matter. This isn’t a Double Dipton rort. But Goff pledged to sell it and he hasn’t. No rort but sloppy. A fair cop.
Written By: - Date published: 3:59 pm, December 16th, 2010 - 27 comments
Isn’t it great we’ve got that nice man John Key running the country?
He can’t sing, but he does entertain his fans so. Last year he sang Snoopy’s Christmas for his fans, this year Santa Claus is Coming to Town. He sure does know what it takes to be popular. And he always does his best.
Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, December 16th, 2010 - 13 comments
You are invited to complete the New Zealand Political Blog Readers’ Survey for 2010. This survey is a follow up to the 2008 survey, which provided an amazing amount of data about who reads New Zealand political blogs and their thoughts on the medium and its potential. This survey will gain further insights into New Zealand political blogging.
Written By: - Date published: 2:47 pm, December 16th, 2010 - 37 comments
The Right often espouses the mantra of “choice”. How we do better if we leave things up to the private sector, so we can all get what we want, instead of forcing us into the same solution.
Choice is great for ice-cream, but I don’t think it’s great for government services.
Written By: - Date published: 11:45 am, December 16th, 2010 - 41 comments
A very good close of year speech from Phil Goff in the House yesterday. I think this is the kind of thing we want to see more of next year. Phil’s job is to crystalise the vague sense of dissatisfaction that most people feel with the Key Government with himself as the spokesperson for those Key has betrayed and let down.
Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, December 16th, 2010 - 28 comments
Pansy Wong’s resignation in disgrace makes four ministers and three MPs lost by John Key’s government in two years (and more who have escaped scot-free). Now, we face another by-election – on March 5th, Botany will choose Wong’s successor. Here’s my take on the probable candidates and the party positioning.
Written By: - Date published: 7:45 am, December 16th, 2010 - 29 comments
The Right always advocates for less government spending as a percentage of GDP. Those with ideological blinkers cannot see the high correlation between being a free and stable country and paying for it. The most successful nations are willing to invest in quality public services. Government spending is low in poor, unequal, and unstable countries.
Written By: - Date published: 7:13 am, December 16th, 2010 - 67 comments
Tax cuts don’t cause growth, and even some of the right wing commentators are starting to admit it. The Nats’ tax cuts aren’t “broadly neutral” either, and that is why the deficit is blowing out. National’s one and only economic policy is busted. Now what?
Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, December 16th, 2010 - 32 comments
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Written By: - Date published: 2:02 pm, December 15th, 2010 - 31 comments
Wayne Mapp to retire “for personal and family reasons” at the 2011 election. Who’s going to be flown in to replace him?
Written By: - Date published: 1:30 pm, December 15th, 2010 - 65 comments
How does large hunks of most of our coastal cities and thousands of acres of farmland being swallowed the sea sound? This neat graphic shows effects of sea level rises from climate change: 1m – roughly in line with official predictions; through 6m – collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet; to 14m – doomsday scenario. Even a small rise is catastrophic.
Written By: - Date published: 12:10 pm, December 15th, 2010 - 18 comments
Annette Sykes recently delivered the annual Bruce Jesson Lecture concerning ‘The Politics of the Brown Table’. Much of her address is a harsh critique of the so called ‘iwi elite’ and their neo liberal agenda. In my opinion her assessments are true and justified. Without doubt neo liberalism undermines Maori efforts for self determination
Written By: - Date published: 10:21 am, December 15th, 2010 - 35 comments
Rortbuster Pete Hodgson unveiled yet more information about Pansy and Sammy Wong’s business activities in China on the taxpayer dime in Parliament yesterday. It’s damning material. The Auditor-General had decided not to investigate but there’s every chance she will now or that the Police will.
Written By: - Date published: 9:54 am, December 15th, 2010 - 29 comments
3 under the radar stories yesterday. All linked by ideology. Kiwirail to buy 300 wagons from China because its cheaper than building them here. Not allowed to consider wider economic gains. Collins outsources her new prison to a multi-national with a history of prisoner abuse. English wants more ‘value’ from public assets. Value for whom? The likes of Serco?
Written By: - Date published: 8:48 am, December 15th, 2010 - 37 comments
As a government and as a country we honoured the Pike River dead, as was right and proper. But now the hard part starts. What are we going to do for the Pike River survivors? The families who lost loved ones. The fellow workers who have now lost their livelihood.
Written By: - Date published: 7:15 am, December 15th, 2010 - 207 comments
Child poverty is on the rise again. My question to the National government is simple. What are you going to do to reverse this trend and lift children out of poverty? It’s your watch. What are you going to do?
Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, December 15th, 2010 - 41 comments
Open mike is your post. It’s open for discussing topics of interest, making announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. Comment on whatever takes your fancy. The usual good behaviour rules apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike…
Written By: - Date published: 12:39 pm, December 14th, 2010 - 50 comments
Let’s face it. A government doesn’t accidentally spend $15 billion more than its revenue while cutting billions in taxes. The unsustainably high deficit is intentional policy, not happenstance. In good times and bad, National’s answer is always to cut taxes. The objective is to make huge deficits that then need to be ‘fixed’ with spending cuts.
Written By: - Date published: 11:18 am, December 14th, 2010 - 25 comments
So Pansy’s gone. That should mean we can breeze over the fact that thanks to National’s economic policies (or lack thereof) the economy’s gone to custard. And thanks to National’s tax cuts for the rich, the government’s books are in the poo. We certainly won’t get to hear anything about the fact that our first […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:58 am, December 14th, 2010 - 72 comments
Corrupt former National minister Pansy Wong has finally done the right thing and resigned from Parliament. Key didn’t want her to go. This doesn’t change the need for the Auditor-General to investigate the abuse of her travel perks. [Update: Key announces March 5 by-election (a very quick response from him having just learnt her personal, […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:31 am, December 14th, 2010 - 16 comments
Key has been very busy defending sacked Minister Pansy Wong. He has been desperately ignoring the calls for an Auditor General’s investigation as the cracks in the whitewash report on her illegal spending continue to grow. But Key is very quick to call for the Auditor General to investigate a single solitary billboard.
Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, December 14th, 2010 - 37 comments
Do you feel better off after the great tax swindle? Two recent surveys have shown that the significant majority of us do not. John Key has expressed his surprise at our ingratitude. But the numbers tell the story. Most of us don’t feel better off because we aren’t better off. The only surprise is that John Key is so completely out of touch as to fail to understand this.
Written By: - Date published: 7:25 am, December 14th, 2010 - 22 comments
National are consistently attacking the vulnerable in society – those who cannot fight back and complain. This is where a lot of their cuts are aimed at – those who need it most. Be it in health, education or welfare.
And in several recent health and education National cuts have hurt the most vulnerable – our children. Not just the massive ECE cuts of Tolley, but cuts hurting those at the bottom even more.
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